Time to put the smart in smart phone!

With news updates of phone hacking scandals splashing headlines the world over, we’re hearing lots of cell phone security buzz – and for good reason too!

While a major news outlet may not be interested in your cell phone activities (or we sure hope not!), this is still a great time to make sure you are practicing some solid cell phone security practices.

Keep that cell phone close by!

You are far more likely to misplace / lose a cell phone than to get hacked, so be sure your little handheld buddy doesn’t stray too far.

• Beware of keeping your phone on your table at busy restaurants, leaving your phone in the car (even just for a ‘second’), etc.
• Find a ‘funky’ cover or skin to make it super easy to identify your iPhone – avoid an accidental mix up easily (I’m a big fan of the Infectious skins) when at a networking event or dinner with 7,000 other iPhone / Blackberry / Android users
• Password protect your phone to keep your logins, contacts, email and notes safe from undesirables - also great for making sure any kiddos in your life don’t make random calls to Japan
• For safety purposes, use an emergency app like smart-ICE to not only store your ICE info (‘In Case of Emergency’) for paramedics to be aware of medical conditions, insurance details and contact info, but add ICE info to your locked screen (in addition to your quirky-cool smart phone wall paper).
• Install a phone location / security app on your phone, a few examples:
• iPhone users: Find My iPhone 
• Android users:  Mobile Defense
• Blackberry users:  Smrt Guard

Beware of public Wifi + ‘Evil Twins’

Yay for public Internet access!  But boo for public Wi-Fi security.  Extra emphasis on that ‘boo’ when using a credit card or login, as not all Wi-Fi connections are as secure and innocent as they seem.  Learn more about the ‘Evil Twin’ phishing scam here.

As cumbersome and slow as it might be, opt for your 3G / 4G network connection over a public Wi-Fi connection to stay secure.  Or pick up your own piece of the Internet and invest in a MiFi card.

What’s up with hardware and software security?

Not all apps and phones are created equal.  As an iPhone user, Apple has a more stringent vetting process of apps that helps weed out *most* malicious programs.  Android’s app community is far more open and has had some security exploits in early 2011.

Use common sense when purchasing apps and accessing certain sites (like your bank account, for instance) on your smart phone.  Beware of ‘look alike’ apps that might be masquerading as a Chase banking utility and think twice about depositing checks using a phone app – and learn the safe ways to bank on your phone here..

Photo thanks to Flickr user GwenFlickr

This week’s ‘Beyond the Headlines,’ on Click2Houston.com focuses on hurricane preparedness. Host Kim Davis gets tips on power outages, flood insurance and using social media to communicate with friends and family in the event of an emergency from guests Floyd LeBlanc of Center Point Energy, Frank Crystal & Company insurance broker Kenneth Beaman and our very own Ed Schipul.

Now is the time to apply for flood insurance

• The National Flood Insurance Plan has been reinstated by congress.
• Wind insurance in coastal counties is difficult to get. Alternatives include obtaining a homeowner policy excluding wind, then applying for wind insurance through organizations like the Texas Windstorm Insurance Association.
• Talk to a professional, independent insurance broker who knows the details of your contract. Don’t hesitate to ask questions.

*Expert Tip: 45-35% of hurricanes happen in areas that aren’t expected to have them. Once an area is under threat from a storm, insurance companies issue a moratorium and halt the purchase of policies. It’s important to stay current on your payments as you may not be able to reinstate your policy during a moratorium.

Expect power outages during Hurricane and Tropical Storms

• Have a plan that anticipates extended power outages from Severe Weather
• Consider staying with relatives in other areas that may receive power sooner than your area.
• Be prepared to be without power for up to 2 weeks

*Expert Tip: Air conditioning accounts for about 70% of electric bill. To reduce your bill, raise the thermostat or turn off the a/c when you’re not home. Also, change filter every month and use ceiling fans to keep air flowing freely.

Think Ahead for Emergency Planning

• Have an actual road atlas in case you need to evacuate. Map applications on your phone may not work due to communication overload and the need to preserve power.
• Consider services like Yammer.com that allows you to communicate via mass text message for communicating with employees.
• Families may consider Geni.com for locating loved ones following a disaster. It’s not uncommon to lack important details about family members, neighbors or loved ones.

*Expert Tip: Cell towers have their own power generators that permit text messages to work when data packages on cell phones don’t. If you can’t access social media sites via mobile web apps, you can communicate by texting to sites like Twitter. This will alert people outside your area who can use the web interface that you’re ok.

For more information, contact the Schipul offices for help with your social media consulting for your small business or family plans.

You may experience some minor website disruptions around 6:00 PM CST, but these will only be temporary. We appreciate your business and look forward to many smooth and safe years of Web marketing your organization!

If you have any questions please call our support line at (281) 497-6567 EXT. 411 or email us at support@schipul.com.

Thank you!

They fit in your pocket, on your key chain and just look cool. With all the phones and portable devices we carry these days, we forget about these flash drives at the bottom of our desk drawers. The USB drive still has a couple of great features for traveling. Even if you are settled in for a nice staycation, add this little packing and preparedness tip to your travel plans or todo list. Snag a USB drive on sale in a multi-pack as the prices continue to fall on these little jewels. Or, pick up one of Happy Katies favorite designer Flash drives by MimoBot. Now, get ready for some scanning.

Files, documents and every important document you would ever need, all in your pocket. Scan personal documents and records in case you lose your wallet or passport and you will have a digital image of all your registrations. But, but… WAIT! What if the wrong person finds it when it drops out of the pocket of your shorts? No worries, you should encrypt the contents with TrueCrypt or your favorite security feature.

These little tech toys have some crazy cool options besides just a backup. Don’t want to carry a laptop or computer with you? Can’t spring for the iPad yet? You can save all your bookmarks, favorite email settings, and doc settings on a FlashDrive and launch your profile from any public computer without fear of leaving your crumbs all over the desktop. Portable Apps is an open source software platform you install on your flashdrive or other backup device, adjust your settings, then plug it into a computer and run your programs from your own drive. You have access to all your software and personal data just like on your own PC.

What to save on your USB Drive

Losing important documents can ruin what should be a happy vacation. A little safety and planning can eliminate much of the stress. Before you pack up and leave, take the time to scan copies of important documents and save the files on to a secure area of the flash drive. Here are some examples of important documents:

• Vacation Plans: Itinerary, Maps and receipts of deposits for reservations.
• Personal documents: Drivers license, passport, birth certificate, Insurance cards (health and auto), Credit Cards and CC phone numbers for lost cards.
• Home Documents: Home Insurance, Auto Titles, Registrations, photos of big purchase items for insurance documentation, and documents that would be hard to replace if you came back home and they weren’t there. Yikes! My next plan is to scan old family photos for safekeeping before they detoriate or get wet in the next hurricane.
• Medical Records: List of medications for each family member, immunizations, List of family doctor and dentist contacts.
• School and Work Records: Nice to have everything in one place while you are at it. Include copies of your transcripts, diplomas, Resume, licenses, permits, Wills, and any other items you may want to keep all organized.

Now, your life is basically in one place if you ever have to recreate your history or need to hide it Bourne style. This is a cheap and easy way to travel light, backup photos off the camera while on vacation for processing later, and use software programs securely when on public machines. In fact, buy a couple of the drives, make copies of the drive and give one to a friend to put in their safe deposit box or mail one to a family member in another part of the country in case of emergency.

Enjoy your trip, be safe, and tell us how you use your Flash Drive for your vacation!

A recent (and much heralded) update to the Facebook iPhone 3.0 app brought some much needed functionality to the Facebook junkie on the go – access to Facebook events, the ability to ‘like’ content, notes and zoom in on photos.  Yay!

What many did NOT anticipate, however, was the contact update that allows you to call your Facebook friends that list their phone number(s) directly from the updated app.  That’s right, if you have your phone number(s) posted in your profile accessible to your friends/contacts, they can CALL you all easy-like.

Last night, scrolling through the updated Facebook contacts on my iPhone and saw a blue phone icon next to a very famous publisher’s contact info. Assuming it would just go to an office line and an answering machine, I gave it a call – and what do you know…. it was his cell phone. And we chatted. He was a little surprised, as was I.

Lesson learned here - Facebook privacy settings are your friend.  This morning, as you surf the Web, take a look at your ‘Contact Information’ settings and double check who sees what.  Want to share all of your contact info with close friends or family only?  Select the appropriate Friend List and you’re done.

Don’t want anyone seeing your information at all? Keep your settings to private or hey, just keep them blank… unless you’d like a late night phone call from one of the Schipulites too. Talk to you soon?

This morning, the Schipul team was alerted of a potential security compromise for our Webfaction hosted client Blogs. We are addressing these issues promptly and thoroughly.

Real English explanation: A hacker has been attacking some Blogs, attempting to install content that neither Schipul nor our clients placed there.  As far as our research has been able to determine at this point, they were not successful in compromising any data.

Our entire staff is dedicated to researching this matter and are all on high alert.  As a client, you do not need to do anything at this point.  If you notice anything out of the ordinary on your Blog, contact us immediately at (281) 497.6567, ext. 411 or via email at support AT schipul DOT com.

We will have more information from Webfaction and will update you promptly.

Your security is our top priority – thank you for your trust and your business.

While concerns of privacy and content ownership are old news for Facebook users, a recent mix up with Facebook advertisers has gotten more than a few Facebook fans on their heels.

A scenario:  Imagine being a loving husband who is going about his day, sipping his coffee, checking his Facebook updates and then… pow!!!… up pops a photo of his wife on a dating site ad.  Unhappy much?  Yes, we think so.

Long story short, (some) Facebook advertisers stepped out of line with Facebook advertising policy and used photos of users (without their permission) in their ads – happily married or not, this poor couple had no say in how their images were used on the network.  YIKES!!!

The good news is that Facebook has just announced a new ad policy which will keep your private user data out of the hands of scheming 3rd party networks.  Nice to see Facebook taking a stronger stance, we certainly hope they maintain this aggressive approach – privacy is beyond important and maintaining their users’ trust should be the utmost thought in any software developer and Community builder’s mind.

• http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/technology/2009/07/facebook-ads.html
• http://www.allfacebook.com/2009/07/facebook-advertising-policy/

In a post on his Public Relations and Web Marketing blog, our fearless CEO, Ed Schipul, made a further interesting recommendation for Facebook users – UFAID! :

We propose September 1st 2009 as Uninstall Facebook Applications Internationally Day (UFAID).

Not all applications mind you, just the ones you don’t trust or recognize.

To uninstall your Facebook Applications follow these steps:

1. Login to Facebook
2. Click on your “Profile” link at the top of the page.
3. Scroll down to the “Applications” link on the lower left. Click it.
4. Click “Edit Apps” link which should take you to a page like this: http://www.facebook.com/editapps.php
5. IMPORTANT Change “Show” from “Recently Used” to “Authorized”!
6. Click the “X” next to the applications you want to remove.
7. Confirm.
8. Repeat until all cruft and untrustworthy applications are removed.

Find any applications you did not realize were installed? Yup, thought you would. Put them in the comments below so we can see the sneaky ones?

Photo thanks to Flickr user Cortnie.dee

Photo blogged from bksecretphoto's Flickr stream

While this post might give you 2nd grade flashbacks to spelling quizzes and vocab sheets, we wanted to give you a heads up on a Google Analytics malicious code notice that’s been flying around online.

Sounds crazy-scary right?  So what does it mean?

Thousands of legitimate Web sites have been discovered to be injected with malicious Javascript, obfuscated code that leads to an active exploit site. The active exploit site uses a name similar to the legitimate Google Analytics domain (google-analytics.com), which provides statistical services to Web sites.

No Schipul clients have had their sites affected by this malicious code (Security is our first and middle name, we work hard to keep you safe and sound), but as a Web surfer this is good information for you to be aware of.

If you do visit an infected site, you might be asked to download some software.  Exploited computers run the risk of having malicious viruses installed – read more about code injection here.

Here are our tips for you:

1. Spelling bee time!!  Don’t click on links to unauthorized Google Analytics sites with misspellings in the name.  This goes for ANY link that wants you to log in or go someplace – in an email or on a site.  Pay special attention to bank, Paypal and EBay-type email ‘notifications’ and never, ever, ever give your password to ANYONE.
2. The real actual Google Analytics doesn’t want to install software on your machine.  So don’t do it, plain and simple.
3. As always, keep your virus scanning software up to date and your passwords secure.
4. Paranoia is a good thing – if something feels a little ‘off’ to you, it just might be – so err on the side of caution.

Still have concerns or want to double check on a virus scan notice you’ve received or a site you have questions on?  Give our rocking  Search Engine Marketing team a call to calm those nerves.  We’re here for you, even if you just need some help with your spelling homework.  (281) 497.6567, ext. 533

Photo thanks to Tuttletree

The arrival of June kicks off National Safety Month and, if you live near the Gulf as we do, it also marks the first day of Hurricane Season.  A pretty good combo if you ask us!

Given that our CEO, Ed Schipul, is an Eagle Scout and that we have a crazy culture of Security and preparedness, we’ve decided to make June our very own Schipul Month of Safety!!

Stick around for the next month as we feature some great guest Blog posts, great tips and tricks on safety, security and preparedness.  Whether surfing on the Web, in your office or around your house we’ll be sharing useful tidbits to keep you and your’s safe and sound.

In the meantime, here are some handy safety-focused links to check out:

• This 1st week of June is also CPR Awareness Week!  You can brush on up your CPR skills for FREE here
• Create your family’s emergency plan with this handy free site
• Read up on hurricane preparedness