attn: Admins

[aquaholic]

Would it be possible to increase the timeout period for typing a reply? Almost always, I get asked to refresh and log in again when I press the submit button. (Often losing what I've typed).

[SouthernStarr]

This isn’t happening to me, but I will ask our webmaster, Charles to address this.

[Matt24]

Would it be possible to increase the timeout period for typing a reply? Almost always, I get asked to refresh and log in again when I press the submit button. (Often losing what I've typed).

I've noticed this problem sometimes too. Lately I've been doing a control-C on my text before sending, just in case that happens.

[Charles]

I think that's a reasonable request. The timeout period for replying to a post was previously set to 30min. I changed it to 60min. Any more than that and it creates problems in other parts of the board

[cindy]

Thanks Charles

[aquaholic]

I don't think I was exceeding 30 minutes previously but thank you Charles & Cindy for extending the timeout.

[fly4koi]

It might be calculated from the logon time, I now just check the "remember me" and I stay logged on.

[aquaholic]

Could well be...?
You are a trusting soul fly4koi . Cyber hacking, malware, physical phone theft is on the rise. I would never store details, identity theft does serious damage daily. I have different usernames (and passcodes) on each account. I delete cookies and history daily. I use one unique browser on one device purely for online banking, nothing else. Pretty sure I will still get hacked one day.

The extended timeout has made a difference.

[fly4koi]

Oh I can go on and on about cybersecurity...it's what I used to do for a living.

[aquaholic]

One benefit of having different usernames for different online accounts is that simplifies where unwanted data harvesting occurs.

Unfortunately I get a lot of american centric spam emails to 'aquaholic'. Lots of home improvement, window, roofing, finance, matchmaking etc (the usual). Many have malware. It's easy to filter out but perhaps email address privacy/security could be beefed up?

Yes Fly4Koi, I work in IT for a very large research University in Australia. Our cybersecurity team are 2 rooms over. Quite scary how active they are.

[Matt24]

Oh I can go on and on about cybersecurity...it's what I used to do for a living.

... I work in IT for a very large research University in Australia. ...

Small world!

[fly4koi]

Yes, you must not be re-using passwords, and actually it's also good practice to have different alias on different sites, though then you'd use a password manager with randomized secrets so it's safe. Obviously MFA is a must have. These days I tend to use SSO with BIG companies to reduce the overall risk, but YMMV.

[GrandBub]

I agree about the whole cyber security thing, it’s wild how much stuff can get compromised if you’re not careful. Using unique usernames and passcodes for every account is key, and yeah, a password manager can help keep it all straight without the headache. And multi-factor authentication (MFA) should be non-negotiable these days. It’s scary how many risks are out there, even with the best precaution.

[aquaholic]

I'm not sure this amateur KOI group is the best place to discuss cyber security.

Some security measures are better than none BUT;
Many well known and large password manager companies have been hacked and breached already - do a search.

Spyware & Malware software stealthily installed like keystroke loggers love password managers. In fact updating passwords only helps them! Some viruses only need you to visit their website to get installed.

Biometric security like face and fingerprint recognition are easily overcome if someone physically takes your phone from you ... Similarly Multi Factor Authebtication (MFA) often goes to your phone or email which may be compromised/taken.

Some breaches are from brute force, so why provide them the same username?
Sometimes Identity Theft is all that is needed for crooks to change your secure login credentials, cell phone numbers, Google & Facebook signin. You get locked out and can't regain ownership.

A large scale hack of our 4 largest Australian banks was announced today, several thousand customers affected.

With developments in AI and quantum computing, it's getting easier for hacking to occur. Even cryptocurrency and 256 bit encryption strengths will be vunerable in the next few years.

What a gloomy post. I'm going to feed my fish and get off the computer for a while ( after I delete history and purge cookies).

Posting tineout is fantastic now though !

[Artemis]

@fly4koi @aquaholic One of my parents has dementia. They recently replied to a phishing email and entered all their credit card info. Luckily a sibling occasionally audits the credit card statement, caught it, and submitted a fraud report to the CC company. Any advice for dealing with this? We might be able to get the parent transitioned to a new email address, but it's only a matter of time before it's out there enough that phishing will target it.

Also trying to figure out if there's a free or low-cost email service that has a high level of phish filtering (see, it's on topic! Sort of!).

[aquaholic]

Dementia is a terrible illness, my heart goes out to your family.

The simplest solution is usually the most reliable. For all my online purchases, I use a prepaid mastercard. You need to put funds into the account for the card to make payment. It's a little extra management but I keep the balance low and only top up when I want to buy something.
If a shady retailer copies the card details or a hacker gets into their database, this card won't pay out much and is easily replaced so the compromised card details are worthless.

This works both ways, your parent will find it easy to use and their exposure can be minimised.

I'm glad your bank acted quickly. The replacement card will have different numbers.
I keep my credit account separate from my savings account at the same bank. So 2 different cards. If one card gets stolen, cancelling that card won't affect the other account.

I'm going to sound paranoid now, but I keep a different bank as backup because bank outages are getting more common. It's unlikely both banks would be unavailable at the same time.

[aquaholic]

The prepaid card is generic, it only has "Valued Cardholder" as a name, available many places, grwat for overseas travel as well as online purchases.

[Matt24]

... Many well known and large password manager companies have been hacked and breached already ...

I always wondered how telling someone (who I don't know) all of my passwords would be good for my cyber security.

[fly4koi]

@fly4koi @aquaholic One of my parents has dementia. They recently replied to a phishing email and entered all their credit card info. Luckily a sibling occasionally audits the credit card statement, caught it, and submitted a fraud report to the CC company. Any advice for dealing with this? We might be able to get the parent transitioned to a new email address, but it's only a matter of time before it's out there enough that phishing will target it.

Also trying to figure out if there's a free or low-cost email service that has a high level of phish filtering (see, it's on topic! Sort of!).

Sorry to hear that, it's tough.

Set their DNS to Quad9 (9.9.9.9) which provides good levels of protection against bad URL, email-wise I mainly uses GMail these days, you should be able to forward or pay a little to route through old email accounts to GMail and rely on its filter.

[danzcool]

I always wondered how telling someone (who I don't know) all of my passwords would be good for my cyber security.

yeah, one ring to rule them all... I innately distrust large cloud companies... think google, apple, microsoft (azure), Amazon (AWS)... seems like being big would make them a bigger target, I mean if I were running a crypto ransom corporation, I would of course let the bots target the easy marks, then fedicate the top talent towards finding a zero day in the big companies clouds or part of their supply chain... Then big paydays... and probably later get hit by a cruise missile for attacking the wrong people.