Reveal your saved Passwords in Firefox

Many users save their passwords in Firefox so that they do not have to enter it again when visiting the website it was saved for again. Firefox remembers the password and enters it automatically if the user selected this option on his first visit. This is great for us lazy users but poses the problem that we sometimes can’t remember the password when we need it again.

A classic example would be a Gmail user who has been using the Gmail website so far now trying to get the POP3 access running. So, what is this user going to do ? He actually has several options to reveal the password in Firefox. The first that comes to my mind is the ability to go into the security tab of the options. You do find a show passwords button there that displays all passwords, usernames and site urls.

I have written about this before and want to concentrate on other possibilities. Please note that a master password has to be entered for all the following methods if one has been set.

1. Greasemonkey Scripts:

If you are using the excellent Greasemonkey extension you can choose from a wide variety of scripts that reveal the passwords:

Show Password on Click - displays the password if you click the password form.

Show Password onMouseOver - reveals the password if you hover the mouse over the password field.

Unpassword - changes the type of the password form to text which always displays the passwords as text.

2. Javascript Code

Paste the following line of code into the address bar and hit enter to reveal the password on this website.

javascript:(function(){var s,F,j,f,i; s = ""; F = document.forms; for(j=0; j<F.length; ++j) { f = F[j]; for (i=0; i<f.length; ++i) { if (f[i].type.toLowerCase() == "password") s += f[i].value + "\n"; } } if (s) alert("Passwords in forms on this page:\n\n" + s); else alert("There are no passwords in forms on this page.");})();

3. Firefox extension

Unhide Passwords - this extension does basically the same as the Unpassword Greasemonkey script.

[via gHacks]

Remove Metadata from Word. Stay protected

What is metadata?

Metadata is usually defined as “data about data” or “information about information”. Metadata describes how and when and by whom a particular set of data was collected, and how the data is formatted. Most people are unaware that Microsoft Word documents store metadata in all word documents. You must have noticed that when you select a word document, the preview panel (Common Task in Windows XP) shows some details about the document such as the "author". You must have also noticed that the author's name might not actually appear in the document, and yet it somehow shows the author's name and you can't even edit it. That's metadata. The following are some examples of metadata that may be stored in your documents:

• Your name
• Your initials
• Your company or organization name
• The name of your computer
• The name of the network server or hard disk where you saved the document
• Other file properties and summary information such as file size, date/time the file was created, modified and accessed and the location where the file is stored
• Non-visible portions of embedded OLE objects
• Document revisions
• Document versions
• Template information
• Hidden text
• Comments

As you can see, a substantial amount of information is associated in every word documant. Obviously, you don't want to reveal these information to others for various reasons.


How can I remove metadata?

There are various ways of removing metadata, preventing metadata from generating or just minimizing it.

Automatically Remove Personal Information When You Save

You can set your Microsoft Word to automatically remove personal information from a Word document when you save it. To turn this option on, follow these steps:

1. On the Tools menu, click Options.
2. On the Security tab, click to select the Remove personal information from file properties on save check box under Privacy options, and then click OK.

Microsoft word will now not save any personal information along with the document when you save it. But you probably have tons of other documents saved previously, that already has metadata stored along with it. So you will have to remove those data manually.

Manually Remove Your User Name from Your Documents

To view or change your user name, follow these steps:

1. On the Tools menu, click Options, and then click the User Information tab.

The following edit boxes appear:

Name
Initials
Mailing Address

2. If you do not want any of this information to appear in your documents, enter non-identifying strings or spaces in the appropriate edit boxes, and then click OK to accept the changes.

How to Manually Remove Personal Summary Information

1. Open the document or template.
2. On the File menu, click Properties.
3. On the Summary tab, click to clear the Author, Manager, Company, and any other edit boxes that you do not want to distribute.
4. On the Custom tab, delete any properties that contain information that you do not want to distribute.
5. Click OK.

On the File menu, click Save, and then click Close.

These steps will remove most of the sensitive information from your documents. Alternately, you can use the Metadata Removal Tool from Microsoft.

Posted by Kaushik LINK

UK, Vodafone cifrerà gli SMS

Roma - Le cronache giudiziarie potrebbero dover fare a meno delle intercettazioni degli SMS, almeno nel Regno Unito: Vodafone ha infatti siglato un'intesa con un partner che le consentirà di offrire un servizio di messaggini criptati.

Il partner è Broca e la soluzione scelta si chiama SAMS, Secure Advanced Message Service. Il target individuato da Vodafone per il nuovo servizio è la clientela business. Non a caso: sono molte le imprese per le quali la riservatezza delle comunicazioni - anche a livello di SMS - rappresenta un fattore critico.

L'accordo prevede che Broca sia pagata da Vodafone in funzione del quantitativo di SMS cifrati spediti attraverso la tecnologia SAMS, che - assicura l'azienda - consente la trasmissione sicura di dati riservati e sensibili, come i dettagli di operazioni di pagamento.

Dario Bonacina
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