Disable that annoying Windows 10 Update Forever!

For the past few month's Microsoft have been on a mission to put there new Windows 10 operating system onto every machine in the world. Now this is great if you actually want the new Windows 10 OS but if you don't well then the constant pop up stating "Your FREE Windows 10 upgrade is ready!" may be driving you crazy. Lucky for anyone who doesn't want to update a one click solution has now come to light saving non Windows 10 inclined users all over the world.

A new free tool, dubbed Never10, provides the user a one-click solution to disable Windows 10 upgrade until the user explicitly gives permission to install Windows 10.

Never10 has been developed by Steve Gibson, the well-known software developer and founder of Gibson Research, which is why the tool is also known as "Gibson's Never10."

So lets do this, if your ready to disable that update do the following:

1. Go to Gibson's Never10 official site and click on the Download.
2. Once downloaded, the program detects if the upgrade to Windows 10 is enabled or disabled on your system and then shows a pop-up. If enabled, Click 'Disable Win10 Upgrade' button.
3. You’ll again see a pop-up that now shows Windows 10 upgrade is disabled on your system, with two buttons to 'Enable Win10 Upgrade' and 'Exit.' Click on Exit button.

The best part of this tool is that you don't have to install an application on your PC to do this. Gibson’s Never 10 is an executable. So you just need to run it, and it doesn’t install anything on your computer. You can delete it when you're done.

For more technical details on how this tool works, you can head on to this link.

Securing your iot devices

2016 has been named the year that the internet of things (iot) takes hold, with a reported 50 million plus devices sold worldwide to date with everything from smart fridges to smart plugs iot is here to stay. It must be noted however with all of this extra connectivity comes a juicy threat surface for cyber criminals to prey on. The main thing consumers need to remember that if you bough a devices that connects to the internet then you can be guaranteed that it needs to be secured. In this post I am going to outline a number of steps you can take to help protect yourself and your family from becoming victims of a cyber attack.

1) Keep your devices up to date

This goes for all devices that connect to the internet but I would especially recommend it for iot devices as new exploits are exposed manufactures may push down patches to solve the vulnerability and therefor you should regularly check to make sure your device is running the latest software.

2) Change the default password on your device

This is a very important step to take as the majority of iot devices are mass produced with a default login and not changing this on day one will leave yourself vulnerable to attack. May I suggest using a password that is at least 10 character long with special characters and capitals and numbers i.e don't use your last name and type 123 after it.

3) Be familiar with your devices privacy section

What kind of information are you saving or sharing through this device and what guarantees are put in place that this information is been protected. Don't assume just because the manufacturer says its a secure device to use that it is and make sure your information isn't been shared with third parties.

4) Be carefully buying a second hand device or selling your own device

Buying a second hand device on line may come pre-installed with malware or a backdoor only buy second hand devices from a reputable dealer. On the flip side think long and hard about selling your device, resetting a device may look like all your data has been cleared but with a little know how a lot of this information may be retrieved. There are a number of programs out there that ensure proper data erasure and this may be something you should look into first.

Protecting Windows 10 (The Basics)

Over the past few months Microsoft have been firing out their new operating system Windows 10 to the world for free. This blog is more aimed at anyone who is just after installing the operating system as chances are if you are a windows user you may have already upgraded or will be doing so in the near future. Like most things that come fresh out of the box to make them work to a level you might expect takes some tweaking. I am going to focus on a few basic steps you should take right away to make your new operating system secure.

1) Run the windows update straight away, I know you may have spend an hour or two installing the dam thing but running windows update will make sure your operating system has the latest patches. To find windows update just click the little search bar at the bottom of your screen and type "windows update" once opened just hit "check for updates" and your done.

2) System restore is turned off by default in Windows 10 so you might want to turn this on. Microsoft have renamed this function as "system protection" so to turn this on head back down to the little search bar and type "This PC" when the logo appears right click on it and select "Properties" click on "system protection" then click "Configure" and turn system protection on.

3) Check your Windows 10 privacy setting by default everything and I mean everything in here is turned on. To get here you go to START > Settings> Privacy spend a bit of time looking over this and make sure you are happy with it.

4) Make sure that all of your applications are updated in an earlier post I mentioned that Secunia PSI was a good application to check this.

5) Make sure you have your anti-virus turned on if you don't have an anti-virus Windows has a build in AV called Windows Defender. You can find Defender by going to the search bar and typing "Windows Defender".

Staying anonymous online (The Basics)

This is a topic that seems to keep popping up over and over again for many different reasons some good and some bad. In my opinion everyone should have the right to remain anonymous online if they choose to do so. I know in the extreme cases Governments are claiming that terrorists and criminals are using encryption of a means to carry out organised crime and nation attacks, however does this mean the rest of free society should give up the right to remain anonymous online? If you believe that the answer to this question is no then you can take a number of steps to help keep your     online identity non-existent. The steps below in no way mean that the FBI won't know who you are if you start doing some illegal shit like hiring an assassin on the dark-net so I strongly advise against doing so.

1)  If you are the type of person who wants no digital footprint then you might not want to join social media sites. The amount of personal data that social networking sites like Facebook, Google Plus and Twitter have harvested from their billions of users is shocking. Head to facebook.com/settings and click ‘Download a copy of your Facebook data’ and you might be surprised to see just how much information is on file. More or less everything you have ever done on Facebook is saved in this file so you can kind of get a feel for just how much information these sites hold on you.

2)  My second tip is another rather simple approach, go incognito The top four most popular browsers - Google Chrome, Mozilla Firefox, Internet Explorer and Safari - have a private browsing mod. With private browsing activated, your browser will not store cookies or internet history on your computer. This is quiet a limited function and is really only of use to hide information from others such as a significant other. I say this because Private browsing does not securely hide your identity or browsing activities beyond your local machine as your IP address can still be tracked.

3)  It is a known fact that many websites track and monitor their users activity, this can actually cost you money. An example of this is that plane ticket that you want to buy so you regularly check to see if its sold out, then when you have the cash the bloody ticket has gone up in price, the reasons for this could very well be website tracking. The issue with website tracking is you can't see if the websites you are visiting are actually tracking you. Ghostery is a free browser extension - available on all major web browsers - that will reveal these trackers, also known as web bugs. You can then decide which web bugs you’re comfortable with tracking you and which ones you’d like to block.

4)  Stop using Dropbox, I know that its a handy tool but as Edward Snowden once stated about Dropbox "they are a cloud service hostile to privacy". Lucky enough if you still want a way to share your files Snowden himself recommends that you use Spideroak to do so. The reason for this being that Spideroak is a zero-knowledge encrypted data backup, share, sync, access and storage service.

5) Use an alternative search engine to the mainstream, I suggested in a previous post that the best search engine for this is DuckDuckGo, which promises never to track your searches and “emphasizes protecting searchers’ privacy and avoiding filter bubble of personalized search results.

6) Reconsider your phone options, if you have a smartphone then staying anonymous just became a whole lot harder. The reason for this is for some reason every app you download these days wants access to your location,contacts,camera,microphone etc which makes staying off the grid impossible really. If you are super parnoid may I suggest investing in the super cool name "Blackphone" This is an ‘NSA-proof’ smartphone that claims to provide privacy features for texts, emails, web browsing and phone calls.

7) Use a Virtual Private Network (VPN)!!! I am sick of repeating this and if you really are serious about staying anonymous online this is simply a must have. You ask what is a VPN? Well essentially it hides your IP address and runs all your online data via a secure and encrypted virtual tunnel, which can keep websites from tracking your online activity or even knowing which country you’re browsing from (which is great for American Netflix). The catch with a using a VPN is don't ever trust a free one so you will need to shell out a few quid every month for the privilege of the service. Their has been a lot of talk recently about how secure certain VPN's are so do some of your own research and find the best one for you.

8) If you are using a popular webmail service such as Gmail then you might want to either change to a more secure provider or else add some security to your current provider. To do this I would suggest installing Mailvelope. Mailvelope is a browser extension for Google Chrome or Mozilla Firefox that brings OpenPGP encryption to your webmail service. Similar extensions exist, such as SecureGmail, which encrypts and decrypts emails you send through Gmail. Alternatively you could start using a webmail service such as Hushmail. Hushmail is currently very popular, it provides a private email account with no ads, built-in encryption and unlimited email aliases. Their is a limited free version of Hushmail however like everything you need to pay to get all the bells and whistles. For the more paranoid their is always the option of Disposable Email Addresses (DEAs). These are anonymous and temporary. They allow users to quickly create new email addresses as-and-when they’re needed, which can then be disposed of after use. There are many companies that provide this type of service however the more reliable one may come in the form of Guerrilla Mail and Mailinator.