Whilst privacy is the buzz word today, the tug of war between how much is revealed and taken versus how much is protected and safeguarded continues unabated. Towards that end, some privacy tools do enable the decision as an individual on what can be the consequences of using certain applications and web sites. Exodus - … Continue reading Tools to determine privacy safeguards for web sites and apps – Exodus, Blacklight and Chef Koch Blog
Category: Risk
How to fix error the following packages have been held back in Linux Mint or Ubuntu Linux
When updating packages in Linux Mint 21 or Ubuntu 22.04 LTS, at times, a message appears, as shown below, that states the following packages have been held back.$ sudo apt-get dist-upgrade <enter> Reading package lists… DoneBuilding dependency tree… DoneReading state information… DoneCalculating upgrade… DoneThe following packages have been kept back:cryptsetup cryptsetup-bin cryptsetup-initramfs libcryptsetup120 upgraded, 0 … Continue reading How to fix error the following packages have been held back in Linux Mint or Ubuntu Linux
Exodus Permissions and Trackers Report for Android Applications
If you need to find out the permissions and trackers that are required or in use by an Android application, visit, https://reports.exodus-privacy.eu.org/en/. Here, you can enter the application URL of any application from any app store and can see the results of the permissions the applications require and the trackers they use. As an example, … Continue reading Exodus Permissions and Trackers Report for Android Applications
How to shred a file on Linux leaving no remnants
Sometimes we have files on our hard disks that we would like to remove for good. If you have set up full disk encryption when you installed Linux on your computer, you will have an encrypted hard disk which is pretty much useless to anyone without the password that only you know. However, sometimes, to … Continue reading How to shred a file on Linux leaving no remnants
How to check if user name or ID has been compromised in a data breach
When data breaches occur, there are various kinds of data that get compromised. The most critical data that can get compromised is the user name or ID or the password. All is not lost due to a great service hosted by Troy Hunt. Use https://haveibeenpwned.com/ to check if the User name or user ID appears … Continue reading How to check if user name or ID has been compromised in a data breach
How to validate a short URL
At times, short URLs starting with https://bit.ly or https://goo.gl or any other short and strange form are received via SMS or even email. It is difficult to authenticate and know where these URLs point to. If the source is trusted, then too, it is important to know and validate these URLs to ensure they do … Continue reading How to validate a short URL
How to mitigate the threat of being a victim of ransom ware
Ransom ware seems to have gotten the better of many ordinary users. However, it is not a threat that has no mitigation measures available to the ordinary user, but is more of following good basic security and hygiene practices, to not fall prey to a ransom ware threat. Do the following: If you use Linux, … Continue reading How to mitigate the threat of being a victim of ransom ware
How to calculate MD5 or SHA256 sums in Linux and Android
Many of us use Linux Distributions like Ubuntu, Fedora, available for free on the Internet. To install these distributions on our computers, we need to down their ISO files. Recently, the Linux Mint ISO was hacked and malware inserted into some of it's files. It was then repacked and put up on an external website. … Continue reading How to calculate MD5 or SHA256 sums in Linux and Android
Error when creating Android Project in Eclipse IDE
android-sdks/build-tools/17.0.0/aapt: error while loading shared libraries: libz.so.1: cannot open shared object file: No such file or directory To fix the above error, open a terminal window and install:$ sudo apt-get install lib32z1 <enter>
Ubuntu Boot Manager Partition entry overwritten after Windows 8.1 patch update
I recently applied the latest Windows 8.1 patches. To my dismay, I found that the core Ubuntu 14.04 entries at boot time were missing and by default, the laptop always booted into Windows 8.1. This meant that my Ubuntu EFI boot partition had been corrupted or taken over by Windows 8.1 patches that probably updated … Continue reading Ubuntu Boot Manager Partition entry overwritten after Windows 8.1 patch update