Yesterday, I wrote an article on a project being funded in the UK to snoop on private netizens “just to make sure” they’re behaving themselves. I also touched briefly on some ways to protect yourself and keep your communications private. Well today, I’m going to go a little more into details on setting up a crypto system on your laptop or PC to make sure all your messages are only read by the people you want to read them.

OK - so you’re sat in front of your laptop eager to start. The package we’ll be installing today is called GPG (Gnu Privacy Guard) which is a play on the original standard, which was initially introduced by a program called PGP (Pretty Good Privacy). So first a quick outline of what PGP is, and how it works:

Public Key Cryptography

Firstly, one of the systems employed by PGP, and therefore GPG (as it’s based around the same standard), is one called “Public Key Cryptography” - also known as Asymmetric Cryptography. This form of crypto eliminates the need to transfer the key to decrypt a message from Person A (Alice) to Person B (Bob). In the traditional Private Key Cryptography, if Alice wanted to send an encrypted message to Bob, she would encrypt it with her Private key. She would then send Bob the encrypted message. The problem is that she still needs to send him her key so that Bob can decrypt it.

And there lies the problem. You could argue if Alice has a secure channel to send the key to decrypt the message to Bob, she could also use the same channel to send the message unencrypted! In steps Public Key Cryptography:

As the name suggests, there is a “public” key - a key that anybody can have - in fact the more people that have it the better. When you use a Public Key Cryptography system (like GPG) you will create a key-pair: A public key and a private key. The public key, as I’ve said, anybody can have and it has only one purpose - to encrypt messages. Once the message has been encrypted it can only be decrypted with the private key. Think about that for a second. Alice wants to send a message to Bob. She encrypts the message with Bob’s public key and sends the message. The only key that can decrypt that message is Bob’s private key. Eliminating the need to transfer a secret key between the two people. The reason it works is to do with maths, and a bit beyond this article - but needless to say the two keys are related to each other in a way that makes it impossible to derive one from the other. So where does GPG fit into all of this?

Well now you have a good handle on the concepts of Public Key Crytography, you too will need to create a key-pair when you start using GPG. You will also need to give your public key to anyone who wants to communicate with you. There are also Key Servers on the internet that act as giant repositories of public keys - searchable from within the GPG Key Manager - you can add your newly created key for the world to see a little later.

Next page - Installing the Software

£1 Billion has already been ploughed into a monitoring system in the UK that could make every user of technology in the country a target for Big Brother.

The system, based in a building in Benhall, and reported by TechSnake in July, is being funded to intercept all email, SMS and internet traffic to the tune of £12 Billion, once running. Reported in a post on the This Is Gloucestershire website, the move has caused councillors and MPs to question the Government’s morality.

I, personally, can’t believe what is happening. In a modern society too. It is the civil right of every person to have private communications with each other without the government spying over their shoulders. This typical attitude by government agencies is of course wrapped up in the “threat of terrorism” cliché, that is starting to wear just a little too thin. Preventing terrorism is important, but not to the detriment of every other law-abiding citizen. The fishing net mentality is ridiculous - the process is already in place whereby a government agency can get a court order to track individual’s messages for potential terrorism involvement - the government doesn’t need to employ this level of privacy invasion. So what can we do about this - in the UK and globally?

Well of course you can set up an e-petition on number10.gov.uk and you can also voice your opinion to your local MP, to make sure it’s raised in the Houses of Parliament - our civil liberties shouldn’t be taken for granted. For people outside the UK, I would do some research if I were you into current government projects - you may be shocked that something similar is happening in your country. However, I think it’s probably too late for us in the UK even now to do anything about it (although I’m open for comments on this) - the government have already invested £1 Billion of our money into the scheme, so they’re unlikely to back out. All we can do is protect ourselves in the future.

So what can we do to protect our privacy? As regard to SMS messages, I think they are pretty much open to interception, there is nothing we can do to prevent the government from looking at our text messages. Of course, the most important thing is not to send anything important over SMS - passwords, bank details and any other sensitive information shouldn’t be sent over non-secure networks anyway.. And I’m sure we all make sure we’re careful, right? Most of us don’t, I know (I’ve sent passwords myself using a text message). Well maybe now we’ll start to change our attitudes a little - maybe we’ll remember when sending it, that there is potentially a middle man snooping on our private conversations.

Web traffic can be secured quite easily, although the methods at the moment mean you will see bandwidth degradation (and that’s the main reason people try it, then go back to unsecured internet access). I am of course talking about Tor & The Onion Network. If you’re unfamiliar with Tor, it is a piece of software that implements a secure network, so you can browse with anonymity - and was created with just this problem in mind. The Tor software routes your web traffic through an onion router network - a special kind of network where each router doesn’t know the original source of the request - essentially making you anonymous.. If you want to get your hands on the Tor software, which also includes a nice Firefox plugin - to switch between secure and unsecure modes, you can visit the Tor Project. The site will explain in more detail the fundamentals of Tor, and the Onion network - plus it has a lot of documentation, and details of how to volunteer for the cause.

So now we come to email. Believe it or not, it was probably easier to protect your email 5 years ago than it is now - and that’s purely because of habits people (including myself) have adopted since. For instance, a lot of people don’t use a desktop-based client anymore, which is relatively easy to integrate with encryption software. Instead, their email is held “in the cloud” either with GMail, Yahoo Mail, or any of the other web-based email services. What can you do to protect the content of sensitive emails if you’re sending by these methods? Unfortunately it’s not that straightforward.

One option you do have is GnuPG - or Gnu Privacy Guard. GnuPG is a project that implements the OpenPGP standard. If you’re unfamiliar with cryptography, I would suggest reading the very good Wikipedia pages on PGP and on Public Key Crytography. For MS Windows users, there is a version called GPG4Win - and this has integration for Outlook 2003 & MS Explorer - for encrypting files on your system. However these options require you to install the package, create a key-pair, encrypt your text by copying and pasting (if you’re using web-based email), and sending the message. This assumes that the person you’re sending to is also a user of PGP or GPG and has your public key. It would be so much nicer if encryption was already integrated straight into your webmail - unfortunately it looks like there are no plans by Google or Yahoo to do this.

Well there are people that have thought of these problems, and have gone part way to a solution. There is a program called “FireGPG” which integrates into Firefox (what do you mean you’re not using Firefox yet?) and gives you the option to encrypt or decrypt text on the fly, by right-clicking on the page and choosing what you want to do. And in Gmail it gets even better - you are presented with a row of buttons related to encrypting and signing the email next to your regular Send button. Now all you have to do is send an email to all your friends and get them to do the same - assuming it won’t be intercepted of course..

So the upshot of all this is, come to terms with the fact that everything you send over an unsecure network (the internet) is always going to be read. Accept that. And anything you don’t want to be read, other than by the recipient, encrypt by the means I’ve said. Also, text messages should never be used to send anything sensitive.

Keep posted, as I’ll be doing a tutorial on using GPG / FireGPG with Windows very soon.

Ever found yourself wandering around the internet when you stumble into something that you can’t tear yourself away from? Me too - enter Tankball 2!

You start off by picking a name for your tank, selecting your team colour and away you go! The controls are very simple, with the cursors controlling your direction (including your turret) and CTRL used for fire. There are power-ups over the map, such as a flame ball, and a speed boost. Controlling the turret is a little tricky to begin with, but soon becomes second nature after a few minutes. Addictive fun, especially when you pwn the map! Play the game now!

The makers of World of Warcraft (WoW) have won a settlement today from a company who created a bot to “level-up” players of the popular online MMORPG.

The software, called MMOGlider, gives players of WoW the opportunity to automate tedious tasks to increase their abilities and ultimately have a more powerful avatar. Players that signed up to WoW agreed under the T’s & C’s to not use utilities or methods other than the normal gameplay to level-up their players. The creators of MMOGlider, MDY have to pay damages of $6 Million to Blizzard after an estimated 100,000 copies of the WoW bot have already been sold - which works out at $60 a copy (MDY sold the software for $30). The BBC have the full story here.

News has emerged that Valve will be releasing a demo of its 4 player co-op zombie shooter Left 4 Dead. The demo, which should be out shortly before release, will more than likely be the first two maps of the game. The two missions start outside in the streets and later lead you into a subway station.

Left 4 Dead will be out on Xbox360 and PC with rumours of a PS3 version later to follow (not confirmed by Valve). The game will be available Nov 18th on Steam and the 21st in the shops.

The search engine we all know and love has turned 10 years old today.

It’s odd to think that they’ve been around for only ten years to be honest - Google is intertwined with our online lives everywhere now. I personally use GMail, of course, Reader, Notebook, Analytics, Sitemaps, Video and Youtube, Maps and Earth, Chat - not to mention their search. In fact I can’t think of anything more convenient than everything under one Google account. How they make money I don’t think I’ll ever understand, but I guess if the advertisers want to pay the sort of money they do, who am I to argue - especially if I’m the one to benefit! Then there’s the browser & mobile OS markets with Chrome & Android respectively. The last ten years have been good for Google, and the future is looking very bright too. Happy Birthday Google!

Well, I can now say the problem is solved and it is in no way down to EA’s help. A member of the team at DICE, the company behind the much anticipated Battlefield Heroes game, read my article on techsnake.com and contacted me directly through the website.

Not only were the guys courteous, helpful, and dedicated (he was still helping me at 9.30pm Stockholm time!) but after a few emails he sorted the problems and I’m able to log into the beta test forums on the site. Proof that support isn’t that difficult once you have some intelligent people behind it.

I have been a long time owner of EA Sports and Electronic Arts games generally for many years. I have the Battlefield series (apart from 2142) and I’ve enjoyed the Need for Speed games (the older ones more, I must admit.) I have had problems with games in the past, but never had to use EA’s support - and I’m counting my blessings now.

I have friends and family who told me in the past that EA were really bad supporting their products, but I’ve never had first-hand experience until now. I always thought that the reports on the internet, or by my friends were blown out of proportion - to make a much juicier story. However, I now have first-hand knowledge of how bad it really is. Don’t get me wrong, I’m sure if the problem is a very simple one the support staff would be absolutely perfect at sorting it all out - however if the problem actually requires any amount of thought then you can rule out an intelligent answer. Let me outline my problem:

I recently won a key for the Battlefield Heroes beta. When you win the key, you have to set up a security layer username and password, and attach the key to an EA account. The security layer username and password allow you to log into the beta website and the forums on that website. The beta website allows you to download the latest build and play, and the forums are a place to discuss bugs and enhancements for the game. This is when everything went wrong (for me).

The username and password are the same for the main site and the forums. However, I was unable to log into the forums when I initially signed up. The main site was fine - and I could play the beta without problems. However, when I went to report a bug to the team, the forums were not available. Entering the username and password correctly 50 times in a row did not help matters. I knew the problem had to be a setup issue - the forum wasn’t accepting my username and password because it had no record of me - I could have typed in the same username and password 500 times and the result would be the same (and in total I probably have by now). So I decide to contact EA support for “help” - Of course I would have used the forums if I was able, but I had no other choice..

So I send, what I think, is a nice email, basically asking for help but letting them know, there’s probably not a lot they can do, so if they could forward the email on. Below is the factual part from the support email, which doesn’t contain usernames and things!

I got a reply 2 days later asking me for the information I had given in my first email - which lead me to think that I was perhaps talking to the wrong people, straight away. So I provided the information for a second time, and repeated what I had said in the first email, but I finish with (because I’m starting to get a feeling for the support staff’s ability to solve these kinds of problems):

Now I’m thinking, right I’ve made that clear, this should be a simple matter of forwarding an email to another department in the huge EA empire so they can sort it out - I was genuinely not expecting any more contact from the EA support staff, but perhaps something directly from DICE (the creators of Battlefield Heroes). Instead, no, I receive another email back from the staff at EA. They suggest that I should use a different login. A login that I hadn’t created. I tried this of course (I was getting desperate at this point) and surprise surprise it didn’t work. Funnily enough, the username they asked me to try was actually one of the character names I had created on the Beta site - so again I was thinking, maybe just maybe, I’m getting closer to a solution - this was of course a stupid thought.

So I reply back that it didn’t work, I tried all combinations of usernames and passwords I could think of, with and without their suggestion. I’m in IT support, so I’m used to blitzing a problem from all angles until I get an answer! 3 days go by and I hear nothing. So I decide to write an email to express my opinion on the matter - as I felt the support was starting to trail off..

I receive no reply. For a week. And then an email pops into my inbox, asking me to fill out a survey about my “experience” with EA’s support department. Big mistake. I filled it out, and in the any-other-info box at the end they were subjected to a large essay by me about how simple the problem was, their bad reputation and their inability to support people. A day later I receive an update on the support ticket:

Wow - these generic answers are great aren’t they? Especially that “getting you back in the game” bit - good place to push your company tag-line, eh?. This is obviously some follow-up to the bad support questionnaire I filled out - is it supposed to make everything better though? I don’t care about assurances at this point, I just want it fixed. So I think, well I’ll leave it at that for the time being, if somebody is on the case, it might take a few more days (see I still haven’t given up the faith completely, although I’m pretty damn close).

And then I open my email this morning.. My jaw dropped, I go speechless for a minute. I blink once - twice. Then a tiny laugh starts to creep out of my throat. It grows and grows until I’m laughing like a maniac. And then I say to myself “WTF!!!??” Here is the final response to my problem, which tidies everything up nice and neatly:

Thank-you Sean M - That’s that fixed then, eh?

This just goes to show the ridiculous place EA support finds themselves in. And sure I know the game is a beta, Sean, but that’s not the point is it? The point is that I told you people over and over again that you can’t help me, just forward the email on. But this seemed too difficult. Also if Sean had bothered to read the previous emails he wouldn’t have made such a stupid mistake. Maybe the infrastructure and communication isn’t there for the support staff - maybe they don’t know how to forward emails - maybe they’re told at all costs to only do what it says on the piece of paper in front of them - don’t use any initiative, and God forbid thinking, “Hmm, maybe my Manager should help me with this one.” Or maybe they did and their Manager is still trying to figure out where the send button is in Outlook. Whatever the reasons. This problem which would take 5 minutes to solve, from my own personal experience - if I had the correct contacts, has taken EA 2 weeks to go around in circles and get nowhere. Outstanding.

But does this effect me buying their games? Of course it does - if EA are attached to anything now, the first feeling I get is that of incompetence. And after this subsides, I’m left with an overwhelming desire to avoid the game. If I ever need to contact EA’s support department again about anything more complicated than inserting a CD into my PC, I think I will be disappointed with the results.

Think of the unhappiest times with your computer.. What happened during those times? What would cause your face to freeze and your jaw to drop? In my experience it has almost always been because data was lost. It’s normally the realisation that everything you had was gone - when you stare blankly at the computer for 5 minutes dumb-struck. Maybe you went into a folder in your My Documents that was, until yesterday, full of those really important files you were doing for work. Or maybe you went to power on your PC and you had one of those horrible error messages from Windows, that essentially means “your system has gone bye-bye.”

After the realisation sinks in, you also try to think if you have any backups - if you’re smart you will of course followed this simple tutorial to create a daily backup and feel comfortable that you can get to all of your old files. If you’re not then the sinking feeling will continue and you will have some explaining to do to the boss/friend/other half.

This tutorial is very simplistic - I use the method on my work’s Windows PC, and it’s perfect for what I need. If you need more power over your backups, perhaps with differential, or encryption flavours, I would encourage you to use the built-in backup program for Windows (Start->Run->ntbackup) or download one of the many open-source alternatives.

How To Create A Simple Backup Batch File In Windows:

Firstly you will need to get a hold of an invaluable (and free) utility from Microsoft called “Robocopy”. It’s funny because you think of RoboCop when you use it. It comes with the Server 2003 Resource Kit, so you probably won’t have a copy on your system. There are lots of other useful almost linux-like command line tools that come as part of the whole package - and no - don’t worry, you don’t need to have Windows Server 2003 to install it - it will be fine on XP or Vista.

Once you’ve downloaded and installed the kit, we need to create the batch file containing your backup commands. Firstly, double check that file extensions are visible, by going to the Control Panel, double clicking Folder Options, and un-checking the “Hide extensions for known file types” box in the View Tab. Next, right-click a blank space in your (My) Documents folder and select “New->Text Document”. Windows will create a file called “New Text Document.txt” - rename this to “backup.bat” and we’re ready to edit it..

Now comes the part where you need to work out what you want to backup and where you want to back it up to. You have a few options - To the same hard drive, but a different folder; to another hard drive on your computer; an external hard drive; or a hard drive on the network. The more detached you can make your backup the better. If your current hard drive goes down, and you had decided to backup to the same hard drive, but in a different folder, your backup would be about as useful as a chocolate teapot. I personally backup to another PC, that is in the same room - I figure this is good enough - especially as I burn off a DVD with all of my documents anyway every month or so. Have a think about it and work out the best place to store your backup.

With the pathnames at hand (source and destination for your backup) we need to edit the batch file. Right click the backup.bat in your documents folder and select edit. Fill it with one of more lines of the robocopy command below (depending on how many things you want to backup) - I’ll explain what the switches are afterwards.

robocopy /e /zb /copyall /purge /xo /r:3 /w:5 “C:\Documents and Settings\Paul\My Documents” “\\ServerName\Paul’s Backup\My Documents”

Broken down: The two strings in quotes at the end are the source directory, followed by the destination directory. Robocopy will copy all files and folders inside the source directory, including empty folders, all the way down that particular directory tree. It will retry locked files 3 times, waiting 5 seconds between each retry. It will copy all security settings for the files (permissions etc) and it will only copy new files (which will be everything to start with - subsequent runs of the command will copy only files that have changed since.) The /purge switch is optional, and has a big impact on your backup. /purge will remove anything in the backup, that has been deleted in the source folder. I’m very careful with what I delete, so I’m comfortable using it. You may not be so comfortable, or may want the extra security of knowing even the stuff you didn’t want will still be kept in the backup.

And that’s it. The file is ready to be run. Simply double click from your documents folder to set it into action.

To make it a daily backup, that’s automatic, you can setup a schedule very simply with the one built into windows. Go to Start->Accessories->System Tools->Scheduler and follow the simple to use wizard, making sure the command to run is your newly created batch file.

In fact, what’s probably scarier, is that if you search for the Yume Neko Smile cat you get lots of people scared by it, rather than an actual advert to buy the thing. Maybe everyone has risen up and burnt the factory down, to save humanity. Look below for the “First Yume Neko Smile cat in Sweden”? and the last, no doubt…

Hearing the servos whirring and the badly sampled purring is eerie.. Aaagh! Save us!

With news that Google have just got that little bit closer to providing users of Google’s Maps and Earth a more detailed than ever view of where we live, I wonder if it’s all such a good thing..

The GeoEye satellite, 423 miles about the Earth, peers down as you’re outside doing the gardening. Little do you know that while you prune your petunias, the large lens of a hi-resolution camera is watching your every move, down to a 50cm resolution. What does that mean to the average person?

This new innovation is great to see - as technology is pushed to it’s limits - but like Jurassic Park, people are so preoccupied with whether or not they could, they never stopped to think if they should. I’m all for getting a better idea of where we live and where we’re going, so we can pinpoint places a little easier, or help us with directions to an unknown area - but isn’t this getting a little too close? If you pointed the telephoto lens of your camera into somebody’s back garden, you would be in court on privacy charges - but it seems as though if you’re looking in from above it’s fair game.

Well it turns out Jay Erox thought the same thing, and wrote a utility to fix it. Download Taskbar Shuffle (XP & Vista) and you can drag your Taskbar buttons around to your hearts content. My life is complete again - for the time being at least.

I know, we shouldn’t be getting the pallbearers ready just yet, but after the release of Google’s Chrome it does raise the question of how it will affect Firefox & the Mozilla Foundation.

The Foundation is largely funded by Google so it presents a complicated situation for the two groups. On one side you have Google, with an open-source, Google branded browser - and on the other you have a foundation that receives funding from Google, with their own browser already available and widely adopted. Competition you could say. So can Google justify investing in Mozilla when they have Chrome?

You could argue that the two entities are approaching the browser from different angles. In my opinion, Google are looking to create a modern, stable browser, capable of running their web apps as quickly as possible (hence the V8 rethink), and at the same time make it all open-source for the good of other browsers that might want to adopt the code. Whereas Firefox is looking to be the Swiss Army Knife of the browser market with add-ins that make it capable of doing everything you need (and at the same time making it slower because of this), a really good grip of web standards and a very large and dedicated community base.

Both of these browsers are competing with Internet Explorer’s dominance (and to a certain extent Opera and Safari). They’re aren’t fighting side by side, however, but rather in their own respective corners - and I can see only one winner from the two if Google want to get serious. But are Google going to get serious? It’s interesting when you realise the exclusive Google search contract in Firefox - based on referrals (which by the way generated 85% of Mozilla’s funding in 2006 - or $56 Million) is up for renewal in November of this year. Is it just coincidence that Chrome has been launched now?

Google Chrome was made available for download, by the public, from here, during a press conference & webcast at Google HQ (which I was lucky enough to view), which detailed the features of the new browser.

A few things I noticed during the conference, was a lot of direct comparison between Internet Explorer and Google Chrome - intentional of course as it is the most popular browser, but interesting how Firefox, Opera or Safari weren’t mentioned at all. The tests were impressive however, with rendering times much quicker, and a basic Java benchmark literally making IE look like a Penny Farthing in the middle of a Grand Prix. Another thing that was mentioned quite a lot was the open-source nature of Chrome - another side-swipe in Microsoft’s direction I thought.

Next up, the “Omni-bar” as it’s called was demoed quite a bit - showing the power of search in your browser. For instance, not only will the Omni-bar intelligently learn your browsing habits, but it will also make a note of search engines within websites when you use them. So if you search on Amazon a lot, Google Chrome will remember your preference and give you the option to search amazon straight from the bar. The other options you’re likely to see pop up when you start typing are pages you’ve historically been to, stuff in your favourites, and google suggestions (where I think their ads are really going to make an impact). Also, if Chrome thinks you’re generally interested in finding things with your search engine, the results will be the search results page you would normally see. All very similar to Firefox’s Awesome Bar, as it’s been called, but I think a bit better.

Another really nice feature that was showed off was the ability to take a web page and turn it into an “Application Shortcut” - blurring the distinction between Desktop and Cloud. For instance, if you’re the sort of person always with a Gmail tab open in your browser, you can create an Application Shortcut to it, which will be placed on your desktop. When you double click the shortcut, it loads the webpage in Chrome, but without all the web buttons and address bars and things - stuff you don’t need if you just want a window to check your email in.

During the conference, the browser was made available for download, so I nipped over to the download link I posted earlier, and grabbed a copy for testing.

After the initial quick download and install, the initial thing that hits you is the speed. The speed of the browser is a lot quicker than Internet Explorer, and is a little quicker than Firefox. The other thing that hits you is the clean feel to the browser. No unwanted buttons or gizmos, just the normal forward, back & refresh buttons, plus a page button (for creating new pages or adjusting how the current one is rendered) and a config button, for changing the browser options.

When starting up it imports browser settings from anything else it finds on your system, and then you’re pretty much in. As you use the browser it learns your favourite places - with the pages you like the most displayed, by default, on your homepage.

I think it will take a few weeks to fully test the browser and to notice any problems arising or bugs appearing, but in the meantime I can say I am happy with the overall feel to the browser - and it renders techsnake.com perfectly too! In fact, it renders it so well, this post is being written with Chrome right now.

To download the browser either visit here or here. To visit the newly opened code project “chromium” go here. Remember folks it’s still Beta, so treat it as such!

Download Google Chrome