security

You may have already seen the headlines, read the news, and bought the t-shirt, but I thought I'd post a quick note about the recent leak of Gmail account details. Here's one such headline and article about the leak from the Daily Dot:

A security flaw now known as the Heartbleed Bug, because of the specific feature it exploits (called Heartbeats), was discovered by the security community recently. In this post I will give a brief explanation and a list of some vulnerable sites that you should be aware of, but first, thankfully, I can provide some reassurance.

As a foster carer you open your home to a range of people from young people of a range of ages in foster care, to social workers and other professionals. This means that you must be even more sure that your computer is secure, and that your personal information is protected. After all, you may access everything from your bank account to your online shopping through your computer and this means password after password having to be stored in your computer or remembered.

A quick note about why that CAPTCHA test is now required to log in: On Friday afternoon I noticed that we were getting more failed login attempts than is normal. Rather than it being a simple-yet-unusual coincidence, we deduced that it was an automated script (read: robot) that was trying to gain access.