From the category archives:

Mobile Computing

Troubleshooting Buffalo WLI-UC-GN on OSX

January 31, 2010

These are some notes from trouble-shooting the Buffalo Wifi  WLI-UC-GN USB dongle on OS X.
I’m using an older Linksys BEFW1154 802.11 B wireless router as my test access point. I wasted a day trouble-shooting my airport because I plugged the cable modem into a LAN port rather than the WAN port. When I scanned for [...]

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Tracing someone using an IP address

December 4, 2009

What is an IP address?
by John Davidson
Every telephone needs to have a phone number to be able to use the public phone network. Similarly every device connected to the public Internet needs a unique number known as an Internet Protocol (IP) address. IP addresses consist of four numbers separated by periods and look something like [...]

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How to use free coffee shop wireless securely – part 3 – Your Own Virtual Private Network (VPN)

December 3, 2009

Create your own virtual private network with Hamachi
You can do things between computers on your home or office network you can’t do securely on a public WiFi network like listen to a shared iTunes library, access files in shared folders and corroborate on shared projects. But using the free virtual private network application Hamachi, you [...]

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How to use free coffee shop wireless securely – part 2 – Create a secure tunnel using SSH

December 3, 2009

Create a secure tunnel using SSH
by John Davidson
In part 1, we learned that using Wi-fi in public hotspots can be dangerous because of packet sniffers which can view and log all unencrypted network data. You need to protect yourself by encoding both what you are sending and receiving over by using https:// (note the [...]

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How to use a secure tunnel to view US televison on hulu.com, nbc.com and comedycentral

December 3, 2009

Stream Hulu, NBC and Comedy Central to your computer while living or traveling outside the United States.
by John Davidson
Watch full episodes of all the best in US TV programming streamed to your home computer. Are you a fan of Highlander, Family Guy or Heroes? Well you can watch seasons of episodes the whole library of [...]

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How to set-up a secure tunnel to use public WiFi safely

December 1, 2009

Using Wi-fi in public hotspots can be dangerous with packet sniffers so readily available. You need to protect yourself by encoding both what you are sending and receiving over an unsecured public network.
Even at work if you want to avoid having your activities logged (for whatever reason) you should encrypt your traffic. An excellent [...]

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How to use free coffee shop wireless securely – part 1

December 1, 2009

There are lots of coffee shops in Vancouver that offer free wireless. It’s common to meet clients, surf the net, work on projects, read email, shop and do banking all while sipping on a latte and gorging on the free bandwidth. In this post I’ll tell you how to work more securely over an insecure [...]

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An Anonymous Cell Phone

December 1, 2009

Did you know that the cell phone company can determine your exact location to within 25 to 100 metres anytime your cell phone is turned on? Though this technology has saved lives, there are many unresolved privacy issues around it’s use.
In this post I’ll explain briefly about how a person can be tracked using their [...]

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Secure Anonymous VISA Credit Card

December 1, 2009

This is a little off-topic, but several clients have asked me about how to make secure payments on-line without the risk of exposing their personal credit card data. If you have a card with a high credit limit like a gold or platinum card definitely  avoid using it for online payments. There are also privacy [...]

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