The text message: the simplest easiest way to communicate with anyone and all within 160 characters per data packet. Texting has really taken over as the prime medium of our entire daily chit chats, reminders, and even formal small talks. And without us really ever realizing when and how, text messages have become keepers of our most personal and guarded information. You may not fret so much over someone going through your email or Facebook account but the moment someone starts looking through your phone’s message inbox you’ll start feeling that sensation quite similar to a stroke. The same reason why keystroke loggers are so dreaded; they can read every message you type out.

And so of course it’s needless to say how momentously important it is that our text messages be kept safe from prying eyes and hackers. The latest text message scare drives this point home harder than ever before. Thanks to an Apple employee who did not follow company protocol while fixing an iPhone, we learned that a bizarre security flaw in iPhones allows user’s access to each others text messages just by inserting the other person’s SIM into their own iPhones. Just imagining what would happen if it were your messages showing up on someone else’s iPhone, that’s enough to give anyone anxiety. So here’s what you can do to ensure that your messages don’t fall prey to iPhone spyware and whatever Apple security flaws and vulnerabilities that may exist.

Safety: Say No to Jailbreak

What most people don’t care to mull over when purchasing second hand iPhones are whether they are jail broken or not. Many even consider it an advantage since now they can allow third party apps onto the device. But the fact is doing this puts everything in the device, including all your personal text messages, at risk of being exploited through some iPhone spyware. Using non- jailbroken IOS devices will also cut down to a great extent the possibility of installing a keylogger and hence getting at your messages that way.

Precaution: Put in a Spy App for Spy Apps

Before someone gets at your personal info by reading your texts, take matters into your own hands. Firstly, make sure your phone doesn’t have texts dating back to your college rebel days that you would be mortified if anyone found out. Lewd or sexually explicit messages really shouldn’t be held onto since those are the first to go public once someone successfully gets into your message log. A precaution one can take is to self-install an iPhone spy app-monitoring app. In other words, apps which will notify you of any and all apps being installed on your iPhone, allowing you to investigate whether they are suspicious or not on your own. Such apps give you pop-ups so you’ll be sure not to miss them and are easy to use.

Cure: Once You Know   

If your iPhone security has been compromised there are a number of things you can do to minimize the data theft or the damage. But let’s suppose you’ve taken all the precautions and necessary steps. And once it’s back in your hands, the security flaw which enables hackers (or just about any dandy really) into your private messages is giving you nightmares. Here’s what to do until Apple thinks up a real solution:

1. Use the Remote Wipe option and then de-register via your cell phone carrier. Make sure you do this within 24 hours of using the Remote Wipe Option.
2. Instantly activate a replacement phone with a replacement SIM too using your stolen phone number.
3. If you are an iMessage user, then change your Apple ID password.

And finally, pray all those squeamish texts that you knew you shouldn’t have saved don’t show on a public forum one day.

Natalia David, an author significantly contributes towards Cell phone and PC security, mobile phone spy and spy software for blackberry. If you want to know more about Natalia you can follow her on twitter @NataliaDavid4

There is an array of excellent customer relationship management (CRM) apps that small business owners can use to provide exceptional customer service. Location is irreverent when using mobile CRM apps because they exist on electronic devices. Incorporating electronic devices and corresponding apps can significantly increase the efficiency of a small business.

Primadesk App for Content Management 

Primadesk is an excellent app for managing the cloud content of a small business. It is a free app. Primadesk users can search, view, manage and backup all their cloud content from any device. The app supports drag and drop documents and photos between the internet and desktop. Primadesk users can also backup photos, emails and documents from various websites.

MyCyberTwin App for Productivity 

MyCyberTwin is an app designed to benefit small businesses that are very dependent on the customer service they provide. The app allows customers or a business owner to create a virtual intelligent human being. The virtual intelligent human being can be added to a website and can interact with website visitors. Usage of the app is free for the first thirty days for business users. After thirty days it costs $25 a month.

Intacct App for Financial Management 

Intacct is an app that provides a multitude of accounting tools for a small business. Different financial tools are available via the app including a general ledger, accounts receivable, cash management, etc. The app also helps users move their information from QuickBooks into the app, if necessary. At $400 a month the app is quite expensive to acquire, but the amount of tools that are in it can really organize and expedite the financial aspects of a small business.

CrashPlan Pro App for Backup 

CrashPlan Pro is an excellent app for backing up any files related to a small business. The app operates in the background of laptops and desktops for continuous backups. Backed-up files and information can be sent to external hard drives or cloud. With a simply interface, it is an easy to use app and can prevent the loss of important data.

SysAid IT Help Desk App for Customers 

SysAid IT Help Desk is a good app for any small business to have. It costs less than $5 a month per user, but provides a helpful web-based help desk and asset management for potential customers. The app can significantly lessen the time it takes to generate problem or question resolutions.

All of the mobile CRM apps mentioned above are excellent. However, there are many more apps available that can really help a small business owner expand their business operations. Doing additional research is the best way to find the most beneficial apps for any particular kind of small business.

Stuxnet is a complex piece of software discovered by a Belarusian security company, VirusBlokAda, in June 2009. Since September 2010, over 100,000 hosts were infected. Iran has been hit the most, with almost 60% of all infections.

Due to its sophisticated nature the worm is capable of infecting removable media such as USB pen-drives and spreads through the network and bypasses security protection. It is considered to be the world’s most advanced Malware. According to Microsoft, the worm was created to target Industrial Control Systems (ICS) including oil, gas and power industries.

Stuxnet works by re-programming ICS’s; it seeks Siemens management system and infects them. This allows the hacker to modify the functions of Control Systems, upload information to the Internet and possibly specify how they should operate. Something like this could cause a huge impact and big financial losses.

Industrial Control Systems are usually programmed by Windows machines and in most cases they are not connected to the Internet or any type of network in order to reduce the chance of infections. This means that the worm is inflicted internally by using a portable device such as USB pen-drive.  In order to inflict Stuxnet
Malware, the attacker must have a good knowledge of the system.

The pie chart above represents the percentage of geographical infection distribution. Detailed stats have been published by Symantec.

Protect your computer from malicious software. Perform frequent updates and Malware scans.

Article by Dimitri Hrusha – VikingPC IT Director at VikingPC – The power of 5 anti-virus software in 1 Dynamite Package.

An Infographic on How Burglar Alarms Function.

Click on image to enlarge

Article submitted by HomeInsurance.org

Tony Stark is not the only one who can enjoy holographic images. And, his visions are not far from being realized by real people. In fact a year ago, an animation company who’s caught up on iPhone’s fervor created one concept design for the next generation of iPhones. Like Tony Stark, they armed their creation with fascinating holographic features and laser technology.

Who would not be amazed by dragging virtual objects into thin air or make them float like ghosts exorcised from your electronic device? Much to the delight of gamers, they can now experience racing in GTA at Monte Carlo right in front of their eyes or slashing fruits in the air like a real ninja. Best of all, for photo enthusiasts, you won’t need a cable and a surface anymore just to project images and videos from your phone. Your iPhone can efficiently project holograms in 3D! All these and more is promised by Aatma Studio for their iPhone concept design.

Aatma CEO Pramod Modi Shantharam and the whole team envisioned the next iPhone to be ultra thin for a lightweight handheld device. Aside from this, they used laser technology to enable the projection of the iPhone keyboard onto the nearest external surface. To do this, the user must drag the on-screen keyboard out of the borders of the phone. By means of a sensor, the user can also resize the keyboard depending on his taste and adjust its brightness and contrast to adapt to outside lighting conditions. The user can always resume the look of the portable device by dragging back the laser keyboard.

While playing games, watching videos, scanning through pictures or even mobile surfing, the user can convert the screen into a holographic display in a snap of your fingers. An upward pull from on top of your iPhone screen can instruct the iPhone to project the holographic display. Again, the user can always bring the display back to normal by mere finger motion.

Most would agree that this concept may be far from being the next iPhone 5. It may take 5 or 7 more years before this technology can be perfected as issues on battery energy and gadget responsiveness may create some conflicts. But this definitely paves the way to a brighter future for iPhone, or any other smartphones perhaps.

This then leaves us more thrilled and excited for what the future looks like.

Peter de Jesus is a marketing consultant for Repair Labs. An industry-recognized specialist in iPhone and iPad repair.

How does Yahoo allow these emails to be delivered to a recipient’s in-box? I find this very irresponsible on Yahoo’s part that their security can’t catch these scams that are using their brand. The latest scam claims that your email account will be temporally blocked due to messages that have been triggering our spam box.  You may permanently stop receiving messages to this Yahoo Account!  If not verified.

The grammar was the first thing I noticed that made me suspicious of the validity of this notification. Secondly, senders address was a Gmail account. Too easy!

Actual Email

From: jandsyabu@gmail.com

Dear Valued customer,

Your account is about to be temporally blocked due to messages that has been triggering our spam box.  You may permanently stop receiving messages to this Yahoo Account! If not verified.

You must verify your email address simply click on the link below

	Click to login for activation »

We know it can be a pain to switch email accounts, and we hope this makes the transition to Yahoo! Account a bit easier.

It is amazing that Yahoo doesn’t filter emails with words such as; Yahoo, notifications, account, verification, etc. All they need to do is add these words in the Bayesian spam filter for any subject line that contains those words and these emails would never make it to anyone’s in-box.

Bayesian spam filtering ( /ˈbeɪziən/ BAY-zee-ən; after Rev. Thomas Bayes) is a statistical technique of e-mail filtering. It makes use of a naive Bayes classifier to identify spam e-mail.

All links were removed to protect our readers.

Steven Sinofsky, president of Microsoft Windows division, is trying to give Windows users something new to cheer about. Windows 8 has almost every feature that you would love to have & share. A few days ago, Windows 8 was put on a consumer trail period and more than 1 million people have downloaded the OS within 24 hours of its official release. Hopefully you downloaded it already and are enjoying all of the benefits of Windows 8.

You will find some great built-in Windows 8 Features that you will surely love.

Sky Drive

Sky Drive is one of the many great built-in apps on Windows 8 that allows ‘private Cloud’ storage space. So, if you want to share or store something interesting, now you can do it easily. Moreover, your Desktop files are available online & offline too, which reduces the chances of data loss and help’s you in recovering your precious data.

Windows 8 Logo

Since the launch of Windows 95, Microsoft continues to use their slightly changed logos, but you will find a completely different one in Windows 8. Not yet confirmed, but this logo might remain the same for business & enterprise versions of Windows 8.

ReFS (Resilient File System), Latest File System from Microsoft

After broad uses and continuous improvement on the NT File System, Microsoft has completely changed the scenarios with ReFS, which stands for Resilient File System. It is created using NTFS technology to provide more reliability, storage space & security.

Here are some stunning features about ReFS:

• Easily compatible with NTFS
• Metadata integrity with Checksum
• Huge volume size, file and directory
• Disk Scrubbing to avoid latent disk errors
• File Level Encryption
• Bit locker Encryption
• File ID & oplocks etc.

Detailed information and features can be found here, authored by Surendra Verma, development manager for the Storage and File System Team.

Touch enabled

In the past, we have heard about touch screen laptops and PCs will soon enter in the real market. Windows 8 has software to provide users more interactivity with their laptop using touch screen. However, this feature is not publicly available, but you can expect to get it after the next official release from Microsoft.

Rocket Speed:

Unlike other Windows operating systems, Windows 8 is highly optimized to provide greater performance. So, if you want to make your PC a rocket, then you can do so using Windows 8. Moreover, Windows 8 takes under 10 seconds to boot!

Available for Tablets & PCs Both

This unification of tablets and PC would never allow you to feel lonely either at home or on the go.

High Security

This Windows OS version allows each program to run independently to avoid cross contamination when your system ever gets an attack. Moreover, it has improved virus detection capability to keep your system free from infections.

Windows Store

Like any other store, Windows has its own great set of ‘Windows store’ to enhance the ability to perform operation and easy share what you love.

About The Author: Oliver is a software evangelist who would love to explore about latest happenings in tech world. Right now, he is working with Stellar Data Recovery, an award winning hard drive Recovery Company offering powerful data recovery software and services to clients worldwide.

Majority of the people get confused between hard drive cloning and hard drive imaging and do not understand whether they have to clone their Mac hard drive or image it! Since cloning software provides both options to clone and create an image of the hard drive, both options look almost the same. They both copy the entire content of hard drive or hard drive volume thus it is very obvious to get confused.  To know the basic difference between these two terms, we have to understand their basic definitions and the reason for segregating these two.

Cloning: The literal meaning of cloning is creating exact replica or mirror image of something just like cloning and animal or even a human. Likewise creating mirror image or replica of the hard disk is called hard disk clone. The hard disk cloning process copies sector by sector data of source drive to destination drive. Cloning also gives you an option to clone the entire hard drive or specific volume of your hard drive and the best part of cloning is the resultant object can immediately be used. That means disk cloning creates a ready to use copy of the hard drive which you can restore your entire machine in various situations such as an operating system crash, hard drive damage, or you want to switch from an old hard drive to new spacious hard drive, etc. However, while cloning you must know the fact that cloning erases all data of the destination drive and that too beyond any scope of recovery so it is recommended to choose that destination drive which is either empty or which does not have any important data. Moreover, the destination drive must have equal or larger space than the source drive.

Now let us see what exactly is imaging and how is it different from cloning:

Imaging: Imaging is basically creating a backup copy of your hard drive or volume which can be used to restore data at any situation of data loss or inaccessibility of data. In imaging, the data of the destination drive is not destroyed as well as most of the imaging software as it uses compression while creating image so you can create multiple images of your source drive to the destination drive easily. Their sizes are comparatively smaller than their actual size. Moreover, by using image you need not to copy everything each time, instead you have a choice to select only damaged or lost files/folders or anything of your choice.

The difference between imaging and cloning; Image you cannot create an entire system rather you can restore the data which you have lost or which has become inaccessible while the clone is ready to use as it’s a copy of your entire hard drive. Therefore, we can say that image can restore only data of our hard drive or volume but clone can restore entire system. By now it must be clear to you where to use clone and where to use image. However, most third-party Mac cloning software has can perform both functions.

One of the award winning and reliable software for the same is Stellar Drive Clone. The software provides you the feature to clone your hard drive or logical volumes, create image of entire Mac hard drive or any volume, and feature to restore volume from image file or folder. The software supports latest Mac OS X 10.7 Lion.

Convenience and added efficiency are just some of the things that a mobile business can give you. However, even if it does look quite attractive to become a “mobile entrepreneur”, a great portion of your capability to do business on the go actually lies on the fact that it requires several modern computer and communication technologies. Simply using them to conduct business is just one thing, and properly utilizing every single aspect of the technology WITHOUT endangering your security is another.

If you want to keep your mobile businesses from being ruined by cyberattackers, here are a few very simple and perfectly easy-to-do tips:

Consider Using a High Specification Smartphone

Smartphones today evolve by the month; your latest model today might just be a completely outdated version half a year later. Although this can be a bit tedious to some people, you can actually use this fact as an advantage to keep your mobile business security intact. Malware, as you may have already known, always evolve on the fly. On an old, slightly low-spec phone certain version vulnerabilities might still be present, but in a more powerful updated smartphone, those vulnerabilities could have already been fixed.

Consider Upgrading Your Smartphone’s Functions

Aside from using an updated smartphone, it might be also wise to learn more about your smartphone so that you’ll be able to use it at least near to its 100% functionality. For instance, a simple installation of an anti-virus could help improve your smartphone’s overall security. An app that could fight Malware can be your first step to defend your mobile business against some of the known security risks that are caused by malicious programs. Another suggestion is to find a strong (but safe) tweak for your smartphone that could help you detect if it is being monitored by another unit (you’ll have to ask other experts to know more about this subject matter however).

Exercise Caution when Accessing Databases Remotely

Sending wireless information over the air is very convenient, but also very dangerous. Even if the information is safely encrypted, you’ll never know if there would be someone skilled enough to crack it. That is why you must exercises extreme caution when accessing databases from your mobile device. Try using an API (application programming interface) that would not interact directly with your database, and would simply throw out bits and pieces of information out of the database for you to use.

If you want to reclaim your privacy, feel free to use our website VPN service

Keep the Physical Mobile Device Safe from Theft

Finally, as a solid hardware maintenance tip, you should always be prepared to protect the physical mobile device from getting lost or stolen. Accidentally leaving your tablet or smartphone in a coffee shop could instantly create a risk of an outsider having direct (and free) access to your mobile business. If you think that losing the device could be an inevitable possibility, try to think up of alternative recovery countermeasures. For example, you might still want some of the more important business-oriented features or apps on the device to still require a password or confirmation code before it can be used. This way you’ll have time to remotely freeze the device before anyone could exploit the data inside it.

Each year we honor our mother’s for all the good they’ve done for us and the love that comes with it. Unfortunately, low life crooks use this day to peddle their scams to steal money from people. Scammers will re-purpose content and graphics (logos) from legitimate web sites that offer flowers, gifts, etc. and try to fool users into thinking it’s a legitimate web site.

Scammers use holiday’s to target victims by sending email spam to promote their scams to get users to submit credit card and other personal information to be used for illegal activities and identity theft. If you receive an email about making purchases online for Mother’s Day, be very wary!

If you’re interested in ordering flowers or any other gift online to send to mom, you should only use sites you’re familiar with. I have included links to trusted sites for ordering Mother’s Day Gifts online below.

Many of these email scams can be detected if you have the (Free) Web of Trust add-on for Firefox or Internet Explorer. The links inside the email will have a red circle indicating that the links go to a site that has a poor reputation. If you don’t have the Web of Trust add-on, I highly recommend it!

Give the gift of flowers for your mom, but don’t give it to the low life crooks!

Trusted sites for ordering Mother’s Day Gifts Online

FTD
1-800 Flowers
Amazon
Gifts.com
Pro Flowers

Happy Mother’s Day to all the mother’s out there!