Which One Are You?

The Attention Whore:
Attention Whores are most commonly found on social networks that allow numerous photo uploads: MySpace, Facebook, Flickr, TwitPic et al. Typically teenage girls (and boys) who have no shame in posing half or fully naked in their messy bedrooms, with pouty lip poses and too much mascara. They will be informed on the next job interview that their likeness appeared on the cover of a GGW video

The Over Sharer:
The Over Sharer has no understanding of “TMI”. Their profiles have far too much personal data: from their cell numbers to their home address to their last bowel movement to links to their family tree on Ancestry.com. In short, everything needed for identity theft! These are people stupid enough to post their personal data over Twitter because, “I only have 16 followers and I know all of them.” The Over Sharer will suffer identity theft twice in one year.

The Snitch:
The Snitch is the company douchebag. He (and it’s usually a he) feels compelled to leak company intel such as layoffs, pitches and new product releases to industry blogs and forums. No one knows what drives this dirtbag to destroy the job security of his coworkers, nor why he does it. There is no fame (tips are anonymous) and no pay. If you’re going to screw your company over, at least have the smarts to get paid for it! This type is easily caught by IT despite the Snitch’s clearing his browser cache. Alas, he forgot to remove his IM logs.

The Plugin Nazi:
“OMG, you must get this plugin!” This type downloads every blog plugin known to mankind, beta or official, tested or not. No review is too unfavorable to dissuade this dolt from installing the latest. Sadly, installing the latest does not include security plugins. They just “don’t make your blog look cool.” The Snitch blames his constant MySQL errors on “the hackers” when it’s more likely just incompatible plugins.

The “Spook”:
The Spook is not really in any sort of intel group, nor has s/he ever worked for any government agencies requiring any sort of clearance. But the Spook wants you to believe s/he has top security clearance. In fact, the Spook cannot resist letting you know that they know something you don’t know, but they can’t tell you why or how they know what they know. You know? Spooks are basically liars that can rapidly be exposed by anyone really in the industry with a few standard questions. Eventually, the Spook will lie on the wrong forum and get taken out by the real spooks.

The Skeptic:
The Skeptic is the sort of person who basically never worries about security. Nothing bad can ever happen to them: their password is secure and besides: they have a great security question! No one knows their dog’s name. Except their friends on Dogster. And maybe their 973 Facebook friends. But besides that, no one knows. The Skeptic will be the sole person in their hometown made an example of by the RIAA for downloading one song illegally.

The Forwarder:
The aunt or mother who forwards you every chain letter email, every reforwarded joke , every “wait for it and scroll down” message. The Forwarder has no concept of scams, has never been to Snopes.com and can’t wait to send you the next good luck email that you must respond to in 24 hours, lest you suffer a broken leg and seven year’s bad luck. Worse than this person’s inability to strip out other forwards from an email, is this person’s gullibility. The Forwarder will disappear one day, only to be found dead in Nigeria after looking for the reward from a certain prince they shared an account with.

Which personality type are you?

It’s no secret to my friends that I am a WordPress fanatic. Having been on the original B2 dev team back in the day, I love seeing how far it’s gone. But with growth comes attention and sometimes that means negative attention à la scams, spammers, etc. WordPress has certainly seen its fair share of attacks. Fortunately, there are some great security plugins available to protect your blog and prevent attacks. Here are my faves:

1. WordPress Exploit Scanner:This plugin searches the files and database of your website for signs of suspicious activity. It will not stop someone hacking into your site, but it may help you find any uploaded or compromised files left by the hacker.
2. WP Security Scan: I love this plugin. It does exactly what it promises, and has protected my blog many times. Scans include passwords, file permissions, database security, version hiding, WordPress admin protection/security and removing the WP Generator META tag from core code—a simple method for protecting your blog from attacks that target specific versions of WordPress.
3. Secure WordPress: This fine German plugin has a few unique tricks I haven’t seen on the other plugins, including removing the error-information on the login-page, adding an index.php to the plugin-directory and removing core update information for non-admins.
4. Secure Invites for Wordpress MU: I haven’t personally tried this plugin, but it gets great reviews, so here is the plugin page description: “This plugin stops access to your signup page, except where the visitor has been invited and clicked the link in their invitation email. Your users invite people, and you can see who has sent the most invitations, and how many resulting signups have occurred.”
5. Fast and Secure Contact Form: With a 5-star rating (and no rating under 5), this is arguably the most popular and secure contact form available. I used to use Contact7, but was furious with how much spam gets through it. So many features that I recommend you read the plugin homepage to take it all in.
6. WP-DB-Backup: WordPress database backup creates backups of your core WordPress tables as well as other tables of your choice in the same database. Backups are something I suggest you all do on a weekly basis, daily if you blog for a living. Plugins like this allow you to schedule the backups automatically and not have to remember to do it. It’s all about the automation.
7. root Cookie: By default the wordpress cookie exactly matches the URL of your installation, this plugin removes any subfolders from the cookie so that your whole domain has access to it. This useful plugin also allows your authentication to work across subdomains!
8. WP-Secure Remove Wordpress Version: While plugins like Security Scan and Secure WordPress do this, if you aren’t up to installing big guns like them, at the very least add this plugin. It’s a one-trick pony, but a very good trick. It removes the version number from the WordPress meta tag; something spammers target all the time.
9. Akismet: Despite being a default plugin, I am amazed at how many people will not take the 30 seconds to sign up for an Akismet key. Do it now. It is the most effective spam plugin ever developed. Bar none.

Which plugins do you use for security?