Reid Dossinger

Like any TechCrunch-reading web nerd, my first reaction to the "Open Graph" Facebook changes was whiny and furious. How dare they slap my name on every site that's desperate to tap into their user base? If I wanted my name on those sites, I would have signed up for them! And if I wanted to share my info from those sites with my Facebook friends, I would have individually signed in to each and every one of them, giving that site explicit permission to share with the same people I was sharing with on places like Facebook and then dealt with dozens of different settings arrangements! Maybe you can see my thought path on this issue changing there. If not, it's come to this: not only is the change not a big deal, but it's what we've been looking for from the web for years . Yes, I was surprised when I went to the Washington Post front page and was greeted with a list of the articles my Facebook friends had shared. Yeah, it was a little discomforting to go to Yelp a...

In the last couple of months, I've seen friends of mine have their email, Twitter and/or Facebook accounts used to send out spam, and I've had a couple of conversations with friends and family about how to increase their security online. This post, as you've probably already guessed, is a package of those conversations to help out those folks that still think of these issues as "computer stuff", when they are simple and necessary steps to living a more secure online life. If you consider yourself a non-techie, read these and incorporate them into your online life. They'll bring you a lot more security and peace of mind. If these are things you already know, I'd love to hear from you in the comments. What things have you done to persuade non-techies to be safer? And what additional tips do you have? The sum: Get a good password When your account is sending spam, change your password immediately Know what websites you're logging into When in doubt, don...