John @jchelp@aus.social

I also now take online payments using Square which as far as I know won't ask for more details than needed.

I now take card payments through Square!

Rolling out IPv6, or: 192.168.0.X is good enough for anyone

I re-checked and found that to fix the Centrelink 'Bad Request' you need to clear your cookies for centrelink.gov.au. The website just keeps sending new cookies and eventually refuses to accept the very long 'Cookie' header your browser sends.

PSA: For whatever reason Centrelink will return 'bad request' on out dated Chrome browsers.

Possibly my worst experience has been with my credit union. To even get two-factor authentication I needed to call them and ask for them to enable support for it on my account, then set it up while on the phone.

They don't have backup codes either, but since I can call them I'm not too concerned about this as much as I would be with PayPal.

After setting it all up, I found the second factor is only used in special circumstances such as changing my password or sending money to new recipients.

Perhaps there's a lot more criticism in the implementations of two-factor authentication. One example is GitLab allowing recovery code generation with just a SSH key.

The places you'd expect good multi-factor authentication seem to have it the worst: PayPal hides and fights against you adding two-factor authentication. You need to head to a hidden URL and use Symantec VIP as the software token, or hack around it with python-vipaccess. No backup codes either.

Two-factor authentication is underimplemented and underused - how many Mastodon folks here have enabled it in their account? It's a great defense against spyware.

As someone technically inclined, I use it but regardless of which factor I'm using (andOTP, Google Authenticator, SMS) I'm always uneasy about backup codes. They seem so easy to ignore or lose, and storing them digitally can undo any second factor security added.

Happy holidays everyone!

Just updated my website to link back to my Mastodon account, so now the link to my home page is verified!

Dual stack IPv6 in the first half of 2019 you say, Exetel? https://forums.whirlpool.net.au/forum-replies.cfm?t=2771349

Question to any web developers out there: My site has articles for people to read like 'How to identify junk apps' ( https://www.jchelp.com.au/tips/junkapps.html ), should I be adding some kind of large header image to set the mood?

The downsides would be having to find images that relate, dropping support for low bandwidth connections since I'll be pushing a giant image, making the page longer and slower.

The upside is that people may take the page more seriously since it would look like other professional prose.

I just checked my Facebook page and saw I had 2 inbox notifications. Uh-oh! Are these potential clients that I've accidentally ghosted? Opening the inbox, I find: Nothing.

Thanks Facebook.

While I was gone from the fediverse iI managed to migrate my small static business site from managed hosting to my home.

Hello again folks! I'm returning to Mastodon after mstdn.com.au disappeared. In case you don't know who I am, I'm John and I do tech support in Tenterfield. I also do remote support online, including Linux and open source support.

#introductions