Security

First of all, any information that you save with RoboForm is protected with a Master Password. Yes, this means that you will have to remember one password – but it also means that people around your computer won’t be able to access any of your online accounts unless they know this Master Password. All of the information that is stored with RoboForm is also encrypted. Anyone who got their hands on your actual passcard files would still need your Master Password to decrypt them.

Since RoboForm remembers and fills all of your passwords for you, you won’t have to worry about forgetting any of them. This allows you to create a different password for each online account without having to worry about forgetting any of them. If you’re currently using the same password for everything that you do, you should definitely check out my basic password tips. In case you don’t want the hassle of thinking up a new password for each website, RoboForm is able to randomly generate very strong passwords for you. An example of a generated password might look like this: NJ@&z47lpXZCds7VKvXI, but as you can see in the picture below – these generated passwords are also easy to customize.

One of the many risks to your security is a type of software that is known as a keylogger. A keystroke logger is a program that can record anything that you type on your keyboard. This log is then covertly sent out to the person who created or installed the keylogger which allows them to use your passwords, credit card numbers and so on. Most of the time, these keyloggers will look like an installation for a useful piece of software. You (or your family) could end up downloading and installing the keystroke logger; thinking that it was something else. On a side note, it is always a good idea to protect yourself from such downloads with a good internet security suite.

As I mentioned above, RoboForm will generate random passwords for you. When you randomly generate your password and drag it into the password field, your information will remain invisible to a keystroke logger. RoboForm also offers protection by providing a Virtual Keyboard for you to click in your Master Password so that keyloggers cannot capture it. Your other information (username, password, etc.) used to access your accounts will be filled with one simple click of the mouse. So, since you aren’t typing any of that information, it won’t be recorded either.

Phishing is yet another common threat to internet users today. Phishing is basically an electronic communication from someone that pretends to be a well known legitimate business. Let’s say that I send you an official looking email saying that there is a problem with your bank account. I continue to write that all you have to do to fix this “bank error” is to click the link that I provided in the email and then login to your account. That link then takes you to a website that appears to be your bank’s website but if you were to look at the actual website address (or URL) – you would see that it’s just a fake version of your bank’s homepage. For example you might see www.bankonamerica.com rather than www.bankofamerica.com in the address bar. The hope of the criminal that sent you this email is that you won’t notice the difference and you’ll end up submitting your username, password and other account information to this fake website. Then the bad guy uses that information to get at your money, steal your identity or do anything else that those evil lawbreaker types like to do.

RoboForm is quite an effective tool that prevents these phishing scams from being successful. RoboForm exposes these illegal practices by securely storing the correct URL (or internet address) along with your login information. RoboForm will only display passcards for URLs that match the internet address that is stored with your login information. If you happen to visit a fake website – you won’t be able to accidentally login because there won’t be any passcards that correspond with that fake URL.

RoboForm also keeps users alert by reminding them to be vigilant when it comes to protecting their personal information. Whenever a user is going to automatically fill credit card, social security, or any other important information – RoboForm will display a warning box stating that the web site is asking for sensitive information. This serves as a wake-up call in case you get too accustomed to automatically filling any form that comes along.

How it all looks and works

I suggest that you opt to use RoboForm’s toolbar inside your browser (which should be Firefox) because their toolbar has everything you need and is very easy to use. The image below is an example of how the toolbar looked at the time that I wrote this article.

The ‘RoboForm’ button (on the left side of the toolbar) gives you access to everything RoboForm has to offer. In the drop down menu you can view and make changes to your logins, identities, profiles, tools, options and so on.

The search field (to the right of the RoboForm button) allows you to search through all of your logins. If you have a Gmail account and a RoboForm passcard that contains your login information, you could simply type “gmail” (or whatever you named the passcard) in the search field and press the enter key to have RoboForm automatically go to the Gmail website and enter your login information for you.

The ‘Logins’ button (to the right of the search field) lists all of the passcards stored with RoboForm. From the drop down menu you’re able to choose a specific login, create a new login, edit existing logins, print a list of your logins or select one of your recently used logins.

To the right of the ‘Logins’ button will be a ‘Passcard’ button which contains all of the passcards matching the specific URL (or internet address) that you’re visiting. If you were sitting at Gmail’s login page, you would see your default Gmail passcard. If you have 5 different Gmail accounts, you would need to hover over this button for a second to select the specific account that you would like to access.

If you’re storing your personal information with RoboForm to easily fill checkout pages and other lengthy forms, then you will see ‘Information’ buttons to the right of your Passcard button. These buttons will fill forms with information like your name, address, phone numbers, bank accounts, credit cards, business information and even custom fields.

The ‘Save’ button is located to the right of the ‘Passcard’ or ‘Information’ buttons. This button allows you to save new logins, forms or bookmarks.

Next is the ‘Generate’ button and it quickly and easily creates secure passwords for new accounts. Hovering over this button lets you customize your options for password generation. You can then fill the password field with this generated password by pressing the fill button on the drop down menu or by dragging the password into the password field. You can also copy the generated password to be pasted elsewhere.

Final Ramblings

Even though I don’t get excited about things too often, I love this software! All I have to do is remember my Master Password, and RoboForm remembers everything else. I am thrilled that the functionality of RoboForm allows me to easily use different passwords for every online account that I maintain. I always try to keep my passwords 20 characters long with as many different types of characters as possible. If a particular website only allows letters and numbers or has a maximum of 10 or so characters, it is very easy to change the options prior to generating the password. I was so tired of continuously typing my full name, address and phone number for various sign-ups and other forms. Now, shopping cart checkouts and long registration forms only take seconds to complete. All I have to do is click on my RoboForm Identity or Passcard and RoboForm completes the entire form. If you spend a lot of time on the internet, I strongly suggest you that you look into purchasing this software.

Download RoboForm for free and for the first thirty days, you will be able to store as many Passcards and Identities as you want. After this trial period, RoboForm will always continue to work – only the amount of information that you can store will be reduced. I’m sure that once you have used RoboForm for a few days, you will see how much time it can save you. More importantly, I hope that you understand how much more secure your online activities will be while using RoboForm.

If you want to know how your password can be cracked, just ask any 8 year old kid. I’m kidding – but honestly the problem is that most kids these days know exactly what illegal things can be done and how to do them. Meanwhile, most of the adults using computers are absolutely clueless when it comes to protecting their information. Even government employees (*cough*Sarah Palin*cough*) conduct their daily business with lackadaisical security efforts. Usually it’s the people who possess a lot of information worth protecting that don’t know the first thing about security.

STOP – I suggest that you read this other article on how criminals get your passwords before reading this post. If at any point while reading this, you become frustrated and think that this is all too much non-sense; you are probably the type of person that needs to read everything in this post – so pay attention.

Phishing & Keyloggers

These threat usually rely on your gullibility. There are two programs that I highly recommend you arm yourself with. I believe that AVG Internet Security (read my post on AVG’s Internet Security software) and RoboForm (read my post on Siber System’s RoboForm software) are incredibly useful tools. I use both of these programs on a daily basis and they have both saved me many headaches. AVG checks all of my incoming emails for viruses, keyloggers, likely phishing scams and other goodies. Should I accidentally find myself on a phishing website, RoboForm won’t let me accidentally fill forms with my precious information.

There are millions of spam messages out there leading users to thousands of phishing sites. These sites are usually only up for a few days before they get shut down, but are constantly evolving. The stories vary but once you learn to spot one type of phishing scheme, you’ll probably notice all of the rest. Even without the helpful software that I mentioned, if you keep the following things in mind, hopefully you won’t be a victim.

Do not click any links that you have received from suspicious sources with suspicious stories. If you’ve been notified of an account problem, you can always call the company to make sure. If you want to login to your account, you can use a bookmark that you’ve used before or type the web address as you normally would. Don’t click the link in the email or instant message and don’t type that link either. Always verify the URL or web address of a page that you’re visiting, before you submit any personal information. Big companies generally won’t operate websites with an IP address as their URL. If you’re visiting a website and it says something like http://209.85.171.100/ in the address bar, you should be careful about submitting any personal information. You might think that you’re visiting bestbuy.com if you saw something like this ‘www.bestbuy.com.ww2.us‘ in your address bar, but you’d actually be on the ww2.us server.

Do not download any programs attached to your emails – unless you trust the source and know that they have scanned their files for any malicious software. An executable, no matter how small, can do serious damage to your computer or track your activity. Do not reply to any emails from princes in other countries who have boatloads of money waiting for you. and please don’t send them any of your hard earned money either.

Stronger Passwords

If you’ve read my article about common password cracking methods, you should know all about the brute force method, dictionary attacks and making educated guesses. Once again, I’m going to suggest that you look into getting yourself a copy of RoboForm – as it will save you a lot of trouble. It generates secure passwords and remembers all of them for you.

The longer your password is, the more secure it will be. Just imagine trying to troubleshoot a password that is 1 character in length and consists of a number between 0 and 9 – pretty easy right? There would only be 10 possibilities; but now imagine trying to systematically solve a password that is 20 characters long. Each character would have the same range of numbers (from 0 to 9) but arriving at the perfect combination of all 20 characters leaves us with 100,000,000,000,000,000,000 (10^20 or one hundred quadtrillion) possibilities.

While computers make it easier to systematically attack all of these possibilities – it all comes down to a matter of time. The point is that choosing a long password will cost an attacker a great deal of time. Keep in mind that the attacker probably wouldn’t know the exact length of your password. This means that they would have to start guessing from passwords with only a few characters, all the way up to those with 20 characters – which ends up adding another 11 quadtrillion possibilities to the mix. When you start adding symbols, punctuation, lower-case letters and upper-case letters to the simple 0 through 9 range that we were using – the possibilities become even more ludicrous.

Try to use as many different types of characters as possible. Some websites don’t allow you to use punctuation (like `, ; and “) or special symbols (like #,$ and %) – but whenever they are allowed, use them! No one is likely to guess that your password is +@wEd&.nJ(uF[4=Nr/’- (this is a random 20 character password generated with RoboForm) and attempting to brute force it will take a bunch of computers or a lot of time.

The ‘Don’t Do It’ Section

Different Passwords for Different Accounts

Yes, you have to. This is the biggest problem for everyone; nobody wants to have all these different passwords for a bunch of different accounts. As I’ve been telling you, you need to get yourself a password manager and it will all be easy after that.

Imagine how stupid you’re going to feel when someone, gets your password for your eBay account somehow. Then that crook gets some smart idea to go see if you use the same login information for PayPal. I’ll bet that the criminal was surprised to find out that not only do you use the same login information for PayPal but for all of the bank accounts and email accounts that are linked to your PayPal account.

Upgrading Your Stupid Password

As I’ve said in the ‘Don’t Do It’ section, I’d rather you not choose a word and replace certain letters or vowels with numbers or symbols. If you are going to stick with one password for all of your accounts but want to be strong, try this. Think of a line or phrase that is very easy for you to remember but isn’t connected to your life in any way. For example, the phrase ‘A Spoonful Of Sugar Helps The Medicine Go Down’ might be easy – so now you would abbreviate this phrase. ASOSHTMGD isn’t a word, so it’s already somewhat strong. It’s also more than 8 characters in length – so that’s good. Now, if you can manage it, try to get a good mix of lower-case and upper-case letters, numbers and symbols in this abbreviation- perhaps A5*sHtM6D. You’ll just have to see how it works with your own special phrase, try a couple different ones.

Assigned Logins and Passwords

Never accept a generic login or password that was assigned to you by a website. If you’re setting up a blog or something and you’re given the username of ‘admin’ or something similar – you need to change it. Likewise, if you just entered your email address as part of the sign up process for some new account and then the website sent you an email with a password in it that they setup for you – you need to go login to that account and change your password.

Your Username is a Password

Your login usually consists of two parts – your username and your password. If you use the same username everywhere that you go – the criminals only have to work on getting / guessing your password. I recommend that you vary your username from account to account whenever possible. This will keep the crooks guessing and working twice as hard to gain access to your data.

Final Ramblings

I guess most people prefer a weak password that is easy to remember over a secure password that is hard to remember. This makes a little sense, considering that a strong password isn’t any good if the user isn’t able to remember it; however, you must keep in mind that a weak password doesn’t really protect your information.

I recommend that you always use a randomly generated password for each online account. Each account that you create should have a completely different password. These passwords should be the maximum length allowed by the website that you’re creating an account with. Your passwords should contain a good mix of lower-case and upper-case letters, numbers, symbols and punctuation. If some o these characters are not accepted, use as many different characters as is allowed by the website. Use RoboForm to remember all of your password and complete all of your logins with one simple click.

For security questions, I suggest that you answer them with the same type of randomly generated passwords as described above. Again, use RoboForm to save these answers in a SafeNote or have RoboForm automatically fill the answers for each security question whenever you’re prompted.

If you’ve been using one password for everything, this might sound very complicated but with RoboForm it’s all very simple and way more secure. You should download your free version of RoboForm right now. Or at least read my detailed article on RoboForm and it’s many uses.

Through Trickery (Phishing)

With the ‘anonymity’ of the internet, everyone can pretend to be anybody. Anyone can easily contact you with some type of story designed to trick you into sharing your personal information. These communications will usually come in the form of emails, instant messages, links on social networks, and maybe even some phone calls. Regular people are able to send you an email that looks just like the emails that you have been receiving from your bank, eBay, PayPal, and so on. Probably the most popular storyline in any of these communications is that there is some type of fraudulent activity or other problem with your online account. An official looking email is usually sent out in a spam-like fashion, and it’s purpose is to ‘alert’ you to this (fake) problem with your account. Now that you’re worried about the account that’s in (fake) jeopardy, you will be encouraged to click on a link so that you can be taken to the website where you can resolve this issue. This is what’s known as phishing (and with good reason) – basically the criminal is casting a line and waiting for a sucker to take the bait.

When you click on the link that’s supplied in the email (or other communication) – you are usually taken to a counterfeit website that looks exactly like your online bank, stock broker, email provider, or whatever company the crooks are pretending to be. This website is fake and has only one purpose; to capture your login or other sensitive information. Everything relies on you being flustered by the original alert in the first communication. The criminals want you to concentrate on trying to fix this ‘problem’ or ‘fraud’ that is associated with your account, so that you aren’t paying attention to anything else. Once you’re good and frantic, the link directs you to the website that looks exactly like what you’re used to and you just start entering whatever information it prompts you for. This information goes directly to the hooligans behind these fake emails and website. They use your information to login to the real website and access your identity and/or financial data.

Read my other article to learn how to protect your information.

Venturing a guess

The closer you are to a person, the easier it is to guess their password. I know that you think you’re pretty smart and you have an original password, but as Tyler Durden would tell you – you are not a beautiful and unique snowflake. Most people use the same crap when it comes to creating passwords.

When guessing a password, you might as well start with names. People like to use the name of their pets, lovers, children, friends, relatives, and so on. Names would also include your favorite celebrity, sporting team, athletes, school, city, etc. Once you’ve failed with the name game, numbers are your next best bet. People might use important dates, digits of their social security number, license plates, or even the ridiculously stupid ‘123′ and such. When you come up short with numbers alone, you should try a combination of important names and numbers. After that, you can try passwords comprised of one word or something short and very simple like qwerty, password, passcode, admin, love, letmein, money, secret, or even a swear word. If your password isn’t one of the guesses mentioned above, I applaud you.

Like I said, the more you know about a person – the easier it is to guess their password. Criminals don’t necessarily need to know you on a personal basis in order to obtain this type of information though. A lot of background information can be found on the web for free and almost anything else that can’t be found, is available for under $50. To a criminal, it might be worth the $50, depending on what they can get after they have your online accounts.

Keep in mind that most websites require the use of at least one number in your password. This means that most people will simply add a 0 or 1 to the beginning or end of their password. Obviously, any guesses would need to conform to your account’s specific password requirements. What I mean is that if the website requires that your password be at least 6 characters long and include at least 1 number – all of the guesses would be adjusted to meet that criteria.

Read my tips for choosing better passwords.

Brute Force Attacks

Imagine that your password consisted of only 1 lower-case letter in the English alphabet. A piece of brute force software would systematically attempt all of the 26 possibilities until it found your password. For the sake of argument, we’ll say that this program can attempt 1 password a second. This means that in a maximum of 26 seconds, your password would be cracked. While it may only take 1 second if your password was the letter ‘a’ – assuming that the brute force started guessing from A and finished with Z.

Now, let’s pretend that you upgraded your password of 1 lower-case letter to a 10 character password consisting of upper and lower-case letters. There are 26 lower-case letters and 26 upper-case letters, so each of the 10 characters in your password would contain 1 of these 52 available characters with the possibility of having duplicate characters. To see how long this would take to crack we’ll start with what we know so far. (a) = 52 and (b) = 10. We’ll say that this evil person is able to attempt 1,000,000 passwords per second, which isn’t uncommon (against a password hash) – and he’s working with only one computer. These assumptions give us (c) = 1,000,000 and (d) = 1. Now that we have everything we need, let’s figure out the maximum amount of time that it will take for our criminal friend to crack our 10 letter password with the brute force method. The formula goes like this, (a) to the power of (b) divided by (c) which is divided again by (d).

Our calculation shows that the brute force could take a maximum of 144,555,105,949 seconds. This is an equivalent of 2,409,251,766 minutes, 40,154,196 hours, 1,673,092 days or 4,584 years. For comparison, a password containing 6 lower-case letters would only take 5 minutes to brute force with the same attempts per second. Keep in mind that your password is likely to be solved before the very last attempt; and the bad guy could always use multiple computers to cut down on the time that it would take to run the brute force.

Read my other article to learn how to create stronger passwords.

Dictionary Attacks

Somewhat similar to brute force attacks, dictionary attacks will attempt to guess your password by submitting word after word from a huge list. Dictionary attacks will usually result in a faster completion over the brute force method because it only guesses passwords that are more likely to exist rather than every single possible combination of letters, numbers and symbols. Since most people choose simple passwords that are fewer than 8 characters – these passwords are usually very easy to predict. All a crook needs to do is create and maintain a custom list of common passwords (with a few variations of each) and then unleash it on some unsuspecting target.

Don’t let the word ‘Dictionary’ fool you – it’s more of a custom list that is downloaded off of the internet or created by the criminal performing the attack. The password ‘iloveben’ wouldn’t be found in your common dictionary, but it might be included on a list used for dictionary attacks. The beauty of a dictionary attack is that the criminals can tailor their list to a particular person or websites that they want to attack. If the bad guy is trying to gain access to an administrator account on some website about butterflies, the bad guy can simply import butterfly related words and phrases to the password list being used for the attack.

Read my other article to learn how to create stronger passwords.

Password Reset

It appears that this method may be the easiest one that someone can use to gain access to your online accounts. We have all used the “Forgot your password?” option at one point or another. This is where the website that you’re trying to access will ‘do you a solid’ and email your old password to you or hook you up with a new password after you answer some security questions. The trouble with this reset function is that the security questions are usually pretty dumb. Anyone would be able to reset your password if he/she can find out the name of your dog, where you attended school, where you were born, what streets you’ve lived on in the past or some other trivial crap.

This is where your extravagant blog posts or information on myspace, Facebook or Twitter come into play. You have probably already posted something about every answer to your each of your security questions without even thinking twice about it. People have even started stockpiling this information by sifting through webpages and social networks to build databases of common pet’s names, and related content that they can then sell to information-hungry criminals.

Read my other article to learn how to be safer online.

Recording your keystrokes

As the name suggests, a ‘keylogger’ will maintain a log of the keystrokes made on a given computer. This means that whenever you type your login information, it is recorded and stored on your computer for later review or secretly transmitted to the person who wants to steal this information. Keyloggers are very common on public computers (such as those in an internet cafe) and work computers.

It could be a piece of software that pretty much runs invisibly on your computer. Most of the time, you will not see a keylogger program running on your taskbar or system tray. Sometimes keyloggers are hidden inside of other programs or renamed to look like other software, which makes it hard for a human to detect. These keyloggers could accidentally be installed by you, your family members or perhaps a friend. Another possibility is that someone intentionally installed the keylogger on your computer.

Another type of keylogger is a little piece of hardware that is physically connected to your computer. It could be as simple as a USB stick that is plugged into on the back of your computer or it could be located inside of the computer case. Just imagine an unscrupulous computer technician working at your local repair shop, attaching a keylogger to every computer that comes his/her way. Whenever you take your computer in to get fixed, he/she downloads your keystrokes and then accesses your accounts or sells the information.

I suggest you download the free trial version of AVG Internet Security and scan your computer.

Final Ramblings

Once you have read how these criminals attack your password, it’s pretty easy to figure how to prevent them from doing so.

Find a strong internet security suite to protect you from spam emails, fake websites and keyloggers. Don’t download any programs attached to communications from suspicious sources. Don’t click any links in any private messages that are notifying you of a problem with your account. If you think that there might be a real problem with your account, manually type the website’s address into your browser and login to fix it. Don’t tell anyone your login information; even if they say that they are some official person working at some official company. Companies will never ask you for that kind of information, they already have access to it and they can even reset it if they need to.

Create long passwords that use as many different characters as possible. Use a different password for every account that you have. If you need help remembering these passwords, you should definitely get your free copy of RoboForm and / or the portable version, RoboForm2Go.

I would recommend that you use strong passwords for your security questions, but that’s because I keep them saved in my SafeNotes with RoboForm. If you don’t want to use random characters for your answers, I might suggest that you lie to them. Tell them anything else that’s easy to remember, as long as it isn’t the real name of your dog. =)

If you have the time – read this next article on creating and maintaining good passwords.

If you’re looking to get free software, you should probably read this other article about TrialPay.

TrialPay increases a customer’s willingness to pay by removing the cost associated with your product. Let’s say that you have a customer that won’t purchase your product outright but he or she might be a good lead for a different company’s product or services. TrialPay lets you leverage the brand recognition of the advertisers in the TrialPay network to convert such customers. TrialPay saves your abandoned shopping carts and turns them into successful conversions by matching your customers with other preferred brands.

When your potential customers complete an advertiser’s offer (for example: signs up with freecreditreport.com to monitor their credit), you will receive money from the advertiser (worth the full price of your product) which allows you to give your product away for “free” to the customer. With TrialPay everybody comes out a winner – the customers get their free products, advertisers acquire new leads / customers, while merchants earn significant revenue from customers that would otherwise be lost.

Cost Per Action or Acquisition

TrialPay advertisers operate through an online advertising pricing model known as CPA. Rather than paying for clicks, the advertisers only pay when a specified action (such as a purchase or form submission) is completed. This payment process allows every party involved to be compensated quickly and efficiently. Once the action is completed by the customer, you will get paid by the advertiser which allows you to send out the product license (or whatever you’re selling) to the customer.

Will TrialPay actually improve sales?

Many merchants have reported that TrialPay does indeed increase conversion rates. If you would like proof, I suggest that you read the case studies hosted on the TrialPay site. Basically all you’ll need to do is add the TrialPay payment option to wherever your customers are exiting without making a purchase. Some popular placements include: exit pops/overlays, trial uninstall messaging, reactivation campaigns, e-mail messages, rewards programs, standard payment options and many more. TrialPay is excellent at walking you through and explaining the various ways to capture more conversions. There is zero commitment between you and TrialPay – if you aren’t happy with the results, simply stop using them. The TrialPay payment platform is completely free to use – they don’t charge you for processing payments or customer service. You will also receive comprehensive merchant services like custom graphics, marketing tools and fully developed html pages from TrialPay, free of charge.

TrialPay guarantees that you will be paid (at least) the minimum that you require for each transaction and you will usually receive more than that. Let’s say you’re charging $35 for your product, with TrialPay you will definitely receive $35 for each transaction – but you could also earn $40 or $50. If you’re receiving a direct sale from the customer, you will only get $35.

Final Ramblings

When I wrote this article, there were over twelve million shoppers using TrialPay. Personally, I have used TrialPay to obtain products that I would never seriously consider spending my money on. Getting such products for free when I spent the same money on other services/products just seemed to make sense though. At the very least, merchants should use TrialPay to confront customers that are abandoning their shopping cart or uninstalling their software. When the customer sees that there is an alternative payment method available, they may reconsider walking out on your product. TrialPay is especially effective when a customer learns that they can get your product for free when they try out something else that they were already interested in. If I’ve been thinking about joining BLOCKBUSTER Total Access for a while and then one day, I found out that by joining Total Access, I could get AVG Anti-Virus 8.0 for free – I would definitely be more likely to go through with it. Getting 2 things for the price of 1 is always enjoyable for customers. So, don’t let these customers slip through the cracks – offer TrialPay as a payment method for your products today.

In the past, I have tried a couple of small town banks and some of the hugest financial institutions. So far, the best financial services company that I’ve ever had the pleasure to be a member of is USAA. All of my income goes to USAA first and then I transfer my money out to wherever I may need it. USAA is convenient for transfers because they allow you to link numerous external accounts to your USAA checking/saving account. Once you setup a transfer, USAA is very quick with processing everything. When I make a transfer from an external account into my USAA account, they even front me the incoming money while the transaction is processing. This way, I can instantaneously have those funds available to me in case I really need then. Some banks (like WaMu) make you wait a few days before they even think about actually processing the transfer which then takes another couple of days. USAA won me over with their courtesy, trust and common sense when it comes to taking care of their customers. There aren’t a bunch of ‘gotta have it’ or ‘gee whiz’ features but they provide a professional and honest service. Other than a checking account, I rely on USAA for my auto insurance as well as term & universal life insurance policies for my wife and I.

In case you’re wondering, USAA stands for United Services Automobile Association. In order to be a member, you’ll need to be one of the following:

Getting to know USAA

USAA has been around since 1922 and was started by some twenty-five Army officers. With honesty, rather than slimy car salesmanship, USAA has provided financial security to over 6 million (and growing) members. I might also mention that USAA isn’t a publicly traded company; which means that stockholders aren’t calling the shots – instead, the company prefers to listen to their customers. USAA doesn’t have branches everywhere; the company conducts its business through the internet, phones and mail. Beginning in 1922 USAA basically operated through mailings; late in the 1960’s they adopted the use of phones but didn’t get a toll-free number until 1978. Considering that toll free numbers were available in 1967, I’m guessing that USAA was a little slow adapting to change or there just wasn’t a lot of need for phone based services. USAA started operating on the Internet in 1999 and have stayed in touch with technological changes ever since. When I wrote this article, their website was pretty slick. The pages load fast and I can manage every type of account that I have very easily once I login. USAA keeps an archive of your bank statements and other documents (like insurance policies) so that you can look at or print them in a matter of minutes. I can also communicate with USAA’s customer service through speedy email messages that are built in to their site.

USAA runs on integrity; employees don’t receive any commission for selling someone a bunch of different insurance policies that they don’t really need. USAA currently offers incredibly competitive checking, savings, loans, certificates of deposit, credit cards, mortgages, auto insurance, home & property insurance, life insurance, numerous investing options, and much more. USAA also provides a free financial assessment so that you can see where you need to improve your financial situation. The financial assessment is a good tool for anyone but it is especially important for any young military member who just left their parent’s house for the first time. If you are eligible to be a USAA member and are trying to reach a decision on whether you should choose USAA or not, I urge you to read this short article.

Subscriber’s Account

This is just icing on the cake and shouldn’t be a major consideration when deciding to join USAA. When you pay $X amount of money to USAA for some type of insurance policy, your money sits in an account. This account is your Subscriber Savings Account (SSA) and it’s something that you’ll never be able to see or mess with. You can pretty much assume that you will never see your insurance premiums again, however, every once in a while something magical happens. If USAA had an awesome year – one where the company’s investments did great and they didn’t have to cover a lot of member accidents or other catastrophic losses – then USAA may choose to give you some of your premium money back. SSA Distributions are never guaranteed, but I have received them on a fairly regular basis.

Subscriber’s Accounts are a unique feature of USAA membership. As a reciprocal insurer, USAA holds a portion of its capital in each member’s name in a Subscriber’s Account. The association may, at the discretion of the USAA Board of Directors, use these funds to support USAA’s mission and goals.

Subscriber’s Accounts play an important role in our financial structure by providing capital to satisfy legal and regulatory requirements, support current and future operations, and pay large unexpected losses, such as claims from catastrophes.

Each year, the USAA Board of Directors examines whether USAA’s capital exceeds its current and projected needs and requirements. As circumstances permit, the board may authorize a distribution from each member’s Subscriber’s Account. If the board authorizes a distribution, a member can choose to receive the Subscriber’s Account distribution by direct deposit, apply the Subscriber’s Account amount to a USAA auto and property insurance bill or receive a check.

Final Ramblings

If you qualify to be a member – definitely take advantage of USAA’s professional services. USAA strives to be the provider of choice for the military community. They have succeeded in that mission with me; I’d like for everyone to be able to experience the benefits of being a member of USAA.

How it works

You pick out a program that you want or need, such as AVG Anti-Virus 8.0. You then select an offer to complete or sign up for, like FreeCreditReport.com. Once you signed up with the Free Credit Report people – they will pay the AVG people some money for referring you to their service and then you’ll receive a free, working copy of AVG Anti-Virus 8.0 with license + a free credit report. =]

Merchants

At the time that I wrote this, there were approximately six-thousand companies that were offering a service/product for free through TrialPay. These merchants consist of reputable businesses such as AVG, Siber Systems, Corel, The Wall Street Journal, WeatherBug, Plaxo, Skype, McAfee and so on. In addition, TrialPay had approximately two-thousand companies to match customers with in order to pay their merchants. Premium advertisers such as Blockbuster, American Express, eBay and FTD.com are just a few of companies in the TrialPay network that offer special deals to shoppers. Once again, when I wrote this article, TrialPay had well over twelve million shoppers.

Amazing Deals

There are some great applications to be had as well as some credible offers to try – such as, GoDaddy.com and BLOCKBUSTER Total Access. Below is a giant list of programs that you’re able to receive (for free) by participating in the TrialPay process. I hope that you’re able to find something to your liking.

It is important to note that not every available merchant is listed here. Some merchants prefer to keep the TrialPay method hush hush and only offer it as a last resort. For example: If you download a free trial of some software, then the trial period expires and you decide to uninstall that software – you might see a dialog box that pops up to explain how you can get their product for free using TrialPay.

My Top Picks

Roboform – Siber Systems AVG Anti-Virus 8.0 (1 PC / 1 year license) – AVG Technologies CZ s.r.o. WinRAR – WinRAR Ad-Aware 2008 Plus – Lavasoft CuteFTP 8 Home – GlobalSCAPE GetRight and Where’d My Space Go – Headlight Software, Inc. Go!Zilla – Headlight Software, Inc. STOPzilla Anti-Spyware Made Easy – iS3 Page Peel Ads – Page Peel Ads Easy CD-DA Extractor Professional – Poikosoft ZoneAlarm ForceField (1 PC / 1 year license) – ZoneAlarm ZoneAlarm Internet Security Suite (1 PC /1 year license) – ZoneAlarm

General Software

Online Services

Published Offers

Retail Related

Screensavers

Online Banking

The common bank out there will usually have numerous branches that you can visit in person and might also provide you with the option of tending to your financial matters online. Such financial institutions provide their customers with a win/win situation. Unfortunately, most of these banks are despicable when it comes to caring about their customers.

Other banks primarily operate over the internet, rather than maintaining any physical “brick and mortar” establishments. These are the true “Online Banks” and I consider them to be a shimmer of hope in this dismal land of money grubbing financial institutions. These guys are a little more relaxed than most traditional banks usually.

As mentioned above, Online Banks don’t have to build or maintain local branches. No brick and mortar facilities translates into savings for the Online Bank and it’s customers. They sidestep having to shell out money for branch employees, maintaining ATMs, security escorts for money transfers, and yada yada yada. In return, the customers usually receive a higher interest rate and fewer fees than what they might find at their local banks.

The Cons

Since the banks are online – you won’t be able to stop in for a face-to-face resolution to any problems. You will have phone calls, emails, faxes and snail mail at your disposal but if you enjoy causing a scene and getting into some employee’s face, then this isn’t the type of bank you’ll want.

Deposits can be difficult when you use an online only bank. Since they don’t own any ATMs or branches you’ll usually have to mail in your checks. This might not be a huge problem because you use a direct deposit or you transfer money from another account – but in certain situations this can be a real headache. Some online banks even allow you to deposit money into your account by sending them a scanned image of your check and then voiding it out.

Home Banking Security

A huge concern that is always floating around out there is security. You need to understand that every bank is going to be concerned with security. So whether you’re creating an online account with your long time brick and mortar bank or you’re signing up with a new internet only banking service – they are going to protect your information. All banks use sophisticated levels of encryption to transmit your personal information over the internet. I suggest that you remove any doubts about the bank from you head for now because the biggest risk to your security is probably going to be you.

The main security concern related to online banking is most likely the fact that customers become victims of online scams and fraudulent emails. This is something that your bank cannot protect you from. In fact, these scams are at no fault to your online bank – it would actually be your fault if you ever got duped. As an example, pretend that you are a member of “A1 Bank” and you get an email that looks like it’s from “A1 Bank” claiming that there is a problem with your account or asking for your personal information. If you fall for this trick and reply to the email with your personal information – you can’t blame your online bank. You can always contact “A1 Bank” to verify if they need something from you but make sure that you use the email address, contact form, or phone number from their website – not the ones in the email. Very similar to emails that look like they are from your bank, are websites that look exactly like your bank’s website. If you aren’t paying attention, you might type in your login information and the ‘bad guys’ with use that info to login to the real website. Make sure that you type in the web address for your bank or use a trusted bookmark each time. It’s best not to click on any of the links in emails that you receive, unless you know for sure who sent you the email. You could also have some malicious software on your home computer that compromises your personal information. These types of software steal your information or record your keystrokes and send it home to the ‘bad guy’ who created the software.

If you’re really worried about security, I suggest that you educate yourself on the threats. Some basic tips that I recommend for your security are (a) investing in an internet security suite and (b) using a different password for each online account that you have. If you need help remembering all of your passwords, check out Roboform. It’s also a good idea to protect yourself from identity theft with some sort of insurance policy. I recommend LifeLock but there are other programs around like ID Watchdog – it’s best to shop around.

What I like about Online Banking

The advantages are plentiful – convenience always creeps into my mind first. I do my budgeting and track my balances at random times and my banks are always ready when I am. Online Banks are available to you 24 hours a day, seven days a week – unless they are performing some sort of site maintenance which is usually done in the wee hours of the morning. Your account information never closes and with wireless internet available practically everywhere, you will even be able to keep track of your finances while traveling.

You should experience less of a hassle with record keeping and paperwork. With my banks I can manage my checking, savings, auto insurance, life insurance, IRAs, CDs, and so on under one secure roof. I can print documents off whenever I need to or save them electronically and back them up. Most Online Banks also allow you to export your financial information to your favorite applications such as Quicken or what have you.

Every internet bank that I’ve ever looked at will refund your ATM fees each month. Since these guys don’t operate any ATMs of their own, they understand that you’ll get charged an arm and leg when you go to another bank to withdraw some money. At the end of each statement period, most Online Banks will automatically refund your ATM fees back into your account. You won’t have to track anything or even remind the bank to pay you back – it’ll just show up. Keep in mind that they do have dollar limits of how much they’ll pay back each month so make sure you know what that limit is.

Final Ramblings

I have a severe disliking for most financial institutions, but unfortunately we all need them. The best we can do is hope that we’ve chosen to bank with one of the good guys. While I was a customer of UFB Direct’s online banking service – I experienced zero problems with their work. All of my deposits and transfers were processed quickly and any concerns that came up were successfully taken care of by customer service. UFB Direct’s services came without any fees or minimums and offered the highest interest rates that I could find at the time. I did, however, close out my accounts with UFB Direct recently because I hardly used them anymore. The main reason that my UFB accounts were stagnant was because I transferred most of my savings into my brokerage accounts so that I could readily buy stocks. I also grew tired of UFB’s constant change in ownership which meant new terms and conditions to review.

You see, at one point Sky Financial Group was the ‘man behind the curtain’ over at UFB Direct but in 2007 Sky was purchased by Huntington Bancshares. Then in November of 2008, I received notice that Waterfield Bank was taking over UFB deposits as well as imposing some new fees here and there. I eventually closed out my accounts because they weren’t being used and didn’t want to incur any fees. I have no problem with UFB Direct and would recommend them but just make sure that you review their current rates and minimums.

Why I was a member with UFB Direct

I have never had a customer service problem with UFB Direct. Even when I wrote them an email to close my accounts it was doesn’t the same day without any hassles. The hardest thing I ever had to do with UFB Direct was sign a signature card and fax it back to them, which was very simple. I lost my pin number to UFB’s debit card and they reset it within a couple of minutes on the phone. When I was visiting South Korea, I lost my debit card which was canceled and replaced without any headaches. UFB Direct had always taken care of me whenever I needed them to and didn’t bother me the rest of the time. UFB Direct only sent me my statements and important notices; I never received one piece of junk mail from them.

I also enjoyed having access to my savings and knowing that they were protected. Putting $10,000 in some stocks is much different than having that $10,000 available at a moment’s notice. While a stock could jump up 25%, it could just as easily drop by 25%. Any deposit with UFB Direct is FDIC insured and you are guaranteed to earn whatever their current rate is.

The Cons

With certain accounts you might only receive a debit card, rather than a debit/credit card. Most places accept debit so it’s not that big of a problem and you probably don’t want to go spending all of your savings anyway so maybe it’s for the best.

You can’t choose or customize your pin number; whatever they send you in the mail is what you’re stuck with. For some people (for example: me) it might be hard to remember an unfamiliar pin number. As I mentioned above, I always appreciated that UFB Direct made it harder for me to spend my savings.

When I wrote this article, you weren’t able to link external (non-UFB) bank accounts from UFB Direct’s side. In order to transfer money into UFB Direct you would need to set up a direct deposit, mail in a check, or link to your UFB Direct account from a bank account that allows external linking. For example: I use USAA (read my review) for my every day banking, so I would need to log on to USAA and add an external link to my UFB account from USAA’s interface. Once everything was verified, I would be able to send money to UFB or withdraw from UFB using USAA’s transfer process.

Final Ramblings

UFB Direct never did anything spectacular for me, but I’m kind of hard to impress anyway. When I wrote this article UFB Direct was refunding customer ATM fees, up to $4.50 or $6.00 (per statement period) depending on the type of account. This isn’t a lot of reimbursement but it’s better than nothing and you shouldn’t be withdrawing from your savings anyway. When I was a customer there weren’t any monthly service charges, but this might have changed. UFB Direct was very simple and it was easy to track my activity online at any time. If you’re interested in UFB Direct and have done your homework (rates, fees, minimums, etc.) – I recommend their services.

Searching for additional savings

If you’re looking for a specific product – I suggest that you start at the manufacturer’s website. Visit the main website for the item that you want to buy and gather some detailed information. If it’s software you want, grab the latest version number – If it’s a leaf blower, grab the model number that you’re interested in. This will help you be more specific during your searches and you might even find a different discount when you use the model number rather than the product name. Normally, I will never buy anything directly from the manufacturer – but it’s a great place to start your research.

In this example we’re going to buy from my favorite print shop – OvernightPrints.com. Let’s say we need to buy 1,000 double sided business cards, which would cost us $49.95. In this example, we’ve already snooped around and it turns out that $49.95 is the best price available. So now that we know what we’re buying and who we’re going to buy it from – we will look for some type of discount from that store, preferably for that product.

Since I love Google, we’re going to start there. Do a quick search for discounts by using the company, the product and the words “discount code.” If you don’t like discount code, you can search for discounts, promos, coupons, deals and so on. Most of the time, my favorite discount website, RetailMeNot.com will show up in the rankings. Go to any of the sites that are listed and check out their special offers or promotional codes that you can enter when finalizing the checkout process. For this example Retail Me Not has a lot of codes for Overnight Prints, we just have to figure out which code will get us better savings. With the current listed codes for business cards from Overnight Prints, it appears that we could save 10% or $10. Since we’re talking about $49.95 we would opt for the $10 discount since 10% would only be $4.99.

Companies also offer special promotions from time to time – you may want to email them or sign up for their newsletter to find out when things will be on sale. While we’re on the subject – sign up for my newsletter to have my updates and articles delivered directly to your inbox.

A quick touch on Security

Most people that I speak with are too scared to get that big online deal because they think that their credit card will get stolen. Identity theft does happen but shying away from the internet isn’t going to protect you from it.

If you’re worried about your online dealings, I suggest that you sign up with PayPal and download their plugin. PayPal’s plugin allows you to generate a MasterCard number that can be used once or multiple times. Just imagine an endless supply of disposable credit cards! Even if your single-use credit card number was compromised during an online purchase, the criminals wouldn’t be able to charge it again.

I also recommend that you use a program called, “Roboform” to assist you with storing your personal information such as names/logins, addresses, phone numbers, passwords, credit cards, and banking numbers. Whenever you need to fill a form on any website, Roboform will automatically fill in all of the information with a simple mouse click. This not only helps you remember all of your important logins and such, but it protects you from hidden programs on your computer that record and send out logs of everything that you’ve typed on your keyboard.

Final Ramblings

In the past I have tried out a lot of anti-virus, anti-spyware, firewalls and other applications. I purchased a two-year subscription for all three of my computers back in October of 2007. This set me back $86.95 which was relatively inexpensive, considering that I was protecting all of my computers for less than $4 a month. I do spend a lot of time on the internet and I download a large quantity of files from questionable sources. =] This is why I choose to give myself a little bit of protection.

Most of the other brands that I’ve tried were either (a) too annoying to setup/implement, or (b) weren’t catching malicious content that AVG was finding. I started off using AVG’s free anti-virus and anti-spyware software, which only has 33% of the functionality included in their Internet Security suite. I used to download one file onto my laptop while it was “protected” by some other anti-virus software and I would eventually transfer that file to my desktop which was running the free version of AVG. I soon found out that AVG was much better than most others when it was catching malicious files that the other applications were letting slip by. AVG’s Internet Security 8 has received the VB100 award by detecting a wide variety of viruses in its default state during on-demand and on-access scanning without any false positives. AVG has since earned my trust and I haven’t experienced any problems finding those naughty files since using their software. The following paragraphs contain my review of AVG Internet Security as well as some basic information about viruses and what not.

Getting Started

How It All Works

AVG’s Internet Security brings together every type of security product that you’ll need to protect your computer. This software suite protects it’s users from viruses, worms, trojans, spyware, adware, identity theft, phishing, fraud, spam, hackers, threatening websites, dangerous instant messages, as well as other hidden threats and malicious content. Malicious software is able to copy, corrupt and even erase the data on your computer.
One of the newest features is the ability to scan a website’s address prior to you actually going to the website. This way, if the website you were going to visit is a known threat – AVG will warn you before you go any further and possibly get infected.

Why do I need all this?

One of the foundations to your computer’s protection is the Anti-Virus feature. The number of Viruses out there in the world is expected to reach one million by sometime in 2009. A Virus is an application that can duplicate itself and infect your computer without you even knowing about it.

Worms differ from Viruses because they are able to spread themselves without a user’s actions. The Code Red Worm infected more than 359,000 servers in less than 14 hours. The Sapphire/Slammer SQL Worm took approximately 10 minutes to spread worldwide and infected at least 75,000 victims.

Trojans basically hide inside a file that you would think is harmless. Most of the time it is very hard to detect a Trojan before it is actually executed. If you accidentally run a Trojan, it can practically cause any kind of damage that it wants to your computer.

Around 40% of computer users have been infected by a computer virus.

Spyware can do a variety of nasty tasks. There are programs that can steal your personal information, email address and address books. Some Spyware likes to keep a log of everything that you type (like your passwords) and then it sends those logs to the Spyware creator so they can steal your identity. There are a lot of Anti-Spyware programs that pretend to be security solutions but actually consist of Spyware themselves.

Other malicious software can consistently deliver advertising emails to your inbox, use your computer to broadcast pornography to others, slow down your internet connection and/or crash your computer.

Adware usually keeps track of what you’re browsing on the internet, redirect you to certain websites, and open pop-up windows all of the time. A program using Adware (like some of the toolbars out there) will display advertisements that are related to what the Adware notices you’re viewing while it is spying on you.

Around 91% of high-speed internet users have some form of Spyware on their computers.

A Rootkit is another type of malicious software that takes control of your computer system. This allows someone else to access your computer while avoiding detection. It manages to do this by hiding files, looking like it is part of the system and concealing the processes that it runs.

Approximately 14.5 billion Spam messages are sent out across the globe each day. Spam consists of unwanted messages that are related to advertising, adult-related topics, financial matters, fraud, phishing and other scams. Not only a constant annoyance, Spam also contains links to the above mentioned Viruses and Spyware.

Another threat that is lurking around out there is the individual that tries to access your computer and the data contained within. This person could steal your personal information or perform illegal acts from your machine without your knowledge. Imagine getting in some legal trouble because your computer was responsible for launching a Spam attack or hosting child pornography. A firewall will help to prevent any unauthorized application or person from having access to your computer and it also stops applications from spreading to the internet from your computer.

AVG Internet Security is always screening for threats, even while you download files or communicate with others on the internet. There are also security exploits and drive-by downloads that are executed by malicious websites; meaning that you can get infected just by visiting a web page. AVG Internet Security makes sure that your search results, websites, and favorites are safe before you open them.

There are Frequently Asked Questions, video tutorials and a lengthy PDF User Manual for you to look at if you have any problems. You can also email AVG’s Technical Support via e-mail but you have to pay to talk to someone on the phone.

Not Just For Home Users

The Cons

AVG Internet Security doesn’t give you much info about infections. All I’ve ever gotten from them is the name of the threat that it caught. On the other hand, it is quite easy to research the infection once you have the name and I’ve never really need to look too far into it – because AVG has always removed the threat.

Some say the AVG Internet Security 8.0 slows down their computers. Some have claimed that a full system scan use up to 70% of their system resources. I personally have experienced any problems with AVG and the speed of my computer. I prefer not to have anything else running when I’m scanning for viruses anyway, so I do my full system scans when I’m asleep or away from the keyboard.

AVG doesn’t search for Rootkits by default, you have to manually search for them. This doesn’t really make any sense to me, but it isn’t hard to perform either. This would probably be the one feature that I would change if given the choice.

I don’t like programs that have partnerships with other services and then try to dupe the user into installing that service along with their program. I always recommend that you perform a custom install whenever possible and do not install any additional toolbars or services that aren’t related to the program being installed. AVG does ask if you want them to set Yahoo as your default search engine (in Internet Explorer) and Yahoo Search will be on their toolbar as well. I didn’t default to Yahoo and I didn’t install the toolbar – you actually don’t need the toolbar to be fully protected.

For security and usability reasons, I suggest that you never use Internet Explorer. Instead, you can download Firefox or Google Chrome which are both free. I also recommend that you make Google your default search engine because they are extremely accurate with search results.

Final Ramblings

AVG offers a 100% free Anti-Virus & Anti-Spyware (doesn’t expire) program. This is good if your 30 day trial of AVG’s Internet Security expires and you choose not to pay to be fully protected. When I wrote this article, AVG’s free software was the most downloaded file over at CNET’s Download.com with 1,649,472 downloads.

AVG is trusted by over 80 million users. You need to be protecting your computer(s) from all of the threats out there. It is also important to realize that installing a good security program is a good first step, but you also need to backup your data. Do not let Internet Security or Data Backup sit on your to-do list, take care of them now!