Digital 2A

Today we have a guest article written by Musashi Aharon. He is a Jew who believes in the value and purpose of individuals, whose souls are created in likeness to the Divine. A tech enthusiast, he occasionally writes about ways to move power from corporations and the government back to the people.

I saw an unclassified release from the FBI that Islamic terrorists are using Telegram to coordinate and transfer funds. Unfortunate legislation in the UK was recently passed that eliminates many privacy protections online for their country.

To ban privacy and encryption is no less a problem than to ban arms, because both technologies serve as a leash upon would-be tyrannical governments. For sure, terrorists will use every advantage they can get. But that does not mean innocent people like us must digitally take off our body armor because terrorists can use the same.

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Slow internet will cause problems

Sometimes you need to open your wallet and get faster internet.

I have a client, only 3 active computers with 5 on their small network. They have the slowest internet available to save money. They had to quit using Microsoft Outlook because it would time out when downloading email from this 768kb connection. Windows Live Mail (WLM) worked if only one person at a time was retrieving email. However WLM is no longer available. We went to EM Client which acts a lot like WLM, however it is not unusual for headers, images and even senders names not to download.

If I bring any of their computers to my office, open email everything is fine.
I had another client that I had to let go for this very reason. They moved into a community office that had community internet. They were getting 256k internet speeds and Outlook never quit trying to get email until it times out. They also were unable to get Security updates, Windows patches or browse the internet for business or pleasure. Once again, if I brought the computer to my office, everything worked, after the 600 plus emails downloaded.

Now imagine needing to email important papers, invoices, or photos. You are wasting more than the monthly cost of faster internet while waiting for those things to go through. Add the use of Dropbox, OneDrive, Google Drive and online backup programs and you have a never ending issue.

Moral of this lesson, if you don’t have at least a 1Mb connection per person using the internet you are not acting like a real business or even home internet user. I would suggest even more speed. Today it is common to have 1Gb (1,000Mb) service available in most communities where there is a city with 100,000 people or more.

Quit causing yourself and your IT folks frustration and get faster internet.

Until we meet again, have a virus free week.

Some website drop down menus don’t work in Chrome

Recently I built a couple of new computers for a client. On one of the computers one and one website for that computer, the drop down menus would not work. The side fly out menus and click boxes worked just fine. All other computers in the office worked fine on that site.

After much scratching of the head, resetting Chrome, checking and double-checking of security exemptions in ESET, Malwarebytes and Super Anti-Spyware I was going nowhere. I emailed the support site of the problem web site. Their response is one I would have not thought of probably ever. Continue reading

Physical Security on a Budget – Securing Your Home Internet

For updated comments et al visit our other blog at http://www.the22man.com/2016/03/start-your-physical-security-on-a-budget/

This is a no cost solution to increasing your personal security, and we all like that four letter word “FREE”.

I was working on this as a subject not only for TWG, but also for a book that was written by Matt Canovi. The problem is I was on page 3 and just showing you how to log onto your router. That may be alright for a book however it is unacceptable for a blog. I will let you know when I either joint publish in the 2nd edition of Canovi’s book or have this published in depth elsewhere. Continue reading