Hacked....?

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Uncle Bob, what sort of personal info are you worrierd about? From memory when signing up here there really isn't much info you have to give that could be stolen.

All info in threads can be viewed by anyone except the "Member meetups" section which you have to be a member to view. Any other stuff such as being a paid member would be under paypal's security.
 
Most likely your device would be hacked through other means and your account to PA accessed through auto login. Your details provided to PA could then be accessed.
Jon
 
They are directly in the forum, don't want to say too much but you should recheck the security for all areas.
 
Hi guys,
Thanks for the replies.
It's good to know than not to know how computers work when it comes to security and IT TECH stuff.
 
I had a pic or something on this site the other day that when clicked on Microsoft blocked it saying that it was unsafe and they blocked it before it could damage my computer????... damb... I only know what a pencil and paper is... scary.. :)
 
This site is probably as safe as any site can be. Every platform, theme, plugin has a chance to have a hidden vulnerability. Keeping them up to date with the latest versions is good practice but not foolproof. There is often a short window of opportunity if the vulnerability info is spread around hackers before updates are released.
From my limited knowledge, most successful hacks use social engineering or man-in-the middle attacks to get your info, and so it's irrelevant how good the site's back-end security is, if someone has access to your login and password.
Your computer may be infected with malware, such as keyloggers, which record everything you type. Running good security on your personal computer is probably your best bet. This includes good password habits. How many of us use the same password over and over again?
 
As long as server software and forum software is kept up-to-date things should be pretty safe. The site is also using a secure certificate which helps protect data sent between the web browsers (on peoples computers) and the server.

I host many sites, about 400 for the past 7 years and none have been hacked because I keep the servers up-to-date and all site software up to date. The simplest things help the most!

The easiest way for a users account to be hacked is due to poor/simple passwords, which a lot of people use. I recommend using hard passwords, ones like cHq58#6$n@DyHDF7 etc etc. Password generators and scripts would have a hard time cracking a password like that.

Never use the same password twice on the internet either. Use a password generator like the following:

https://identitysafe.norton.com/password-generator/

Use a program like 1Password to remember your passwords.
 
Westaus said:
They are directly in the forum, don't want to say too much but you should recheck the security for all areas.

I just did some testing and in my tests all Exif data was removed from the photos when they were uploaded to the site.

If there are some user uploaded photos hosted on this site that include EXIF data, especially GPS data, please PM me and I'll investigate.
 
Martin said:
As long as server software and forum software is kept up-to-date things should be pretty safe. The site is also using a secure certificate which helps protect data sent between the web browsers (on peoples computers) and the server.

I host many sites, about 400 for the past 7 years and none have been hacked because I keep the servers up-to-date and all site software up to date. The simplest things help the most!

The easiest way for a users account to be hacked is due to poor/simple passwords, which a lot of people use. I recommend using hard passwords, ones like cHq58#6$n@DyHDF7 etc etc. Password generators and scripts would have a hard time cracking a password like that.

Never use the same password twice on the internet either. Use a password generator like the following:

https://identitysafe.norton.com/password-generator/

Use a program like 1Password to remember your passwords.

Problem with those hard passwords consisting of random numbers and letters is that nobody's going to remember them so they'll have to write them down...

One easy way to create very safe passwords for different sites is (which are also easy to remember) First you for example count the letters in the sites domain, on this site, "prospectingaustralia.com" it would be 25. and then after that add some random sentence (which is the same on all sites) that you'll remember... for example Ireallylikedoughnuts

so password for this site would be: 25Ireallylikedoughnuts
password for some other site would be 20Ireallylikedoughnuts
 
HarriL said:
Problem with those hard passwords consisting of random numbers and letters is that nobody's going to remember them so they'll have to write them down...

Yeah not supposed to remember them, that's why I mentioned using a password manager like 1Password :cool:

You only need to remember one password, all other passwords are stored in an encrypted safe. Costs about $30 for life and works with most popular web browsers. I use it on my PCs, tablets and phones and have about 400 passwords stored in it.

https://agilebits.com/onepassword
 

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