Photo by Trevor Blake via Flickr

If you've ever had a car stolen, your house broken into or your bike wheel "roll off" you know the feeling — you're exposed, vulnerable and looking for answers as to how this could have happened.

I've never been hacked before (at least to my knowledge) and immediately researched what to do and how to guard against it happening again.

Not all hackers are malicious, but those bent on ill will are usually exploiting security loopholes in the websites we use. While the average user can't do much about lax security on the site itself, we can make our browsing experience safer. Here are five tips for doing so:

Use HTTPS Everywhere

When using public wifi, your computer and login credentials can be "sniffed" by malicious hackers on the same network. Always use HTTPS to secure your information. HTTPS Everywhere automatically forces HTTPS onto hundreds of popular sites, thus ensuring your safety. You can download the free plugin here.

Careful where you click

Most of us are well acquainted with not clicking of fishy links in email. But if you happen to use sites such as Twitter or Facebook, you're not out of the dark. If links from friends look "spammy", it's often the case that their account has been phished. Avoid clicking on the link (or even hovering over it, in some cases). Whenever in doubt, don't click!

Create a different secure password for each account

The truth about passwords is that we are horrible at creating good ones. Too often, it's your cat's name, your wife's maiden name or your favorite celebrity. Secure passwords should be a random combination of letters, symbols and numbers. Applications such as 1Password are excellent at generating random passwords and keeping a list of them so you never have to wonder. Best of all, 1Password syncs on the Mac, PC, Android and iOS with Dropbox, so you can store your passwords and always have them synced with your devices. I highly recommend using this application or something similar.

And remember, don't give your password to ANYONE!

Encrypt your data

In the case that you are hacked, you'll want to make sure your important data is safe. TrueCrypt, free and open source encryption software, is available for Mac and PC and can do just that.

Shop safely online with temporary credit card numbers

Worried about giving your credit card number to some no-name guy in Florida in exchange for sending you some rad Ghostbusters patches? Well I sure was! Most, if not all, banks offer the ability to create a temporary credit card number. This number can only be used once. It links directly to your credit card, so you can keep your actual number safe.

I hope these tips have been helpful. If you've got your own to share, please let us know how you keep safe in the comments.

Photo by killrbeez on Flickr

HTTPS Everywhere has released its 1.0 version, moving out of beta and boasting secure HTTPS connections for over 1000 popular websites.

Last winter I wrote about HTTPS Everywhere, a Firefox Plugin that will ensure your information is securely encrypted over the Internet when using a variety of popular websites.

HTTPS Everywhere was popularized in response to Firesheep, a Firefox plugin that anyone could install that could "sniff" usernames and passwords from those passing data over HTTP on an open Wi-Fi network. Using HTTPS Everywhere, your session is automatically made secure on over 1000 sites including Wikipedia, The New York Times, Facebook, Google, Twitter, TOR and others.

To learn more about HTTPS Everywhere, visit the Electronic Frontier Foundation's website.

Tor helps you become anonymous online.

In places like China, all traffic going in and out of the country is monitored. Certain website are blocked and the content of your messages (email, forums, IRC) is monitored by a legion of net nannies.

Whether you're worried about advertisers capturing your info, or preventing the government from snooping, Tor is an excellent solution. Tor, "The Onion Router", is free open source software that provides you with anonymity online.

Tor works by distributing the source of your traffic across a variety of exit points, so that your computer cannot be associated with the final destination. Just like the layers of an onion, Tor provides several layers of encryption — one encrypted layer to each relay along the path that you're relaying traffic through.

As Tor explains on its site:

"The idea is similar to using a twisty, hard-to-follow route in order to throw off somebody who is tailing you — and then periodically erasing your footprints. Instead of taking a direct route from source to destination, data packets on the Tor network take a random pathway through several relays that cover your tracks so no observer at any single point can tell where the data came from or where it's going."

Tor is an excellent resource for journalists that need to protect their anonymity, those that want to express their opinions under regimes where freedom of speech is in question and anyone concerned about what information is being captured about their Internet use.

Tor is largely run by volunteers who run relays that help anonymize Internet traffic. In addition, there's a team working hard to continually improve Tor, including Jacob Applebaum, its main advocate and Bay Area native.

If you would like to learn more about Tor or download it, visit Tor's website to learn more.

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The HInternet would use radio frequencies.

Noisebridge is working on this project using commodity Wi-Fi equipment that’s been modified to work under amateur radio frequencies. The FCC grants experimenters spectrum space to build high power, long range radio systems. Through this provision, Noisebridge has begun building the HInternet (a combination of “Ham Radio" and “Internet”).

As one enthusiast explains, “You can run any application you could run over the Internet, the difference is you don’t need any wires. Everything is done through radio links. In the event of a major disaster, you wouldn’t have to worry about downed lines or earthquake damage to underground equipment — the network would naturally reform itself, routing around failures.”

The idea to create the HInternet was triggered by the realization that there was a lot open IP space allocated to amateur radio that was not in use.  Aside from the benefits this system could provide in natural disaster, the HInternet is driven by the belief in freedom and open access to the Internet. The United States is debating a bill to create an Internet kill switch, also known as the PCNAA bill. For true redundancy, a non-critical network such as the HInternet is being built to avoid this single point of failure.

The HInternet project is looking for volunteers to help them test and build the network. If you’re interested in learning more, they are holding a variety of information sessions this Fall. Visit their website for more information.

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The California Academy of Sciences' homepage

For the last forty-five minutes, I have been perusing the California Academy of Sciences website, trying to think of a topic for this blog piece. It is 10 PM on the day before my entry is due, and I am doing what I have been doing since college – procrastinating! But now the Internet makes that so much more time consuming. Going through the pages and sifting ideas to see what might work, I am drawn into how technology and the Internet are making so much available to the public, and how information interacts at so many intersections. You just need to look at the Academy's website for examples.

There is a page on the Academy website dedicated to blogs. It follows researchers in the field, or discusses nuances of climate change; one blog category is dedicated to being a fly on the wall. One of these "fly on the wall" blog entries notes that Claude (the albino alligator) is doing well after being pulled off the floor for an injury.  Because these blogs feature a way to leave comments, we can streamline them to answer specific inquiries, and also bring light to the concerns of the public.  People can watch specific animals online through streaming video, such as the Penguin Cams.  The videos and images are not wholly staff generated either; YouTube video and flickr photo uploads are linked in, as well as social commentary from Facebook and Twitter. There is even a  survey (on the bottom right of the homepage) that lets you test your science knowledge against a recent study.  I got all six of them correct, compared to an average of 4.1 right answers, a fact I found out immediately after taking the quiz.

Last week, Google unveiled it's new Google Ocean feature (for its Google Earth software) at a press conference in our building. A great deal of technical set-up went into the day to have the press conference virtual. A link to the story about the process of creating it is referenced on the homepage. You can also take a quiz to test your Google Earth acumen, again directly from our homepage.

None of this surfing and procrastinating led me to a finite topic, but it did give me a "huh" moment. I remember when the Internet was just disparate websites. Information that before would take me hours to find, if I could at all, I can now access from a home base on one website. Websites and information are integrated, and help form communities along with advanced interactivity. There are now Social Networking Coordinators at various institutions — including the Academy — who work to maintain and enrich this virtual and ever-growing community.

In just getting lost on the Academy site, I was emmeshed in a rich diversity of content and feedback. Evolution has put down strong roots online.

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