Have you got folders on your Windows 7 computer that you’d like to disguise in order to keep prying eyes away from them?

I thought so.

Here is an ingenious way of hiding your sensitive folders in plain sight by making them look like something else.

Hide that folder full of porn distros

The first thing you need to do is get the application from The Windows Club.

Once you’ve downloaded the .zip and extracted it you’ll need to double click on the application to get started.

Running the application will open the program which looks thus:

Proceeding from this point is very easy indeed.

Firstly you will need to choose which folder you wish to disguise. Click on the Disguise folder button and navigate to that folder.

Now choose the type of disguise that you wish to apply to that folder. My personal favourite is highlighted below – the Recycle Bin!

Lastly, click that Disguise Now button.

And that really is all you need to do.

If you scroll up the page a bit you’ll note that I chose to disguise a new folder on G: (a USB drive). Navigating to that location, I was presented with the following:

which quite clearly shows that the folder in question was now masquerading as a Recycle Bin. In this instance, clicking on the icon will actually take you to the recycle bin as well! (I’ve noticed this isn’t the case with every disguise so check them all out before choosing the one you’ll use long-term).

Recover that disguised folder

Whenever you need to ‘undisguise’ a folder that you’ve previously used this application on you’ll find that is remarkably easy too.

Simply click on the Recover folder button and navigate to the folder you wish to reset. Now remember to give the folder a name (this can be anything, you don’t have to remember what it was called in the past). Now click on Recover now and the folder will be back without any camouflage.

How Can I Camouflage My Secret Folders With Disguise Folders v1.0? is a post from: Security FAQs

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Some of the most bought software items in both the Apple apps stores and the Google apps stores are note taking apps. Being able to take notes is a very important use of the modern day smart phone. So much so, that most phones that are bought today already have that capability within them. As a matter of fact, most phones have come with those capabilities for a couple of years now. The reason why someone would buy a note taking app from the app stores in question is because the note taking applications available for purchase are specialized for their needs.

A lot of the different types of businesses out there need for their people to be able to take notes. It is an important way for people to be able to remember the items that they need to. One place where it is important for a person to be able to take notes is in the world of computer security. There are so many moving parts of the world of computer security that you must be able to write them down. You have to do this because there is no way you will be able to remember all of it.

If you are not in the industry, then you might be asking yourself, “What do you have to remember besides activate the firewall”. There is a lot more than that when it comes to protecting high level enterprise networks. Heck, there is a lot more than that when you are talking about just protecting a home network.

When you are protecting a large or medium size network, you cannot just set one port to be available to the outside and then leave everything else alone. No, you must be able to make sure that all of the different applications that the people who work there might need are set up correctly. This is where the note taking part comes into play. Each app that runs on the network has a different type of setting, so you must document the settings and adjust the network accordingly.

You will also need to keep notes to keep track of the attacks that happen on your network. You need to keep notes on both the successful and also the unsuccessful attacks that happen. This way you will be able to know what you did wrong and what you did right and use that information to improve your set up.

Keeping notes, no matter whether on paper or electronically, is very important in the world security. Make sure you are keeping yours.

Network Security And Note Taking is a post from: Security FAQs

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In the past, a person going computer shopping was considered to be a boring task. Only a few people who would be considered geeks at the time enjoyed going. But these days, a lot of different types of people like going to the store to look at new computers. It is almost as if you are going car shopping. You might not be able to understand all of the technical lingo but you are still excited to be getting a new car. And even more, just like going to buy a car, you are able to test the item out before you take it home.

But some people go a little far when they go to test out computers. Instead of just going on the internet or using some of the programs that are already installed on the machine, they decide to use it like a home computer. While they are in the store, they will go online and check their email and other personal accounts. Some people will even check their banking data on these computers. This is very dangerous for many reasons.

The first reason why this is dangerous is probably the most obvious. You do not know who is standing over your shoulder when you are on these machines. While you are doing your business on the internet there are dozens of people who are going to walk past you and see what you are doing. Some of them are not even trying to be nosy. When people see someone else working on something they just have a natural tendency to look over to see what that person is doing. All you have to do is to log onto your email when the wrong person is walking by and they will have all of the information that they need to be able to access it later on.

Another reason why you shouldn’t access personal accounts on a store computer is because the browser saves your data in many cases. You probably know already that a browser will ask you to save your password. But that is not the only information that it stores. Your browser will also store the web sites that you visited as well as the cookies form those web sites. Some cookies are able to give away password information. You have no control over these browsers so you do not know how they are set up.

So unless you really have to, it is best to not log into personal web sites when you are on a store display computer.

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While the internet seems to be really exploding in the last decade there are still some parts of it that people do not trust. This is especially true for people who did not grow up with the internet. To them, even though it is a decade old, there are still some concerns about it. There are still a lot of people out there who are still scared to use their credit cards over the internet. They hear all of the negative stories and they do not trust it.

But what about the security of your credit card when you are not on the internet? While there are a lot of credit cards that are stolen online, there are even more that are stolen offline as well. Most people do not think about that aspect of the credit card game. Most of the publicity that you hear about is when credit cards are stolen from you by some rogue black hat hacker. You do not hear about it when it is the local waiter who is swiping your credit card twice.

Local credit card thief

Yes, there are times when you will visit a place like a restaurant or a small convenience store and they will try their best to try and steal your credit card number. There are a number of ways that they are able to do this so you will not notice.

One way they are able to do this is by taking your credit card in the back and swiping it with a second machine. This second machine is small and it stores the credit card number in an internal database. They then later send the numbers to a third party. Another way that your credit card is taken is through the use of a fake front when you go to pay for gas or use an ATM device. You think that you are actually running your card once through the machine but in reality it is being scanned twice. Once it is scanned by the fake front end and another time by the real front end. The number is then given to the bad guys in the same manner as the first scam.

Yes, being online can be a problem when it comes to black hat hackers and other types of bad guys. But that is not the only place that you have to worry about your credit card. When you are out shopping, your credit card becomes a target as well.

Credit Card Fraud Doesn’t Only Happen Online is a post from: Security FAQs

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Everyday the web site Facebook just gets larger and larger. It doesn’t matter how many people complain about the web site, it is not going anywhere. As a matter of fact, Facebook is probably considered more of a platform now than just a regular web site. There is so much you can do on the site and people do just that. No one uses Facebook the same way.

Some people go on to Facebook just so that they can keep up with friends both new and from the past. If you wanted to know how people from your past were doing before then you would have to go to a high school reunion. Either that or live in the same town for the rest of your life and they would have to do the same. But with Facebook all of that information is right there. But that is not the only reason why people use Facebook.

Some people go on to Facebook because they like to play the games and other apps that are offered. Believe it or not, Facebook has become something of a gaming platform and there are publishers on there that are making millions. The gaming and app platform of Facebook is now big business and many people are taking advantage of it.

And these people include black hat hackers.

When you have that many people all in one place then if you are a hacker you want to take advantage of it. When else are you going to get a chance to get so many people at once? The app and gaming platform leaves a lot to the imagination when it comes to a black hat hacker. They just have to figure out the best way to run their attack.

The best part for black hat hackers when it comes to Facebook is that many of the people on the web site are not very computer literate. They know how to get on the internet, check email, and visit a few web sites but they do not know how to protect themselves on the web. This leaves for a lot of vulnerability and a lot for the Facebook security team to deal with.

The one thing that you can say is that Facebook really does try to keep everything in order on the web site. When they find someone has corrupted the system then they do their best to try and fix it. They want to be able to protect their visitors as much as possible.

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In this day and age I would certainly say there is a need for more awareness of privacy concerns on the world wide web. But that doesn’t mean you need to go too overboard with things; you certainly need commonsense and some tools may be useful though.

If you use the Chrome web browser then you will have some privacy options that are assigned by default but do you really need them? For instance, phishing and malware protection, as great as it is, may just be a duplication of what your antivirus or internet security program is already providing you with.

Switching off some unnecessary privacy features in Chrome could actually lead to some small speed gains which could improve your browsing experience.

Disabling unnecessary privacy features in Chrome

Disabling unwanted privacy features in the Chrome web browser is actually a very quick and easy action if you know how.

Firstly, click on the spanner icon, found in the top right corner of your browser.

Next, click on Options from the menu that you now see.

This will take you to the following screen from which you will want to select Under the Hood, found on the left hand side as shown:

At the top of this page you will see the Privacy options available in Chrome.

There are 5 options here -

1. Use a web service to help resolve navigation errors
2. Use a prediction service to help complete searches and URLs typed in the address bar
3. Predict network actions to improve page load performance
4. Enable phishing and malware protection
5. Automatically send usage statistics and crash reports to Google

- all of which are enabled by default.

You can easily deselect any that you personally don’t require by simply clicking on the ticks in order to remove them.

Learn more from this video guide my son has made up:

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When you are a programmer there are a lot of rules that you have to remember. They can be confusing at different points but if you do not remember them then you are putting the safety of your users at risk. And that is what it all comes down to. A lot of the rules that you will find when programming, especially if you are a web programmer, are made because of the safety issue. You have an obligation to make sure that the users of your software does not fall victim to some bad guy on the internet who knows how to manipulate code.

When you are learning these rules, you learn that some are more important than others. While you want to try your best to follow all of them, you want to make sure that you follow the most important ones carefully. That is why you will hear about some programming security rules more than others. One of the main ones that you will hear is about not hard coding passwords and other credentials in your source code.

What is hard coding passwords?

Hard coding your password means that you have made it part of the software you are using. Sometimes it is unavoidable and you have to do it but you do it in a safe way. You make sure that it is somewhere that no one is able to get to it. But when you are creating a web app, then there are very few places that are like this.

If you are making a web app, and you have to use a password then you encode it, salt it after that, and then put it in a database. If you look on the web, you will see that some people write JavaScript and they put the password right in the code. Anyone is able to see that code. This means that you did not make the black hat hacker have to break into your back end, you just gave him a key. If you are going to code a password into a web app then you have to put in a part of the server that regular users cannot get to.

A hard coded password in your web app is very dangerous. While there may be some exceptions, the best option is always to not do it.

Why You Shouldn’t Hard Code Your Passwords When Programming is a post from: Security FAQs

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The username and password process is very tenuous at best. While the process seems to do its job for the most part, it still has so many holes in it. These are the holes that are found all of the time and exploited by the black hat hackers of the world. You can never discount the creativity in people when they really want to accomplish something. And you can see this creativity at work when you see hackers attacking a system.

To be able to counter the creativity of the black hat hackers out there, the good guys have to be creative as well. They cannot just sit by and not be proactive when it comes to stopping security threats. That does not work and it leaves you playing defense all of the time. No, if you want to be able to stop the bad guys out there you must be willing to get on the ground and play dirty with them.

One of the most creative solutions that we have seen recently is the adding of two factor authentication to web sites. Every day we are seeing more and more web sites adding this type of security to their web services. One of the biggest names in email, Gmail, was one of the first major companies to use the new two factor technology. Now another big email company, namely Yahoo, has added the security feature to their repertoire as well.

What does two factor authentications do?

In the normal password and username process, the person inputs these two pieces of information into a form on a web site. The information is then sent to a server, verified, and if correct is sent back to the browser. The user is then confirmed and they are allowed into the web site. With two factor authentication an extra step is added. Once your username and password has been accepted they now send a security question at you. This security question is a little harder to guess by the bad guys. And if the bad guys guess is wrong and the IP address is questionable, the site will lock out that IP address. That is in some cases.

These extra steps really magnify the security of web sites on the net.

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There has been no better time than now in the short history of mobile phones. They are becoming more and more popular by the day. The Christmas that just went past saw an explosion when it came to the sales of smart phones even though the economy has not been the greatest. A smart phone was just the right price point for anyone who wanted a good, powerful electronic device but did not want to pay monster prices. Not only do you get a solid and dependable device, but you did not even have to break the bank to be able to do it.

The most popular smart phone this past holiday season was, for once, not the IPhone. While it has led in the past, this time it was the year of the Android based phone. There was just so many powerful Android based phones out there that people had a great time being able to scoop them up easily. The IPhone was a very popular phone to get as well but with no major updates and so many great looking Android phones, the alternative choices were just too enticing.

But with all of the excitement of getting an Android based phone, people must remember that there is some stuff that you have to worry about. And this mainly comes in the form of apps.

A big reason why people pick up smart phones is that they like to use the apps that are on there. The apps are what make the phone a mini computer and not just a regular phone. If the app feature was not there then people would not feel the need to spend so much money on the phones themselves. But you have to make sure that you treat downloading apps the same way that you would when you are on the computer.

When it comes to apps, the biggest thing that you have to look out for is the permissions. When you are getting ready to download an app to the phone from the app store, it will ask you do you accept the permissions of the app. These permissions include items such as go on the Internet or change the wallpaper background. Some apps will even ask permission to access your contact list. If an application does not advertise a feature that you think will need these permissions then do not install it. There is a good chance they are trying to trick you.

Malware on the Android is very small percentage wise but you should still be careful. If you use common sense when it comes to permissions then you will be able to avoid a lot of problems in the future.

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When you are a novice at using your home computer, you do not quite realize all of the magic that it can do. And that’s okay. No-one does when they first start out. It takes time to be able to learn all of the things that your computer can do. But once you do start to figure out all of the magic that it can do then watch out. You are going to be surprised and be one happy camper. And the best part about all of it is that a lot of what you have seen other people do on their computers is not as hard as you may think it is.

One thing that people like to do on their home PC’s is to set up a server on them. When a person is getting used to the tech side of things, this is probably one of the first more complicated operations that they will do on the system. But it is also very satisfying as well. There is a lot that you can do when you set up your computer to be a server. And that is what we are going to talk about in this article. We are going to show you how you can set the server up and what you can do once it is set up.

Setting up the server

The setting up of the server all depends on what type of operating system you are running. If you are running a Linux or Mac OS X operating system then a lot of the operations is going to be the same. That is because they are both based on the UNIX operating system. When you go through a tutorial on one then the other is going to be pretty similar. What we are going to talk about here is setting up a server on the Windows operating system. Specifically we are going to talk about setting it up on some of the newer operating systems in the Windows family. But do not let that throw you off. Usually the instructions are the same no matter which operating system you pick. Now let’s go through the easy way and the hard way.

There have been many people over the years that have wanted an easy way to install server software on a Windows system. Most of the server software out there is based on UNIX protocols so switching it to Windows is a little bit difficult. But in recent years there have been some programmers who have made packages to be able to solve this set up. One of the more popular installations is WAMP Server. It allows you to install the Apache operating system along with PHP and the Mysql database with just a couple of clicks. It does this very quick and easily. But some people complain that it is a messy operation. They like to complain that the settings that come with the default is not what they would have picked. Also, they may like some of the components in the set up but not all of them.

For example, they might like the fact that it installs PHP and Mysql but not Apache. Or that it installs Mysql and Apache but they want Perl and not PHP. With installation packages like this, everything is easy to set up but you do not get to configure much. So some people like to go about it on their own.

That’s right, even on a Windows system you can set it up so that everything is installed one at a time. This is considered a harder way of setting up a server on your system but it also makes it more configurable. You can go to the web site of any server that you would like to use, the programming language that you need to hook into the server software, and the database you would like to use and install them all individually. Once you are at the web site, all you have to do is find the binary for Windows and install them like you would any other application. You still will have to set some of the configurations manually such as opening ports and getting it in the right Windows path but other than that you should be fine.

The solutions I have given you up above are all open source solutions. You can also set up the default Windows server IIS as well but if you ever need a license you will have to pay for it. The solutions I highlighted above are all free.

So why do I need this on my home computer?

There are several reasons why you would want this on your home system. If you ever needed to create a web page or any kind of web app, the tools you need are right there. But most people set up home servers so they can serve themselves files to anywhere in the house. You can serve up music, documents, and video to any machine that is hooked to the internet. People like to call this sort of set up a media server.

So there you go, setting up a server can be both educational and easy. And once you do it you will find many uses for it.

Getting Ready To Create A Secure Server Installation On Your Home PC is a post from: Security FAQs

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