• 0 2012.08.13 / Viktor Petersson / 11:00

    Gmail’s new security system causes trouble for YippieMove

    As much as we support Google’s efforts to keep hackers and spammers away from our email accounts, it often leads to some inconvenience for the users. This of course is unfortunate, but often time required.

    Recently Google rolled out a new system to improve their security. This did unfortunately create some issues for YippieMove in the sense that many of our users’ received an ‘invalid credentials’-errors when trying to create a transfer to or from Gmail (despite the fact that they entered the correct password).

    We have been able to reproduce this issue, and here are the steps you need to take if you are affected by this.
    Read more »

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  • 0 2012.08.07 / Viktor Petersson / 11:40

    Gmail now supports Application-specific passwords

    In light of the recent hack that turned Wired’s Mat Honan’s life upside down, many people have started to re-think their password strategy. While this hack only affected one individual (in contrast to many other bigger hacks, like the Playstation Network-hack), it touched us all on a very personal level. If a tech-savvy journalist at Wired can be hacked this easily, could you be targeted as easily?

    At WireLoad we take security very seriously. This is especially true for YippieMove. Due to the nature of YippieMove, it is necessary for us to temporarily store some sensitive data, such as passwords and emails waiting to be uploaded. However, it is in our interest to minimize the period that we store this data and we have automated processes that deletes this sensitive data in accordance with our strict privacy policy.

    Since we need to store the passwords during the migration, we are excited that Google now offers something they call Application-specific passwords. This works just like a regular password, but you can create multiple passwords and easily manage the access. This is great both for us and for our users. The password you provide us is less ‘valuable’ for an attacker and you can revoke the access to the password at any time.

    Hence, our advice would be that your use ‘Application-specific passwords’ for you next YippieMove migration.

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  • 1 2011.08.05 / Viktor Petersson / 1:19

    Now available: Preview Pane in Gmail

    This is pretty nice. Google just announced a new feature called ‘Preview Pane’ in Gmail (including Google Apps users).

    The feature does just like it sounds. It allows you to preview your mail in a horizontal fashion. This is a really smart move, as it enables you to use a wide-screen monitor more effectively.

    As a side-note, this is somewhat similar to what Mail.App in OS X Lion.

    What do you think? Do you prefer the old style, or this new view?

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  • 0 2011.07.13 / Viktor Petersson / 7:24

    Are you smart enough to call a bluff from a scammer?

    Not to long ago, Ela Iwaszkiewicz wrote a blog-post titled “Protect yourself from scams by knowing who really emailed you” where she tells the story about how someone tried scam here to gain access to her bank account. Ela obviously called the bluff, and the article is about how she did this using Gmail’s built-in features.

    The article is very Gmail-centric, but the same concept can be used in most other email clients.

    In Apple’s Mail.app for instance, you can view the raw message source by going to View -> Message -> Raw Source (or by pressing ⌘⌥U).

    Once in the ‘Raw Source’ mode, you can follow along and see that the email was actually sent from whom it claims to be. That said, this is somewhat tricky for the average user, and Gmail’s web interface makes this a lot easier.

    The bottom line is that no serious business would ever ask you for your username or password, or any kind of sensitive information over email (or at all). You should also make sure you are running an updated web browser. Recent versions of Google Chrome and Firefox comes with great tools to helping you to stay safe.

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  • 6 2011.07.09 / Viktor Petersson / 6:49

    Pick your inbox style in Gmail

    Google just announced a pretty neat feature to the Gmail interface. You can now select what ‘inbox style’ you like to display. The options are:

    • Classic
    • Important first
    • Unread first
    • Starred first

    The different styles are rather self-explanatory. For more information, see the original blog-post. We think this is a pretty nifty new feature to combat information overflow.

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