Anti Hacking: General Ways to Secure your Password

We are living in a world were there is a lot of things are going on-line. From business presentations to just chatting with friends, internet is were we a spent a large part of our lives. But with happy times, comes bad times.

All your accounts come with a password, and that password is the sole part that prevents your information from falling into the wrong hands. But as with everything in world, passwords have their defects. Crackers are exploiting these defects and are cracking thousands of passwords for a variety of accounts everyday. In fact, it's quite rare to see a person who doesn't have a friend whose facebook account got hacked at least once. Millions on the web have gotten their accounts hacked and personal information stolen.

So the question is, how to prevent you from being a victim of this malicious process?

Make it unguessable

Your password should be something that you can remember, but make sure it's something that cannot be easily guessed by others, like your name, date of birth etc.

Guessing potential passwords  is what most people do first, especially if they know you personally, when they want access to your account.

Make it BIG

You should make your password as long as possible, as the longer a password is, the harder it is to crack it. Most websites have a minimum password length limit as 8, but you should go way over that. 15 and above is recommended. You should also make sure that you can still remember the password.

Make it vibrant

You should have a password with different alphanumeric characters, special characters, uppercase and lowercase letters etc. The wider your password range is, the harder it is to crack it.

For example, "ilikemessi" is a very weak password. "1lykMe$$i" is much stronger password.

Also, make sure your password is nothing that can be found in the dictionary. That is, it shouldn't be a proper meaningful sentence or word ("Monkey" is much weaker that "Mnokkey" )

Store it..in your head

You should remember your password. You should never write it down anywhere or store it in the computer. People may be able to hack into computers, but they can never hack into your brain.

Look before you type

You should see where you are entering your passwords. If you are asked your password in a suspicious situation, never give your password. Many websites allow you to log in using you facebook account, but make sure that you are entering your facebook account password in a facebook window, as otherwise it is easy construct a fake facebook page that gives the password you enter to a cracker.


That's about it for now. If you have some other methods to make your passwords secure, please share with us.

Remove viruses and malware using Command Prompt in Windows

The Command Prompt is one of the most unique tools in Windows and in any other OS that can be used to do a ton of stuff that cannot be normally done otherwise. This also includes protecting your computer from viruses and malware. Want to know how? Read on.

Please do note that Command Prompt is no substitute for an antivirus program. This post tells you how it can be used to bring out hidden viruses in your computer. If you do this every time you connect a removable media to your computer, you can ensure you won't get infected that way. But apart from that, an antivirus program is still the best.

Autorun is your enemy!
"autorun.inf" is one of the most common viruses found in pendrives that can infect your computer when you open the contents of the pendrive. Most systems come with AutoPlay on by default. Turning it off is one the first things you should do after installing a new OS.

To turn off AutoPlay, go to Control Panel --> Hardware and Sound --> AutoPlay and uncheck the "Use AutoPlay for all media and devices" option.

Time to summon up Command Prompt for some disinfection!

For the following steps, I have a removable USB storage device inserted into my computer with a dummy virus and is recognized as drive F.

Open Command Prompt in any way you want. I prefer to do it by simply typing "cmd" from windows start screen screen and pressing enter (as I have Windows 8.). You can also open it by opening run by pressing start key + r, typing in "cmd" and pressing enter.

Now shift the directory into the storage device by entering the corresponding drive name followed by a colon ( : ) and pressing enter. So, for me, it will be f: .

Time to reveal everything inside.

Type in "attrib -h -r -a -s"
This will make all read only, system, archive and hidden files visible by removing these attributes.

Then, type "dir" to get a list of all files in the storage device.

Look at the list carefully and find out if there is any suspicious file. Any file that you are not expecting to see will probably be a virus (Especially if it has a .inf or .exe extension).

If you find such suspicious files, type "del" followed by the filename and extension.
In the above picture, my pendrive contains an autorun.inf file. So I delete it using "del autorun.inf".

After you have finished going through the files and deleting all such suspicious files, you can open the pendrive safely and do whatever you want.

Note: All viruses can also be detected and deleted by scanning the drive with a good up-to-date antivirus program.

That's about it! I hope this article was helpful!

Windows: Control the mouse, without a mouse.

Broken mouse?
One of the most important and easily the most used computer peripheral being broken is bad news to everybody who uses a computer.
Don't worry. Read on to find out how to use your mouse, without a mouse.

Your Windows OS comes with a feature that allows you to move the mouse pointer and do various tasks using your keyboard.
But do note that if your mouse is broken, it is best to get it replaced at the earliest. This method is only a temporary backup. It is quite difficult to control the mouse pointer in this way (That means you can forget about gaming..).

The steps below are performed on a Windows 8 OS. But on almost all Windows operating systems, the steps are not much different. If you were a sane human being, you will quite surely be able to figure out the stuff in previous versions of Windows that are the equivalent of some stuff on Windows 8.

IMPORTANT NOTE: If you cannot use your mouse in any way, you'll have to use the Arrow keys to select, Tab key to switch between possible clickable areas, Enter to choose, Spacebar to check boxes, and Backspace key to go back one screen to perform various tasks listed below.

To start off, open up control panel in way you like. Then click on ease of access.

Then, choose "change how your mouse works" under Ease of access center.

Click on "Set up mouse keys" from the screen that comes up.

Check "Turn on Mouse Keys" and click OK , then click OK again to get the job done.

Now turn on Num lock to start up the magic.
You can use tap and hold the 4,8,6 and 2 buttons on the numpad to move the mouse pointer in 4 directions, and the 7,9,1 and 3 keys, also on the numpad, to move the pointer diagonally.  The longer you hold the key, the more the pointer accelerates.

The number 5 functions as your click key. By default it is left click. To do a right click, tap "-" on the numpad and use 5. to revert to left click, tap "/".

The + key functions as a double click key, although tapping 5 two times works just fine.

You can tap "Insert" key to press and hold anything, and use the "Delete" key to release the hold.

That's about it. Have fun with your new found powers, and buy a new mouse soon!
Hope this was helpful!

Learn Coding interactively with Codeacademy

Want to learn HTML? CSS? Javascript? or any other popular programming language without having to spend money on taking long and boring courses? Well, Codeacademy is the place for you.

While several websites offer to teach coding for free, all they have is a wall of text with screenshots that can be very confusing as well as irritating, especially to beginners. What we actually need is interactive learning, where the topic is broken into several small and organised sections, and where periodic recaps are present for us to brush up on things now and then. Unfortunately, creating something like that is a long and arduous job that many are unwilling to undertake for no returns. Well, maybe except for one.

Codeacademy is a great website for wannabie coders, developers and programmers to start learning. It has several interactive courses for several popular programming languages, along with badges to win and points to earn that makes education, a fun experience for the younger ones among us.

Especially since we are living in an era where knowledge of computers and programming is extremely essential in almost every job that we could probably undertake in the future, the presence of such websites on the information superhighway is great factor in deciding the future development of the world.

Keep your Images on the Cloud with Postimage

A G Z universe had told you about keeping your text files on the cloud with pastebin. Now, I shall tell you how you can keep your cool pics online and share them with anyone on the planet.

This works almost the same way as pastebin. Just go to Postimage, browse your PC and choose an image, choose the content type and choose a resize if you wish to do so. Then hit "upload it" and in a matter of seconds your image will get on the cloud. Postimage then returns an image codes page, with a link, a direct link, an HTML embed code to put them in forum posts or websites ( All with copy to clipboard buttons, making copying easier) , and instant submission buttons to popular social networking sites like Facebook, Twitter, StumbleUpon, Reddit etc.

And finally, as always, there are lots of equally good alternatives to this, like tinypic and imageshack.

Enjoy!

Find Out All About a Website : Hostcabi.net

Have you ever wanted to know a bit more about a website? Like it's IP address, server location and coordinates, hosting company, website value, average visitors, Alexa rank, load speed, daily income, website ranking, traffic graphs.....and even more? Well, there's a web tool that allows you to do just that.

Brought out by the good old pastebin team, hostcabi.net is a fast and powerful tool that will prove useful to everyone ranging from professional hackers to the average Joe. From finding out the value of your own website to viewing the concentration of web hosts around the world, hostcabi.net is surely a site worth a Ctrl+D.

Easy Screen Recording with Hypercam 2

Ever wondered how all those youtubers record what's happening on their screen? Well, they use a screen recording software. There is a large number of screen recording programs out there, both free as well as paid. The software you choose depends upon your internet usage limit and budget. Here, I'll tell you how to get a proper and free screen recording software and set it up the right way for you to start making some awsome videos.

1) Get the software:

I'll be using Hypercam 2, a free and awsome screen recording software developed by Hyperionics. Download this software from here. The download size is only 5.1 mb. Then, you'll need a proper video codec (Coder Decoder) for compressing the videos. While this is not necessary to start recording, it is highly recommended as otherwise the recorded files will be absolutely massive. I prefer to use the Xvid codec, one of the best out there. Get it from here. The download size is 10.27 mb.

2)Set it up:

Install both the programs. Open up Hypercam 2.  You can check out the rest of the options later, now let me get to the important parts: Click the "AVI file" tab and from the video compressor drop down menu, choose "Xvid MPEG-4 codec". Click "Configure this compressor" and adjust the quality and other settings. I usually keep the quality bar halfway (at 15). Now, you can get recording. But, there one more thing:

3)Add in the audio:

This step is not required if you're making a soundless video. To record sound, go to Control Panel->Hardware and Sound->Manage audio devices.

Under the "Recording" tab, right click and choose "show disabled devices". "Stereo mix" will show up now. Right click and enable it. Disable all other recording devices. Now, in Hypercam 2, under the "Sound" tab, check "Record sound from" and make sure it's set to "default recording device."

NOTE: Step 3 is now shown in a quick video. Click here to see it on youtube.

NOTE: If you are recording sounds from your microphone, just check "Record sound from" and plug in your microphone.

After all this is done, you're all ready to roll. Enjoy!

Best of the Web

Your PC and your modem can be used for more than just playing games and browsing Facebook. Read on to know more about some useful tips and apps to make your life on the information superhighway more fascinating in this constantly updated page.

AGZuniverse

Hello everyone, this is  A G Z universe, an infotainment blog, providing both information and entertainment. Please visit www.agzuniverse.webs.com for the official website of this blog. Please stay tuned for updates to come. Also, do comment if you have any doubt, query or correction regarding the content of this blog.