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. […]
Smart Home Security Simplified: Easy Steps for Non-Techies
Should You Buy a Solid-State Drive?
WHAT IS A SOLID-STATE DRIVE? In order to get a handle on what a Solid-State Drive is, we need to sort of understand what the term “solid state” means. In short, when we say “solid state,” we mean electronic circuitry that is built entirely of semiconductors. It may help to understand what NOT “solid state” would be. Older televisions and […]
The Top Things to Do To Avoid Malware
As a tech professional, it’s my job to clean up after computer “accidents.” But a more important aspect of my job is keeping them from happening. There is a lot of information on the web directed at cyber safety, and most of it is good. But there is one thing that you can do more to keep you safe than any other […]
Critical Information on New Ransomware
Embed from Getty Images Hot off the press, there’s a new version on ransomware that is cheaper to unlock, and there’s bad news and more bad news. Yes, they charge only a portion of a bitcoin to get the key to unlock the files they’ve encrypted. Except that they haven’t encrypted them. They’ve actually deleted the files. So if you […]
Coming Soon! Cybersafety Ebook
I haven’t been putting a lot of material up lately because I’ve been working on getting a book ready for publishing. Coming to an e-reader or computer or smartphone near you, Digital Safety for the Digitally Naive: Every User’s Guide to Staying CyberSafe. This book is a comprehensive advisory and tutorial to help you avoid losing your data, your identity, […]
Are You Safe Using Snapchat?
The process of writing this article was much more educational than I anticipated. I started out to write about a breach of Snapchat usernames and phone numbers, so I could warn readers about using this service. Then I found out about the photo leaks—and more. I also found a significant amount of naiveté demonstrated by some of the bloggers who […]
Sometimes It’s the Little Things
…or, in this case, the Itty Bitty. I get my news and information from a wide variety of sources: websites, newsletters, YouTube channels, and podcasts, primarily. Today’s media content lends itself well to consumer contribution, and that increases the value of each medium as well as each producer. I currently follow 17 podcasts, and the only reason I can do […]
You Can’t Just Surf Anymore
It never was really safe to just surf around and clickety-click on interesting-looking stuff, but it just keeps getting truer and truer (is that grammatically correct?) that you have got to pay attention to what you’re doing on the web. You’ve got to pay attention when you get an email with a link or an attachment. (See Cryptolocker) You’ve got […]
Is Glass Your Next Big Thing?
The short answer is probably not yet. Glass is Google’s latest R&D effort. Okay, it’s a cool concept. Would I like to play with it? Yes, I probably would. Would I spend $1,500 to play with it? Nah. Absolutely not. But let’s remember this: At $1,500, I’m not the target market for this product. Glass is still highly experimental. It’s […]
What is “The Cloud” and Should I Be Using It?
This is a very simplified network drawing done in Microsoft Visio, using commonly accepted symbols. Something like this, only much more complex, would be used for planning a new network or an upgrade or change, or to identify where the technology components of a network are. In the center of the diagram, you see a Cloud symbol. This symbol has […]