Tech Talk at ShieldsGroup

I had all but stopped using Yahoo mail since, in my estimation, they didn’t take security as seriously as Gmail, but in recent months, Yahoo’s offered better protection than in the past.

If you’re concerned about security and using Yahoo for email, here’s five steps to making your Yahoo mail more secure.

1. Turn on SSL (secure socket layers) in Yahoo. This encrypts ALL mail in and out of yahoo, something they should have done years ago, but just initiated under pressure from security experts. You can see how to do this at http://nakedsecurity.sophos.com/2013/01/08/yahoo-mail-https-ssl/
2. Turn on Two-step verification logins on Yahoo. You can read about that here: http://news.softpedia.com/news/Yahoo-Introduces-Secure-Two-Step-Verification-Logins-239586.shtml (See the note at the end of this list.)
3. Use passwords that are sophisticated. You might use nonsense phrases that have meaning to you with misspelled words and numbers. Then you can easily remember them.
4. Keep your software updated: Java, your browser, MS Office, etc.
5. Also, be sure you have commercial grade antivirus on your PCs. You should use antivirus even if you’re using a Mac. The Java exploit that’s been trashing machines over the past few weeks didn’t care what machine you were running.

Two-step verification may seem laborious, but it’s worth the trouble as it makes it very hard for others to access your email. However, on a machine that has a key-logger (a form of malware), if you use the “Answer your secret question” option, you’re still giving away access to your account. Instead, I always have Yahoo text my phone and enter the code they text.

I still feel Gmail is more secure in that it has actually caught compromises and prevented me from sending messages that I didn’t compose — locking the account until I could resecure it.

However, if you prefer Yahoo, these five steps should help secure your email.

SOLVED!

If you want to set up an audio alert to notify you of new email on your gmail app, open the gmail app and do the following:

1. menu
2. more
3. settings
4. “your account name”
5. labels to notify
6. inbox
7. select a  ringtone

I don’t know why they buried this feature so deeply.

My daughter asked me how to install Gmail Notifier on her new PC at school.  Doing a little research, I made the following suggestions:

1. You can download and install gmail notifier.  It’s here.  While google does not indicate it will work with Vista, browsing the web, you can see several people who indicate it does.
2. You can download and install google talk as this page suggests.  Google talk is a chat application.  I find it unnecessry since I can chat on the google page.  Why have an extra application taking up system resources?
3. You can install pidgin as your IM client.  Pidgin affords you ability to use multiple chat platforms including google talk.  It also gives you alerts when email arrives.  If you’re going to use AIM or MSN Messenger or Yahoo IM, you might as well install pidgin.  It’s here.  I’ve been using it for years and like it better than Trillian.

Any other suggestions?