Was looking at my Adguard for home server dashboard and I noticed the blocked links for Mozilla Firefox is sending telemetry data. I did some looking and Firefox data is mainly to help it make a better product but some products go too far. Either way, I want to disable it.
Adguard blocking Firefox telemetry
Firefox doesn’t hide that they are doing this, and posted an article on how to disable it HERE. Basically, go to Settings / Privacy & Security, and scroll down until you see, “Firefox Data Collection and Use” section. Uncheck the option that says, “Allow Firefox to send technical and interaction data to Mozilla”.
Uncheck the option that says, “Allow Firefox to send technical and interaction data to Mozilla”.
After you uncheck the option, you will see the below message. All good now.
It is amazing how phishing emails are becoming more sophisticated. We have recently added a product called SlashNext to help protect our environment from phishing emails. It has been doing a fantastic job of catching emails that passed every other detection method. Below are six samples of the emails captured and blocked from going to the recipients.
SlashNext uses a method of analyzing the links within an email (Or website if you have browser protection also). Thus, this provides protection that most anti-spam and email protection systems, miss.
Recently, O365 started prompting users in my organization during sign-in to add an alternative (Authentication verification) email address. This is not an option we turned on, nor is it an option I wanted to be enabled. If the user needs help resetting their password or having issues signing in, our policy is for them to contact our helpdesk.
Alternative email / Authentication email prompt I never asked for.
To remove this, you will need to go into your admin portal. Then go into Azure Active Directory, then USERS, then REGISTRATION. Change the option, “Require user to register when signing in“, to NO.
Select NO for this option.
Now your users will no longer get prompted to enter an alternative email address for authentication verification. Our policy is that the IT department should be contacted.
About once a month I read a post somewhere that some poor schmuck is using or wanting to use RAID0 for spanning two drives together or thinking their SSD’s going to get better performance.
If you are one of those idiots, we cannot be friends. I cannot deal with that amount of stupidity.
RAID0 was originally designed to split data across multiple mechanical drives for improved performance with scientific calculations with older computers and storage. It was always known as volatile (Like 20 years ago). Now days, there is absolutely no reason to use it.
Here is a very short list of a few of my favorite applications and utilities that I seem to install on almost all Linux workstations I use (And some servers). I could really grow and evolve this article into its own section one day. One note, I typically will always look for a flatpak version (Especially for Evolution), and use that before looking for a native install. Just my preference as flatpaks are usually updated quite often.
What IP – Neat utility used mostly on my laptop when I am at remote sites to quickly find the external and local IP, or a virtual interface’s. Great for verifying VPN connections and finding other devices on your LAN.
Flameshot – Quick screenshot utility with several nice options. Unfortunately, nothing beats Snag-it on windows for an ultimate screenshot utility, but Flameshot does a better job than most others that are supported on Linux. A must-have for any Linux desktop.
Flameshot in action.
Angry IP Scanner – Cross platform IP and basic port scanner. I use this mainly on my laptop to scan either for IP cameras or remote locations I am working in to identify network devices. Excellent tool, and not overbuden with features. Also cool feature to click on anything with a port and it can launch typical method to access (ie, web browser for port 80 and 443).
Angry IP Scanner
Grsync – GUI for rsync. Easier than using cli at times. I use rsync quite a bit to sync directories and files across network shares from my local machine or flash drives. Grsync is a GUI for the rsync utility that just makes it easier to use especially if you use any of the arguments such as always checksum.
Grsync gui.
Midnight Commander – A great file manager during shell access. If you remember the old Norton Commander for DOS, this is the Linux version. I use this to quickly navigate a filesystem, copy, move, and edit files and more.
Midnight commander dual pane file manager.
Evolution – Gnome’s outlook type PIM client. Is compatible with O365. There is just really no replacement to the original Outlook client used in Windows. The web version is pretty good, but sometimes nothing beats using an actual client. Evolution has come a long way and now has support for O365 support.
Evolution
Catfish File Search – GUI file search utility. I always struggle when I use the CLI for find. I never remember the arguments fast enough to be quick, so catfish helps me out.
Catfish
Remmina – Remote client for RDP, VNC, SSH, etc. A nice program to organize all the remote machines you access regardless of protocol. SSH, RDP, VNC and more supported.
Remmina
Updating the terminal shell
Fancy bash prompt is a script along with the powerline font to install on your machine to provide highlighting terminal inputs.
Neofetch is a system information app that almost everyone with a Linux system has. I added this to run every time I open a shell by adding the neofetch command to my bashrc file.
The last two lines of my .bashrc file.
The result:
Neofetch and Fancy Basch Script running every time I open a terminal window.
I’ve been using Cisco’s AnyConnect client to connect my Pop!_OS workstation to my work VPN. The AnyConnect client is ok, but I want to use the network manager built into my workstation. To do this, I needed to install OpenConnect. To do this, open a terminal and run the following command:
Then go into Settings / Network, and add a VPN connection. Select OpenConnect.
From this window you can provide your VPN connection a custom name, and enter the gateway of the Cisco VPN server you are trying to connect to. Then click Add.
Once added, I click click the slide to enable the connection to test. I am prompted for my VPN username and password. This is good.
VPN Connection can also be accessed directly from the taskbar.
I’ve decided to drop Spectrum Business as my internet provider at home and move to AT&T Fiber. The only negative was that I would lose my static IP, but gain an Internet connection that is 5 times faster for the same price. Since I am no longer running a mail server from my home, I can accept this as long as I find a dynamic DNS service that would work with my domain name. I found NO-IP offered exactly what I needed with their Plus Managed DNS service. I am impressed with the amount of options available and the ease to set up my DNS records on NO-IP.
At my previous job, Basecamp was implemented for project management and a journal of what we worked on. For the majority of the time myself and one other co-worker were the only two adding daily entries. Sometimes we had a little fun with them. Below is a screenshot I found that I had saved from one of those days.
Several months ago, I switched companies that I work for. This morning, I am working from home and wanted to start Microsoft Teams flatpak on my Pop-Os! desktop and found it would not let me sign in with my new email address.
The application is set for a single user and I could not find a way to, “sign-out”. My solution was to go into the /home/.var/app directory and rename the existing com.microsoft.Teams directory to something else, then restart Teams. This worked. A new config directory was created, I was able to sign in with my new credentials and all is good.
I renamed the existing folder to XXcom.microsoft.Teams andeverything is good now.
When I first started at my current job I needed to find a solution that would help me get an inventory of all my assets, assist me in managing and patching as well as some kind of remote access. One of my needs was to find something that would be cost-effective for my organization while providing a great toolset to help me lasso all my endpoints together. I discovered Action1.
Action1 has turned out to be a great tool in gathering information about my endpoints, being able to finally have a managed patching solution where I can specify what patches to approve and when to let them be installed, and allows me to do a whole set of other functions such as remote script executions, custom package deployments, scheduled actions based on conditions, and nice remote desktop access.
The price for Action1 is great. It is free for 100 endpoints. Since I am using quite a bit more than that, I have a paid subscription that is extremely affordable. I now have all my endpoints being patched consistently, supported all via the same method, and software deployments and reporting all handled from the same place. Action1 is a lifesaver.
