The LastPass password phishing exploit could trick users into giving away their password.
If you use LastPass check this exploit out at The Hacker Blog and IT Pro. It involves unscrupulous people phishing for LastPass passwords.
This issue is now fixed for all the latest versions of Lastpass on Chrome & Internet Explorer at least.
This article covers some of the issues involved when using a Digital Signature. Each Digital Signature is generated from a Digital Certificate (otherwise known as a Digital ID) issued by a certifying authority.
All examples given are created using Microsoft Outlook 2010 on a PC using Microsoft Windows 10, but the principles apply to other versions of Outlook and other email clients.
This article has been written to compliment my previous article Make Safe Financial Transactions.
Anyone using an Apple Mac can get appropriate certificate information in this article published by TechRepublic entitled: How to configure digitally signed email in Apple Mail.
NOTE: “I am trying to help people make safe financial transactions but I take no responsibility for anyone’s financial loss. Reading and following this information is done at your own risk.” — HC
“The criminals hack into the email chains between sellers and buyers and their solicitors and estate agents. The fraudsters then send an email – usually on the day of sale completion – informing the parties that bank account details have changed at the last minute and that money should be deposited in a different account.” – Robert Mendick, and Nicole Blackmore, The Telegraph
The news is telling us about people who have been defrauded while making financial transactions where they have to exchange large sums of money, particularly when purchasing or selling real estate. This has made me think through the issues and give my two penny worth of advice about how to make safe financial transactions, particularly when email is involved. In particular I refer to the use of Digital Certificates otherwise referred to as Digital IDs (Identities) when sending emails.
Digital Certificates are used to digitally sign an email. When the process is performed correctly by all parties it would take a really massive effort by a fraudster to make his fake email appear genuine.
I cannot deny that steering clear of computers, mobile phones and other forms of IT would be the safest way. Beware of information passed in a phone call too. That could be fraudulent as well.
“We are getting more and more instances of this. The outcome for the fraudster is tremendous. They can earn £1m on the sale of a house in the south-east.” – Steve Proffitt, deputy head of Action Fraud. (Quoted from The Telegraph)
Since my last post on body weight (Excel Templates for Body Weight Records) I have continued to try and lose weight. Well slowly but surely my weight is reducing and I have my latest graph to demonstrate it below (select it to enlarge it):
I have struggled to lose 35 pounds (2½ stones) over a 10 year period. I recall saying I wanted to retire at the correct weight, but that never happened. Well I’m nearly there so I hope those struggling to lose weight can gain some cheer from this article.
We are all trying to reduce energy costs and CO2 emissions by choosing modern alternatives to incandescent lamps. Here are some lighting charts to help you select the best lamp for your situation. Since the decline of incandescent lamps there have been many alternatives made available based on fluorescent tubes bent in many ways to condense a long tube into a confined space.
I had my first Philips SL prismatic Compact Fluorescent Lamp (CFL) lamps soon after they came on the general market back in the 1980’s. I only recently sent my last one to recycling after deciding that even my shed could do better than have one of those long time warm-up devices.
In the early days of low energy lighting there was nothing better than the good old fluorescent tube, usually confined to kitchens and garages in the British house. I still had two twin fluorescents in my kitchen until 2015. If you want the room lit without shadows that’s the way to do it. After much searching in 2003 I found some streamlined fluorescents fit for the modern era to replace my old fluorescent ‘chunky boxes’. Unfortunately they went off the market and I struggled to find a decent looking replacement that didn’t cost a fortune. There were some problems with the ones I used. They had a self destruct mechanism built-in. The plastic fixings for holding the wires in place on the frame all deteriorated under the ultraviolet light given out by fluorescent tubes. I replaced them with zip ties but they suffered from the same problem.
To get back to the point of this article, which is to advise on the brightness of replacement lamps, I have chosen to publish a chart by 
which seems to relate to the UK/European market and another by 
which relates to the American market and appears to suggest their lamps emit more light than European lamps, e.g. UK/European 100W ≅ 1300 lumens, American 100W ≅ 1600 lumens (see A USA Lighting Chart). Continue reading “Lighting Charts – Which Lamp Do I Need?”
I have two teak garden seats which spend all their time outdoors on the lawn or patio. They go back to the 1980’s and the bottom of all the legs has rotted where they are perpetually in contact with the ground. I first noticed the problem while I had them upside down when I was cleaning and sanding them ready for repainting. I dug a penknife into the underside of the end of each leg only to find the wood was soft and easily dug out. I had painted them with exterior paint several times over the years but this wood wasn’t good to paint anymore.
I had noticed a deterioration in the wood previously when I painted them but just put plenty of paint on the bottom of the legs after letting the wood dry out. The problematic area was in the bottom 5mm to 10mm of each leg and It had got to the point where the wood was crumbling away and the legs were no longer all of the same length. I had to find a method of repairing rotten garden seat legs. Continue reading “Repairing Rotten Garden Seat Legs”
After much editing of my WordPress post entitled ‘How A Toilet Silent Fill Valve Works’ , since I wrote it in May 2014, (there must have been at least 150 edits, and I changed it from a page to a post too) I suddenly had this ‘Fatal Error Out of Memory’ script on the WordPress White Screen of Death when I tried to edit it:
Fatal error: Out of memory (allocated 54001664) (tried to allocate 49253 bytes) in /homepages/22/d382273723/htdocs/wp-includes/wp-db.php on line 1380 Continue reading “WordPress Fatal Error Out of Memory”
As people grow older they often lose their agility and so lose their ability to take up certain postures and movements requiring agility. This article offers a list of postures and movements requiring agility which I have concocted and tried. I would expect these postures and movements requiring agility to be easily formed by healthy young people under the age of thirty, but not by older people over sixty, for example, unless they do regular exercises to maintain their flexibility. Continue reading “Postures And Movements Requiring Agility”
I listened to the BBC Radio 2 Jeremy Vine show on 23rd June and heard a great article about a young woman who had been given a bionic prosthetic hand for the 21st century. Her name is Nicky Ashwell and here she is in the following video tweet being interviewed by Jeremy Vine who went on to receive this 
handshake. Continue reading “Bionic Prosthetic Hand For The 21st Century”
Before demonstrating magnetic levitation this video shows a small magnet being cooled to a superconducting temperature using liquid nitrogen. Once cooled the superconducting magnet is shown performing magnetic levitation above a section of magnetic track as seen in the featured image.
Further in the video the magnet is kept longer at superconducting temperatures by building a container of liquid nitrogen around it. It is then seen being whizzed along by hand while levitating above, clinging to the side and hanging below, a Möbius strip track plastered in neodymium magnets. Continue reading “Magnetic Levitation Using A Superconductor”
