Safer Social Networking.

The following is from the SANS Institute:

The number of Facebook users has surpassed 400,000,000, dwarfing its sibling MySpace, and making it No. 1 of the Top Ten social networking sites worldwide with a 55% market share. While the world has fallen in love with Facebook, its popularity is not without problematic consequences. For example, psychotherapists and Facebook users alike talk openly about being addicted to Facebook, and a recent study suggests that 21% of women ages 18-34 get up to check Facebook in the middle of the night.

Articles about Facebook tips and tricks are proliferating, as are lawsuits alleging, among other things, that Facebook’s operators misappropriate its users’ personal information for commercial purposes and change users’ security and privacy settings arbitrarily. German authorities are looking into Facebook’s practice of saving information about people who do not even use the site. Facebook is illegal in China, has been outlawed for blasphemy in Pakistan, taken Africa by storm along with Colombia, Argentina, Venezuela, Mexico, and Chile, and recently opened an office in Moscow.

Any online organization with nearly half a billion members worldwide is bound to be the subject of curiosity, controversy and mythology, as well as a too-good-to-pass-up target for hackers, crackers, spammers and scammers

Think about how you want to use social networking. Facebook is an all-purpose, come-as-you-are social medium. The community is gigantic, and anybody with an email address can join. It’s best to limit your use of Facebook to sharing news, photos, music, videos, etc. casually with friends and family. For business, consider using a service like LinkedIn that caters specifically to professionals.

Follow the Golden Rule. Assume that the personal information and photos you display are available to everyone and anyone, not just to your friends.

Do not display your full birth date. Listing a full birth date – month, day and year – makes you an easy target for identity thieves who can use it to obtain more of your personal information and potentially gain access to bank and credit card accounts. Choose to show only the month and day, or even better, no birthday at all.

To protect children from online predators, do not post a child’s name in a photo tag or caption. If someone else does, delete it if you can, or ask the member who owns the photo to remove the name.

Do not mention being away from home. Doing so is like putting a ”Nobody’s Home” sign on your front door. Be vague about the dates of your travel plans and vacations.

Restrict searches for your information. Find out what your options are for restricting public searches. At a minimum, you should be able to prevent your information from being searched for by anyone other than your designated online friends.

Do not permit youngsters to use social networks unsupervised. Most sites limit membership to ages 13 and older, but children younger than that find ways to use them anyway. If there’s a young child or teenager in your household using Facebook, an adult in your household should become one of their online friends and use their email as the contact for the account in order to monitor their activities.

Think about whom you are allowing to become your online friend. Once you have accepted someone as your online friend, they will be able to access a lot of information about you, including photographs and other material you have marked as viewable by your friends. Find out if and how you can remove a friend in case you change your mind about someone or discover they aren’t who they claim to be.

Make sure you have an up-to-date web browser and comprehensive security software on your computer. This includes anti-virus, anti-spyware, anti-phishing, and a software firewall.

Adjust your privacy settings to help protect your identity. Facebook and some other social networking sites provide options to protect you online, but it’s up to you to understand what they do and how to use them, and to be aware that they change over time.

Set and review your privacy settings regularly. Familiarize yourself with the site’s current privacy policies. For example, with the latest changes in May 2010, Facebook forces some of your information (e.g., your name, profile picture, gender and the networks to which you belong) to be publicly accessible.

Make only a cut-down version of your profile visible to everyone. Reveal the rest of the information in your profile only to people you choose to have as online friends.

Disable options, and then add them in one by one. If you are using a social network just to keep in touch with people, consider turning off the bells and whistles you don’t need or use. Disable unfamiliar options until you understand what they do and have decided that you do need and want them.

Join groups and networks cautiously. Assume that all members of a group will be able to see all of your information unless and until you restrict access to it deliberately.

Understand what happens when you quit the site. It’s usually easy to deactivate your account, but some sites, like Facebook, will retain all your information including pictures, friends, etc. even if you do. Find out how you can delete all of your information. You may have to request that the operators of the site delete it for you. When quitting Facebook, you must submit a deletion request, and that, too, comes with some gotcha’s.

• There will be a delay of unspecified length between submitting your delete request and the actual deletion.
• If you login to Facebook after submitting your request, your deletion request will be cancelled automatically.
• There’s no easy way to confirm that your deletion request has been completed.
• Even after deletion, copies of your photos may remain on Facebook servers for technical reasons.

Starbucks Says "NO" to Brady Campaign No-Gun Policy.

The following was posted on the Buckeye Firearms Association’s blog on 2/9/10:

The anti-gun Brady Campaign certainly put a shot of espresso into Starbucks sales this week when they called for the retailer to place a ban on handguns in their stores. Starbucks shot back with a double dolce of latte on upholding their pro-gun stance for the gun rights of law-abiding citizens.

On Feb. 4, the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence sent out an email to their supporters asking them to sign a petition urging Starbucks to “adopt a gun-free policy.” This came about after Starbucks allowed the Bay Area Open Carry group to use one of their locations for their meetings. This group meets on a regular basis, and their mission is to make it legal to carry loaded guns in California. They gather often, with their guns openly carried – unloaded – at their sides.

The hysteria ensues after the Bay Area head of the Brady Campaign, Griffin Dix, stated, “I don’t want someone who carries a gun into a store to be making life-and-death decisions. I don’t think it’s safe for them to be there.”

Mr. Dix, you are absolutely right! Neither do I want someone who carries a gun into a store making a life-and-death decision either – for me! I don’t want Johnny Crackhead, who’s looking for easy money for his next fix, to make a life-and-death decision for me, by taking my life, because getting his next thirty minute buzz is more important to him than my life.

According to Paul Helmke, president of the Brady Campaign, via email, “the practice of packing heat in places like Starbucks is intimidating and could be potentially dangerous to our families… It’s everyone’s right to sit in a restaurant or coffee shop with their families without intimidation or fear of guns, either concealed or openly carried.”

Pssst! – I hate to break it to you, Mr. Helmke, but if you’re in the same restaurant or coffee shop as I, I AM carrying a gun, but it’s concealed and you have no clue. Now tell me, Mr. Helmke, just how intimidated were you about something you had no clue about? How much danger did I put you in? And they call those of us who conceal-carry paranoid!

Coffee shops are notorious for being easy marks for the criminal element. Starbucks in German Village, a suburb of Columbus, was held up by the same armed serial robber twice in two days last summer. This bandit, armed with a pistol grip shotgun, threatened employees and patrons with his gun. This scene could have turned very ugly, very fast, if the robber had become agitated.

Yet, the Brady Campaign would rather there be dead employees and patrons, than allow law-abiding citizens the RIGHT to defend themselves.

Might I be so bold as to remind the Brady Campaign of the July 6, 1997 murders of three employees at the Georgetown, District of Columbia Starbucks! Perhaps had these three young employees been lucky enough to have had an armed citizen in their store that fateful day, they would be alive today and prospering.

According to Contra Costa Times reporter Janis Mara, Starbucks customer relations department shot holes in the Brady Campaign’s request, stating, “Starbucks does not have a corporate policy regarding customers and weapons; we defer to federal, state and local laws and regulations regarding this issue.”

Bravo for Starbucks for having the strength and backbone to slap back at the anti- gunners with a freshly brewed pot of upholding our Constitutional Rights!!!

The Brady Campaign seems to be pretty desperate these days, since they haven’t won any national battles for several years. Besides picking on the largest coffee shops in the world, they gave President Obama an “F” last month for “failed leadership” in squandering the opportunities to tighten gun control. Much to their dismay, Obama actually signed a good gun law into effect, when national park carry was inserted into his budget bill last year. Jim Irvine, chairman of Buckeye Firearms, recently said this about the Brady Campaign: “To illustrate just how nutty these people are, they give the most anti-gun President in our nation’s history an “F” because he’s not anti-gun enough.”

Could we be seeing the desperation of the Brady Campaign? Are they fighting to survive? Have they lost the steam in their coffee? My advice to them is…just give up! The law-abiding citizens have won. The SCOTUS win of the Heller case has beaten you down. And leave us law abiding citizens AND Starbucks alone. Together, we will uphold and cherish the Second Amendment!

I don’t generally patronize Starbucks, because I’ve already had my 2-3 cups of java before leaving the house. But on my next venture into town, I’m going to make a point of stopping by Starbucks and purchasing a nice big “Mint Mocha Chip Frappuccino® blended coffee with Chocolate Whipped Cream” to show my appreciation to Starbucks for standing up for our Second Amendment rights. And I encourage all gun owners to do the same. And don’t forget to thank the store manager while you’re there!

I encourage all BuckeyeFirearms.org readers to drop a line to Starbucks and thank them for their support!

H1N1: a Hoax for the Ages?

Fox News recently interviewed Dr. Wolfgang Wodarg, a leading European health authority as saying the swine flu was a result of Big Pharma’s “campaign of panic” that put pressure on the little old World Health Organization to declare a pandemic (outbreak of a disease over a large geographical area). Wodarg went on to call swine flu one of the “greatest medicine scandals of the century.”

To be fair, the century is only a decade old but does that discount the fact that the media got bored with the swine flu when thousands of deaths never materialized. Seemed like any other flu season except for the hysteria. And now comes news that countries around the world are dumping millions of doses of vaccine because no one wants the stuff injected into them.

Conspiracy theorists opt to believe it’s yet another example of the shadow government in action. Others see more evidence of magnificent incompetence. Regardless, doesn’t it make sense to take responsibility for the health and medical well being of you and your family into your own hands? Do you really want to rely on the government sticking a steel tube into your arm to keep diseases at bay?

All the more reason to eat a healthy diet and reduce the chances you’ll get sick in the first place.

Thanks to the Holistic Survival site for this information.

Things a Burglar Won't Tell You...

1.  Of course I look familiar. I was here just last week cleaning your carpets, painting your shutters, or delivering your new refrigerator.

2. Hey, thanks for letting me use the bathroom when I was working in your yard last week. While I was in there, I unlatched the back window to make my return a little easier.

3. Love those flowers. That tells me you have taste … and taste means there are nice things inside. Those yard toys your kids leave out always make me wonder what type of gaming system they have.

4. Yes, I really do look for newspapers piled up on the driveway. And I might leave a pizza flyer in your front door to see how long it takes you to remove it.

5. If it snows while you’re out of town, get a neighbor to create car and foot tracks into the house. Virgin drifts in the driveway are a dead giveaway.

6. If decorative glas s is part of your front entrance, don’t let your alarm company install the control pad where I can see if it’s set. That makes it too easy.

7. A good security company alarms the window over the sink. And the windows on the second floor, which often access the master bedroom-and your jewelry. It’s not a bad idea to put motion detectors up there too.

8. It’s raining, you’re fumbling with your umbrella, and you forget to lock your door-understandable. But understand this: I don’t take a day off because of bad weather..

9. I always knock first. If you answer, I’ll ask for directions somewhere or offer to clean your gutters. (Don’t take me up on it.)

10. Do you really think I won’t look in your sock drawer? I always check dresser drawers, the bedside table, and the medicine cabinet.

11. Helpful hint: I almost never go into kids’ rooms.

12. You’re right: I won’t have enough time to break into that safe where you keep your valuables. But if it’s not bolted down, I’ll take it with me.

13. A loud TV or radio can be a better deterrent than the best alarm system. If you’re reluctant to leave your TV on while you’re out of town, you can buy a $35 device that works on a timer and simulates the flickering glow of a real television. (Find it at faketv.com.)

14. Sometimes, I carry a clipboard. Sometimes, I dress like a lawn guy and carry a rake. I do my best to never, ever look like a crook.

15. The two things I hate most: loud dogs and nosy neighbors.

16.. I’ll break a window to get in, even if it makes a little noise. If your neighbor hears one loud sound, he’ll stop what he’s doing and wait to hear it again. If he doesn’t hear it again, he’ll just go back to what he was doing. It’s human nature.

17. I’m not complaining, but why would you pay all that money for a fancy alarm system and leave your house without setting it?

18. I love looking in your windows. I’m looking for signs that you’re home, and for flat screen TVs or gaming systems I’d like. I’ll drive or walk through your neighborhood at night, before you close the blinds, just to pick my targets.

19. Avoid announcing your vacation on your Facebook page. It’s easier than you think to look up your address.

20. To you, leaving that window open just a crack during the day is a way to let in a little fresh air. To me, it’s an invitation.

21. If you don’t answer when I knock, I try the door. Occasionally, I hit the jackpot and walk right in.