A Clean Facebook Profile can get you a Job!

Fact: "24% Employers in India check an applicant's Facebook profile while evaluating him/her, for a job or internship."

If you're not careful, everything you post on Facebook can be seen by your current employer or a prospective employer. Inappropriate comments and/or inappropriate photos can make you lose that dream job or internship offer.

Given the fact that just about everyone does use Facebook, it's smart to take the time to make sure that what you post is seen only by who you want to see it, not by the world.

What Employers Shouldn't See on Facebook

•   Don't post anything you wouldn't want your current employer or a prospective employer to see.

•  Avoid any comments that could be interpreted as racist, sexist or discriminatory in any way.

• Remove or untag photos of you that show you in a bad light. If you prefer not to, then be sure to carefully manage your album privacy settings. These control which people can see which of your albums.

• ·Look at your wall. Remove comments from your friends that seem distasteful.

• Look at the apps on your profile. Does their purpose portray you well? There are more than a few apps that may not be the best ones to have on your page when you're looking to get a job.

• What groups are you a member of? If you belong to "It's 5 am, I'm drunk, and online" or any similar groups, you probably want to leave them.

How to Safeguard your Facebook Profile

• Set Your Profile to Private Mode. This is an automatic given. Click on the arrow tab near “home” at the top of the page>scroll down to privacy settings>control your default settings>switch from “public” to “friends”—this will only allow the people you “friend” to view your page. Or you can click on custom and specify your restrictions even further—for example, you can type in University of Delhi so no one affiliated with the school will be able to see your profile.

• Delete Useless Apps. Don’t think that simply putting your account to private is enough. Many colleges have a way of getting around this. One of the more popular options is making those interested go through a Facebook app in order to ask questions or get more information. If you read the fine print, terms and conditions will tell you that the app will have access to certain features on your Facebook, such as photo albums. If you add a school-affiliated app, make sure to delete it as soon as it’s served its purposes. On the left tool bar, scroll down to Apps and Games>click the pencil icon next to the app you want to remove>click remove.

• Set Albums to Private Mode. If you know you tend to post inappropriate and incrementing photos, it would be a good idea to set those albums to restrict view or simply delete them entirely.

• Restrict Tagging. You can’t control which photos your friends want to post on your Timeline, but you can control which ones actually get a spot on your page. Under the Privacy Settings go to Timeline and Tagging>Edit Settings>Review Posts Friends Tag You in Before They Appear on Your Timeline>On. This will help control any inappropriate photo-tagging.

• Stop Uploading Albums. While restricting albums and restricting tags can help, the truth is that every photo you upload can be uncovered in some form or fashion. Thus, you might want to refrain from using Facebook as a way to store all of your photos. Instead, use other sources as SnapFish and DropBox to upload all of your backup photos. Worried that people won’t be able to see them? Trust me when I say your friends don’t really care to see your photos from your two week vacation in Goa as might as you think they do. Keep the photos as memories, but you don’t have to share your memories with everyone.

• Restrict Public Search. Last but not least, the harder it is to locate your profile the less chances an employer has of finding anything to create problems in your job or internship. To do this go to Privacy Settings>Apps, Games, Website>Public Search>Edit Settings> Disable Public Search.

That said, while your Facebook account shouldn’t play that big of a role in determining whether you get accepted into you dream company or not, the fact that it’s a possibility should motivate you enough to make it presentable.

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Heartbleed Bug - Your Passwords are in Danger!

The Heartbleed Bug is a serious vulnerability in the popular OpenSSL cryptographic software library. This weakness allows stealing the information protected, under normal conditions, by the SSL/TLS encryption used to secure the Internet. SSL/TLS provides communication security and privacy over the Internet for applications such as web, email, instant messaging (IM) and some virtual private networks (VPNs).

The Heartbleed bug allows anyone on the Internet to read the memory of the systems protected by the vulnerable versions of the OpenSSL software. This compromises the secret keys used to identify the service providers and to encrypt the traffic, the names and passwords of the users and the actual content. This allows attackers to eavesdrop on communications, steal data directly from the services and users and to impersonate services and users.

Who discovered it?

It was discovered independently by a security company called Codenomicon and a Google researcher named Neel Mehta.

What leaks in practice?

Codenomicon have tested some of their own services from attacker's perspective. They attacked themselves from outside, without leaving a trace. Without using any privileged information or credentials they were able to steal from themselves the secret keys used for their X.509 certificates, user names and passwords, instant messages, emails and business critical documents and communication.

Why does it matter?

OpenSSL is used by an estimated two-thirds of the servers currently on the internet, and those known to be affected include most of Yahoo’s web properties, the dating site OKCupid and the image-sharing service Imgur, which handles a lot of the image-sharing on sites like Reddit (Yahoo said late Tuesday that it had patched most of the servers for its core websites). The weakness could allow a hacker to pilfer personal information about users of those sites, including login details, passwords and other important data. The Guardian says the bug means “servers vulnerable to Heartbleed are less secure than they would be if they simply had no encryption at all.”

How to stop the leak?

As long as the vulnerable version of OpenSSL is in use it can be abused. Fixed OpenSSL has been released and now it has to be deployed. Operating system vendors and distribution, appliance vendors, independent software vendors have to adopt the fix and notify their users. Service providers and users have to install the fix as it becomes available for the operating systems, networked appliances and software they use.

List of vulnerable websites..

https://github.com/musalbas/heartbleed-masstest/blob/master/top1000.txt

You can get complete information at http://heartbleed.com/

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