Although the Internet has made information easier to access, it has also made our personal information more vulnerable to attacks. Our lives are floating around in cyberspace for anyone to see. In order to safeguard ourselves, we live behind a password-protected world. There are different login accounts for email, chats, forums, bank accounts, newspaper subscriptions, and online dating.

The trouble is remembering our various passwords. So instead we use simple reminders like our childrens names or our birthdays. Or we keep it simple and use the same password for all our logins. Hackers know and rely on people to do this. These are a few tips to avoid becoming a victim:

Make Passwords Strong
A strong password consists of a series of case-sensitive letters and numbers and is at least eight letters long. Microsoft says passwords longer than 14 characters are ideal. Typically, the longer the password, the more difficult and time consuming it is to hack.

Dont use anything that can be found in a dictionary. Hackers use a dictionary attack method where a hacker will literally go through the entire dictionary, English and otherwise, trying to guess a password. This method typically takes less than a day to crack.

Another common hacking method is called brute force. Brute force is more time consuming than the dictionary attack, but its not impossible. This method basically goes through all the possible combinations of keys on a keyboard. Ideally, the longer the password the more difficult it is to hack.

Weak passwords include addresses, family names, pet names, your high school, Social Security number, 123456, ABCDEF, or any combination thereof. Never ever leave the field plain blank. These are surefire ways to let strangers into your personal information.

Dont Forget
One of the most common mistakes in creating a strong password is forgetting your great new password. Now, not only can hackers not get into your personal information, but neither can you.

The goal of creating passwords with letters, numbers, and punctuation is to seem as random as possible. Find something that has meaning only to you. Get creative. A suggestion is to use the first letter of phrases, song lyrics, poetry, or make up license plate sayings. For example, Spoiled Rotten could be changed to 5Poi1edRa10.

After creating your password, use it immediately and frequently during the course of the day. This will help with memorization.

Dont use your great new password for everything. Think of a new one for all login accounts. This may seem like a hassle, but this way if one account is hacked or compromised, at least the others are safe.

There is some debate as to printing or writing passwords down. It is argued that if there is a hard copy, then anyone can hack into your system. If you do decide to print a master copy, be sure to lock it in a safe to which only you have the key.

Change it Up a Little
Change passwords regularly. This means changing them once every month or two. This may seem like a hassle, but there are plenty of people in the world that would love to have access to bank codes and credit card information. Microsoft suggests changing passwords every 30 to 90 days.

Although juggling and making up passwords can be annoying and time consuming, it is the safest way to surf the Internet. There is password software available to help manage the plethora of usernames and passwords associated with our modern computer world. These programs aid in creating passwords and automatically saving information. Think of it this way: We wouldnt leave our homes unlocked and allow strangers to come in. Why would we do that with our computers?

Resources Used
Microsoft, (March 22, 2006). Help protect your personal information with strong passwords. Retrieved June 13, 2006.

Erin Monaghan is a reviewer/writer for TopTenREVIEWS.com. TopTenREVIEWS features expert reviews for technology and entertainment products and services. The company has served over 60 million Internet visitors, has over 400,000 pages of original content and provides users with free access to in-depth product and services reviews, side-by-side feature comparisons, and industry-related news and articles.

If you haven't noticed yet, USB devices are just flooding the market right now. Digital cameras, media players, external drives and many more. All of them require a USB port to function. Most newer computers have a port or two right up front for removable devices as well.

Even though USB devices are the plug and play type (that is, they're ready to go upon being plugged in), you shouldn't just unplug them. A USB port has current running through it, so the power jolt caused by unplugging a "hot" connection can corrupt data on a storage device, a camera or an MP3 player.

You can prevent such problems by clicking the Safely Remove Hardware icon down in the system tray (by the clock). It looks like a rectangle with a green arrow pointing down. Here's a picture of it, in case you're not sure what it looks like.

You'll be given a list of USB devices that are active. Highlight the one you want to remove and click Stop. When the power shuts off Windows will tell you that it is safe to remove the device. Click Close and then remove it from your USB port. It's the best way to keep your "toys" safe!

Don't stop now! Keep reading to learn how you can change your browser's settings to allow you on secure sites, find out how to quickly display some important information in MS PowerPoint and learn how you can have a two monitors to one computer ratio. Also, find out how you can add an online picture to an e-mail with today's video tip and as always, don't miss Amanda's Cool Christmas Site of the Day. Enjoy!

Have you ever been on a Web site and found an awesome picture? Maybe it was a cool image of one of your favorite flowers or maybe your favorite singer or actor. Either way, you found it and now you'd like to show it to some of your friends. So, what's the best way to do that? Well, send it in an e-mail, of course! Now, you might be wondering how you can send a picture from a Web site in an e-mail. Well, to be honest with you, it's not hard at all. To learn how to do it, just click on the link and you'll be on your way! http://imgsrv.worldstart.com/videotips/index.htm

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For those of you that have been having trouble with AVG, here is another free AV solution that has had good reviews.

More than 15 million users worldwide trust in the reliable protection of Avira AntiVir. And this is no coincidence at all: Avira has gained several awards. The product combines first-class detection rates and ease of use with a top performance that protects your computer safely and hardly burdens older PCs.

There is no career field expanding quite as fast as the Information Technology field. Most experts predict this field will remain one of the fastest growing segments of the job market for many years to come. There is hardly a job that does not use computer technology to some degree or another and the demand for trained IT certified techs is reaching critical mass in many industries. One of the major problems within this growth industry is the rapid advances in technology. Training has to be continuous as new software is introduced or upgraded almost daily. One method of determining the level of training of a prospective employee is certification.

Although online certification courses are becoming more and more popular, they are not always the best way to gain the needed skills. Many people work better with the help of instructors and in group learning situations. It is for exactly these kinds of people that the Certification Boot Camp has been developed.

A Certification Boot Camp is an extensive onsite and hands-on training course. The boot camp idea is borrowed from the military where its meaning was a basic training course that was designed to impart a great deal of knowledge in a short period of time. The training boot camp ideal for IT certification borrows from the military model and provides training specifically designed to fill the needs of the student. An example might be an MCSE boot camp where the student is certified as a Microsoft System Engineer or a CCNA boot camp where the student receives the Cisco Certified Network Associate certificate that is good for three years before it must be renewed.

Certification boot camp is certainly a worthwhile alternative to online training. Students totally immerse themselves in the equipment and are guided step by step by professional instructors. Questions are answered at once, and the most updated software and hardware is available for the student to practice his newly refined computer skills. Certification is becoming a virtually necessity for success in the Information Technology field, and the boot camp training concept is a real break through for people whose time schedule does not allow excessive time for training. Speed has become such a necessity in this ever changing technological landscape. If a person takes his time learning a particular computer skill, it may very well be outdated by the time his course is finished. Speed and personal instruction are the real values of certification boot camp.

I was going to write about this, but in researching the subject I ran across Chris Mellors article in Techworld, which does an excellent job with less work for me:

PC users around the globe may find driver software is stopped from working by Vista if it detects unauthorised content access. Peter Guttman, a security engineering researcher at New Zealands university of Auckland, has written A Cost Analysis of Windows Vista Content Protection. He reckons Vista is trying to achieve the impossible by protecting access to premium content. Users will find their PCs compromised by the persistent and continuous content access checks carried out by Vista.

Gutman thinks these checks and the associated increased in multimedia card hardware costs make Vistas content protection specification the longest suicide note in history

Choosing batteries for a digital camera

Question: I have a new digital camera (Canon A540) that seems to take only AA Energizer rechargeable batteries. I tried regular AA batteries, but with no success. Is this normal?

Answer: Digital cameras are energy-greedy gadgets. That makes your choice of batteries important. Choose poorly, and you could be wasting money.

The type of battery you choose is more important than the brand. The most common battery types on the market are alkaline, NiMH (nickel metal hydride) and lithium.

Alkaline batteries are the oldest and least expensive type. They are what most people think of as regular batteries. Unfortunately, they don't do well in digital cameras.

Alkaline batteries lose their efficiency quickly under high energy demands. A digital camera makes this frustratingly apparent. When stressed, alkaline batteries lose much of their energy to their inner workings. At worst, that may leave enough juice for only a handful of snapshots.

NiMH batteries are more efficient than alkaline. Under high demand, NiMH batteries deliver more of their energy to the camera. The difference is noticeable.

NiMH batteries also are rechargeable. This will save you money in the long run. However, expect to pay more for NiMH batteries than alkaline.

Lithium batteries offer the best performance of the bunch. A set of lithium batteries may be enough for a few weeks of sightseeing snapshots. However, lithium batteries are the most expensive. And like alkaline, lithium batteries are not rechargeable.

You'll get the best balance of cost and performance with NiMH rechargeable batteries. Get a couple sets if you can. The spares can sit in the charger while you're busy taking snapshots.

I'll bet you or someone you know resolved to find a new job this year. So tune in to tomorrow's national radio Kim Komando Computer Minute. I'll give you some advice for making sure your résumé gets through spam filters. My Computer Minute is broadcast on hundreds of stations throughout the country. To find a local station, visit my site. You'll also find information on other ways to catch my radio shows.

Do you have a question you need answered? Join Kim's Club and post your question on my Message Board!

Kim :)

If successful at infiltrating your system, viruses and other malicious code will use a common procedure in which they write entries into a special file, called the Hosts file. By putting these special entry lists into the Hosts file, attackers attempt to accomplish one of following two things:

1.) Viruses will put entries into your Hosts file to stop you from having any contact with any antivirus protections domain (for example, Symantec.com).

2.) Malware users will use this to signal to the mothership that youre online and to begin an advertisement bombardment.

Before I go any further with this week's security article, let me give you a brief summary of the Hosts file and what its job actually is in relation to your system. Usually, when you open a Web browser and attempt to connect to a Web site, you're using DNS (Domain Name System) to resolve the domain name to the IP address (a set of numbers that identify you online). There are a couple more factors at play here, but that should be enough to get the general concept going.

The Hosts file is a file that is like an internal DNS cache, allowing your system to connect directly to the Web site without having to resolve the name. Let me clarify. Again, lets say you open a browser such as Internet Explorer and type in worldstart.com and hit Enter. Normally, your system would use DNS and attempt to resolve the name by contacting other servers online until it found the right IP address to connect to. However, the system always looks through the Hosts file first for the name to see if it already has an IP address associated with it. If there is an entry for WorldStart in your Hosts file, you can immediately connect directly to WorldStart without relying on DNS to resolve the name.

Usually, the Hosts file never gets used, because theres only one entry in there, by default, and thats basically for testing purposes. There are however, a couple of really cool tricks you can do by putting your own entries into the Hosts file to, not only speed up your surfing, but to also stop ads/banners, hijackers and other online parasites.

Adding Hosts Entries to Quicken Connection Speed to Your Favorite Web sites:

1.) First, we need to find the Hosts file and open it up in Notepad. Look for the proper location of the Hosts file for your particular Windows operating system:

Windows 95/98/Me: c:\windows\hosts
Windows NT/2000/XP Pro: c:\winnt\system32\drivers\etc\hosts
Windows XP Home: c:\windows\system32\drivers\etc\hosts

2.) Once you find your Hosts file and open it in Notepad, you should see an example of a host entry using Rhino.acme.com and one entry in the list.

3.) Before making any changes to your Hosts file, you'll want to save a copy of the file somewhere safe, in case you want to reinstall it. Go to File, Save As (save as file type All Files, not .TXT. It will not read the file correctly if you save it as a .TXT document).

4.) After you save a copy of the Hosts file somewhere safe, go back to the original Hosts file and lets put in an entry. The syntax is very simple and consists of two entries, separated by a space. First, put the IP address of the destination you want, followed by at least one space and then the host name you want to associate with the IP address. For example:

You can usually find the IP address of a particular Web site by doing a Nslookup from a command prompt.

Thats it. You just created your first Hosts file entry. Now, open a browser and attempt to connect to worldstart.com. If it worked, pat yourself on the back, because you just added an entry to the Hosts file.

In addition to using your Hosts files to set up better connections to popular sites, you can also set your Hosts file to associate the industry's most well known troublemaking host names with internal addresses. Doing this stops third party Internet parasites and banner ads from accessing the Web. You can do this by associating these host names with an internal address, such as 127.0.0.1. Associating the name with this address causes the service to never leave the local system, but rather loop back to the system, thus never contacting the mothership.

This is great Chad, but what am I supposed to do? Go out and create an entire list of malicious sites on the Web and manually enter them in the Hosts files? Yes, but dont worry, Chads got you covered with an easier solution. There are some really great sites on the Web that create these huge Hosts lists of known online pests and put them in a batch file. The list is huge. It looks like Santas bad list or something. All the entries come together in a batch file, so all you have to do is double click on it and it will create all the entries for you. This list has the majority of shady, spying sites on the Web listed in their downloadable Hosts files. The list updates regularly, so if another nasty site becomes known, it will be put on the list and they will notify you of any changes via e-mail once you have signed up for the service.

Well, thats pretty much it, but here are a couple of notes you might want to keep in mind:

1.) Sometimes if the Hosts files gets too big (135kb in Windows 2000, XP), the connection can get slow (Windows 98 and Me are unaffected). To fix this, go to Start, Run, type in "services.msc" (no quotes). Scroll down to "DNS Client," right click and select Properties. Click the drop down arrow for "Startup type" and then select Manual. Click Apply/OK and restart your computer.

2.) If you are starting to have problems when you attempt to connect to a site online, you may want to go through the Hosts file and do a search for the site (Ctrl + F) to see if it is on the list. Then its up to you to continue to block the address or assign the correct one.

3.) If your Internet connection implements a Proxy server, you may want to use the method listed below to work around it.

In IE, go to Tools, Internet Options, Connections tab and choose your connection. Make sure the box called Bypass Proxy for local address" is checked. For example, click the LAN Settings button and select Proxy Server, "Bypass proxy server for local addresses," click the Advanced button and add 127.0.0.1. Click OK, OK.

That should do it. You now have everything you need to edit your Hosts file and hopefully you should see some improvements in your online experience with better security. Hope this helps.