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PC Nerding

Password protecting yourself

When it comes to logins and passwords most, if not all, security sites tend to repeat those two important tips:
“use a two factor authentication, if available” and “use a different password for each different site/service”.

While for the first tip I can’t help too much since every site use a different type of authentication (some by text/sms, some by using a one-time password generator, some with a time based generator) I can tell you how I deal with the second one.

How do I use different password on different websites and how do I remember them all?
The answer is simple: use a password manager.

Now, the one included in browsers are sufficient for self use, but they are still somewhat vulnerable. For example if you store them in Firefox and your colleagues/family/friends have access to your computer, they can simply open Firefox and see your passwords with some easy steps. Same goes for Chrome and similar. I usually use those two browsers only on all operative systems, but the same applies for other browsers.

My family won’t steal my passwords!
When it comes to passwords, trust no one. If it’s a family computer and the same user account is shared between multiple people, you can’t know who is gonna use it. Your parents friends, your we-see-once-a-year cousin, your 14 year old sister’s boyfriend may have full access to it. You don’t want this to happen.

So, how do I protected my passwords?
Yet again, the answer is simple: password protect them.
But how?
Enter KeePass, the best (my opinion, ymmv) password manager out there. Do you know the best part about it? It’s 100% free and licensed under open source GPLv2.

Continue reading to learn more about KeePass and how it can help you protect your passwords.

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LaNoiaDiMuu? Site News PC Nerding

Stat tracking and stat tracking bullshit

Recently I dropped Google Analytics in favor of a self hosted system. I’m using Piwik hosted at acst.at domain, which is hosted on the same server as lanoiadimuu.it, this way it shouldn’t case that annoying “waiting for domain blablabla.com” that slow down most sites.
I use it to count visitors and keep track of most interesting pages and I swear I’m not selling nor doing anything shady with that data. In case you don’t want to be tracked head over acst.at, where you can install an opt-out cookie. You can even use your browser Do Not Track global setting or any noscript or tracker-blocking plugins (Adblock, NoScript, Ghostery, etc).

I you follow my blog, you may have noticed I no longer use Disqus comment system on my blog. I used to use it to allow easier commenting on WordPress, but it turned out it was tracking stats in a shady way. On their cookie policy they state they use Google Analytics but they are clearly using another domain (scorecardresearch.com), not Google’s google-analytics.com. SCS is probably from a legit stat tracking company, but there is no way to rule this out on my blogs and the misleading way Disqus use to promote it is fucked up. I know it’s a free service and they have to make their money somehow, but I care for easy internet privacy and decided to disable that plugin, for your and for my safety. I liked it, and I will surely start to use again when it will work with no third party tracker, maybe using other kinds of monetization.

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Uncategorized

Invisible in plain sight

Looks like there’s a girl who’s trying to organize a dinner event with all twenty-five years old in my town.
She wasn’t able to find me or my girlfriend, both twenty-five, on Facebook and posted there my name so people could help her finding me.

Looks like googling “Andrea Giorgio Cerioli” doesn’t give enough results about me. In the first page only there are links to both my blogs, my Gplus profile and my Youtube channel, with some random stuff about another Andrea Cerioli, who happens to be in this running Italian Big Brother.

I still live in this town, my parents live in the same house I used to, I always shop groceries at the same places at the same time. And most of my peers know all these things.

I’ve had to be contacted by mail and phone by two friends, 200km and 6000km from me, to tell me about that.
I like NOT being on Facebook: Everyone still knows me or what I do, but I’m fucking hard to reach, it’s almost like being invisible in my own town. 😀