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The folks over at ReclaimPrivacy.org have created a fantastic tool that will quickly scan all of your Facebook Privacy settings, and report back to you any “weaknesses” it finds. It’s simple to use, and provides links to each privacy setting that it determines as ‘weak’ so that you can make the change right away.

1. The “tool” itself is a bookmarklet and completely open source. That means that anyone can view the code the script is made up of – so it is absolutely safe to use. It also happens to be very easy to install. Simply visit ReclaimPrivacy.org. On that page, click the Scan for Privacy link and hold down your mouse button. While holding the button down, drag it to your browsers Bookmarks Bar and let go of the mouse button.

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Facebook just announced a tool that notifies you by e-mail or SMS text message when someone logs into your Facebook profile from an unknown computer.

The idea is to help you recognize when a hacker has broken into your account so you can respond quickly by either changing your password (if that’s still possible) or contacting Facebook.

Once you enable the notifications, you’ll be required to identify each computer you use to log in when you first use it and choose whether or not it’s a private or public machine. You’ll be able to see a history of registrations from machines potentially used by hackers, and of course those hackers will be forced to type something into the identification field to get in, so you should be able to tell whether it was just a login that you forgot or not.

Here’s a quick guide to turning this feature on and using it.

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Step 1: Go to Account Settings and Enable Notifications

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When you’re logged into Facebook, you’ll see the word “Account” in the top right corner of the browser window. Click there to get a drop-down menu of options, then click on “Account Settings,” as pictured below.

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With the advent of Windows Vista , a new feature called Windows Parental controls was introduced. This feature allows parents to supervise PC usage of their kids. It lets them decide the kind of access, be it for programs or games or websites, they want their kids to have.

This guide will cover all the aspects of Windows parental controls and how to set it up. It’s almost the same for Windows Vista and Windows 7, except for one or two changes which we would talk about.

Availability

This feature is available in most of the Windows Vista and Windows 7 versions. In Windows Vista it is available on Home basic, Home premium and Ultimate editions. You won’t find it on the Business edition.

In Windows 7 it is available in Windows 7  Starter, Home Premium, Professional and Ultimate versions.

How to Activate Parental Controls

Click on “Start” button. Type parental controls on the search box and press enter.

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Guidingtech.com has a great write up on using True Crypt encryption to protect your data.

Check out their original article.

Hiding files and folders could be a solution when you just need to hide stuff from other users of your computer. However, if you seriously intend to secure your data so that it doesn’t get into the hands of intruders then the encryptng it is the solution.

What is Encryption ?

Wikipedia defines encryption as, “the process of transforming information (referred to as plaintext) using an algorithm (called cipher) to make it unreadable to anyone except those possessing special knowledge, usually referred to as a key.”

Confused ? Just understand that encryption is a foolproof (almost) way to secure your sensitive data. And today we will discuss how you can do it using a software called TrueCrypt.

TrueCrypt is a free open-source disk encryption software for Windows which can create a virtual encrypted disk within a file and mount it as a real disk. It also encrypts an entire partition or a storage device such as USB flash drive or external hard drive. (If you are finding this a bit technical, just read on…things will get clear as you go through the steps)

Here’s a step by step guide to create, mount, and using a TrueCrypt volume. First you have to download the app and install it on your computer.

Step 1. Launch the application. Click on Create Volume button.

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