Security Tips for the Holiday Season

Happy Online Shopping –

5 Security Tips for the Holiday Season

The holiday season is almost upon us, which means the holiday shopping season is also almost upon us.

And as always, it’s bound to be a crazy time of scrambling for the biggest and best deals, both in stores and online.

But while your wallet is destined to take a hit as you stack up on gifts for your family and friends, you want to make sure cybercrooks don’t make your list of people who will be receiving presents this year.

Sadly, with 2014 being labeled by some as ‘The Year of the Hack’, it may be easier for them than ever before to do just that. Fortunately, armed with some general security know-how, you can make their hacking jobs significantly harder while making your online shopping experience slightly less stressful.

Here are 5 online shopping tips to stay secure this holiday season:

1.Be Breachophobic

This one applies to traditional holiday shopping as well…

With the influx of massive data breaches across a wide variety of industries, no company seems to be safe. And popular retailers have been hit particularly hard (looking at you, Target, Michaels, Home Depot, Staples, KMart, etc).

Unfortunately, these breaches don’t show any signs of slowing down. Perhaps even more, unfortunately, as a result of this, consumers are experiencing ‘breach fatigue’ and not changing their buying behavior even in the midst of all these attacks (according to a recent report from Ponemon).

But in this case, fear is actually a good thing. It keeps you on your security toes. Don’t have the ‘yeah, a lot of people are impacted, but it won’t happen to me’ attitude when it comes to breaches.

If you learn of a breach at a company whose store you recently bought something in or at a bank that you use, take a proactive approach. Call you credit card company and have a new card issued ASAP. Call your bank and find our what steps you need to take to protect yourself. These are not the most fun activities, but they could save you from a potential financial/data loss nightmare.

Likewise, if you’re planning to go shopping at a particular retailer and you find out they’ve recently experienced a data breach, look to do your shopping elsewhere. Ok, maybe you won’t be able to take advantage of that exclusive Black Friday deal, but most of the competing big-name stores will likely have something similar. Plus, what good is that brand-new big-screen TV you got for a ‘steal’ if attackers got access to your credit card number?

2.Beware of enticing ‘Amazing Deal’ links in your email inbox

If a deal looks too good to be true, it probably is.

Phishing emails are still a popular tool for cybercriminals. The difference these days, however, is that they look more legitimate than they did in the past. Obvious red-flags like blatant grammatical errors or strange email addresses from the sender are less common and the bad guys are finding more creative ways to get you onto their fake, information-stealing pages.

An example of a UPS Phishing email (Source: PC Mag)

And the fact that the holiday season has many legitimate great deals actually benefits cybercriminals, giving them a perfect opportunity to blend in with a phishing email that would normally seem out of place.

So don’t just immediately click a link in that ‘great deal’ email that popped up in your inbox. Verify that the sender is legitimate, check for grammatical errors and inconsistencies, and even compare it with another email you’ve gotten from that company in the past that you know was legitimate. If there’s something odd or out-of-place, don’t pull the purchase trigger and potentially open yourself up for identity theft or money loss.

3.Know your surroundings

Just because you can connect to WiFi almost anywhere doesn’t mean you should connect to WiFi any time it’s available.

If you’re doing any of your holiday shopping online, it’s really in your best wishes to do it over a secure network.

As appealing as it may seem to knock out some of your holiday shopping as you’re sitting sipping your mocha at that coffee shop, know that public WiFi hotspots are just that – public. That means anybody can connect to them, including an attacker looking to catch a hapless holiday shopper unawares.

There’s a much lower chance someone will break into your network at home, unless of course your home network isn’t password protected. Which brings up another good tip – password-protect your WiFi network at home. And make sure to actually use a strong password! No ‘password’ for your password.

4.Mobile Devices are vulnerable, too

PC, Mac, Android, iOS…it doesn’t matter. No device/operating system is malware or hacker-proof. Let me rephrase: that means mobile devices aren’t in the clear! No, not even the iPhone is safe; remember the recent WireLurker malware?

So if you’re thinking: “I’ll just do my all my online holiday shopping on my tablet to avoid the chances of getting hacked”, don’t do that. It’s a flawed mindset.

Mobile is a hot target for hackers at the moment. Remember that today’s mobile devices aren’t the bricks of yesteryear that you used to make calls and play Snake. Nope, today’s smartphones (and especially tablets) are bonafide computing machines, and protecting them in the same way you’d protect your computer isn’t an idea that should be ignored.

But aside from installing mobile security (which you should definitely do), there are other actions you can take to mitigate mobile risks, a major one being not jailbreaking/rooting your devices and/or using third-party app stores. Easier to do and access on Android devices, these third-party app stores are often riddled with malicious apps that can steal your information and dollars.

5.Safeguard all your devices

Even if you’re intelligent in your browsing and downloading habits, having computer ‘street smarts’ isn’t enough anymore. New threats are emerging seemingly by the hour, vulnerabilities like HeartBleed and Shellshock are coming into light, and if you fall victim to an encrypting ransomware (that seems to be ever-evolving) with no sort of protection, you’re paying hundreds of dollars to get your files back or paying even more for a new computer.

But let’s bring it back to the holiday shopping topic. Take the fake phishing email scenario, for example. Even if you take the aforementioned steps to verify the validity of the email, you’re not completely out of the ‘cyber’ woods. Like I said, hackers are becoming increasingly more clever and those phishing emails are often very difficult (if not flat-out impossible) to distinguish from the real thing. You need an intelligent security solution to have your back in case you get tricked despite your best efforts.

The holiday shopping season is less than a week away so be sure that you’re ready and that your devices are secure. Follow these basic online shopping security tips and go out there and buy those presents…carefully, yet confidently! And by ‘go out there’, I mean on the internet. That way, you can avoid this:

(Source: CNN Money)

Happy holiday shopping!

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Important Rituals to Do on New Year’s Eve

Most Important Rituals to Do on New Year’s Eve

With party planning and cooking you may forget to do the most important rituals on New Year’s Eve. Perhaps you don’t have any free minute to do at least one of these five rituals, but if you want the coming year to be successful and stress-free, let me help you. The beginning of the new year represents the whole year. By doing these five things, you will start the New Year on the right foot.

1. Let go of toxic people

Start the new year with letting go of toxic people. When you bring toxic people with you into the new year, chances are the coming year won’t be happy and positive. It’s hard to end a toxic relationship, especially with someone you love, but if that person makes you unhappy, there’s no sense in saving your relationship. Sometimes you should be selfish in order to be happy. Let them know that you don’t need them in your life anymore. One of the most important things to do on New Year’s Eve is to make a list of all toxic people you have in your life and make sure you end all toxic relationships.

2. Forgive

On New Year’s Eve you should forgive everyone, no matter what they did to you. Whether it’s your parent, husband, child, coworker, boss or best friend, they all deserve your forgiveness. You will feel much better once you forgive them. Remember no one is perfect and we all make mistakes. Just say, ‘I forgive everyone’, and see how you’ll feel. Anger and hatred are dangerous feelings that can ruin the life of the happiest person in the world. Don’t start the new year with these feelings. Keep a positive attitude and don’t dwell on past mistakes. If needed, you should also forgive yourself. Again, no one is perfect, so if you made lots of mistakes this year, forgive yourself and start thinking about your goals to achieve in the new year.

3. Make a list of the most crucial goals

Before ringing in the new year, you should set your goals for 2015. On New Year’s Even, write down the most crucial goals you want to reach in 2015, but make sure that your goals are achievable. Once you set your goals, make a plan for achieving them. This way, you will become happier and more successful in 2015 because you will know what you want and what you should do.

4. Create your budget for the next year

This step may take a lot of time on New Year’s Eve, but it’s a good sign to create a budget before ringing in the new year. The thing is, when you have a well planned budget for the next year, it can help you achieve most of your financial goals easier and faster. Consider investing some money in improving your knowledge and skills and think about the ways to make some extra money. You should also set money-savings goals for 2015 and make a plan for reaching them.

5. Give money away

It’s always a good idea to help people in need, but by giving money away on New Year’s Eve you will attract financial prosperity as well. Make a donation to shelters, give some money to homeless people, or feed stray animals on New Year’s Eve. You don’t have to spend a lot of money. Remember even one dollar can make a big difference. When you spend your money on good deeds, you attract even more money. Sure, you can help others every day, not only before the new year.

There are a few other rituals we should do on New Year’s Eve in order to have a better new year. However, I believe that these are the most important ones. What do you think? What rituals do you do on New Year’s Eve. Please, let me know!

                                       Thanks for your visit

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How to Squash Negative Thought Patterns

How to Squash Negative Thought Patterns

Suppose you have the bad habit of dwelling too much on the same negative thoughts.  And suppose there’s no outward physical manifestation associated to them.  It’s just negative thinking, like “I’m so depressed” or “I hate my job” or “I can’t do this” or “I hate being fat.”  How do you break a bad habit when it’s entirely in your mind?

There are actually quite a number of ways to decondition a negative thought pattern.  The basic idea is to replace the old pattern with a new one.  Mentally resisting the negative thought will usually backfire — you’ll simply reinforce it and make it even worse.  The more you fire those neurons in the same way, the stronger the pattern becomes.

Here’s a little method I use to break negative thought patterns.  It’s basically something I concocted from a combination of the swish pattern from NLP and a memory technique known as chaining.  I usually find the swish pattern alone to be weak and ineffective, but this method works very well for me.

Instead of trying to resist the negative thought pattern, you will redirect it.  Think of it like mental kung fu.  Take the energy of the negative thought and rechannel it into a positive thought.  With a little mental conditioning, whenever the negative thought occurs, your mind will automatically flow into the linked positive thought.  It’s similar to Pavlov’s dogs learning to salivate when the bell rang.

Here’s how it works:

Let’s assume your negative thought is subvocalization, meaning that it’s like you hear a voice in your head that says something you want to change, like, “I’m an idiot.”  If the negative thought is visual (a mental image) or kinesthetic (a gut feeling), you can use a similar process.  In many cases the thought will manifest as a combination of all three (visual, auditory, and kinesthetic).

Step 1:  Turn the negative thought into a mental image.

Take that little voice, and turn it into a corresponding mental picture.  For example, if your thought is, “I’m an idiot,” imagine yourself wearing a dunce cap, dressed very foolishly, and jumping around like a dork.  See yourself surrounded by other people all pointing at you while you shout, “I’m an idiot.”  The more you exaggerate the scene, the better.  Imagine bright colors, lots of animation, rapid movement, and even sexual imagery if it helps you remember.  Rehearse this scene over and over in your mind until you reach the point where thinking the negative thought automatically brings up this goofy imagery.

If you have trouble visualizing, you can also do the above in an auditory fashion.  Translate the negative thought into a sound, such as a jingle that you sing.  Go through the same process with sound instead of imagery.  It works either way.  I happen to prefer the visual method though.

Step 2:  Select an empowering replacement thought.

Now decide what thought you’d like to have instead of the negative one.  So if you’ve been thinking, “I’m an idiot,” maybe you’d like to replace that with “I’m brilliant.”  Choose a thought that empowers you in a way that disrupts the disempowering effect of the original negative thought.

Step 3:  Turn the positive thought into a mental image.

Now go through the same process you used in Step 1 to create a new mental scene from the positive thought.  So with the example “I’m brilliant,” you might imagine yourself standing tall, posing like Superman with your hands on your hips.  Picture a giant light bulb appearing just above your head.  The bulb turns on so bright that it’s blinding, and you see yourself yelling, “I’m bbbbbrrrrilllllllliannnntttt!”  Again, keep rehearsing this scene until merely thinking the positive line automatically brings up the associated imagery.

Step 4:  Mentally chain the two images together.

Now take the images in Step 1 and Step 3, and mentally glue them together.  This trick is used in memory techniques like chaining or pegging.  You want to morph the first scene into the second scene.  The NLP swish pattern would have you do a straight cut from one scene to the next, but I recommend you animate the first scene into the second.  A cut is very weak glue and often won’t stick.  So instead pretend you’re the director of a movie.  You have the opening scene and the closing scene, and you have to fill in the middle.  But you only have a few seconds of film left, so you want to find a way to make the transition happen as quickly as possible.

For example, one of the hecklers in the first scene might throw a light bulb at the idiot version of you.  The idiot you catches the bulb and screws it into the top of his head, wincing at the pain.  The bulb then grows into a giant bulb and turns on so bright it blinds all the hecklers.  You rip off your dorky clothing to reveal a shining white robe beneath it.  You stand tall like Superman and yell confidently, “I’m bbbbbrrrrilllllllliannnntttt!”  The hecklers fall to their knees and begin worshipping you.  Again, the more exaggeration you use, the better.  Exaggeration makes it easier to remember the scene because our brains are designed to remember the unusual.

Once you have the whole scene worked out, mentally rehearse it for speed.  Replay the whole scene over and over until you can imagine it from beginning to end in under 2 seconds, ideally in under 1 second.  It should be lightning fast, much faster than you’d see in the real world.

Step 5:  Test.

Now you need to test your mental redirect to see if it works.  It’s a lot like an HTML redirect — when you input the old negative URL, your mind should automatically redirect you to the positive one.  Merely thinking the negative thought should rapidly bring up the positive thought.  If you’ve done this correctly, you won’t be able to help it.  The negative thought is the stimulus that causes your mind to run the whole pattern automatically.  So whenever you happen to think, “I’m an idiot,” even without being fully aware of it, you end up thinking, “I’m brilliant.”

If you’ve never done visualizations like this before, it may take you several minutes or longer to go through this whole process.  Speed comes with practice.  The whole thing can literally be done in seconds once you get used to it.  Don’t let the slowness of the first time through discourage you.  This is a learnable skill like any other, and it probably will feel a bit awkward the first time.

I recommend you experiment with different types of imagery.  You’ll likely find some variations more effective than others.  Pay particular attention to association vs. dissociation.  When you’re associated in a scene, you’re imagining seeing it through your own eyes (i.e. first-person perspective).  When you’re dissociated you’re imagining seeing yourself in the scene (i.e. third-person perspective).  I usually get the best results when I dissociate in both scenes.  Your results may vary.  You may have to do some mental camera work if you switch from dissociated to associated or vice versa, but it can be done with practice.

I did a lot of this type of mental conditioning during the early 90s.  Whenever I uncovered a negative thought, I plucked it out and redirected it.  Within a few days, I had reprogrammed dozens of negative thought patterns, and pretty soon it became hard for my mind to even produce a negative thought or emotion.  Everything kept getting redirected to the positive side.  I think that’s partly why I felt so confident about starting my own business right out of college — I used mental conditioning to redirect the thoughts of self-doubt to a more can-do mindset.  I also used this a lot while in college, and I’m sure it helped me graduate faster than normal.  I still had to deal with plenty of real-world challenges, but at least I wasn’t battling my own self-doubt at the same time.

This type of mental conditioning gave me a lot more conscious control over my internal states.  Today it’s so internalized that I just do it automatically without even thinking about it.  My subconscious took over at some point, so whenever I have a thought like “I can’t,” it automatically gets twisted into “How can I?”  That’s actually supposed to happen — with enough mental conditioning practice, your subconscious will take over.  Memory experts similarly report that with practice, techniques like pegging and chaining are taken over by the subconscious, just like riding a bicycle.

Give this process a try the next time you notice yourself dwelling on a negative thought.  I think you’ll find it very empowering.  And feel free to share it with others who could use a mental pick-me-up.

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True Love

TRUE LOVE

True love

Love. Love is the greatest gift God ever gave man. Love is not wanting to go anywhere without her. Love is not caring what other people think about the two of you. Love is when you feel depressed and sickly when you're not with her. You feel like your life has no meaning or purpose without her. And that if she wasn't holding your hand you would float away to heaven from where she came. Love is caring for her physically and emotionally. It's telling her every day, anytime, anywhere, anyhow, for no just reason that you love her. Love is telling her u want to spend the rest of your life with her. Love is wanting to marry her even tho ya'll haven't been dating that long. That you would do anything and everything for her. It's the feeling that you would give up everything just to see her smile or look into her beautiful eyes or hear her soft, soothing voice. Love is pure happiness. Love is the feeling you get when all you have to do is think of her and it brings a smile to your face and a yearning to your heart. Love is not being able to think about nothing but her. Love is having the sweetest dreams about her and waking up with a smile on your face. Love is an overwhelming feeling of pure bliss when the 2 of u kiss. Love is wanting to hold her in ur arms till the end of time. Love is wishing ur time with her never ends, that your lips would be locked together forever, that she'd be in ur arms till the end of time, that u could cuddle with her for all of eternity. Love is being helplessly and deeply in love with her and knowing your love for her and your feelings for her will never change/end. Love is the world, the world is love, and she is the world to me...

Soulmate

A person with whom you have an immediate connection the moment you meet -- a connection so strong that you are drawn to them in a way you have never experienced before. As this connection develops over time, you experience a love so deep, strong and complex, that you begin to doubt that you have ever truly loved anyone prior. Your soulmate understands and connects with you in every way and on every level, which brings a sense of peace, calmness, and happiness when you are around them. And when you are not around them, you are all that much more aware of the harshness of life, and how bonding with another person in this way is the most significant and satisfying thing you will experience in your lifetime. You are also all that much aware of the beauty in life because you have been given a great gift and will always be thankful.

Finding my soulmate is the best thing that has ever happened to me; I have never felt this kind of love and understanding. We connect in so many ways, it astounds me.

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How To Attract A Healthy Relationship

How to Attract a Healthy Relationship

Have you found yourself continually attracting the same kind of unhealthy person into your life, such as people who are narcissistic or emotionally unavailable? This is the situation Connie finds herself in.
"As a child of narcissists, I've struggled for decades. My attraction to men, since the age of 14, has been to narcissists and sociopaths. I thought it was love, but really I was seeking approval. I have been healing for many years, yet as a highly sensitive person with this history, I know I may always be vulnerable. The catch is evaluating someone new with a level head, and making sound decisions before falling 'blindly' in love. What are your thoughts to attract a healthy love relationship that is not based on dependency or approval?"
Many people tend to be attracted to people who are similar to one or both of their parents. Their ego wounded self says, "If I can get a person like my mom or dad to love me, then I will be okay." The problem is that there are three different lies in this statement:

1. You can't have control over how people feel about you.
2. People who are not loving themselves won't learn to love you, no matter how loving you think you are being with them.
3. As an adult, you need to learn to love yourself to feel that you are okay. Others' love can help and support you in developing self-worth, but no one can do it for you.

So trying to get a narcissistic or emotionally unavailable person to love you and connect with you will always be a losing battle.
Attracting "a healthy love relationship that is not based on dependency or approval" naturally occurs as you learn to love yourself. The more you learn to love and value who you really are in your essence, the less you will find yourself attracted to people who are not loving or valuing themselves. As the Law of Attraction states, "Like attracts like," so the more you abandon yourself and then seek others' approval to feel okay, the more you attract other self-abandoning people.
Connie finds herself attracted to narcissists because she is coming from her own narcissistic wounded self. The wounded self in all of us as some degree of narcissism, which means that, when we are abandoning ourselves and are operating from our wounded self, we expect someone else to take responsibility for our feelings of worth and ability to love. When we are abandoning ourselves, we are operating from a low 'frequency,' and we attract other people who are also operating from a low frequency - i.e., the Law of Attraction.
When we practice Inner Bonding, learning to connect with our spiritual Guidance and operate as a loving adult who takes responsibility for our own feelings of self-worth, then we operate from a high frequency and we attract other high-frequency people - people who are also loving themselves and taking responsibility for their feelings and defining their own self-worth.
So I would say to Connie, "It's not about '... evaluating someone new with a level head, and making sound decisions before falling 'blindly' in love.' It's about becoming the kind of person you want to attract. The more you learn to connect with yourself and your spiritual Guidance, the quicker you can sense the frequency of another person."
When you are operating from your loving adult rather than from your wounded self, you can sense immediately whether someone is authentically open and loving, rather than acting open and loving. Narcissistic and emotionally unavailable people are adept at acting open, but there is a huge difference in frequency between genuinely open and caring people and people who have learned to act open and caring. The more open and caring you become with yourself, the easier it becomes to sense the truth about another person.

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/9159427

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