3/30/17 Report - Coin Bracelet Find. Computer Security and How To Avoid Sharing More Information Than You Really Want To Especially When You Send Photos.

Written by the TreasureGuide for the exclusive use of treasurebeachesreport.blogspot.com.

Dug Bracelet of Drilled Coins.

Here is a dug coin bracelet.  At first I didn't think these would be real coins, but after inspecting them closely I'm pretty sure they are.

Each one is a un sol de oro.  Heavily tarnished or discolored but not old - 1975.

Despite the fact that oro means gold, there is no gold in these coins.  They are brass.

It appears that somebody worked the coins and drilled holes in them.  Close inspection of the holes shows they were drilled and they still have rough edges.  The connectors are hand made too.

Closer View of One Coin.

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This is the digital age.  We are an internet community.  I thought you might be somewhat interested in what other people who access this blog are using.  For browsers, the list in descending order is Chrome, Safari, Internet Explorer and Firefox.  For operating systems it is Windows, Macintosh and then Android.

There has been a lot in the news lately about hacking and privacy.  It is a topic that is very relevant to treasure hunting.  When I was doing some consulting for a TV show, I was asked if I knew of any treasure maps.  That is a question I received previously from another TV show, and one producer commented that real treasure maps are really hard to find.

They are hard to find.  They aren't really meant to be public.  When they do exist, they are often coded.  But today instead of drawing maps, people are simply keeping GPS coordinates instead.

Treasure hunters, like everybody else today, use computers and electronic communications extensively, but they might think those forms of communication and data storage are more private than they really are.

People sometimes send photos of finds and things to me for the blog.  They might not  know sometimes the file also includes information about where the photo was taken.  I never post that information, so you don't have to worry.  I don't even look at it myself.  I just make a snipping or screen print and post that.

If you wouldn't say something out loud in a crowded room, don't say it over a phone or internet connection without encryption or some serious security measures.

You might know about the bill to repeal the Broadband Consumer Privacy Rules, which I understand would allow your internet service provider to sell your browsing history.  Maybe you also heard that tech genius Mark Zuckerberg and FBI Director James Comey both use tape to cover the camera on their laptops due to the ease of hacking.

If you are reading this blog, I know you use the internet or a smartphone, so I think you should be aware that your electronic communications are probably neither secure or private.  I doubt that most people realize how insecure those things are.  If you don't care if your browsing history might be sold or made public, or if you don't care if your system is hacked, fine - no problem, but you simply can not be sure your electronic communications or data is private and secure.  I don't care if you are the President of the United States, leader of Germany, Secretary of State, head of a high tech company or the FBI, or just an average Joe, you can't assume that your electronic communications or data has not or can not be compromised.

The United States bugs and hacks.  Why would anyone think that other countries, especially those that are not supposed to be our friends, aren't doing the same type of things. You can assume that they are.  All this fuss about Russia trying to affect the election is silly.  I would expect no less of them. Foreign leaders aren't going to play fair and be nice, and neither are crooks.  That is just the way it is.

My point here is that you shouldn't assume that your electronic devices and computers are totally secure and private.

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I want you to know that if you send me photos, I never look for any data other than the picture and any email message that you send. You don't have to worry about me checking out the location of where you took a picture. There are steps you can take to remove that data if and when you want to.

Just to make sure I made this clear, I don't post photos. I make a snipping of the photo or picture and post that. I never post a photo so that the additional properties and data can be accessed.

You should know how to find that data in your photo files.

The location information is stored as “metadata” embedded in the photo files themselves. All you have to do is view the file’s properties and look for it.

If you use Windows, after downloading the image file to your computer, right-click on the file, select Properties, and then click the Details tab. Look for the Latitude and Longitude coordinates under GPS.

That is how easy it is to find where photo was taken if your camera or device stores that data.


If you want to remove the location information from your photo files,so you won't be telling everyone where you made those special finds or where you were when you took the photo, here is how you can remove that data when using an iPhone.

On an iPhone, open the Settings app, tap Privacy, and tap Location Services. Tap the Camera app in the list and select “Never” for “Allow Location Access.” The Camera app won’t have access to your location and won’t be able to embed it in photos.

If you want to know how to do it using other systems or devices, you might want to visit the following site.


https://www.howtogeek.com/211427/how-to-see-exactly-where-a-photo-was-taken-and-keep-your-location-private/

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The surf is down to around two or three feet, but we still have a very good low tide.

Happy hunting,

TreasureGuide@comcast.net

8/15/16 Report - Flintlock Pistol From Treasure Coast Beach. Thoughts On Religious Relics. World Wide Web 25 Years Old This Month.

Written by the TreasureGuide for the exclusive use of treasurebeachesreport.blogspot.com.

Flintlock Pistol Found After Hurricanes of 2004.
Photo submitted by Darrel Strickland.

Lately I've been showing some noteworthy treasures that were found a few years ago, especially after the hurricanes of 2004, which was some of the best hunting we've had since the legendary Thanksgiving Storm of 1984.  A lot of treasure was found by a lot of people after Francis and Jeanne. You've never heard of most of it, and I'm only showing a few pieces.

The flintlock pistol shown above was found by Tom K., who found the pistol "at Wabasso Beach going north towards Golden Sands in the wet sand near the water's edge."  Thanks for sending the photo and email Darrel.

I don't know if Tom ever got the pistol cleaned up or not, but he wasn't in a hurry to clean it at the time because he thought it might be damaged in the process.

Tom also found some rings that day.

Here is charm or rosary piece found back then too.

Photo submitted by Darrel S.

I've shown some of the famous religious pieces found by the salvage divers, and Laura Strolia has provided authoritative research on some of the most fascinating ones. Click the following link to go back to a post containing some of Laura's research on the Pelican of Piety.

  http://treasurebeachesreport.blogspot.com/search?q=pelican+piety

Before Laura's research was published, the gold Pelican of Piety was often mistakenly referred to as a reliquary.  A reliquary is meant to contain a relic.

I recently found an article about first-class relics being sold on the internet.  A first-class relic is an item or piece of an item directly associated with event's of Christ's life or the physical remains of a saint, for example bone or hair.

One person wrote an article about selling first class relics and wants the practice stopped. The author of that article, Ryan Scheel, had the following to say.

The listing of first class relics “is incredibly insensitive to the Catholic faith in way I doubt would be tolerated for other religions,” Scheel said. 

“But also...common decency should tell eBay that profiting off of the sale of body parts is ghastly and unethical, no matter who the remains belonged to in life.”That's why Scheel decided to launch a petition calling for eBay to remove the listings of the first class relics. He hopes to obtain signatures from at least 25,000 Catholics in order to alert the site of the illicit sales.”

Here is the link to that article.

http://www.ewtnnews.com/catholic-news/US.php?id=14075

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Did you know that August 5 was the 25th anniversary of the first web site.  That web site described the WorldWideWeb project and said the following.

"The WorldWideWeb (W3) is a wide-area hypermedia information retrieval initiative aiming to give universal access to a large universe of documents," the world's first public website reads, going on to explain how others can also create their own web pages.

"The project started with the philosophy that much academic information should be freely available to anyone."

I found that information on thehackernews.com, which is a good site for those who want to stay informed about computer security.

Many large corporations have been hacked by China.  Google admitted they were hacked.   If Google, who has all of those bright computer scientists, couldn't prevent being hacked, who can?  If you don't maintain the finest security practices and if you have anything that the major players might want on your computer, you probably have been hacked, whether you know it or not.

Computer security isn't all technical.  A lot of it is behavioral.  Hackers take advantage of natural and naive human behavior.

On a side note, the Stuxnet super-virus was created to damage Iran's nuclear centrifuges, and it did its job fairly well even though the controllers were isolated.  Somebody had to use a USB or some other portable storage device to install it the virus.   More powerful versions are now being developed.

I started this post talking about a centuries old flintlock pistol, and ended it with cyber warfare.  How things have changed!

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Here is one note on old rings that appear large enough to be worn by a giant or on a big toe.  They were made to be worn over a glove.

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There are no storms right now, and the surf will run around one or two feet for the next several days.

Happy hunting,
TreasureGuide@comcast.net