The WebmailSafety Tour!

WebmailSafety is Gwebs new encryption product for Gmail, Hotmail, Yahoo! Mail and AOL Mail and with WebmailSafety’s new 2.0 release out yesterday, it’s high time for a walkthrough!

But first, be sure to download WebmailSafety 2.0 at www.gwebs.com!

1. The First Time You Run Gwebs WebmailSafety
2. Logging into Webmail With A Secure Browser
3. Receiving Normal Email
4. Receiving Encrypted Email
5. Sending Normal Email
6. Sending Encrypted Email
7. The Invitation Process

1. The First Time You Run Gwebs WebmailSafety.
   1. Follow the wizard to create a WebmailSafety account and bind one or more email addresses to it.
   2. When you create an account, WebmailSafety automatically generates a key pair
      (a public key and a private key,)
      and binds it to your new account.
2. Logging into Webmail With A Secure Browser.
   1. Run WebmailSafety and click on a bound email address.

   

   2. WebmailSafety launches a safe version of Microsoft Internet Explorer (The plug-in is only installed when you
      launch MSIE from within WebmailSafety) and directs it to the correct domain.

   

   3. Manually login.
3. Receiving Normal Email: It Just Works!
4. Receiving Encrypted Email: It Just Works!
5. Sending Normal Email.
   1. Go to the Gwebs icon in the Windows Task Bar and select “Disable Temporarily” so that it becomes checked.*
   2. Send email as usual.

*The WebmailSafety Tray Icon should appear inside a circle with a line through it. (like this: )

6. Sending Encrypted Email.
   1. If WebmailSafety is disabled, go to the Gwebs icon in the Windows Task Bar and select “Disable Temporarily” so that it becomes unchecked.*
   2. If attaching files be sure to enter your recipient before selecting the files, so that WebmailSafety
      knows who’s key to use when encrypting the attachments.
   3. Send email as usual.**

*The WebmailSafety Tray Icon should appear normal. (like this: )

7. The Invitation Process: If you don’t have a person’s public key.
   1. WebmailSafety will notify you that you don’t have their public key.
   2. Enter a Passphrase.

   

   3. WebmailSafety uses AES-256 Symmetrical Encryption to encrypt your email with this passphrase.
   4. WebmailSafety automatically attaches your public key and a WebmailSafety download link to this email so the recipient can easily install WebmailSafety, read, and reply to this email.
   5. Call, SMS, IM, or use some other method to tell your contact this passphrase.
   6. When the recipient replies to this email, their public key will be attached to their reply
   7. Now that you have their public key, simply send them email from the safe browser and it will be encrypted.

Well, that’s it for the walk through! Hope you enjoyed it, and don’t forget to check out www.gwebs.com for more info and new downloads!

WebmailSafety 2.0 Released!

WebmailSafety v1.0 was the world’s first public key encryption product designed for webmail from the ground up. Version 2.0 adds a host of new features designed to make webmail encryption even easier.  Download WebmailSafety 2.0 here!

New Features:

• RSA 2048 bit public key encryption for Webmail.
• Supports Gmail.com, Hotmail.com, Live.com and Yahoo.com.
• New Multi-User Interface with Avitars.
• Auto-Update.
• Tray Icon Now Provides Total Control.
• Improved Key Management.
• Improved Invitation Process.
• Improved English Language Support.
• New French Language Support.
• New Hot-Key and Desktop Integration.
• Multiple Recipient Support.
• And Many More!

And now for some screen shots!

Here is the Login screen:

Encryption From Gmail:

The Windows Tray:

File Encryption:

Auto-Update:

Now what are you waiting for? Download WebmailSafety 2.0 at www.gwebs.com!

I just read an review of a new 64 gb flash drive from Samsung on ComputerWorld.com and it got me thinking about the best way to distribute resources on a laptop. Here are some excerpts from the article, and my comments:

The no-moving-parts characteristic is, in part, what protects your data longer, since accidentally bumping your laptop won’t scramble your stored files. Samsung says the drive can withstand an operating shock of 1,500Gs at .5 miliseconds (versus 300Gs at 2 miliseconds for a traditional hard drive). The drive is heartier in one other important way: Mean time between failure is rated at over 2 million hours, versus under 500,000 hours for the company’s other drives.

….

Other specifications are equally “small”: power consumption is just 1 watt when the system is active, 0.1 watt when idle, and .06 watt in standby mode. (Equivalent power consumption figures with hard drives are 2.1, 1.5, and .2 watts, respectively.)

Flash drives will be the next big thing in laptop computing. The simple fact that they are three times more durable then platter drives is enough to make me want to lay out for one (data integrity is much more important to any business user then his/her screen, which can be replaced with minimal effort). Add to that the fact that they reduce energy consumption (thus increasing battery life), and it becomes a no-brainer for a non-media dependent person to use a flash HD.

On the other hand, many of us use massive amounts of storage for digital imaging, music, and video. These users require platter HDDs because you cant buy a 250 gb flash drive yet. (but with Moore’s law, we will have 256 gb flash drives in no time…)

Now there are two solutions to this problem (best practices) - if you are using your laptop as a digital video/photography production system, you can buy a dual hd system. Put your system on one partition (which you ghost after setting up your ideal system config) and your important word docs and the like on another (encrypted) partition on the flash drive , and then put your media files on your 250 gig platter drive (all of which you have backed up of course.)

The other (not so good) option is to carry around a minimal dataset on your laptop that is to say keep your images and video in highly compressed format for the laptop, and have them in RAW your whatever you use for uncompressed storage on some NAT drive or server (but don’t forget the sys partition and ghost… it will come in handy in the future).

Facebook, if you didn’t know already, asks you for your email address and password when you create an account, or even if you don’t. It’s a highly visible link on their homepage. The stated reason is so that you can send invite letters to your contact list. And you can’t blame the peeps for trying, right? We all gots our hustle. It’s just that Facebook’s particular hustle leaves a lot of room for doubt. It could be Facebook doing exactly what they claim to do and nothing else, or it could be that the largest data mining company in the world is applying to email what Nigerian scammers have been doing with bank accounts for years.

But it’s also a royal pain in the tuches to have to invite every one of your friends to your social networking site manually, and with the importance of social networking sites to many businesses, people in fields that require a little publicity, and people who really like attention, this is a useful feature.

Which is why this article from blogger Dragon’s Flag caught our eye. It’s not just a plug for our product (although an independent testimonial to how awesome we are it certainly is), it’s also a fantastic little piece of know-how that makes you kick yourself for not thinking of it. And so here it is, translated for your edification:

On National Day (October 1st), 2007, I created a Facebook profile, and as part of the registration process, Facebook asked for my email account and password. To test if Facebook poses a threat to social networks by doing this, I gave them my password. I can hand out my password to pretty much anyone who asks for it, but can you?

My email address is dragonflag@gmail.com, and there are over 3000 emails inside. (Facebook supports most of the major services, including gmail, hotmail, live, yahoo, aol, etc.) Before uploading my password, I changed it to 123456.

I’m a longtime user of the notable Gwebs WebmailSafety software. I have more than 50 people in my address list there, and all the email we’ve sent back and forth is stored on Google’s servers is encrypted using a RSA+AES mixed cipher. I’m definitely not worried about Facebook searching or selling my email, because they can’t understand a word of it.

So after I gave my password to Facebook, those 50-odd received their invitation letters, and after 30 minutes I changed it back. Everything was alright, and now Facebook and don’t owe each other anything, nor do we have to be concerned about one another.

I also used the same method to register at the domestic (mainland Chinese) social networking site XING.com, without any apparent danger to my privacy or data. My advice when dealing with commercial web service companies like this is not to trust them lightly. Their promises to you don’t mean a thing, and it’s never a bad idea to have some basic self-protection in place.

So take my advice, especially if you’re one of those people who haven’t invited their email contacts because you’re afraid of your email being searched or revealed.

Italicized text added by translator.

Encrypting his email, we approve of, and using our product to do it, we approve of even more. But another important step he’s taken is:

Before uploading my password, I changed it to 123456…and after 30 minutes I changed it back

This is very important, because people are often predictable when they create passwords, and even if you use “rules” to create less breakable passwords and change them regularly, if someone gets a sample or two of your work, they can figure out your formula, and you’re right back where you started. Change your password to a no-brainer before giving it to someone, and change it back as soon as possible.

The best advice here, though, is not to let a company that makes its living by selling highly specialized user data to advertisers rummage through your inbox. Using Gwebs WebmailSafety; which is free, remember; or any of the other programs on the market means that your email is safe from advertisers as well as hackers.

Check this out: To send relatively secure email (encrypted using weak encryption) to someone who doesn’t have WebmailSafety, (or any other encryption software, ) installed:First, enter some text to encrypt and click encrypt:

Copy the resulting text into your email or IM client or post it on your blog or whatever, and then tell your friends/readers/im buddies the password by some other method, and youve got yourself quick and dirty encryption.

I Just came across this article on why you should encrypt all your Google activities. The author notes that Google, like most other sites, doesn’t encrypt your connection data…

Google, like most other similar services, encrypts login traffic but not your content. So the moment you’re signed in they switch to plain-text communications and send everything to you in the open.

This means your mail, the news sources you read, your calendar events — are all able to be read by someone with access to any part of the network between you and Google. This could be your employer at work, the wireless network at your local coffee shop, whatever. This isn’t good.

And his commentors note a few things you can do about it:

1) log in to https://mail.google.com/mail (note the httpS://, the s stands for SSL)

2) Install the “Customize Google” Firefox Add-On to force the use of https for all google services. Also check out “Better gCal,”  and “Better GMail 2”

3) One user suggested  Google Secure Pro.

Here is an article on law.com titled Think Before You Send that all my readers should take a look at.

From the article

“Don’t put this in writing, but … ” Those are the opening words of an e-mail that got the writer’s company in legal hot water. And there are plenty more where that came from.”

I mean, you must be kidding me. If you don’t want something in writing, don’t write it. And if you write it, encrypt it! Common sense, kiddies!

Today I was helping my mom setup new Gmail and AIM accounts, (now that gmail chat and AIM are linked, its essential to have an account on AIM and gmail, and to link them) and I was horrified to discover that she keeps all of her passwords, including her bank, email, credit card, web and domain hosting, and other crucial sites, in a word doc on the root of her laptop’s hard drive. AHHHHHA! What a recipe for disaster! “But what should I do?” she asked me. Her passwords are myriad, and all different (good), but she can remember none of them (bad!).

Here are several ways to keep your passwords safe (and the pitfalls):

1) Do like my mom, and keep all your passwords different, and in one “password file”, but encrypt that file with PGP, GWEBS WebmailSafety, or some other asymmetric encryption.

Pitfalls: A) You could forget your PGP password. B) You could lose your private key or your password file. C) Someone could steal your private key and your password file and guess your password. D) Someone could steal your password file and crack your private key.

Avoiding Pitfalls: A) Write down your pgp password somewhere, but don’t label it “PGP password” and keep it safe and long. B) Keep both a copy of your private key and your password file backed up and offsite, but not on someone else’s systems. C) Not likely, but again, you have to keep your password long and secure. D) Even less likely. Use a high bit rate algorithm. WebmailSafety, for example, uses 2048 bit RSA, and you would need to string together several of today’s most powerful supercomputers to crack that within your grandchildren’s life time.

2) Use a commercial password keeper, like Apple’s keychain or similar.

Pitfalls: these password keepers are only as secure as their implementations – and the user must decide which software to trust. Apparently Apple’s keychain is pretty secure, but you should always find out as much as you can about critical security software.

3) Use several passwords that you can remember, but different passwords on important or often-used sites. And never write any passwords down. For example Password A for email, password b for your online bank and password C for everything non-mission critical.

Pitfalls: The more you use a password, the less secure it is, and the more places you use, the less secure it is.

Avoiding pitfalls: For daily use and important passwords, choose long, strong, and hard to guess passwords, enter them manually and change them often. Daily use passwords are easy to remember because you are entering them all the time, and repetition breeds memories. Your non-mission critical passwords may be guessed, and if the intruder guesses one, they know them all, but again, these passwords are non mission critical, so this isn’t such a big problem.

Well, there are three solutions that I recommend. This is a big topic, so I look forward to user comments. Tell me what you do. How you keep your passwords secure, and if I missed some pitfalls, help me fill those in too!

Last Thursday when I was sitting around the Thanksgiving table with my friends and family, (and they asked me what my new job was about), I was surprised to find out that many of them didn’t know the word encryption – but they all knew what it was – and many of them had seen encryption in the movies.

First: What is Encryption?

Encryption is the mathematical process (or algorithm) of taking data and modifying it so it becomes unreadable. Decryption is the process of taking the unreadable encrypted data and running it through an algorithm that returns it to readable form.

Often encrypted data or encryption keys (passwords) will be called “code” but I don’t like to use that word because it’s vague, and has many other meanings in the computer world.

Ok, so now that we know what encryption is, (and here’s the fun part), here are some great movies that feature encryption, and may jog your memory a little more:

Sneakers (with Sidney Poitier, Robert Redford, Dan Akroyd and River Phoenix) is a movie featuring a universal encryption cracker – and the people who steal it. Obviously a box that can crack any “code” is mathematically impossible, but without it there would be no plot… and that would have been a shame cause

Sneakers was a terrific usual-suspects-esq movie.

(more…)

Encryption is extremely important, but its overuse can also lead to problems.

Five to reasons to use Encryption:

1) You are dealing with important government, company, or personal data – especially on laptops, flash drives, or portable hard drives.

The news these days is riddled with stories of public servant or big company data theft, often due to laptop or hard drive loss. If big companies lose their data that often, little companies and individuals must do it all the time (more often, probably, because they don’t have encryption mandates) – they just don’t make the news. If you encrypt your data properly, data theft is virtually impossible. Note too that encryption doesn’t preclude data loss - you should back up your important data as well. (more…)