Secure Yourself by Using Two-Step Verification on These 16 Web Services

Secure Yourself by Using Two-Step Verification on These 16 Web Services

Two-factor authentication, also known as 2-step verification, provides additional security for your online accounts. Even if someone discovers your password, they’ll need a special one-time code to log in after you enable two-factor authentication on these services.

Notably absent from this list are banks and other financial institutions. It’s a shame that you can use two-factor authentication to protect your in-game currency in an MMORPG, but not the real money in your bank account.

Google / Gmail

Google offers two-factor authentication that secures your Google account, including your Gmail, files in your Google Drive, and everything else. You can use the Google Authenticator app on your smartphone or get login codes via SMS message. We’ve covered enabling two-factor authentication for Google accounts before.

You can even use Google Authenticator apps on your computer without a smartphone, although it’s more secure to do so on a separate device.

Facebook

Facebook’s “Login Approvals” feature requires you to enter a code whenever you login from an unrecognized computer. The code will be sent  to your mobile phone via SMS. Facebook offers instructions on setting this up.

LastPass

LastPass offers a number of different two-factor authentication options to secure your account. You can use the Google Authenticator app, which is free for everyone. LastPass Premium subscribers can purchase a physical YubiKey token and use other options to secure their password database.

For more information, read our guide to setting up two-factor authentication in LastPass. We’ve also got a list of 11 ways to make your LastPass account even more secure.

Dropbox & SpiderOak

Dropbox now offers 2-step verification using the Google Authenticator app. When you log in from a computer you haven’t trusted, you’ll have to enter a security code generated by the app. Enabling this feature is one of the 6 ways to secure your Dropbox account.

Google Drive offers two-factor authentication through your Google account, while Microsoft’s SkyDrive also offers some two-factor authentication support.

SpiderOak, a Dropbox-like cloud storage service, also offers 2-factor authentication.

Microsoft

Microsoft offers some rudimentary two-factor authentication. It’s available when you access billing.microsoft.com, xbox.com, and SkyDrive. When you access another service with your Microsoft account – such as Outlook.com or Hotmail – you won’t be prompted for a security code. Read more about Microsoft account security codes here.

Yahoo! Mail

Yahoo! offers two-step verification, but only for your email. When using this feature, you’ll have to enter a code sent to your mobile phone via SMS or enter the answer to your account security question to log in. Make sure your account security question is unguessable if you use this feature – as usual, security questions are a weak link. Read more about enabling and using Yahoo!’s “Second sign-in verification” feature here.

Amazon Web Services (AWS)

Amazon offers multi-factor authentication via its AWS Virtual MFA app or Google Authenticator. This is only for AWS services, such as Amazon S3’s storage service, not for the average consumer’s Amazon account. Get started with it here.

Battle.net & MMORPGs

Massively multiplayer online role-playing games (MMORPGs) have been at the forefront of offering two-factor authentication to prevent account thefts and in-game items and currency from being sold. Blizzard offers a Battle.net Authenticator app that secures access to your World of Warcraft, Diablo 3, and Starcraft 2 logins.

Many other MMORPGs also offer two-factor authentication. For example, if you play Guild Wars 2 or Star Wars: The Old Republic, each offers two-factor authentication systems for you. Read more about enabling it for Guild Wars 2 or SWTOR.

Your Website

If you host your own website, you can install a WordPress plugin or Drupal module that enables two-step authentication with the Google Authenticator app. DreamHost accountsalso offer multifactor authentication with Google Authenticator, as does the CloudFlareservice.

Your Linux Server

You can implement two-factor authentication on your own Linux server to increase its security. We’ve covered using the Google Authenticator PAM module to add two-step authentication to your SSH server. All the number-crunching happens on your own server; no phoning home required.

How to Make Your Laptop Choose a Wired Connection Instead of Wireless

How to Make Your Laptop Choose a Wired Connection Instead of Wireless

Have you ever connected your Laptop to a wired network point in your house and continued to get wireless  network speeds ? Here’s how you can quickly fix that, the easy way.

Giving Your Wired Connection Higher Priority

Press the Win + R keyboard combination and type ncpa.cpl into the run box, then hit enter.

When the Network Connections window opens you will need to hit the alt key to display the classic menu bar.

Once its available click on advanced, and then choose the Advanced Settings option.

Here you will see the preference of your network connections. In order to make your laptop use a wired connection, if available, even when connected to a wireless network, you will need to select Wi-Fi and then click on the green arrow pointing down.

This will automatically bump Ethernet to the top.

That’s all there is to it.

How to Use Custom Dictionaries in Word 2013

How to Use Custom Dictionaries in Word 2013

If you have the option on for checking spelling as you type in Word 2013, you can easily add words to the custom dictionary, using the context menu. However, what if you want to add or delete many custom words, or even add specialized dictionaries?

We will show you how to add words to and delete words from a custom dictionary in Word 2013, create a new custom dictionary, or even add third-party custom dictionaries.

To access the custom dictionaries in Word 2013, click the FILE tab.

Click Options in the list on the left side of the screen.

On the Word Options dialog box, click Proofing in the list of options on the left.

Scroll down to the When correcting spelling in Microsoft Office programs section and click Custom Dictionaries.

On the Custom Dictionaries dialog box, you can manually edit the word list in each custom dictionary. Select the custom dictionary in the list and click Edit Word List.

To add a word to the selected custom dictionary, enter a word in the Word(s) edit box and click Add. To remove a word, select the word in the Dictionary list and click Delete. If you want to clear the entire list from the custom dictionary, click Delete all.

You can quickly add words to the custom dictionary by right-clicking on a word that has a red, squiggly underline under it and selecting Add to Dictionary option. This adds the selected word(s) to the default custom dictionary. To change which custom dictionary is the default, select the desired dictionary from the Dictionary List and click Change Default.

NOTE: The Add to Dictionary option is only available when the option for checking spelling as you type is also on. This option is also on the Proofing screen in the When correcting spelling and grammar in Word section on the Word Options dialog box.

You can also add third-party custom dictionaries to Word to expand the list of words to which it refers when checking spelling. To do this, click Add on the Custom Dictionaries dialog box.

Navigate to the location of the third-party custom dictionary you want to add, select the *.dic file, and click Open.

NOTE: As an example, we found a free medical dictionary we decided to add to Word.

The added custom dictionary displays in the Dictionary List.

You can also create multiple new custom dictionaries, if, for example, you want to separate your word lists. To create a new custom dictionary, click New on the Custom Dictionaries dialog box.

The location for the custom dictionaries is C:\Users\<username>\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\UProof by default. This is the directory that is selected on the Create Custom Dictionary dialog box. Enter a name for your new custom dictionary in the File name edit box and click Save.

NOTE: Be sure to keep the .dic extension on the file name.

To add words to your new custom dictionary, select the dictionary in the list and click Edit Word List. Add any desired words using the Add button and click OK to close the dialog box.

To remove a custom dictionary you don’t want to use anymore, select the dictionary in the list and click Remove.

NOTE: The .dic file is NOT removed from the hard drive, only from the list of custom dictionaries Word uses.

When you create a new custom dictionary, Word associates all languages with the dictionary. That means the dictionary is used to check spelling of text in any language. You can associate a particular language with a custom dictionary so Word uses that dictionary only when you check the spelling of text in that particular language.

To change the language associated with a custom dictionary, select the desired dictionary in the list and select a language from the Dictionary language drop-down list.

When you have finished setting up your custom dictionaries, click OK on the Custom Dictionaries dialog box to close it and save your changes.

How to Use Google Chrome to Remotely Access Your Computer

How to Use Google Chrome to Remotely Access Your Computer

We have looked at some of the various ways in which remote access of your computer can be achieved, including using TeamViewer and VNC, but if you have Chrome installed you can do the same with nothing more than a browser extension.

It does not matter whether you’re using Windows or OS X (sadly, Linux users are left out in the cold), all you need is the Chrome Remote Desktop extension.

Grab yourself a copy of the add-on from the Chrome Web Store – click the Add To Chrome button followed by Add.

You’ll need to install the extension on both the computer you want to be able to used remotely and any machines you want to be able to use to dial in. Start with the machine you want to be able to control.

This is actually a surprisingly large extension, weighing in at some 22.6MB, but it will install very quickly nonetheless. Once installed, click New Tab and you can access the remote access tool from the list of installed apps.

The first time you launch Chrome Remote Desktop, you’ll need to grant it permission to access your computer. Click Continue, make sure that you are signed into your Google account, and then click ‘Allow access’.

Chrome Remote Desktop can be used in one of two ways – to offer remote assistance to someone or to take remote control of another computer of your own. Click the ‘Get started’ button in the My Computers section. Click the ‘Enable remote connections’ button

As a security measure, you will need to choose a PIN to protect your computer, so enter and confirm a code that is at least six digits in length and then click OK.

You will also need to click Yes in the User Account Control dialog that appears to permit the changes. Once this is done, re-enter your PIN and click Confirm, followed by OK.

Now turn your attention to the machine you’d like to use to take control of your first computer. Run through the same steps to install the necessary extension in Chrome. Make sure that you are signed into the same Google account and then authorize the extension to access it.

Click the Get Started button in the lower portion of the page and you should see an entry for your other computer. By default, this is labeled using the name of the machine, but you can change it by clicking the pencil icon to the right and entering a new name.

To start a remote session, click the name of the computer you would like to connect to, enter the PIN you set up, and hit Connect.

You get to jump in and take control of your remote computer just as if you were sitting in front of it. At the top of the screen, you’ll find a slide-down drawer where there are a limited number of options.

The Disconnect button is self-explanatory, while the ‘Send keys’ menu makes it possible to send keyboard combinations to the remote machine without them being intercepted by the local computer.

From the ‘Screen options’ menu, you can toggle full screen mode on and off as well as choose between viewing the remote desktop at its native resolution or scaled to fit the size of your browser window.

How to Disable the Mini Toolbar and Live Preview in Word 2013

Disable the Mini Toolbar and Live Preview in Word 2013

The Mini Toolbar and Live Preview are features in Word introduced in Word 2007 and continued in Word 2010 and 2013. They can be useful for quick formatting and to preview possible formats. However, if these features annoy you, they are easy to disable.

The Mini Toolbar in Word 2013 pops up when you select text in a document and provides quick access to formatting tools.

Live Preview allows you to preview how a specific feature, such as style sets, will affect your document as you hover over the different choices for that feature.

To disable one or both of these features in Word 2013, click the FILE tab.

Click Options in the list on the left side of the screen.

Make sure the General option is selected on the left side of the Word Options dialog box. In the User Interface options section, select the Show Mini Toolbar on selection check box so there is NO check mark in the box to disable the Mini Toolbar. Select the Enable Live Preview check box so it is also empty to disable this feature. Click OK to accept the changes and close the Word Options dialog box.

These settings are also available in the same location in Word 2010 and 2007, although the General screen on the Word Options dialog box in Word 2007 is called Popular.

If you find you need one of these features again, simply open the Word Options dialog box and select the desired check box again to enable the feature.

How to Use Multiple Profiles in Google Chrome Like a Ninja

How to Use Multiple Profiles in Google Chrome Like a Ninja

Don’t look now, but there’s a ninja in my browser! Not only that, but I can switch between multiple profiles in Google Chrome with ease—which is extremely useful if you have more than one Google account.

This isn’t really a new feature, nor is it a tough feature to enable… but since most people don’t seem to know about it, here we are with a quick article explaining it. Seriously, it’s barely worth reading this article. Other than the ninja picture, of course.

Enabling Multiple Profiles in Google Chrome

Head into Options –> Personal Stuff, and click the Add new user button. Yep, it’s just that easy.

You’ll immediately see a new browser window, and you can start using it as if it was a separate browser.

You can switch between the different instances quickly, edit the icon and name that shows up, and all that stuff.

You can even sync each profile to your Google Account separately. It’s really quite awesome.

Plus, there are ninjas.

How To Install Windows Home Server Beta “Vail” on VMware Workstation

How To Install Windows Home Server Beta “Vail” on VMware Workstation

If you’re a Windows Home Server enthusiast you probably want to test out the new version code named Vail. You might not have an extra box to test it on, so here we take a look at installing it on VMware Workstation.

Getting Started

You’ll need the following items to get started.

• VMware Workstation with a valid license or you can use it free for a 30 day trial period
• WHS Vail Beta ISO
• Computer Capable of Hardware Virtualization
• Enough Hard Drive space on the Host computer to create a 160GB virtual hard drive which is the minimum system requirements
• At least 2GB of RAM or more on the Host computer – The minimum amount of RAM to allocate for Vail is 1GB

For this article we used a machine with a Core i3 processor and 6GB of RAM  running Windows 7 Ultimate x64 and VMware Workstation 7.1.

Hardware Virtualization

To start out you’ll need to make sure your machine is capable of Hardware Virtualization. If it isn’t,  you might want to check through your BIOS settings to enable it. Also check for and install any BIOS updates that are available for your machine. An excellent utility to quickly find out if it’s capable of Hardware Virtualization is SecurAble. There is no installation needed…just download the file and run it.

Install VMware

If you don’t have it already, download and install VMware Workstation (link below). If you already have the free VMware Player installed, you’ll be prompted to uninstall that first. Don’t worry about losing any VMs that you created in Player as Workstation comes with a version of Player as well.

A restart is required to complete the uninstall of VMware Player.

When you get back from the restart or are just beginning the install, go through the wizard accepting the defaults of a Typical Install. You’ll also be asked to enter your license number during the process or continue with the free trial.

Again a reboot will be required to finish the installation.

Creating New Virtual Machine

Once it’s installed you’ll see the VMware Workstation icon in the Taskbar. Launch it from there and click on New Virtual Machine.

When the New Virtual Machine Wizard starts, click on Custom (advanced) configuration.

In the next step of the wizard just keep the defaults and select Next.

Now select I will install the operating system later. This will make the install process easier by configuring the correct VMware settings first and not have it do an unattended install.

For the Guest Operating System select Windows Server 2008 x64.

Give your VM a name that makes sense. If you end up installing a lot of different VMs, giving them unique names helps keep them all straight.

For this article we didn’t change the processor settings, we kept them with the defaults. This is something you might want to experiment with later though.

Now decide the amount of memory you want to allocate for the Vail VM. Keep in mind it will be using the host computer memory, so if you don’t want big slow downs with other tasks while the VM is running, you can set it to the minimum requirement which is 1GB. On our system we have some memory to spare so we bumped it up to 2GB.

For the Network Type select Use bridged networking for best performance. This will give your Vail VM its own IP address and will act like a separate machine on your network.

For the SCSI Controller type you can just leave it with the default recommended LSI Logic SAS. Again you might want to experiment with these settings at another time, but for now you can leave it.

Now you need to create a new virtual disk for Vail.

Select the disk type to be SCSI…

Now you need to select the size of the virtual hard drive. The minimum requirement is 160GB, so you’ll want to make sure you have enough disk space on the Host computer.

You can then specify the disk file, we just left it as the default.

You’ll get an overview of the settings you selected when creating the Server VM. Look it over and if something doesn’t look right you can go back at this point and make changes.

From the main Workstation screen, under Devices double-click CD/DVD so we can install the ISO image. Since Vail comes in ISO format, there is no need to burn it to disc for the VM. You might want to burn it at some point for installing it on an actual machine later.

Select Use ISO image file and browse to its location.

Now power on the machine to begin the install process of Vail.

Go through the installation as you normally would. Don’t worry if you haven’t installed it before, the process is pretty basic following the wizard. The VM will restart several times which is normal and the amount of time it takes will vary. On our machine it took around 30 minutes.

After the install process has completed click the I Finished Installing button.

During the installation process, it didn’t take up too many resources on our Core i3 desktop, but once you start using Vail, it will use the Host’s resources you allocated for it.

Now that Vail is installed on VMware Workstation you can log in and start using it. At thePress CTRL+ALT+DELETE screen select VM \ Send Ctrl+Alt+Del from the toolbar.

Now you can log into your new virtual Vail Server.

VMware Tools

Now you’ll want to install VMware Tools which will enhance the VM experience. From the toolbar go to VM \ Install VMware Tools.

When the AutoPlay screen comes up click on Run setup.exe to installed the tools.

Now run through the VMware Tools wizard and install it accepting the defaults.

Another restart will be required to complete the installation of VMware Tools.

There you go! You can now test out the beta version of Windows Home Server virtually. If you want to test out clients, you could create another virtual machine and connect it. You’ll also be able to RDP into the virtual server so you can test out the new features. If you already have WHS Version 1 Connecter software installed on the host machine, you won’t be able to install the Connecter Software.

 

VMware Player

Remember at the beginning of this article we mentioned that any VMs you had setup in the free VMware player will be fine? Well that is true provided the install goes through successfully without and errors. You can access VMware Player from the Start Menu \ All Programs \ VMware folder.

On our tests, all of the VMs we had previously setup worked without any issues.

Conclusion

That is all there is to it! The process is fairly easy since everything is wizard driven. You just need to make sure to follow the steps in the right order and select the correct options. Now you can enjoy testing out Vail without worrying about having an extra machine to run it on. Remember that Vail is still in Beta and at this point, you definitely don’t want to get rid of Version 1 and replace it with Vail. If you don’t have a license for Workstation they do offer a 30 day free trial so you can at least play around with Vail for a month.