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.

According to Shanghai Daily, a virus has affected at least one million cell phone users in China.  The Zombie Virus, as it’s called, disguised itself as an anti-virus app that, when installed actually sends the details of the contacts on the user’s phone to hackers, who then use these contacts as a database for the spread of spam. Additionally, it sends links to infected  recipients phones.

Additionally, when a user follows a link sent by the virus, they find their phones infected.

Be careful out there — especially when you’re adding apps. And just as links received in email should be clicked with care, so those received on your phone should be examined carefully.