Smart Home Security Simplified: Easy Steps for Non-Techies

The last post introduced the idea of smart homes. Smart homes are exciting, but security can be a concern. Today, I’ll guide you through straightforward steps to secure your smart home without overwhelming you with technical details. When you’re done reading this piece, you’ll be able to enjoy the benefits of smart devices while keeping your home safe and stress-free. […]

A Better Way to Manage Your Passwords

The Problem: It doesn’t take long to accumulate a mass of passwords throughout the Web. You have one for email, one for each of several (or multitudinous) websites, shopping sites, your bank, retirement accounts, education…how do we remember them all? Unfortunately, our methods for keeping track of our logins and passwords usually entails one of the following: 1. Pick something […]

The Math Behind a Good Password

Embed from Getty Images This post is actually a preface to another one I’m in the middle of right now, on password managers. But I wanted to take a minute and explain why your workplace insists on bizarre passwords, and how you can capitalize on that in your personal life. Why are there password requirements? When you have to change […]

Is Your Heart Bleeding?

  What have you heard about the vulnerability called Heartbleed? More than you wanted to? Less than you needed to?  Let me unpack it for you, only the part that you need to know, and then I’ll get a little deeper for those who want to stick around for the full meal. Let’s do a Good News/Bad News thing. What […]

Before You Send That Resume…

Before you send that resume, you might want to take a look at your social media profiles, and the stuff you’ve put “out there,” and see what they say about you. While I doubt the validity of requiring your Facebook login ID and password would stand up in any court, employers have ways of checking your online life without it. […]

I’m Completely Safe On a Mac Or Linux

FALSE! Well, you might be safer on a Mac or Linux machine than on an unpatched Windows machine. But just getting a Mac and never taking safety measures, and then clicking on every link that comes into your email and giving your install password to every process that requests it isn’t any safer than running any other Windows machine. Remember Willie […]

Please Tell Me Your Wi-Fi Has a Password

Regardless of the method used to connect to the internet, if you use a wireless router or access point, IT NEEDS A PASSWORD–and it needs to NOT be set as “password.” If you use U-VERSE from AT&T, the password is on the bottom of the device, and it’s a good password. I don’t know how much configuration you can do […]