Monitor your Recent Login Activity on Yahoo

With more and more enhancements in technology we are seeing more and morephishing and hacking attacks on our personal accounts and profiles. These days I get to hear more hacking news than earlier and our no online account is safe from it. Whether it is the email service or the social profile we see our profiles getting hacked every now and then. If you have an account on Yahoo then do read this article as it will help you in tracking your login sessions and find if there is any access attempt on your profile.

Did you know that most of our email services like Gmail and Yahoo provide us a way of monitoring our recent login activities? Well the link to that option is very clear in case of a Gmail (button termed as “Last Access From” right on the homepage) however it is not that accessible in Yahoo. If you are a Yahoo email user then here is how you can check your Recent Login Activity.

Steps:

1. Either open yahoo.com or the email service mail.yahoo.com

2. Now login with your credentials

3. On the top right side you will see your name which is actually a button to your profile.

4. Hover the mouse over it and in the options that open up, select the Account Infobutton.

5. Now as a security feature you will again need to provide your password.

6. After you have logged in again, see under the “Sign-in and Security” section for “View your recent sign-in activity”

7. Now when you click on this link, it will open all your recent login activity logs that you have accessed from various Yahoo services like web, cell phone client etc.

The list of the logins will show you at what time and from what location or IP address you have accessed the Yahoo service. In my case as you can see from the screenshot, it shows a different state than where I am actually located but I guess that’s because of the IP address. Overall the country remains where you are.

So I guess it’s a nice way to track when and from where your profile has been accessed.

Facebook Trusted Contacts

It’s always good to have friends, and if you have really good friends whom you can trust then you will never lose access to your Facebook account. That’s right! Now having good friends adds to security of your facebook account and ensures that you will never lose access to your account.

Facebook yesterday announced a new feature that is called as Facebook Trusted Contacts and as per this feature if you, anytime, happen to lose access to your account or if it gets locked then you can regain the access to your account just by seeking help of your trusted contacts. The contacts can be anyone who is in your friends list and someone whom you can trust. It is like trusting someone with an extra pair of key to your house.

How Trusted Contacts work:

“Trusted Friends” is an optional security feature that you can make use of and avoid answering the old forgotten security questions. You just need to add three to five trusted contacts in your account and if a lockout situation arises, they will be provided some security codes. Now you need to ask them the codes, who after verification will pass on the security codes to you. Using these security codes you can unlock your account.

How to Add Trusted Contacts:

You can add anyone from your friends list as a Trusted Contact by visiting the Security Settings on top right. When you are done selecting the Trusted Contacts, they will be notified that you have added them as your entrusted buddies.

I think this is a cool feature added by Facebook but if you still feel that this is not what you were looking for, then the old answering the security questions process is still there. [via]

Check how Safe and Hackable your Passwords are

It is very important for us to create and keep simple, easy to remember yet stronger passwords that can keep all the hackers and other attackers away. Today we have lots and lots of online accounts like those from bank accounts, social accounts to our personal and work emails. Every account needs a password and I can imagine how difficult it is to keep passwords strong enough every now and then and still abide their password policies.

Well you can make use of Passwords Manager too in this case but if you don’t feel like then here are some tips that will definitely make you aware on “How you should create your passwords and how to take then from hackable to uncrackable”.

Tips to Create Passwords

Before we go deep in this topic, it would be better to know how much safe is your current password. Did you know, even a complex password like “XF1&tmb” would take 6 minutes to hack, according to Intel whereas a password like “The-shining-sea” can make the hacker busy for around 48 years?

Well do visit the Intel’s “How strong is your password page” and you can check for yourself, how much strong your passwords are and how much time it would take for a hacker to crack it. In my test on one of my passwords, I was surprised to see that it could be cracked in around 39 seconds. Gosh! Similarly, passwords like “12345” or “abcde” would take around 0 seconds to get cracked.

So if you now think it is time to change a password, then the following tips shall help you a lot:

• First of all, do not keep the same password for all your accounts. If you feel it is difficult to do that, then at least keep different passwords for bank accounts, email accounts, and social accounts. This way, even if your email password gets hacked, your bank accounts will be safe.

• Create password mix of Upper Case, Lower Case, Numbers, Punctuation marks and Spaces (some websites now allow space as password, if they do, use them else use dashes in place of them). As per Intel, even the simple sounding password “My 1st Password!” will take months to crack.

• Use prefixes or suffixes to distinguish the passwords for different websites example, “My 1st Password!: Twtr” for Twitter and “My 1st Password!: Fb” for Facebook.

Now since you have become a Password Master, go ahead and change your passwords to make them safe and unhackable. [via]

Record PC Screen to Create Animated GIF with GIFCam

There are many screen recorders available on internet and we have also shared some of them but most of them are used to record the computer screen to save in video formats. I haven’t come across some tool that can actually create animated GIF images from my system screen. Well if you are also looking for some tool that can create animated GIF images for you then this post shall help you.

Here is a free and simple tool called GIFCam and as the name of the tool suggests, it is used to capture your computer screen to create animated GIF images. The tool is very easy to use, as you just need to run the exe file (download link at the bottom), and place the capture screen over the area of the capture. You can also resize the capture screen to include larger portion which would automatically adjust the GIF resolution (the following image shall help you understand).

So whenever you are ready to capture, just press the Rec button which will start recording your activity on the screen. If you don’t wish to record the screen, you can manually add the frames too with the option of Frame button. If you wish to edit the capture or remove the frame, then editing is very easy too. Just click the Edit button and it will open the captures in the new window from where you can delete the frames easily.

When you done recording and editing you can save your gif in 5 color reduction formats(as shown here).

You can record anything off your screen from this tool whether it is text you are writing in a notepad or your drawing in the Paint or etc. Have a look at the animation by the developer himself.

To know more about the tool, do visit the download link below. See more animation ideashere. GIFCam is compatible with all version of Windows too.

Download GIFCam

Facebook Trusted Contacts to Unlock your Facebook Account

It’s always good to have friends, and if you have really good friends whom you can trust then you will never lose access to your Facebook account. That’s right! Now having good friends adds to security of your facebook account and ensures that you will never lose access to your account.

Facebook yesterday announced a new feature that is called as Facebook Trusted Contacts and as per this feature if you, anytime, happen to lose access to your account or if it gets locked then you can regain the access to your account just by seeking help of your trusted contacts. The contacts can be anyone who is in your friends list and someone whom you can trust. It is like trusting someone with an extra pair of key to your house.

How Trusted Contacts work:

“Trusted Friends” is an optional security feature that you can make use of and avoid answering the old forgotten security questions. You just need to add three to five trusted contacts in your account and if a lockout situation arises, they will be provided some security codes. Now you need to ask them the codes, who after verification will pass on the security codes to you. Using these security codes you can unlock your account.

How to Add Trusted Contacts:

You can add anyone from your friends list as a Trusted Contact by visiting the Security Settings on top right. When you are done selecting the Trusted Contacts, they will be notified that you have added them as your entrusted buddies.

I think this is a cool feature added by Facebook but if you still feel that this is not what you were looking for, then the old answering the security questions process is still there. [via]