February 2019 - Monthly Mini-Bytes

Take the Phishing Quiz! Phishing has been and will continue to be a big problem for every single email user. Every day you will see phishing emails in your inbox or junk mail folders. The potential of being a victim of one of these nefarious messages is easier than you may think. And unfortunately there is no one quick answer. The scammers change up their methods, which means you need to constantly be on your toes and aware. Google has put together a little phishing quiz in partership with Jigsaw. It is available here: https://phishingquiz.withgoogle.com/ If you do take the quiz, don't use your real name and email. Just make one up for an example (per their instructions). The quiz can help you learn about phishing and potential ways to avoid it. And in the words of Sergeant Phil Esterhaus, "Let's be careful out there."

Three Tips to Avoid Spoofed Web Pages Web page spoofing has become a huge problem. Tricksters create a webpage and URL that look very close to the real one, fooling you in to entering usernames and passwords, which are immediately compromised. They may also offer downloads that then load up your Mac with malware. Just as with email phishing, you are the one in ultimate control, and like walking through a bad neighborhood at 2AM with multitudes of Benjamins taped to your person, you must learn that just by being on the internet, you are a target. Act appropriately. Here are three tips to get you started: Be Careful of Your Search Results - First, make sure you are using a reputable Search Engine. Search results vary between them, and some are better than others. When you search and get those results, be careful of what you are clicking on. Look at the listing. If it looks funny, then it most likely is spoofed. Bookmark Frequently Used Sites - Do not use a search engine to hit frequently used sites like your bank, credit union, webmail, etc. This is the main way that the spoofers trap you. Bookmark all your most important sites and access them from the bookmarks. Check the URL - The URL is the thing that often starts with www and ends with .com, .net, or .edu, etc. A website like mybank.com can be spoofed as my_bank.com, mybankcom.net, etc. Be sure of the site you are visiting.

Use the Correct Power Adapter I bet you have a drawer in your house packed with old power adapters that go back to the 90s. We all have them. It's okay. What is not okay is using the wrong power adapter with a device. Whether it be your Mac, iPhone, iPad, external hard drive, cable box, XBOX, or Tesla, using the wrong power adapter and cord can be a huge problem. From battery damage to over heating (or worse), the wrong power adapter can get you into trouble. What to do: Make sure you have the correct power adapter for your device. If you are not sure, check with the manufacturer. Label the power adapter, so you know which device it is supposed to be associated with. Check the condition of the power adapter. If the cord is frayed or the unit itself is in any way damaged, get a new one.

January 2019 - Technology Mini-Bytes

New Year! Time for a Mail Cleanup! Large mail databases are not a good thing. The more mail that you have, the harder your computer and devices have to work to sync everything. Having too large of a mail box can mean delays in getting messages, lockups, the dreaded spinning wheel, or even database corruption, which means moving your mail to a new mail host will be very difficult. So how do you do it? Outside of just deleting everything and starting anew, there are some more surgical methods that we prefer: Empty the Trash and Junk Folders - It's amazing how large these can get. Keeping them cleaned out is an easy thing to do. Delete Old Mail - That sale on curtains from 2014 is long over. Archive Old Messages - If the messages are important, come up with an archive strategy. There are different options depending on your mail host. The choices available to you could be as simple as hiding the folders from the sync function, dragging to local storage, or even moving to an archive email account. And one other thing... It's a good idea to keep the unread count down. Having thousands of unread messages isn't good for you or your mail database. Most mail clients have a way that you can sort by unread. And here's a Pro Tip: Apple Mail and other clients give you the ability to create Smart Folders that can make cleaning up your mail much easier.

Be Spoof & SPAM Savvy Spoofing and SPAM have been around for as long as email has been mainstream. These attacks are not letting up and will not go away. The only thing that you can do is to be more email savvy. Keep in mind, too, that Spoofing and SPAM are not technical problems in and of themselves, but more of an opportunity for education. In fact, many big security firms provide training to companies to teach the staff tips and best practices to protect themselves and the business. But what can you do to protect yourself: Use a Decent Email Provider - Email services are not all the same. Some do a better job filtering out the bad guys. Mom & pop webhosts cannot keep pace with the likes of Google or Apple. Check the Email Address, not the Name - Spoofing emails very often have a mismatch between the name and the email. The name is there for your convenience. The email is the real thing that you want to focus on. If it looks funny, it probably is. You can contact the person directly via phone, or through their known and trusted email account to confirm if it is real or not. Don't Click on Links or Attachments - If you do not know who the email is from, do not click on the link or attachment or call the phone number. This is usually how they get you. If you see something from your bank or credit card, be safe -- do not click on the link, but go to their website as you normally would. Tighten Up Your Password - Make sure for your email account that you are using a unique password with numbers, letters, and symbols. Also, if two factor authentication is offered, consider using it. Having a weak email password can turn you into a victim. Don't be one.

Mac Slow? It May Be Your Hard Drive With all the updates that have come out in the past few months, we have noticed that all Mac computers with the old-style SATA Hard Drives have gotten slower and slower. If you use apps like Mail, Photos, or the Adobe Creative Cloud you are probably familiar with this phenomenon. The bad news is that there really isn't anything that you can do to speed up the process. SATA hard drives struggle with the larger files sizes and loads that a system like macOS Mojave puts on them. It is also a factor that our iPhones and iPads operate with Solid State memory, so the experiences we have on our mobile devices make the old SATA driven Macs feel, well, slow. Outside of getting a new Mac with a Solid State Drive, what can you do? Use Webmail vs. Mail - Working in a browser eliminates the database syncing that goes on when using Mail. Only Open One Application at a Time - Multiple apps use resources. Add RAM - If you can, adding memory will allow your applications to run in RAM space, vs. having to pull data on and off your old SATA Drive. Upgrade to a Solid State Drive - For many, this may not be an option, but if the Mac is only a few years old, it is a possibility. But keep in mind, if your Mac has a SATA drive and is from 2014 or before, it may just be time to replace it. The good news is that all new Macs, except the iMacs, come with Solid State Drives standard. If you do want to get an iMac, you will need to custom order one with a Solid State Drive. iMacs that they stock at the Apple Store only have SATA or Fusion drives. You don't want one of those. And just to be totally clear: We do not recommend purchasing a Mac with a SATA or Fusion Drive. With the complexity of systems today, only a Solid State Drive will give you the performance that you are expecting.

November 2018 - Technology Mini-Bytes

Safety Tip: Use Your Bookmarks Don’t get scammed searching for that perfect pumpkin pie this week. Spoofed internet searches are one of the leading ways that computer users get tricked into downloading malware, and it happens so easily. Say you are searching for your bank. You type in the name of the bank in your internet search engine, click on the first link, and proceed to enter your username and password thinking that it’s, well, your bank. But it’s not! It could be a spoofed site and you just handed the hackers the keys to your kingdom. Can you call them hackers if you give them your password? So what can you do to ensure that you hit your bank’s site and not some fake page? Use Bookmarks. Yes, you know what they are. They have been around forever for a reason. They get you to where you want to go every time. In Safari it’s easy to create and manage your Bookmarks through the Bookmarks Drop-Down Menu.  And remember that when searching for your sites that you intend to Bookmark, the search engine that you use has a lot to do with whether or not you will come across a bogus website. Google does a very good job of cleaning their results. Other services are not nearly as good. Google is not 100% foolproof, but they are far better than the rest. The name of the game is to be very careful on what sites you hit and what information you enter in the pages that you land on. If you are logging into your bank, or credit union, or broker’s site, you want to be 100% sure it is them and not some criminal.

Are you making it simple for hackers? If you have been a regular consumer of Mini-Bytes, you have heard me drone on about not using the same password for every single account. What makes it easy for you makes it easy for the bad guys. One password gets them into all of your accounts.  There has been a big round of sextortion emails using old passwords and usernames to scare users into paying thousands in Bitcoin to scammers. Paying these ransoms does nothing, as another email with the same username and password is soon to follow. If you do get one of these emails, make sure that you are no longer using that password for any account. And remember these tips: Use Strong & Varied passwords with at least 8 characters. Mix up numbers, letters and symbols. Don’t use the same password for every account. Enable two-factor authentication when possible. Have a method to securely store and record your passwords, updating the list as things are added or changed. If you save passwords in Safari you can go up to the Safari drop-down menu and choose Preferences. Hit the Passwords tab and authenticate to view the passwords that you have saved. Look for the yellow triangles. They will tell you where you are using this password as a duplicate. It’s a good tool to help you clean up and vary your passwords.

It’s Mojave to High Sierra and That’s It In the past, it was okay to be on an older Mac operating system up to three editions back. Unfortunately, with security in mind, those days are past. We recommend that your Mac be running either the current macOS 10.14 Mojave or the one-year-old macOS 10.13 High Sierra at the very least. It will help make sure that you can run the latest web browsers, and keep up to date with compatibility with your iPhone and iPad. If your Mac will not run either of these systems, then it is definitely time for a new machine. Mojave will run on most Macs 2012 and newer, and High Sierra will go a few years earlier than that. With the industry lifecycle of 3 years, a Mac that is six years or older has definitely performed well.