~Brian Bondy

​Not from me, exactly, but still good advice. Of course, first you get a story.

I was recently ‘hacked’. What that means was that I got an email from someone, likely foreign, and it had my Windstream email and password. Normally, I’d ignore it but since they did actually have my password, I was a bit miffed, and upset. The good part is that I’ve been spending the last year getting rid of all my Windstream related accounts. I thought Windstream itself was the only account still related to my Windstream email.

Apparently, my little used LinkedIn account was also Windstream, and it got hacked too. I did recover it, fortunately, or not, whatever. I’m not into all that Social Networking anymore, as it has badly disappointed me. That’s another story. I have multiple emails for various reasons, like through Apple, Microsoft, Gmail, and Fatcow. They are free, and serve to segregate various activities.

My real point though is that you should have better passwords. Unless you really do have some complex ones, chances are they will have been stolen, either from other big data breaches, or by ‘bots’ that just continuously try different combos till they succeed. Likeliest is from breaches though. It’s estimated that BILLIONS of user’s data has been stolen from various big businesses, like Yahoo and Target. https://termly.io/resources/articles/biggest-data-breaches/
Data breaches occur every day, and often we don’t hear about it.  Read The Statistics  
Ransomware is getting fairly common also, read about it here.

So basically, I am NOT trying to scare you. What I want is to remind you to take your security seriously. Turn on two factor authentication wherever possible. Have a real password, not your pet dog's name. Use special characters, numbers, caps and lower-case mixes, and write them down in a notebook dedicated to your passwords. Supposedly, a password management app is a good thing, but that seems a little iffy to me. Experts suggest using one though. Ideally, do NOT use the same password everywhere.  That’s good advice, but I don’t know how realistic it is.   Using unique passwords for your financial accounts is always a good idea. 
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Make a backup. To an external drive, to a cloud storage place, or both, but if you are worried about losing it, then you need it backed up. Finally, read this article, originally from Medicare and edited by the Council on Aging of Oregon.

BTW, the hacker wanted $400 in Crypto for ‘ransom’. I don’t know what he thought he was going to do with the info he had, but I didn’t pay it. I did spend several days changing my passwords and checking my accounts for accuracy, particularly my email and phone number for 2 factor authentication. 

Occasionally Brian or I are asked to fax something.  We no longer have a fax machine although some printers provide that function, I thought this was a great article on using your smartphone as a fax for the occasional fax.  The recommendations of apps are from Rick. There are also free apps.
​~ Carol Bondy

Rick's Daily Tips
Rick Rouse
Back in the days before the Internet became ubiquitous it was common to use FAX machines to send documents to distant recipients if they needed those documents right away.

Today, most “immediate” correspondence is sent via email, but believe it or not, many businesses and government agencies still make heavy use of FAX machines even though we’re well into the Internet era.

That’s why there might actually come a time when you’ll need to send and/or receive a FAX or two yourself.

You could always buy yourself a FAX machine (or a multifunction printer that has FAXing capability built into it) and connect it to a landline phone connection, but that’s a huge heap of overkill just for sending or receiving a FAX once in a blue moon.

A much better and cheaper alternative is to install a good FAX app on your iPhone or Android phone and use that to send and receive your FAXes instead.

There are several really good FAX apps to choose from. Just open your phone’s applicable app store and search for the term fax and they’ll pop right up.
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Pick one that has great user reviews and install it and you’ll be all set the next time you need to send or receive a FAX.

There are several FAX apps available in both the Apple and Google Play app stores. While some of them are free, unfortuantely the best ones aren’t unless you want to just send an occasionaly one-page FAX.
In my humble opinion, Simple Fax is the best FAX app for Android smartphones and tablets.
Have an iPhone or iPad? I recommend that you check out SimpleFax (yep – same name, but different app).

~ Brian Bondy
 
While stumbling around the interweb, looking for some good tech tips, I found this group of 17 tips. I don’t know why they chose 17, it seems odd to me. It is odd, but why 17 and not 15 or 18? It was the first tip that made me read the rest of them. Try re-booting. Whatever electronic device it is, from a vacuum cleaner to a computer, I always try powering it off and then back on. Half the time, it’s as simple as that.

Number 14 had several keyboard shortcuts. Those are always appreciated, if only I could remember them. Still, I tried the one about using the space bar to page up or down. I didn’t understand it. Where would I use that? It turns out, in a browser. The space bar worked at paging down, and shift + space bar paged up. I didn’t know that.

Read the rest of them HERE. https://www.lutz.us/blog/17-tech-tips-and-tricks
​
Another thing: I want to thank everyone for the kind birthday wishes. I am now on Medicare. Also, I am retiring from the computer repair business. I’m still going to keep fixing up donated computers and giving them away, but for the most part, I’m out of the repair biz. I want to thank everyone for keeping that line of work going for me. It’s been frequently fun and always interesting. I gave away most of my computer stuff and found a whole other room in my house.

I’ve written about this before, but things change and it was a while ago. Before you discount Remote Desktop as something you’ll never use, remember that it may be something for a friend or relative to use to help you with your computer. I just installed the Google version on my Mom’s computer. Lately, I’ve been using Microsoft’s Quick Assist to help her remotely. That’s a great tool, but it does require some intervention on her part, to start it up and answer some prompts. That makes it quite secure as well.
 
There are several other ways to access a computer remotely, PC or Mac. A cool feature of some of these is that you can access the computer from your phone. While I can’t think of any particular reason why you would want to, I’m sure there are some. The article does offer an example, and you can read that HERE. How to control your desktop computer remotely with your phone (komando.com)
 
Google’s Remote Desktop is installed as an extension. The only real prompt is for a PIN to be used for the actual access. The computer needs to be on and connected to the internet, of course, but other than that, it’s pretty hands free after that.
 
Windows has something just like Google’s called Microsoft Remote Desktop, and it’s an App you can download. Also, Teamviewer has an option for taking control of the computer.
 
If you’re interested, give some or all of them a try to see which you like best. Let me know what you think at [email protected]
 
Kim Komando had a blurb on streaming videos coming in June. I am always annoyed at looking for movies to watch and being told I have to pay. King Ralph should be free, not $3.99, that’s just wrong. Here’s the list:
 
What’s streaming in June?
Netflix: “Groundhog Day,” “Terminator 2,” Dunkirk,” “Spider-Man” 1 through 3, “The Breakfast Club,” “Jarhead.”
Hulu: “The Grand Budapest Hotel,” “Idiocracy,” “One Hour Photo,” “Dune,” “Bewitched.”
HBO Max (the app is just called Max now, btw): “The Hurt Locker,” “Moonlight,” Dog Day Afternoon,” “3:10 to Yuma,” “Ready Player One,” “Dumb & Dumber,” “Grease,” “Police Academy” 1 through 5.
Prime Video: “Creed,” “12 Years a Slave,” “Hot Fuzz,” “Selma,” “Interstellar,” “Crazy Rich Asians,” Laverne and Shirley” seasons 1-4, “Chitty Chitty Bang Bang.”
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* I’ve decided to stream all the Sylvester Stallone movies. Unfortunately, I’m off to a “Rocky” start.

If you are ‘serviced’ by Jemez Electric, then you’ve likely noticed the power has gone out a few times this year. Even in cities the power can go out, but rural service definitely has this issue more frequently. We have a bunch of battery backup devices, battery charging blocks, and a generator for a longer outage. It’s good to be prepared.
 
I was reading an article on how to charge your phone when the power goes out. You can read it HERE. 

It has some obvious suggestions, like battery backups, or getting in your car and charging there, which I actually had not considered. But there was also a wood burning stove that has a built in charger that gets fed from the heat. That was very cool, though a bit on the spendy side. Still, our stove is electric and Carol cannot be without coffee in the morning, so it might be a good investment.
 
There are those crank type emergency radios that generally come with a USB charging slot, so that might be an idea. It seems like it would require a lot of cranking though. I wonder if they make an exercise bike that can charge a battery? That wouldn’t be a bad idea.
 
Something to keep in mind also, generally speaking, a landline is self powered, so that phone should still work in a power outage, though you’d also need a non-electric ‘old timey’ phone to use on it, and not a cordless or powered one.