Protecting Your Data

We all have safety measures to protect the things we treasure. We protect our credit card and bank account information, we have keys to our cars, keys to our house, and we protect other account information by shredding information we don't want other people to view or use.

But, do you also take care to protect your online information? When we think about having information taken online thoughts usually go toward making purchases online. While it's important to stay sharp and protect your information while shopping, do you take as much care with the rest of your online information?

Today, being online means we all have at least one email account, possibly more. Most of us also have domain names we have purchased. Some of us probably are responsible for updating websites as well through some type of CMS interface. All of these services require user names and passwords for access. How strict you are about defining passwords will in large part determine how safe your data really is.

If your email address is part of the access code, i.e. your user name, then anyone online looking to get your information already has 1/2 of the access code. Your name is Bob, and your email is bob@hotmail.com, and your dog's name is spot - that's probably the password. If so, then the person is in your application, and there's nothing to stop it, except the password that's too easy to guess.

In the recent past, most of you received passwords from system managers, like me, and we really are bad about assigning passwords that are hard to remember. But, we know how important it is to safeguard this information. Today, there are so many areas where people can sign up for services, and the password, along with the security, is up to you when you define your password. If you have not been been diligent about defining good passwords, then now at the beginning of the year is a good time to start.

What makes a good password? Basically, something random that is hard to guess. Yes, you have to remember it, but it will keep your information safe. For starters, a good password should be 8 characters in length. Preferably, it should contain numbers and alpha characters. Ideally, it should be completely random, and not something like brenda33, although that's better than Spot! :)

This small, but important safeguard could save you some big headaches later. Imaging having someone hack into your web registry and point your domain to another site, or get a copy of all of your email? All of these services should have a good password to protect them.

The saying is really true: better safe now than sorry later.

Beware Domain Search

We have encountered problems where customers have used some popular domain search tools, even at one of the registries, only to find the domain is "seized," and the only place you can buy it is where you did the search. This may not seem like a problem at first blush, but consider the situation where you may not be ready to actually purchase the domain. We found that the domain, while in the possession of the registry, was also up for grabs - that is, anyone who knows about the domain or who may be watching could just buy the domain out from under you.

No reputable registry will do this to you. So, who can you trust? If you are considering a new domain and want to try out a few combinations, in other words, search to see if the domain has been registered yet, please contact us. We are experienced with domain searches, and we can make sure that the domain you want is sold to you -- and only to you.

From My Little Corner of the World

As I am sitting here this morning at my desk in our office, out in the middle (or the edge, actually) of Kansas, I have communicated with a wide array of people. From this location, I talked someone across town through making some changes on his web page, and he will be showing his new on-line catalogs to people all over the world. Joe is taking an on-line course that he started last week, and he is communicating with the instructor. I have web site updates from customers, some here in our area, and some clear across the U.S. on the East Coast. I had several technical newsletters in my email this morning, along with alerts for the latest PC threats from the Internet. One of my favorite places to buy plug-ins for Adobe Photoshop sent me an email newsletter; I think I'm going to buy the Color Toolbox. In all, I had 8 newsletters in my email this morning, and I subscribe to all of them. And, yes, I received some spam, but since I keep my spam filter updated, most of them went quietly to bit heaven without bothering me. I have been in touch with one of my programmers who I have not actually seen in person for over a year - but we talk all of the time through email, and he works on the projects that I give him, and we share files through our server. I have purchased two domains from GoDaddy. That's just in the last three hours.

The Internet has become part of our everyday lives for most of us today. But, sometimes we fail to appreciate just what we have at our finger tips when we sit down on our PC's and connect. I don't know of any other method of communication that has come along in the last 20 years or so that has had such an impact on our lives. There is so much potential available to a small business today, if you just take advantage of the number of people you can potentially contact just by putting a site on the Internet, and inviting people to visit, or sending out a newsletter.

If you are a small business owner and have not yet published a web site, contact us, and let us get you started, and you can communicate from your corner of the world, too.

Start Of A New Year

Here at Rossini.com we are getting started on plans for 2008. We had a great holiday with my family, except our Accord bit the dust while we were in Alabama. It was bad enough that we actually bought a new vehicle. So, as we start the new year, we also have a new car, a 2006 Honda Element we christened "Pronto," since we had to make a decision so fast.

Anyway, some of our plans for the new year include a redesign of our website, the ability to purchase Rossini.com T-Shirts from our site, and reorganizing our office. The office really needs it, too.

Here's a tip for those of you who use FireFox: Did you know it has the capability to do tabbed browsing? If you have not tried it already, when you want to go to a new website instead of typing the URL at the top, go to the drop-down menu "File," and select "New Tab."

Instead of replacing the page you have been viewing, FireFox will put tabs above the viewing window and you can then visit another URL while leaving the other site in the browser, and then you can go back and forth between the two by clicking on the tabs. You can create as many tabs as needed within a browser session.

I like the tabbed browsing. It helps sometimes if you need to use information from more than one website, or if you need to compare information from two sites. Give it a try!