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How safe is your browser saved passwords?

There is a misconception people have that the saved password feature is pretty safe to use. After all, you can't see where passwords are saved("It is being put in a safe place by the computer."), then no one else can either.. and you are the only one that have a login, "So its for your eyes only", right? WRONG!

Just the other day, I caught one of my best friend using a saved password for one of his logins, so I jumped on him

"I bet you $5 bucks I can see all your saved password just by using your browser.. without hacking into the registry or anything of that nature "  He was pretty confident that I can't and that I need to load some special software and do some low level hacks, so the bet was on!  It took me about 30 seconds to show him all the saved passwords in a formatted table, in alphabetical order, just by using his favorite browser, Firefox!

"Well you work at a web hosting company so you can do this kind of stuff.", he rebuffed.  Here is the interesting thing, you don't need to be a computer wiz to pull this off. It can be done with your browser and a handy add-on.

It really is simple, unlike the olden days where you need a floppy to get that kind of info. Here is how I did it:

https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/92086

Install it and restart your Firefox. In the Tools menu you will see a new link, "Saved passwords..." Click it and voila!

Don't freak out yet.. There is a simple step you can take to protect yourself from these type of add-on/programs. In Firefox, there is a setting called "Master Password".  It is under preferences >> Security >> "Use a Master Password". When setting this make sure you do not forget it. Otherwise you will have to do a full reset and will lose all your saved passwords...  it might be a good thing .  This will encrypt your passwords and you need to enter the Master password every time to show or use the saved passwords.  It is not 100% and can be brute forced with programs like Firemaster but better than being naked.

You can also opt to use password programs that store your password in encrypted form. For Windows, Roboform is a popular choice. For Mac, I personally use 1password. These are still not 100% but it does offer you another layer of security.

Stay safe!

Tony Chu
Canadian Web Hosting

http://www.canadianwebhosting.com/

Heat Maps! Find out graphically where people are looking!

Heat Map according to Wikipedia is "is a graphical representation of data where the values taken by a variable in a two-dimensional map are represented as colors". The heap map I'm talking about this week is different areas of a web page most frequently scanned by visitors. Wouldn't it be to your advantage as a website owner to find out which areas of the web page your visitors are looking at and most likely to click thru? You can use Google Analytics to find out where your traffic is coming from, where they are clicking throughout your website and where they are dropping off. It would be better also to find out where they are looking on the web page and optimize it to increase your conversions. There are several services online that can help you by searching "heatmaps" on Google. These heat map software programs use computer algorithms to simulate where people will look. They can also be used to track the effectiveness of your landing pages.

They can do the following:

Pinpoint exactly where your links and advertisements should go.
Get more visitors to complete their purchase.
Predict how your visitors will interact with your site in the future.
Get more visitors to fill out your forms.
Make Web usability testing easy to implement.

This technology combines eye gazing statistics and predicted attention to give you a visual picture of where visitors are interacting with your site.

As you can see from this image of a sample Google search results page, the popular areas are on the top left. This shows the density of user clicks in a series of colours from red to green. Red indicates that more people are spending more time at that location.

Crazy Egg offers a visually-based program that allows you to see your landing page's effectiveness at a glance. Check it out and leave any comments which would be helpful to our other readers.

Kevin Liang
CTO / SEO Guru
Canadian Web Hosting

http://www.canadianwebhosting.com

Google Breadcrumbs

Google has updated their search results for some listings to make it easier for searchers to find relevant content.

Instead of displaying the URL, Google now displays links taken directly from the actual site's breadcrumbs (site navigation).

Here's an example:

As you can see this type of site navigation allows your visitors to easily know where they are on your site and gives them a chance to quickly navigate to another page.

It makes it easier that your site's search result listing is more user friendly.

But the big plus is that the breadcrumb categories displayed in the search result is also a link to that page within the site. It's 3 additional clickable links for just one of the site's listing and a great way to skyrocket your site's deep link ratio.

Google takes this step because many web addresses don't tell you well enough where you are going. The "URLs are too long, too short, or too obscure to add useful information." By adding the new text Google wants to give useful information about the page before you click on them.

For more information, visit the Google Blog!

Kevin Liang
CTO / SEO Guru
Canadian Web Hosting

http://www.canadianwebhosting.com/

Advertise on YouTube

Similar to advertising on Google's search engine, you can now advertise on the 2nd largest search engine, YouTube.

You can now create your own Adwords for YouTube. More information can be found here.

Here's some staggering facts:

400 million plus viewers

420 million unique visitors

20 hours of videos uploaded every minute

3500+ content partners

Kevin Liang
CTO / SEO Guru
Canadian Web Hosting

http://www.canadianwebhosting.com/

Microsoft Selling Computers

With the release of Windows 7 yesterday, Microsoft is now selling computers and 3rd party software on its online store.   Browsing the store revealed laptops starting from $750 and also netbooks.  There are over 10 different models to choose from.  Microsoft is also selling Norton 360 and Adobe Photoshop, along with Windows, Office, and other Microsoft products. Accessories include a lot of Microsoft keyboards, mice, and Webcams, along with flash drives and blank DVDs from other companies.

Check it out at http://store.microsoft.com/home.aspx

PS: For those who are currently running Windows XP and bypassed Vista (me included), Windows 7 will bring welcome relief as it's fast, stable and intuitive!

UPDATE: Looks like it's only available to US residents.

Kevin Liang
CTO / SEO Guru
Canadian Web Hosting
http://www.canadianwebhosting.com/