How to hack a former employee's LinkedIn account

This is a surprisingly easy way that employers can hack into a former employee's LinkedIn account. They can change anything they want, including password and the former employee wouldn't know until it is to late. This was a discovery I made today when...

I received a phone call from one of my former colleagues. She was having trouble changing information on the company's LinkedIn page. Seeing as how I used to be one of the admins, she tried to login with my company e-mail. At one point  I had added my company e-mail as a contact. I no longer use that e-mail and thought the account was deactivated. However, like with most companies, the mail account can be remade or retrieved.

Now it is important to note that I originally registered with a different e-mail to linkedIn and had a different primary e-mail address than my company e-mail. What I did not know, was that if you have an e-mail address associated to your profile account, you can login using that e-mail as a username.

So she had my username. Then the password was all that was needed. For this a simple password recovery sent to the company e-mail was all that was needed to reset the password and voila, she was in my account. But unfortunately I was no longer admin of the page, so she had to start all over. She was nice enough to call me and tell me what my password had been reset too. To be honest I was really amazed that she was able to do this so easily as she is not someone who I would call technical.

So how to you keep your old employer from taking your account? Make sure to remove any past e-mails from your account. This took a little searching to try and find where it was.

How to keep linkedin safe from former colleagues

1. Hover on your name in the top right corner, and select settings from the drop-down menu.

2. Under your profile picture click on Primary E-mail address CHANGE/ADD

3. Now remove any former e-mail addresses. Try to keep it to just 2 e-mails max.

That's it, your a bit safer now. I hope you enjoyed this post. If you did please share it with friends or colleagues who would find it useful.

Restore Pattern Security Android

I really like my security pattern on the Android phone (Nexus 1). Basically I can draw a pattern to unlock my phone rather than using some pin number or password. I don't like password or pin as it is just annoying to quickly input on my phone with the keypad. I've seen many friends using this feature, however recently there was a problem.

After trying to install e-mail from my work account on my phone, I kept recieving security updates from the server. [Note to self: do not install stuff when you are intoxicated]. After allowing this by accident I realized I coudn't use my pattern security swipe anymore. I kep[t recieving the message "pattern disabled by phone administrator". What? So how do you fix this?

1. Goto Home > Settings > Location & security settings > Device administration

2. remove the device administrator.

Now I'm not sure what other security problems this may have, but I've got my security pattern back. If you have the same problem I hope this helps. And of course if anyone has any tips or comments about this and why it may be good or bad, leave a comment!

And remember to keep your fingers clean or it doesn't work so well :-)

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Create Passwords EZ with L33T

The other day I was helping my friend Isabelle out with her blog. Of course setting up a blog with your own hosting etc. you need some good passwords, for example many sites insist that you create an extra strong password. Isabelle was having trouble with good passwords that were easy to remember. I told her about my L33T technique and she thought it was brilliant. Here is what I told her.

A good password has a number of letters and text at least 8 characters long. Many sites require this. However most people just use thier phone number, or name or a word which are all easily hacked using a dictionary or number crack. As I talked about before, having a few passwords for different sites is a good idea. I usually say 3 max so that if one doesn't work, you can try one of the other 2 before getting locked out. This is because most sites allow for password retry for 3 times. Ready to make one of your own?

1. think of a phrase that you like or can easily remember. A good idea is to have some letters like O and I in it. for instance: "I Love Gummy Vodka"

2. Writedown your phrase on a piece of paper and start replacing letters for numbers. Also add a couple letters as Capitals. 1LuvGummEV0dkA

3. There is your new password. however if you are still having trouble with it, just take your phrase and place it into a LEET translator, and remove the spaces to get this: 1l0V39ummyV0Dk4

4. No this is not a password I use, but I am waiting for my gummy bear vodka to be ready. Another week or so now I think.

Leet is a style of writing that popped up on the message boards when certain words were being censored or filtered and has found it's way into our culture. Much of the LOLSPEAK and SMS or TEXT message techniques we use today are derived from LEET speak. Thank you L33T for helping me remember my passwords.

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Facebook Virus and Hacking Passwords in Firefox

Sometime this afternoon I started getting mails from people asking me about a link I had mailed through facebook. I thought it was one of the links I put through twitter. Then I noticed it was a message I hadn't sent at all. Plus, it had sent it to practically everyone in my friends list. Some application, website, something somewhere had hacked into my facebook account and sent emails saying "Look at this" with a link to something called silvertag.be. As soon as I noticed I started replying to people saying it was not from me. Then I quickly changed my facebook and some other passwords. Fortunately I don't use the same passwords for facebook and twitter type sites. This makes it easier for me to make sure that even though one attack might get through on one of these sites or apps, it will not hit anything that can really make my life miserable. Like my paypal or banking passwords. It is a good idea to create a series of passwords that you can remember easy for different levels of security you would like on different sites. Here are some tips to good passwords.

One nice thing about the MacOSX is that it has a secure keychain for many passwords. However, what many people do not know is that Mozilla browsers are easily hackable if you do not secure them. One way to do this is to go into your mozilla browser (such as Firefox or Flock) and set a Master Password.

Firefox-> Preferences -> Security. This makes sure that all those saved passwords on all the different websites will not auto fill in when someone else tries to use your browser. By setting a master password, Firefox or Flock will ask you for your password at startup. If you enter it, then it will auto fill and auto login to all those sites you use most often. If you do not set it, then no passwords or sites will be logged into. It's not the be all end all of securtiy measures, but it does help.

I am sorry I got tagged with this virus on FB, and am sorry to any friends that it inconvenienced. Sorry folks.

update: I just saw on Mashable Pete Cashmore talking about it. He said " Today my Facebook inbox shows there’s another attack underway that’s suckering even some of the most tech savvy users:". Now I don't feel as bad at being suckered in.