Computer Security Session 4: Surveillance and Privacy

Who wants to track you?

• The government and law enforcement
• Private companies (to sell you things and learn your shopping habits)
• Criminals (to learn your patterns)
• Friends, family and potential friends (“Facebook helps you connect and share with the people in your life.”)
• Stalkers

How can you be tracked?

• Data traces left on your computer (e.g. browsing history, browser cache)
• Interactions with your Internet Service Provider (ISP)
• “Like” buttons and advertisements
• Browser toolbars
• Keyloggers
• Logs on the websites you visit
• Wifi (and wired) snooping
• Mysterious shadowy government projects that may or may not exist

Get Organized: Week 5 Materials

A bit late, but here are the slides and handout from week 5 of the ‘Get Organized’ series. Week 5 was about budgeting.

For those who attended the series, please send me feedback of the constructive and/or showering-in-praise type. Let me know which sessions you liked (or didn’t), whether or not the structure was useful, what has worked for you, what really didn’t work for you, what you wish I’d covered (or covered more), etc. And if you qualified for those 2 free hours of help, I will be in touch at the end of the month!

For those who didn’t attend, or missed some sessions, if anyone is really interested and would definitely come out to a second offering of the series (perhaps a bit reorganized; probably in June/July), please contact me at laura @ bettertogetherdesign.com.

Week 5 Handout (pdf)

Week 5 Slides (pdf)

Computer Security Session 3: Phishing and Other Everyday Threats

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This session will attempt to focus on the most common security problems that regular home users run into.

Computer Security Session 2: Encryption and Trust

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Encryption

Encryption is the process of scrambling data so that only somebody with the right authorization (i.e. the right key) can unscramble the data.

Computer Security: No class March 20

Because several participants would not have been able to make it, we decided to defer this week’s Computer Security class. Instead, we will meet on Tuesday, March 27, Tuesday, April 3 and Tuesday, April 10.

Some topics we will cover over the next few weeks include:

• Verifying identity (secure web browsing, encrypting email…)
• What should we be worried about?
• Email phishing and scams
• Privacy and tracking
• Firewalls, Routers, and Wifi

There is still space left in the course, so feel free to register by leaving a comment below.

GO! Weeks 3 and 4 resources

Here are the resources for weeks 3 and 4 of the Get Organized! series. Next week is the final week – be sure to bring the data you’ve collected from tracking your spending, and your online banking info to set up an account at budgeting site Mint.com!

GO! Week 3 Handout

GO! Week 3 Slides

Week 4 Slides

Computer Security Session 1: Passwords, Overview

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Passwords

Passwords are like housekeys for computer services. They are intended to be secrets that allow you to access resources, but deny access to others.

Here are some questions to ask yourself about passwords:

• What are the passwords protecting?
• If one password is breached how many other computer services become vulnerable?
• Who else knows your passwords? How much do you trust them?
• What services have your passwords? How much do you trust them?
• How many passwords do you have to manage?
• How do you manage your computer passwords?