I just read a blog post at Mcafee Avert Labs Blog about a special type of maleware that can infect computers in Internet cafes and I started thinking about secure Internet connections when you travel.

When traveling many of us use Internet cafes to access our email, check the server status and maybe even do some transactions at our online bank. We do it because it’s so easy, just pay a few bucks and you can use the Internet, but the thing is if you really should trust computers you don’t have any control over? Anyone can use the computer you’re sitting in front of at the cafe and anyone can also install evil software on it without letting the cafe owner know about it. The blog post “Are Internet cafes and bars at danger” is describing a special maleware that can bypass the special security measurements most Internet cafes are relying on. So the question is should you trust Internet cafe computers?

In real life most people think about all kinds of diseases you could get when traveling and to protect our selfs from problems we get all kinds of vaccinations before we travel. Have you ever got any vaccinations for computer problems?

Even if you use your own laptop on your vacation you still can’t feel that safe if you “borrow” someones wireless connection because you don’t know if the connection has been hijacked and monitored by evil forces.

The solution may be to start using mobile Internet connections you pay for yourself because then you know all parties involved (i.e. you, your laptop and your ISP). But the disadvantage so far is slow connections, much slower then your normal broad band connection at your office (I’m not that impressed by the connection speed here in Sweden so far). Another disadvantage is high fees you have to pay for your access if you use it in another country (see this) and unfortunately you tend to travel to other countries on vacation……

Let’s just hope that the European Union will force the mobile service providers and Internet service providers to better inform customers about their pricing structures and also to make it much cheaper to use your mobile Internet connection in all the European countries. We need mobile Internet access within the whole of Europe at reasonable cost!

Earlier today when I tried to access Reviewme.com I couldn’t access the site because it seemed offline. I also noticed that it was problems with iWebTool.com too at the same time so it must have been something wrong with the Internet connection between me and them, but when the access to ReviewMe got back I got this front page instead of the usual front page:

What’s wrong? Have they been hacked or what?

I checked the whois records, but since they use a proxy (Whois Privacy Protection Service, Inc) I can’t verify if the domain name has been hijacked or not. This is one of the down-sides with proxy when you register domain names, your customers can’t verify if they access your page or not .

Anyway I hope the access gets restored soon…..

I read a guest post in the Entrecard blog about how to recover your data (i.e. posts and files) in case you lose your blog in a hard drive crash, server fire (like in the case with ThePlanet.com) or in a hacker attack. The article gives you some good advice, but why wait until you’ve already lost everything before you act?

When you see an article like that you shouldn’t just say (or think) “it’s a good article, I have to remember this until it happens to me” or “that will never happen to me”, instead you should create an action list on how to prevent that you end up in a situation where no backups can be found. You should also setup an action plan on how to restore your blog as soon as possible after an unexpected incident.

1. Backup your blog databases - If you got Wordpress as blogging platform you should use one of the many backup plugins that are available. Here are two plugins I found at Wordpress.org: WP-DB-Backup and WP-DB-Manager. I’m sure you will find many other plugins too and if you use another platform then Wordpress you should also be able to find backup solutions. Just search in Google for backup and your blog software.
2. Check your web hosting company’s backup solutions - If you’re at a shared hosting account you shouldn’t just trust that your web hosting company will do backups for you. Check it and make sure they do it daily, otherwise change to another hosting company with better backup routines.If you’re hosting on your own server it’s your own responsibility to do backups. Some server hosting companies offer backups as an extra service and it can be a good investment (not only to make sure you can access your data after an incident, but also because you don’t have to do it yourself). You can also setup hosting control panels like cPanel and many more to FTP backups to a FTP account hosted on any other server you like. Therefore it can be a good investment to get a shared hosting account at for example eXavier.com where you can FTP your backups to. The important thing is to make sure that you FTP account is hosted on another server and in best case also in another data center.
3. Backup your local files - Even if you have all important data on a web server somewhere it could be a good idea to backup your local files every now and then. A good thing could be to get an external hard drive where you can store copies of all your data. You could also get a gmail account, ZIP all your important files and email them to your gmail account. For a small fee you get up to 25 GB space at Gmail!!!!!
4. Create an emergency plan - Do a checklist with things you should do in case your hosting company, the data center where you have your servers or for example your broad band operator can’t get their servers and Internet connections up and running fast enough. On the same list you should include phone numbers to all parties just in case you can’t access Internet to find the phone numbers on each companies web site.
5. Test your backups - Make sure your backups are working (i.e. you can restore your site, blog or forum from the backups you have) before you really need your backups. I’ve learned the hard way that you should never fully trust your backups until you’ve tested that they really work. You should do a test every now and then just to make sure that everything is working as it should.