This feature is enabled by default. If you turn off this feature for yourself, it can still be possible for other people to post your location on your behalf. Granted, there’s nothing preventing someone from posting a status update saying they saw you somewhere, but if you want to disable the ability to be tracked with Facebook’s new location services, read on.

From what I can tell there are three different setting that need to be disabled. Go to Account > Privacy Settings > Customize and make the following changes:

Under “Things I Share”

• Places I check in to: Only Me
• Include me in “People Here Now” after I check in: Disable

Under “Things others share”

• Friends can check me in to Places: Disable

Facebook also has a Places FAQ page that provides more information on this new feature.

UPDATE: After reading “How to Disable Facebook Places” tonight on Lifehacker I found I missed a fourth item. You have to also prevent your friend’s applications from collecting your location. This is not in the same Privacy settings screen, it’s under Account > Privacy Settings > Applications and Websites (in the lower left.)

• Edit your settings
• For the section called “Info accessible through your friends” click “Edit Settings”
• Uncheck “Places I check in to” and save your settings

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Update Facebook Settings to Disable Location Tracking is a post from:   Jason Owens at www.jasonowens.com

According to the AP article by Joelle Tessler, the government exemption rules include the following:

• Jailbreaking a phone in order to use a non-approved app
• Owners of used phones can bypass mechanisms in order to use phones on any network
• Educators and students can break copy-protection on DVDs for non-commercial use
• Allow vision-impaired users to bypass electronic locks on books in order to be read
• Bypass security dongles

I wonder if this will have ramifications in other parts of the technology, movie, or music industries, such as the recent Kaleidescape and RealDVD lawsuits.

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Jailbreaking iPhones Now Legal? is a post from:   Jason Owens at www.jasonowens.com

In an attempt to find a workaround, I just tried the upload feature and it now works for me for some reason. So far it seems to work fine, but I’ve only been testing for about 30 minutes as I write this.

Are you able to upload now as well? Post a comment below or send me a note on Twitter. Here’s some info about my environment:

• MyKeePass version: 1.11
• Safari version: 5.0 (6533.16)
• KeePassX version: 0.3.4 (not v2 file format)
• iPad iOS version: 3.2.1 (7B405)

Follow Jason on Twitter @jason_owens

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MyKeePass Upload on iPad Fixed? is a post from:   Jason Owens at www.jasonowens.com

My latest discoveries are that I can use GoodReader as a simple text editor and as a teleprompter. In writing a recent article I wanted just a plain text editor for my iPad. Evernote is good for some things but felt like it was slowing me down, and the iWork apps seemed overkill.

I found I could create text files with it, and write without the app getting in the way. It’s simple to just create a file and type.

In poking around I found there’s also a way to use GoodReader as a teleprompter. You can easily change the foreground and background color, increase the font size, and set the scrolling speed. Hit the “play” button and you’re set. Even if you don’t need a prompter, you can use it to help pace yourself when preparing for a presentation or recording a narration.

GoodReader is $.99 and you can get it the ITunes App store.

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GoodReader: More to Love is a post from:   Jason Owens at www.jasonowens.com

Rob Shavell form Abine contacted me after reading a Mint.com article I wrote, and wondered if I would be interested in reviewing their new solution that’s currently in beta testing, along with their website and anything else that might be relevant. According to their website, Abine was founded in 2008 and “provides Internet privacy solutions for consumers. Abine’s products and services allow regular people to regain control over their personal information while continuing to browse, interact and shop online.”

General Observations About Abine

My only knowledge of Abine other than a few email exchanges was their website initially. If we assume that trust is in large part a function of competence and likability, then it’s important for Abine to make a crisp, professional impression in order to garner user’s trust. I initially found broken links, confusing navigation, typos, spelling and grammatical errors, and missing information. However, the website has since gone through many updates and improvements, with most of the issues I saw corrected. If you haven’t visited the site in the last month or so, take a look.

Documentation refers to the software somewhat inconsistently. In some places it is referred to as a browser plug-in. In other places, a suite, and yet others a collection of privacy apps and spam protection. Before installing,I wasn’t quite sure what I was going to get.

What Can Abine Do For You?

Abine installed as a Firefox plug-in. So far I’ve tried it on both Mac and Windows. With the latest release there is now an IE version available as well. Essentially it allows you to do the following

• Turn on and off various privacy settings
• Manage and generate passwords
• Manage credit cards
• Manage and shield personal information tied to the various privacy applications
• Create and manage “shield” email accounts and alternate identities
• Integrate additional purchased features and third-party apps
• Submit the managed information to websites automatically
• See what cookies sites are setting and block them
• See a gauge of how “safe” Abine thinks the website is from a privacy perspective
• Opt out of ad networks
• Sign up for Hushmail serivces
• Sign up for web proxy services

Im my opinion, Abine’s possibly unsung strength is its ability to help support and enforce best practices with regard to security, browsing, and privacy. It puts several useful solutions in one place and helps you to use them. See below for more comments on this.

It’s not entirely clear how Abine determines how “safe” a site is from a privacy perspective. When tested on various sites, it reported the following risk levels:

• Low Privacy Risk
  • Google.com
  • Twit.TV
  • GRC.com
  • CIA.gov
• Medium Privacy Risk
  • CNN.com
  • Lifehacker.com
  • Mashable.com
  • Facebook.com
  • Twitter.com
  • Disney.go.com
  • IMDB.com
  • TMZ.com

I didn’t turn up any high risk sites, but I didn’t really want to look to hard for those either. Ironically, when I first pointed Abine at its own website during testing, Abine did not report the website as safe. I’ve noticed with the latest update however that it is now registering at the lowest risk level.

As a good example, when testing the privacy info feature I went to TMZ. This was the first time I’d ever been to the site. According to Abine, TMZ’s home page tried to put 150 cookies and 16 ad networks on my system.

The Abine website provides some educational information regarding how you can be tracked online. The recommendations are sound, however none of them currently are accomplished using the application directly:

• Block third-party cookies
• Prevent unwanted JavaScript from loading
• Don’t keep browser history
• Know that your IP address can be tracked and correlated with other logging to determine where you go on the internet.

There were some other features of the Abine interface I found helpful. The privacy popup window that displays when you first visit a site shows usueful information, including a like to any recent data breaches associated with the site.

Up For Debate

The site makes some statements that I think need clarification or refinement.

“Safer and easier because you own everything.” I don’t understand that statement. I own my information now, and don’t see how then application would change that. It does seem to make it easier to manage information having it in one place, but I don’t see how I am safer when using Abine itself. Also, it’s not an objective statement to equate privacy with safety. In some situations this could be true, but not always.

Abine implies it can help prevent identity theft. It also draws a correlation between increased privacy and less spam. Remember, you’re still providing information but in a controlled manner. The info is still released once you submit it, and whether it’s your real account or a shielded one, you can still end up receiving spam on that email address. If you submit your email to a site that would eventually end up in some type of spam, whether or not you submit that info from Abine isn’t relevant. In my opinion what is beneficial is how you use the tool, not just the tool itself. If you’re using the same passwords everywhere, and especially if they’re weak, keeping them in a safe place doesn’t help.

Problems and Weakness

Unprotected by Default

The data file where information is stored is encrypted with 256 bit AES. In order to protect your information though you need to remember to enable a master password in the security preferences. If you don’t do this, password, credit card data etc. you enter into Abine will not be protected on the desktop. Once a someone opens your browser, they would have access to your information and your profiles.

Good Potential but Chaotic Complicated Interface

Mentioned above, one of the benefits of Abine is that it provides a lot of tools to help manage your privacy. The interface in my opinion however has some major flaws with usability and branding

• Inconsistent and overly complicated interface
• Seeming unnecessary mechanics to turn on and enable/disable features
• Visual presentation, GUI, and branding inconsistent with Abine’s website
• Hard to determine who the target audience is

The two major challenges I see for Abine right now are a) determining their target audience and designing for them, and b) refining the interface to reinforce the ability to simply, safely, and quickly protect your privacy online.

Profile Not Easily Portable

One of the things that makes apps like Evernote, Xmarks, and DropBox so useful for me is their ubiquity and their ability to sync across browsers, platforms, and devices. Xmarks for example allows me to maintain one set of bookmark information and sync it securely across Firefox, Chrome, and IE and on multiple OSs. If a user had the ability to do that with Abine, and potentially use it via a browser when using a potentially unsafe computer, it would be that much better. Maybe this would make a great upgrade or paid feature of the application.

Recommendations

Download the latest beta version of Abine and give it a try. Even if you don’t want to enter credit card information and passwords, the cookie, ad blocking, and form entry functions are helpful. And give Abine feedback. They seem genuinely interested in what people have to say and making their product as good as possible.

For Abine, IMHO here are some ideas that could help optimize the solution for users

• Lead with benefits to users rather than the tool and what it does, and educate users
• Define your audience and design your tool and content for them
• Simplify

Simplify would be the biggest recommendation overall. If the target demographic ends up being the average user, then Abine needs to be a simple tool that “just works.” Make it powerful enough so that advanced users can do as much as they want while at the same time making the interface intuitive enough that it doesn’t deter users from taking advantage of the protection that Abine can help maintain.

Follow Jason on Twitter @jason_owens

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Abine To Protect Online Privacy is a post from:   Jason Owens at www.jasonowens.com

Warrington Colescott is the premier satirical printmaker working in the United States, employing his sharp wit and vivid imagination to interpret contemporary and historical events in the tradition of William Hogarth, Francisco de Goya, Honoré Daumier, and George Grosz. He is internationally respected…The Milwaukee Art Museum has the largest collection of work by Colescott.

He’s 89, still making art, and still producing relevant and thought provoking prints.

Follow Jason on Twitter @jason_owens

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Warrington Colescott at the MAM is a post from:   Jason Owens at www.jasonowens.com

A recent post from Foursquare on their blog discusses how users could “scrap[e] venue pages from our website through anonymous gateways, to capture private check-in information that users didn’t intend to share with the general public.”

Wired has an article titled Foursquare Puts Money Before Privacy discussing Foursquare’s current public financing negotiations and how it  addressed the issue:

The response is quite telling. Foursquare had nine days to write a simple blog post, acknowledging the hole, explaining the fix and telling users they could opt out in the future and giving credit to Andersen. That’s how responsible disclosure works. But the company didn’t do any of those things. From that it’s clear to see that Foursquare isn’t focused on its privacy practices, and seems to be ignorant of the consequences of violating its privacy promises to users.

Point being, this is another reminder as we make more and more of our personal information available. The people we’re giving that information to have interests their own interests in mind and not ours.

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Foursquare Was Leaking Data is a post from:   Jason Owens at www.jasonowens.com

I remember having a conversation with him once about how often these days people still stay working for the same company for relatively longer periods of time. In his case, he had the opportunity to learn, teach, and grow, developing professionally and helping others throughout his career. And he’s very good at what he does.

My experience in the IT world in some respects is very similar, and at the same time very different. I’ve been with my current employer going on 11 years now, but I don’t see that as often in my world.

Often what I see more is people being loyal to their trade or profession, working with professional organizations, acquiring certifications, and moving from company to company every few years in order to get a raise or promotion.

Some would argue that this is due to due employers investing less in their employees than they used to and employees having an increased self-reliance on financial retirement planning vs a pension. Others would state it’s just the nature of some industries such as IT and Internet-related work.

The Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) never has attempted to estimate the number of times people change careers in the course of their working lives (bls.gov.) They do however seem to have some information reflecting that workers between the ages of 18 and 38 change jobs an average of 10 times (About.com.) And one study states that people change careers five to seven times in their lifetime. (Rosenberg McKay, 2006)

What has been your experience? What do you see in your field, what makes people stay, and what makes them leave?

The Herman Group identifies on their site what they state are the “Five Principal Reasons People Change Jobs”

• It doesn’t feel good around here.
• They wouldn’t miss me if I were gone.
• I don’t get the support I need to get my job done.
• There’s no opportunity for advancement (growth)
• Compensation (typically last)

What say you?

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Profession vs Job Loyalty is a post from:   Jason Owens at www.jasonowens.com

• Project Management
• Information Security
• Web, Development, and Technology
• Productivity and Business
• General

I’ll keep trying to add to it or change out the recommendations in the future.

http://bit.ly/jo_read

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Recommended Reading is a post from:   Jason Owens at www.jasonowens.com

The mailstore is the local copy of your mail. Similar to the .pst and .ost files under Windows, the Mac Entourage 2008 client stores email in a directory at “/Users/Your_ID/Documents/Microsoft User Data/Office 2008 Identities/Your_Profile” and the Mail app stores it’s mail in “/Users/Your_ID/Library/Mail/.” Other email clients such as Thunderbird will put their mail and profiles in the directories you specify during the setup.

Snow Leopard provides the ability to encrypt your home directory through the use of FileVault. However this poses several problems

• Provides protection when the computer is off, but if your laptop is stolen when running, your user directory has already been decrypted and is available
• Time Machine will not work as designed; It will not be able to backup individual files in your user directory, only the entire FileVault volume. As a result, even if only one minor change is made to a file that is not sensitive, the entire volume is backed up
• Other backup utilities may behave differently than Time Machine, leading to inconsistency in backups or potential data leaks

A solution is to use separate encrypted drives for different purposes. This allows you to

• Have more granularity on what gets encrypted
• Mount, use, and unmount sensitive content only when needed
• Use different passwords for different drives
• Have portable, encrypted content

Using Encryption with the Microsoft Entourage 2008 Mailstore in Snow Leopard

How To Encrypt the Microsoft Entourage 2008 Mailstore in Snow Leopard

After a lot of trial and error I found the following steps to work.

1. Make sure Entourage is not running and you have a current backup
2. Do a Get Info on /Users/Your_ID/Documents/Microsoft User Data to see how large your current data directory is
3. Open Disk Utility found in /Applications/Utilities
4. In Disk Utility, click New Image
5. Name the image “EntourageMailstore”
6. Select 256-bit encryption and read/write for the format, and make it about twice as large as the size of your current Microsoft User Data directory
7. Save the image somewhere in your home directory
8. Double-click the image to mount the drive; it should appear on your Desktop
9. If the drive shows as “Untitled” rename it to “EntourageMailstore”
10. Copy the contents of /Users/Your_ID/Documents/Microsoft User Data/ to the new drive
11. Rename the folder /Users/Your_ID/Documents/Microsoft User Data to /Users/Your_ID/Documents/Microsoft User Data_OFF
12. Create an alias of the “EntourageMailstore” drive on your Desktop
13. Rename the alias to “Microsoft User Data”
14. Move the alias to /Users/Your_ID/Documents
15. Eject the “EntourageMailstore” drive

You should now have a copy of your Microsoft User Data contents on an encrypted drive, a copy of your original folder called Microsoft User Data_OFF, and an alias called Microsoft User Data in /Users/Your_ID/Documents

Note that the following did not work with the Entourage mailstore

• TrueCrypt Volumes: I rely on TrueCrypt every day on Mac and PCs. For whatever reason, Entourage just could not keep it together on a TrueCrypt volume. Every time the Microsoft Database Daemon would quit, Entourage would lose any and all notion of where the profile identity was
• Sym links: a symlink works when a drive is mounted but will not trigger a disk image to mount automatically. It will also break if you move the .dmg file whereas an alias will not
• Defined mount points in /etc/fstab: I mapped drives to mount points in the filesystem but had the same issues as with sym links
• Mapping just the identity folder: I had to do the entire Microsoft User Data directory

How To Use The Encrypted Microsoft Entourage 2008 Mailstore in Snow Leopard

1. Launch Entourage
2. If you have a current profile, it’s likely that Entourage will not be able to use it right away. I had varying results. The first time i tried it i had to create a new identity (you can either import data from your old one or just leave it empty.) Once that was done I was able to go to Entourage > Switch Identity… and the pick my previous identity. If this doesn’t work for you, try importing data from your old profile into your new one. When I did this, I had to choose Entourage 2004 as the source format even though the content was from a 2008 version.
3. Use Entourage as usual. Content will be written to the EntourageMailstore drive.

Because of the alias, Entourage will try to open the content on the encrypted drive whenever you start it. It’s a .dmg image so your Mac will automatically try to mount the drive when you need it. You’ll be prompted to enter the password for the drive, and then Entourage will launch and write to the encrypted volume.

If you want the drive to be unmounted when you close Entourage, you can write an Automator service to help. You cannot just quit and eject or force eject the drive as the Entourage Database Daemon still has files open on the drive. The Automator service you write needs to save and quit Entourage, explicitly quit the Microsoft Database Daemon, and then gets and ejects the EntourageMailstore drive. Set the dropdown settings in the top to “no input” and “Entourage.” Save the service as “QuitEntourage.” It will show up as a service when you’re in the Entourage app.

You should confirm that when the EntourageMailstore drive is mounted, Time Machine or other backup utilities are not backing it up. If you want backups of your mail, check to make sure that your EntourageMailstore.dmg file is being backed up.

Using Encryption with the Apple Mail Mailstore in Snow Leopard

How To Encrypt the Apple Mail Mailstore in Snow Leopard

1. Make sure Mail is not running and you have a current backup
2. Do a Get Info on /Users/Your_ID/Library/Mail/ to see how large your current Mail directory is
3. Open Disk Utility found in /Applications/Utilities
4. In Disk Utility, click New Image
5. Name the image “AppleMailMailstore”
6. Select 256-bit encryption and read/write for the format, and make it about twice as large as the size of your current Mail directory
7. Save the image somewhere in your home directory
8. Double-click the image to mount the drive; it should appear on your Desktop
9. If the drive shows as “Untitled” rename it to “AppleMailMailstore”
10. Copy the contents of /Users/Your_ID/Library/Mail/ to the new drive
11. Rename the folder /Users/Your_ID/Library/Mail to /Users/Your_ID/Library/Mail_OFF
12. Create an alias of the “AppleMailMailstore” drive on your Desktop
13. Rename the alias to “Mail”
14. Move the alias to /Users/Your_ID/Library/
15. Eject the “AppleMailMailstore” drive

You should now have a copy of your Mail contents on an encrypted drive, a copy of your original folder called Mail_OFF, and an alias called Mail in /Users/Your_ID/Library/

How To Use The Encrypted Apple Mail Mailstore in Snow Leopard

1. Launch the Mail app

That’s it. Because of the alias, Mail will try to open the content on the encrypted drive. It’s a .dmg image so your Mac will automatically try to mount the drive now that you need it. You’ll be prompted to enter the password for the drive, and then Mail will launch and write to the encrypted volume.

If you want the drive to be unmounted when you close Mail, you can write an Automator service that quits Mail, gets the AppleMailMailstore drive in the Finder, and ejects it. Set the drop-down settings in the top to “no input” and “Mail.” Save the service as “QuitMail.” It will show up as a service when you’re in the Mail app.
You should confirm that when the AppleMailMailstore drive is mounted, Time Machine or other backup utilities are not backing it up. If you want backups of your mail, check to make sure that your AppleMailMailstore.dmg file is being backed up.

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Related Posts:

• Jailbreaking iPhones Now Legal?
• MyKeePass Upload on iPad Fixed?

How to Encrypt your Entourage and Apple Mail Mailstores is a post from:   Jason Owens at www.jasonowens.com