Guest Article – Page 4 – Conflict Manager

A Gaping Wound in Self Protection Training for the Care Industry – Peter Jones

Let’s start by stating some facts on self protection law

Boxers, Karate practitioners, Taekwondo people etc must register their hands and feet with the Police as weapons
Martial artists are not allowed use their skills in self defence

Facts.

Now given that you’re reading Conflict Manager you may well be a serious martial artists well versed in self protection law. My guess is you won’t tolerate bullshit so you will have read the above with your mouth agape, wondering how someone could make these statements. Please allow me to explain.

I should start by explaining my background. I’ve been training in martial arts for over twenty-seven years and have amassed a variety of grades in different arts including some dan grades. These days my emphasis is very much on pragmatic self protection and as a result I’ve developed a very fine bullshit filter. I’m also a specialist nurse in the NHS working in emergency care.

These two disciplines of emergency nursing and martial arts compliment and influence each other, but that’s an article for another day. I also do a little agency work on the side. All of my nursing roles require annual mandatory training and this includes conflict management. For my main job I get an hour every other year. But this particular agency insisted on my doing a full day and had no interest in my credentials or experience. So I did it. Just to “tick the box.”

My suspicion is that they put the training out to tender and gave the contract to the cheapest company.

The day started well. The lady presenting was confidant, articulate, practiced and prepared. We covered the usual things; causes of aggression, types of language, a model for de-escalation and so on.

After lunch we covered law as it relates to self protection. Now, I knew going in that she needed to be careful, on my iPhone is the Kindle app, containing the latest Star Wars novel and the books of Mr Mark Dawes and Mr Leigh Simms. The latter two lack the entertainment value of x-wings engaging TIE fighters or indeed the deep discussions on ethics, actions and The Force, but they are the foremost authorities on self protection and the law and their books are very accessible. I keep them to hand for quick reference for when I’m teaching this material.

Our presenting lady started well in the right place, 1967 Criminal Law Act and all that. She got a little confused over the implications of imbibing alcohol and self protection but we can write that off as irrelevant to nurses on duty (we hope.), but then without warning or relation to anything previous she dropped the bombshell: anyone that does martial arts, Karate, boxing or whatever has to register their hands and feet with the police as weapons. Furthermore, us martial artists can’t use our skills in self protection.

Those that know me know that at times I’m as subtle as being whacked around the head by a lemon, where said lemon has been wrapped around a brick. I lost it.

I would like to think that normally I am an articulate, and I would hope erudite, person I think I simply declared “that’s utter tosh!”

But she persisted. We were clearly disrupting the class at this point so I gave her my business card and invited her to e-mail me the reference to these supposed “laws” and said she was welcome to peruse my iPhone Kindle library.

I wish I could say that I was exaggerating all of this using artistic licence in my writing for effect. But in the immortal words of Han Solo “it’s is true, all of it.” I worry about how many people she’s fed this misinformation too. I genuinely worry that someone might have some workable skills developed over a number of years in the dojo and now have the fear to use them when it matters due to the supposed consequences.

And then we did the practical session. Oh hell! I suspect you wouldn’t believe me if I did explain what she taught us, and again I didn’t hold back my opinions on it. She maintains that the techniques were endorsed by her son who is in the SAS or Royal Marines or Spetsnaz or something. I maintain that they were based around concepts that all sensible instructors dropped years ago. They were devoid of principles. Several times I asked about context. Was our attacker a 19 year-old six-foot-three unit with their brain addled by M-Cat? Or were they a frail 85 year old lady with a screaming urine infection? In my job both are possible. She wouldn’t even answer my question. (As a point of interest, one of my Aikido Sensei was a retired mental health nurse, his answer is to knock out the 85 year old and share a coffee with M-Cat boy. I think he’s joking, but I’m honestly not sure!)

So, what do we learn from this? Well primarily, if you pay with bananas then you’ll get monkeys. A well trained monkey might have been a very effective trainer but unfortunately this particular paid primate wasn’t well trained and was repeating how she’d been trained. Sadly I don’t know what we can do about it, aside from continuing to be the paragons of correct information and effective methods.

For reasons I won’t go into, I feel that there is a chronic wound in the way that (most) front-line NHS staff are training to deal with conflict. On this occasion the wound was gaping wide open.

Cyber Safety Part III – Ashtad Rustomji

More information on threats to our computers, these are things we are hearing a lot more of these days as the criminals move ahead of the game.

Hacking

Hacking is a term used to describe actions taken by someone to gain unauthorized access to a computer. The availability of information online on the tools, techniques, and malware makes it easier for even non-technical people to undertake malicious activities.

They find weaknesses (or pre-existing bugs) in our security settings and exploit them in order to access our information.
Install a Trojan horse, providing a back door for hackers to enter and search for our information.

Malware

Malicious software that infects our computer, such as computer viruses, worms, Trojan horses, spyware, and adware.

Intimidate with ‘scareware‘, which is usually a pop-up message that tells us our computer has a security problem or other false information.
Reformat the hard drive of our computer causing us to lose all our information.
Alter or delete files on hard drive.
Steal private information.
Send emails on our behalf.
Take control of our computer and the softwares running on it.

Pharming

A means to point us to a malicious and illegitimate website by redirecting the legitimate URL. Even if the URL is entered correctly, it can still be redirected to a fake website. Copies the original site down to it’s smallest details to get us to enter our personal details.

Phishing

Fake emails, text messages and websites created to look like they’re from authentic companies. They’re sent by criminals to steal personal and financial information from us. This is also known as “spoofing”.

Trick us into giving them information by asking us to update, validate or confirm our account. It is often presented in a manner than seems official and intimidating, to encourage us to take action.
Provides cyber criminals with our usernames and passwords so that they can access our online bank account, shopping accounts, etc. and steal our credit card information.

Ransomware

Ransomware is a type of malware that restricts access to our computer or our files and displays a message that demands payment in order for the restriction to be removed. The two most common means of infection are via phishing emails that contain malicious attachments and website pop-up advertisements.

Two types of ransomware;

Lockscreen: displays an image that prevents us from accessing our computer.
Encryption ransomware: encrypts files on our system’s hard drive and sometimes on shared network drives, USB drives, external hard drives, and even some cloud storage drives, preventing us from opening them

Sometimes the notification states that authorities have detected illegal activity on our computer, and that the payment is a fine to avoid prosecution.

Paying doesn’t help.

Regularly back-up data with a removable external storage drive.

Spam

Mass distribution of unsolicited messages, advertising or pornography to addresses which can be easily found on the Internet through things like social networking sites, company websites and personal blogs.

Phish for your information by tricking you into following links or entering details with too-good-to-be-true offers and promotions.

Provide a vehicle for malware, scams, fraud and threats to your privacy.

Book Review by Mark Hatmaker -Voices of the Foreign Legion: The History of the World’s Most Famous Fighting Corps by Adrian D. Gilbert

Exactly what the title says, but tells the story of the Legion via diary entries, memoirs and interviews from Legionnaires themselves, from its romantic inception in the deserts of North Africa to the post-colonial anti-terrorist operations of today. This sort of skin-in-the-game/boots-on-the-ground history fascinates me more than academic history, as here we get the eyes-on view of top-down policies, that is, we hear what the folks in the comfy chairs think should happen in the world, and then we see what happens when real men must trek through sucking jungle, scorching desert, hostile streets to attempt to render these pseudo-manly pipe-dreams coherent. The real-world view never matches the academic view.

The book is harrowing in places, graphic in many, sad in most, and in the end so so so so much death and destruction and suffering for what? Colonies in Algeria, Vietnam, the Congo, Morocco that don’t exist today.

Compare with our own experience today in the United States’ longest war ever. In some cases fighting the same foe the Legion was fighting in the 19^th century; it’s a sucker’s game with other men’s blood on the line. The days of joint-suffering on the Home Front are over. We have no rationing, coupons for days we can buy dairy products, we do not toil in Victory Gardens, we share no hardship with our fighting forces—imagine telling folks “We will ration your data plans or tamp down on streaming until our sons and daughters are home.” Maybe we’d see some resolve or sensible draw-down if for nothing else to make sure we don’t miss an episode of Game of Thrones.

Distance renders us callous or indifferent-same result—other people die, we pretend to care with bumper sticker sayings, and quickly forget as the “smartphone” beckons for another input of loving parental attention. It should shame us that our memories are not longer than two days of the year: Memorial Day and Veterans Day. It might ought to fester on our consciences that others are at risk, right this very minute, and we may not be able to point to that dying ground on a map or articulate what our “goals” are “over there.”

This fine volume reminds us that history has not changed: empty suits set policy and set strategy, a distracted populace seldom pays attention beyond a rote “Rah-rah!” here and there, and real flesh and blood suffers.

Smartphones get smarter, the users, not so much.

This excerpt from the book, is a Legionnaire speaking of the catastrophic loss at Camerone. It seems to echo the sentiments of many military I speak to today.

“The appeal of Camerone to a legionnaire is as natural as instinct. He reaches out to it in his own heart, because it is part of his own pain. It is the great reminder to the legionnaire that the sand is always blowing in his eyes, the battleground is always ill-chosen, the odds are too great, the cause insufficient to justify his death, and the tools at hand always the wrong ones. And, above all, nobody cares whether he wins or loses, lives or dies. Camerone gives the legionnaire strength to live with his despair. It reminds him that he cannot win, but it makes him feel that there is dignity in being a loser.”

To all the “Losers” of our military, past and present. VALE!

To all the “Winners” state-side [self-included] may we do a better job monitoring all those “smart” folk who dig war so much without ever having fought.

www.extremeselfprotection.com

Beyond the Cul-De-Sac – Malcolm Rivers

The first time I encountered the principles of self-protection I was very young. The house had been shot into for the first time, giving my bedroom an oddly soothing breeze, and my father and I were walking to our corner store. On the way, he explained the importance of vigilance and comportment. We encountered a group of young men standing outside the store, affiliated with some gang or other-the names were always changing. My father made a point of raising his voice to an off-putting volume and maintaining eye contact with each one. We were outnumbered, outgunned and unwelcome but the young men were perplexed by his boldness and let us pass without incident. As we walked home dad explained “the appearance of weakness invites aggression.” I pondered that, as long as a young child reasonably would, and came to the conclusion I would try to be strong too.

A combination of divine intervention, awareness, and savvy allies kept me alive and out of trouble until I grew up and had the opportunity to work with young people, frequently from worse situations. All throughout, I tried to reconcile the realities we’d faced with what I saw in self-defense industry. It looked confusing. Often instructors didn’t come across as aware of the types of violence I’d seen: their answers were too simple, their techniques too complex to function in that reality. Later I realized the reason for the disparity: most “self-defense” was the security blanket business: selling things that don’t work to people who don’t need them.

Valiantly Defending the Suburbs

I found that even solid self-defense instruction wasn’t built for life outside the suburbs. I saw instructors who’d served as violence professionals explain the primacy of escape, knowing that there was little likelihood their students would ever see their assailants again. This didn’t jive with the world my students lived in or how I’d grown up. We all knew that the issue often wasn’t the initial interaction, it was the aftermath. When challenged, I’d heard students credibly reference armed reactions from friends or family and if I’d been robbed or shot growing up, my more serious friends would have…addressed the problem. The first encounter would not have been the last: one side evening the score, the other pre-empting assumed retaliation. Most instructors seemed to have little to no interest in the aftermath: when revenge brought the dulcet tones of automatic fire to a family dinner. Why not? Because that stuff is messy and self-defense in the suburbs is a whole lot easier to sell.

The Security Blanket Factory

People in nicer places are a much better demographic for the security blankets sold by SD instructors; they’ve more to lose and are more likely to be scared shitless by largely imaginary threats. More importantly, people of means have the resources to make “self-defense” work for them. They can afford the thousand-dollar “deadly technique” weekend class, the DVD set, the CCW license, the lawyer on retainer, and all the rest. Though they’re more likely to get hit by lightning than bullets, their unjustifiable fear persists, often because they have minimal exposure to life outside Mayberry. Folk in rougher areas are a lot harder to teach: they tend to have experience, a low bullshit tolerance, and more complex problems. Taking a “fence” and pre-emptively knocking someone out might work well for them the first time but when they live two blocks away from the predator and his friends, events might play out differently, the next time. Most importantly, folk from violent neighborhoods know a harsh truth that uproots significant amounts of self-defense theory: you can’t blindly trust the state to keep you safe.

Fairly Tales of Super Cops

Put simply: most self-defense instructors I’ve met have levels of faith in the state that confuse the hell out of me. Some are in law enforcement or corrections, with a vested interest or a legitimate belief in the system. Others feel it would be irresponsible to talk about when they wouldn’t get law enforcement involved. Some are probably just trying to avoid accusations of impropriety or lawsuits. Regardless, it seemed strange to me because of how I’ve seen law enforcement handle violence. Early in my stay in D.C. a rival crew began a shootout with the drug dealers next door. I remember hearing sirens approach around 45 minutes later. The precinct was 2 minutes away and, apparently, responded to other crimes in the interim. Nothing surprising there; I’d learned early that depending completely on the state to handle potential threats was dangerous and stupid: they’re mostly people with jobs and no responsibility (or interest) to protect you. More important than being jaded with law enforcement’s utility, was learning that keeping yourself safe required careful balance of the legal and the practical.

Legal v. Practical

The American justice system at the municipal level is a reactive organization designed to catch and prosecute criminals, not to preemptively protect citizens. Often folk who used the law to handle all their problems found themselves in violation of street code and facing enemies who knew the law well enough to get around or ignore it. Shunning, beatings, or more dire consequences ensued. Folk who focused too much on the practical found themselves in unenviable lifestyles filled with paranoia, dead friends, and prison sentences. Often what began as protecting their own evolved into a path they’d never escape. Those able to achieve this tenuous balance developed complex skills to manage interactions.

Survival Skills

In most dangerous neighborhoods, even the citizens know the predators and their politics, helping them survive encounters. Young people I’ve worked were always well versed in the in’s and out’s of these environments: one teen planned his bus routes based on time of day and conflicts between rival crews. Family and friends of mine have also used knowledge of the landscape to help negotiate with predators. Hierarchies, however unstable, absolutely exist and reaching out to members or affiliates of influence can also help address problems in the making or find terms of negotiation to avoid bloodshed.

As these kids traverse the environment, they learn to manage their presentation. The image one presents is paramount and the savvy learn to develop a manner that keeps them off predators’ menus without looking like a threat to the foodchain. Once, at 16, I had to change my shoelaces during a bus ride to another neighborhood after a call from a friend indicated the colors were wrong. Some teens use social media threat displays like posing with guns to ward off higher order predators. One boy began representing his gang at 8 years old because of the murder of his uncle, admitting in a moment of vulnerability that he felt stronger with a “crew” to back him. Knowing how to cultivate and maintain an image to keep the crowd from identifying a new victim, or new threat, is an essential skill.

The strategic minding of one’s business is as important as air in violent neighborhoods. Knowing which conflicts, yours or others, are essential and which can be ignored can diminish the number of engagements, and thus the risk, without the appearance of weakness. In a recent discussion, students openly admitted a refusal to intervene in conflicts or get police involved. Many had personal examples of folk who’d learned this lesson the hard way. In these environments, the refusal to assist law enforcement and theoretical “bystander effect” are frequently products of careful consideration and years of watching the mistakes of others. Because I’d seen the consequences of such calculus, instructors and students in the self-defense community always confused me when they waxed poetic about sheepdogging and the like. I wondered how many of them had ever smelled the blood on a wolf’s breath.

When legal options are minimal, having allies that can contribute overwhelming force makes a huge difference. In many tough areas, even the most upstanding citizen is related or connected to an individual or group ready to do violence on their behalf. The deterrence of knowing that someone’s gang banger cousin is ready to kill in retaliation is sometimes enough to squelch a more serious conflict.

Final Thoughts

Very few instructors are willing to acknowledge the complexity of regular civilian engagement with violence or the fact that many innocents are forced to manage these engagements, without the resources of their suburban peers, from a very early age. Coaches and sensei wax platitudinous about how anyone regularly defending themselves needs a change in lifestyle without considering how many decent people can’t visit the money tree in back yard to buy a new life. Study of self-defense has taught me a lot, much of it retroactively, but it’s time for the field to expand beyond well entrenched boundaries of the cul-de-sac.

The ‘Real’ Gladiator Diet – Mark Hatmaker

Imagination Time-Call forth images of the lean and mean, jacked and ripped cast of the television show Spartacus. You know the body-type I’m talking about, the taut, toned, chiseled body-fat of 5% physiques that reek of 2-3 HIT workouts per day and scrupulously avoiding all sugars and carbs, while piling on all the paleo-approved goodies that you can choke down.

Got those enviable images in mind?

Terrific!

Before we get to The Gladiator Diet, allow me to ask another question of our Spartacus cast-members.

No matter how jacked and ripped these performers are, no matter how much undoubted discipline and hard work goes into attaining these forms, do we think this translates to true gladiatorial skill? Actual combat prowess?

Of course, not.

Don’t get me wrong, hard-work is hard-work and we are able to do more with a fit athlete than an unfit athlete but these performers would be the first to tell you they eat and train to look like warriors not to be warriors.

With this said, what did the actual gladiators consume to fuel for actual gladiator combat? Might there be a difference between training to be a gladiator and training to be a pretend gladiator?

You betcha.

Paleo-pathologists Karl Grossschmidt and Fabian Kanz, both of the Medical University at Vienna, have been doing analyses of more than 60 gladiator skeletons found buried in a mass grave in western Turkey [formerly Ephesus.] They subjected the remains to isotopic analysis which allowed them to assay for trace elements and determine the composition of the diet that went into making these warriors of the Colosseum.

So what did they find? Were they Paleo? Were they on the Zone? Were the gladiators on the South Beach Diet? Surely, to God, they were at least on the Mediterranean Diet considering where they were. What exactly fueled these real gladiators?

Turns out, they were primarily on a vegetarian diet. Not just that, a vegetarian diet heavy on the carbs.

Keep in mind the diet was not based in poverty or a dearth of protein sources as other non-gladiator skeletons from the same region do not show this same dietary make-up. Also keep in mind gladiators, whether slaves or voluntary were a valuable commodity and it seems they weren’t being deprived of meat, but rather being fed as well as the gladiator Ianista [trainer] could afford to keep his athletes in peak condition for the performances.

The results of the isotopic analyses should be of little surprise to the deep digging historian who is aware that contemporaneous accounts of gladiators often referred to them as hordearii [that is, “barely men.”] Many extant purchasing bills for the gladiatorial schools reflect a diet heavy on barley, heavy on legumes, that is lots and lots and lots of beans. Lots and lots of carbs.

It seems, despite our images of Spartacus or 300 cast-members, that gladiators were groomed to be a bit, well, fat, and what is more, purposefully so.

One To increase mass as we are dealing with a no-weight class competition [the opposite of what we have in today’s tamer combat sports] and…

Two To allow the subcutaneous fat to act as a sort of dermal armor. Grossschmidt states, “Gladiators needed subcutaneous fat. A fat cushion protects you from cut wounds and shields nerves and blood vessels in a fight.”

Three This layer of fat provides a better show. Grossschmidt again, [Surface wounds] “look more spectacular. If I get wounded but just in the fatty layer, I can fight on. It doesn’t hurt much, and it looks great for the spectators.”

Think of this as being akin to blading, juicing, gigging, or getting color in professional wrestling in which the athletes intentionally cut themselves on the sly to add to the drama of the spectacle.

An intriguing addition to their isotope analyses reveals a high calcium content, meaning that the gladiator athletes were supplementing their carb heavy diet with calcium supplements. The historical record shows that gladiators often garnered this calcium not with a trip to the nutrition store, but by chugging concoctions that included calcium rich substances such as charred wood or bone ash.

Then, as now, anything to pursue an advantage.

So, with the science and history in mind, real gladiators looked less like Gerard Butler in 300 [Spartans and not gladiators I know, but you get my drift] or anyone in the cast of Spartacus and perhaps a bit more like UFC fighter Roy “Big Country” Nelson.

Whether or not this actual gladiator diet would work for us or not is not the point of today’s fun. But rather to point out what is often the wide gulf between reality and the comic book images that we often allow to intrude on fact.

The proof, more often than not, is in the hard work and the diligent drilling than it is in what you digest and/or look like on the beach.

At least that’s what the gladiators and scientists would tell us.

http://www.extremeselfprotection.com

The Four W’s – Darren Friesen

I want to say this with a ton of sobriety, clarity and seriousness and zero machismo and testosterone. I’ve always been known as a high-skill/explosive-speed guy. However, as I get older, I question the validity of these alone in any kind of serious violent struggle for my life. They are traits and fallible traits at that.

I am a 45-year old foreigner in Central America, 5’10”, 170 pounds that stands out so take this into consideration (objectivity) as you read this as you’ll have your own personal caveats that affect your evolving life scenarios. As I get older, the need to stay safe and protect my family stays the same. There’s another gap that inevitably widens for everybody. I have visualized and analyzed deeply when I would be able to use lethal force, when I wouldn’t, when it’s inappropriate, when I would have inner resistance over doing so and what the consequences would be of doing so. I have not taken this lightly and, as you all know, I don’t talk tough nor see this industry as a forum to act like a killer. That all being said, speed, skill, strength, stamina…all these things fade as we age, to one degree or another. As I’ve grown older and wiser, I believe that there are 4 elements that will/can keep me upright if shtf and have tried to cater my training and those of my students around:

1. WILL. The intent, drive, intensity and full commitment to go home at the end of the day. Whether peacefully or not so. One of many intangibles that simply cannot be read from a video, a post, a commentary but an internal fire.

2. WILE. Cutting corners, dirty tactics, misdirection, subterfuge. Being creative, inventive and diverse. Gaining the edge psychologically, physically, emotionally, mentally. “The one with the most flexibility on the system, most often controls the system.”

3. WITS. A cerebral approach to self-defense. One that doesn’t dive head-first into the storm without thinking but finding a varied method approach with the holistic view of “being safe” that circumvents style, system or art. Taking into account legal, social, ethical, financial, emotional, mental factors that dictate outcome pre-, mid- and post-conflict. Smart overrules cocky/tough the vast majority of times.

4. WEAPONS. Yes, there is a huge stigma that is omni-present in this area. Online, the ego of will-to-use, aggressive commentary, zero forethought as to consequence, the psychological state that goes into using one on another human being. I have not thought lightly on this. They are, however, a force equalizer and to not acknowledge this would be as naive as the other end of the spectrum just mentioned. As I get older, having to defend my life against someone bigger, faster, stronger or with their own weapons or friends is a monumental task and will increasingly become so as the years pass.

Just some thoughts, think heavily and profoundly on this, base your personal training accordingly and do research on how difficult real violence can be if you haven’t lived it yourself. It’s not as organized and cookie-cutter as many will have you believe.

Problems with the Training Establishment – Raymond Dettinger

The same old problems exist in both the martial arts and firearms training. I always called it the “Training Establishment” setting up the rules and training lesson plans. These rules and lesson plan writers have their own methods of creating experts being certified with paper certificates. The qualified experts teach others the same ole stuff passed down for a hundred years. Or, somebody just sets themselves up as an expert just for fun or whatever.

Let us take a look at how most firearms training is done. You shoot behind a barricade at 25, 15 and then 7 yards from your motionless paper target. If you get half your shots on paper, you are now “qualified” to protect yourself from a person behind you and going to hit you over the head with a brick.

Now, let’s talk about how real gunfights go down. Low light conditions, so there goes sight alignment. Firing distance is about a couple of 7 feet. One hand is usually used to fire with. An average of 3 shots are fired. Missing the target is common because of the adrenal stress problem. So, what does barricade training do for us when it does not match with street reality?

This is why modern pistol craft has to be multidisciplinary like the martial arts. No one shoe size fits all. Also, all of the upfront awareness and risk assessment skills should be taught before anybody picks up a gun. Also, legal, adrenal, aftermath should be taught before touching a gun. Guys, shooting is easy. People can accurately shoot targets blindfolded from 7 yards out if properly trained. Just think what they can do with their eyes open. We all know that we must understand how violence gets started in order to avoid it or prepare to shoot it out. The biggest point to firearms training is learning EMPTY HAND skills to avoid the first blow so you don’t get knocked out, disabled or killed right off. So a gun without empty hand skills is can be hazardous to your health.

When I started out learning all this in law enforcement, I wanted to learn only effective stuff. I could not find it. I went to local Karate Schools and the instructors all bragged about making their students to 50 knuckle pushups. I needed to know immediately how to handle people trying to kill me with a knife. I had to go the the old WWII manuals to learn. I am sorry that the martial arts could not have helped me at all during that time. Reality is the best filter for BS methods.

There are the other problems of just what type of training do you need in self-defense with a gun? There are many styles of sport combat shooting like IPSC, PPC, Cowboy Action Shooting and a hundred more. These are sport combat competitions. The participants in them are good. However, they have $5,000 specially built handguns with special ammo usually given to them for free by gun companies. The problem is that these sport combat people sometimes think that their skill sets are also self-defense based on their firearms marksmanship skill which based on the process of shooting: Sight Alignment, Sight Picture, Trigger Squeeze, Breath Control and follow through.

These things may be hard to do in a dark alley when suddenly attacked by a gang out to hurt you. Believe me, you will not have the time or the rational to do them. Some schools sell the sexy military house clearing methods. These are ex-military guys trying to make some money by selling the sexy stuff in the name of self-defense. Clueless people flock to the previously mentioned instructors because they are “experts”. Indeed, they are experts in what they do, and they are darn good at it. Good for them. But when they claim their methods are transferrable to street and home defense, things can get screwed up. Buyer beware as they say.

People must do their research to find good instruction but, like many things nowadays, it is hard to find professionals in any endeavor. Bullshit Artistry seems to be the thing now days.

Cyber Safety Part II – Ashtad Rustomji

Safety on Facebook

There are many things you can do to keep yourself safe from potential threats and cyber criminals on Facebook.

1- The most important thing to do is to never make any personal photos public, especially of your kids wearing any swimming clothes. Your photos be used by predators to sell them to certain kinds of websites and are also sold to highest bidders. They can also use these photos to estimate and track your location, if you don‘t already have it mentioned on the profile.

2- Don’t make your day-to-day activities public and avoid posting updates about when and where you are traveling. If you do want to post them, make it private or for friends only, but that may not work, as if you add someone, they can now view your activities and jobs, etc. getting all they wanted from your profile.

3- Which brings me to my third point, never accept friend requests from individuals who you don’t know or haven’t spoken to. Especially avoid individuals with no profile pics or only a handful of friends when they’ve been members for years. Some of the fake profiles usually just spam search. It’s done by typing in the most common names, when the results show up, they send friend requests to all. Then when their request gets accepted by target, they get to their friends list as well and most accept requests due to them being mutual friends with someone they know and trust. Plus, there’s also a possibility of a sex offender or a PI creating a fake profile to see your ‘friends only’ posts.

4- Never post personal likes and dislikes as this can be used against you. Once an individual knows what you like and don’t like, whether it’s food or a movie or anything, they can use that data to either direct you to a phishing website if they’re a cyber predator or if they’re a predator who searches their victims online, they can strike up a conversation with you basing it on common grounds.

5- Don’t use the same password you did for you email and other accounts, for your face book account. In fact, never have the same password for all accounts as a general rule.

6- If you access Facebook on your phone, log out of the Facebook app you use, after each visit.

7- Post nothing on Facebook that you wouldn’t want anyone to know about. Nothing, once it gets on the internet, is safe or private, especially on a social networking site like Facebook.

8- Be sure to have a good anti-virus installed. There is a possibility of a virus infecting your email list, the virus then sends friend requests to everyone in your email contacts, infecting them with the same virus as well. IIRC, this is done to gain access to not only your personal email, but other email addresses as well, it also leads you to a fake site to get your personal information that you may enter in the form.

9- Report suspicious profiles.

10- Be careful of external and third-party applications and websites asking permission to access your Facebook account information. Once you have given the permission to access your Facebook account, the website or application now has access to all of your personal information, including email, number, posts, address, job and location. Never accept it, unless you are absolutely 100% sure that you trust the application and it is reputed as safe to use.

11- Visit the help center for more information on Facebook safety.

12- Some good tips are mentioned here in this info graphic; http://www.bedfordshire.police.uk/pdf/facebook_safety_tips.pdf

Safety on Twitter

The following are some simple tips to stay safe on twitter.

1- Whenever you tweet, never add your location to it. Turn off the ‘add location to tweet’ option from the settings. You can also remove all location information by clicking ‘delete all location information’.

2- Strip geo-tag information from your photos before tweeting them. When a photo is tweeted, the location information that many camera phones add to the metadata of the photo file would be provided to anyone viewing the photo, any EXIF viewer software/application that can read the location information embedded in the photo would be able to determine the location of the picture. There are apps available that strip the geo-tag from the pictures; deGeo, metapho and pixelgarde are some of them.

3- Enable security and privacy options. The ‘HTTPS Only’ option ‘Settings’ menu will allow you to use Twitter over an encrypted connection which will help protect your login information from being hijacked by hackers using packet sniffers and hacking tools.

4- Twitter is actually more public than facebook, which means that you have to keep your personal information very minimal to virtually none. I.e. No phone numbers, no emails and no address in the location section.

5- Avoid using any third party apps on twitter. If you have any unrecognized app or an app you don’t remember installing, remove it by revoking its access to your account information from the app tab in your ‘settings’ menu.

6- Turn on the ‘protect my tweets’ option. This is a helpful tool when it comes to preventing unwanted individuals from following you on twitter. Once turned on, it will only show the tweets to people that are approved by you. This will not stop the current followers, it’s only for the future ones.

7- Remove unwanted or unknown followers. Delete the follower from your Followers list by blocking their account. The user is not notified when you block them, but your tweets no longer show up in their searches or timeline.

Here are some good sites with much more information about safety on twitter.

http://www.makeuseof.com/tag/10-twitter-safety-tips-to-protect-your-account-identity/
https://support.twitter.com/articles/76036#
https://support.twitter.com/articles/18368#

Cyber Safety Part I – Ashtad Rustomji

Being Safe From Identity and Personal Data Theft

1- The most important thing and the most common sense thing to do is to not put up any private info, including your full name, date of birth, or even address on any public forum.

2- Never give any of your bank information or credit card/debit card information to anyone who claims to be calling from the bank or from the credit card company. This can also happen if you get a call from one of your currently subscribed magazines, etc. If you want to renew the subscription, do it from the website itself, by typing the address in the address bar, never do it over the phone.

3- Never post any of your private pictures or family photos, photos of your home online or in a cloud storage, they can and have been easily hacked. (Example is the leaked celebrity pics scandal). Store them offline and off computer.

4- If you have any passwords written down, always store that file offline and off computer, store it in a usb drive and connect the usb only when you’re offline and encrypt the usb storage with strong password. There are softwares available that help you create strong passwords.

5- Never give out your primary email. Always use a secondary email with not much information in it (like your name, address, location, etc, while signing up), to sign up to websites, etc. It’s called a dummy account. This can also help with avoiding spam emails in your main email inbox.

6- Always make sure to check the validity of the secure encryption certificate on websites, while making any transactions online. Usually if you have an anti-virus installed, it warns you of fake pages.

7- Always password protect your data with a strong password that contains letters, numbers and symbols.

8- Install a strong anti-virus that gives you protection from the latest threats and protects your offline data as well.

9- Never check your emails in a cyber café.

10- If you use Wi-Fi, make sure the connection is secure and password protected.

These are some simple tips to protect your data and online identity.

Safety tips to secure your wireless connection.

Without going into too much technical details, I’ll make this category simple and direct to the point as if I did go into details, you‘ll have to spend a whole day on the internet googling the terms. So to begin;

1- Turn on WPA2 Encryption on Your Wireless Router. If you have an older router, it will have an older encryption which is easily hackable. You’ll need to upgrade your firmware to WPA2.

2- Use the most unique and uncommon name for your network. If it’s one of the common names, you will be on the list with the most common names and will be more susceptible to your password being cracked. According to some sources, even WPA2 may be vulnerable to this kind of hacking.

3- This connects to the above point. Use a long and unusual password for your wireless network. The longer the password, the harder it is to crack using the rainbow tables. The max password limit is 64 characters, so go crazy. Wi-fi devices usually store the password as cache, you will have to do this only once, when you connect a new device.

4- Turn off the admin via wireless option. What this will do is restrict the hacker’s access to your wireless router’s administrative settings.

5- Enable firewall (If your router has it built-in, most do).

6- If you are in a smaller house, but the range of the wireless connection is high, reduce it. Decrease the signal range or hide it in a box or in any enclosure that could restrict the signal direction.

7- Be careful of something called piggybacking.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Piggybacking_(Internet_access)