By Brian Bondy
 
You may have heard of Apples Air Tags.  They’ve been in the news this year, for good and sinister reasons both.

Air tags are very small tracking devices, not a lot bigger than a quarter. They can be attached to your keys, your purse, anything really. Generally, if you misplace your keys in your house, for instance, you can make the Air Tag chime to help you find them. More than that, if you left them at your friends house, you can use the Find My app to locate them.

You may have heard folks placing an Air Tag in their luggage and if the bag gets lost, or stolen, they can tell authorities where the bag is. What isn’t good is that some naughty people have hidden them to someone’s car without them knowing, in order to stalk them, follow them, whatever reason. Apple came up with a warning when that happens that alerts the person that there is an Air Tag near them.

Apple isn’t the only maker of these devices, not even the first. Carol has been using a brand called Tile for a long time. She attaches one to her keys, her Ear Pod case, her purse, and a few other things, I think. They are VERY handy if you tend to misplace things.

A great CNET article on this subject is HERE. 
​
I don’t know about putting one in your tent? Or jacket pocket, but, I guess, if you tend to misplace those things? Keys makes sense, definitely. Luggage, maybe so. I’m sure you can come up with some good ideas. 

By Brian Bondy

​Last week, you may recall, had a nationwide Verizon outage. So we went into T-Mobile that day and switched our phones to T-Mobile, and additionally, we signed up for their Wi-Fi hotspot. The transfer of our phones was fairly trouble free, except for a few days with Carol’s phone, because she also ordered a new one. It took 2 days to resolve. We were wanting to switch anyway, because we don’t get a Verizon signal at our house and for us they are expensive.

Our house is line-of-site to the T-Mobile tower. The switch to T-Mobile saved us more than  $50/month, and that is with the additional cost of Carol’s new phone, so it’s quite a savings. Starlink is $120/month and the T-Mobile hotspot is $30/month as part of the bundle.

The next thing was to try it all out. The phones work great, as does the WiFi. I set it up and was shocked when I did a speed test. Starlink, when I first got it, was running about 200mbps. It has since gotten to over 300mbps. Way more than we need, but it was nice. The thing we needed was stability, and it’s been rock solid.

T-Mobile measured at over 600mbps. That was startling. I don’t notice a speed a speed difference, as fast is just FAST, 300 or 600, they are both fast to me. I was just surprised is all, as I didn’t ask about speed and didn’t expect that.

I ran that for about a week, and then switched my mesh system to the T-Mobile router. It’s been working great. The mesh system gives our house more complete coverage of WiFi, spreading it out to our outbuilding offices, the tree house, and the Airstream. If you haven’t already, you should read Rick Roen’s article on setting up a new mesh system at his home.

I don’t even know if our mesh units go up to 600mbps, it doesn’t matter to me, they are fast enough. Our internet has been working great and it’s saving us $90/month over Starlink. I plan on pausing Starlink for a while so I don’t keep paying for it, and to give T-Mobile a longer testing time, but so far, we are very pleased.

Rick Roen's article below talks about swapping out his EERO mesh units for another brand. He's selling them in the classifieds section if you are interested. They work great for us, but they do have some limitations. I have several units outside on our porch where they are protected, but they are not weatherproof. 

By Rick Roen
 
I have been contemplating a big change to my Wi-Fi and finally pulled the plugs on my Eeros.  It was a pretty good mesh system which I have used for the past few years. 

The advantages are a basically plug-and-play setup with very few user settings to adjust and pretty good meshing from one unit to another. 

The disadvantages are they have to be inside. The Wi-Fi signal has a hard time going through block walls from room to room and I have little possibility of running ethernet cable to each router. I had to locate them near windows in site of another Eero which was not always the ideal location.

The setup I replaced starts with a Starlink satellite, through an unused vent in the roof, into a wiring closet where the main Eero connected to the Starlink router.  This fed another nine Eero’s located throughout the house. The Starlink Wi-Fi is turned off.

My inner geek made me look at dozens of YouTubes about Wi-Fi and I finally decided on Ubiquity Unifi.  This brand is more oriented to commercial use, but they have a broad product range and are widely used at home. I had a hunch that a Wi-Fi signal could more easily pass through the flat wooden joist roof than through the block inside. That proved to be true.

Here is what I have now:

• Cloud Gateway Max – the Starlink connects by ethernet cable to this device which feeds everything else.  This unit also has a Unifi application suite that controls everything.
• Three U6 Mesh Access Point – these route up to the roof from the Cloud Gateway via ethernet and cover the entire house.  They are powered by PoE (Power over Ethernet) like many UniFi products. They are rated for outdoor use. I have them mounted on 3 foot PVC pipes that sleeve on top of drain vent pipes. The ethernet cable is rated for outdoors and is slightly thicker than normal.
• Three U6 Plus Access Points – these indoor units connect to the rooftop access points and extend the Wi-Fi signal to some out of the way places like the garage. These are also PoE and are mounted on walls with Velcro sticky tape.  I probably don’t have to have these, but the signal is slightly better where they are located.

The changeover was surprising easy.  You open a free admin account at Ubiquity, plug in the Cloud Gateway after which it automatically updated to the latest version. Then you make your initial settings which are mainly to name your SSID (Wi-Fi name) and provide a password.  From there you plug in each unit which is recognized by the Cloud Gateway web interface, adopt it and repeat for the other devices. The access points automatically use the Wi-Fi settings in the Cloud Gateway.

I have quite a few “smart” devices throughout the house like Nest Thermostats, SimpliSafe security system, Tempest Weather Station, Kasa Smart Plugs, etc.  Most of these automatically logged in to the new network since the name and password were the same. On a few devices I had to manually enter the info again.

Now my speeds are vastly improved throughout the house.  Starlink speeds of course vary widely even from minute to minute, but I was generally getting 10 - 80 Mbps. Now I am getting 160 – 320 Mbps and the outdoor coverage goes for hundreds of feet.

Problems – not many so far after two weeks.  The only thing I notice is a connection lag when I am on a Wi-Fi phone call and changing access points. The signal doesn’t cut out, but it takes longer to switch over than the Eeros.  I will investigate this since there may be some settings I can make.

Cost – about $1,300 including the outdoor ethernet cable.  UniFi has lots of options so you could start with a much cheaper setup.  For many houses just one access point would cover everything. A U6 Lite or AC Mesh are only $100. A Cloud Gateway runs between $130 and $200. An Eero costs about $65 and frequently go on sale.
​
What’s Next – maybe security cameras.  I have SimpliSafe cameras, but they don’t always connect. The Cloud Gateway has a slot to add SSD memory to record video with UniFi camera.
There are LOTS of tweaks you can make to the network which I have not investigated.  For example, you could put all your smart devices on a separate Wi-Fi network and isolate them from your personal traffic.  Many of these devices “call home” and might have access to things you don’t want to share with North Korea.  There are lots of YouTubes on UniFi that explain all the network options and devices.

By Rick Rouse
Rick's Daily Tech Tips

Well, the account cloning epidemic on Facebook is showing no signs of letting up. In fact, it seems to be getting worse.

Every day I see frantic posts from several of my friends saying they've been hacked and not to accept a new friend request from them.

I know how alarming it can be when your friends start sending you messages saying they've received duplicate friend requests from you, but the situation really isn't as dire as it seems. 
The important thing to understand about this situation is your account cannot send a friend request to someone who is already your friend. Sending duplicate friend requests wouldn't serve any useful purpose, therefore Facebook doesn't even give you the option of sending them.
What's more, hackers can't send duplicate friend requests either, even if they somehow manage to assume control of your account. In short, the "duplicate" friend requests your friends are receiving aren't duplicates at all. They are being sent from an entirely different account.

What's happening is some scammers on Facebook are cloning (i.e. making fraudulent copies) of accounts, NOT hacking the original accounts.

What they're doing is simply copying whatever personal info you have made public on your account along with a few of your pictures and using that info to create a brand new account in your name. They then send all of your Facebook friends a friend request from the new fake account.

After they have tricked several of your friends into "friending" the fake account, they use that account to spread malware and scam other Facebook users - starting with your friends.
I know that sounds serious, and it is. But luckily it isn’t anywhere near as serious as actually having your account hacked.

If your Facebook account gets cloned by a scammer, your real account hasn't been hacked. You don't need to change your password. All you need to do is ask your friends who receive the fraudulent friend requests to report the fake account so it will (hopefully) be taken down by Facebook.

And finally, always remember this: The less information you make available to the public on your Facebook profile, the less information a potential scammer will have to work with (i.e. steal) if he decides he wants to clone your account.

That's why I recommend "hiding" as much info as possible from everyone except your friends. It's also a good idea to limit the types of information you publish on your profile in the first place, starting with hiding your Friends List from the public.

Bonus tip: This post explains why there's really no such thing as "privacy" on Facebook.

​I’m sorry, What did you say?
 
By Brian Bondy

I recently got new hearing aids, from Hear.com. I’m happy with them. That’s all I’ll say for now. Apple, recently, came out with some air pods that are FDA approved to be used as hearing aids. There are some qualifications for that, but I am including a great article from CNET on that subject HERE. https://www.cnet.com/tech/mobile/apple-airpods-pro-hearing-aid-feature-authorized-by-fda-heres-how-itll-work/

For several years I used hearing amplifiers from Amazon. They started out costing $50 each and then became $50 for a pair. You can’t get any cheaper than that. As I broke several way more expensive hearing aids, I decided to go with some cheap amplifiers and they were great for a long time.

Hearing amplifiers are just that, they amplify all sounds. No frills here, just amplifiers with a volume control. I liked the rechargeable variety over the battery ones. They work fine but they amplify everything. For me, I was having a hard time on certain frequencies, voice being the main one. Sometimes, the amplifiers were too loud, depending on what was making sounds.
Carol appreciated the amplifiers though, as she thought I was ignoring her. I still couldn’t hear some things, like the alarm on the refrigerator door, the timer on the stove, or the cricket in our bedroom. The cricket actually worked out for me, but not for Carol, who couldn’t sleep.

Finally I tried out the Hear.com hearing aids by Horizon. They do a virtual appointment over a computer they send you, along with headphones and a pair of hearing aids. They have you do a test, and the audiologist connects to the hearing aids and adjust them to your specific needs. After a couple of weeks we ‘met’ again for another tweek. After a couple more weeks we had another session for tweeking, but I was happy with them. I can hear the crickets outside, the timer on the stove, and the alarm on the fridge.

My hearing isn’t perfect but it’s way better. There is an app so I can alter some things as needed, and my phone connects to them which is HUGE. I love that feature.