If you’ve noticed in the news, there have been some articles talking about Amazon Sidewalk, and that you should opt-out of it before it’s too late. Most of the articles seem to have inflammatory headlines. Sadly, that’s typical of the news these days. Maybe it’s always been that way? At any rate, I have 2 articles and a Snopes blurb about it. The articles do a good job of explaining what it is. One article is definitely against it, while the other one is a bit more, I’d say, level headed.

First, If you have an Amazon Ring or Echo, this applies to you, if not, then you don’t necessarily need to read this. We do have the Echo, and have a Ring but not yet installed. There are plenty of creepy things about having this type of device in our home. The fact is, they are accessible by Amazon, and who knows who else. I would say the same thing about smart phones. In fact, I have. Not too long ago I wrote about how these big corporations are ‘listening’.

If you leave your home, you can be watched. If you live in a neighborhood, those Ring cameras that people have are, in effect, watching you. Not to mention security cameras in commercial buildings, and traffic cameras everywhere. If you are neurotic and off your meds, this could be quite upsetting. If you’re paranoid, you may have good reason to be. This is reality.

The Sidewalk is described as a mesh WiFi system created from the internet of Amazon Ring and Echo devices. Amazon will be taking a wee bit of your internet and distributing it through their devices to the outside, and PUBLIC world, where these devices live. The logic is so that Amazon products that use the internet can have better range. It does make sense, for instance, if I put a Tile ‘homing device’ on my dog’s collar, and she gets lost, the Tile could stay connected to the internet in a much wider range, allowing me to find her. Imagine if that’s my kid’s backpack instead of a dog collar. There is definitely a good reason for this.

The problem many folks have is that Amazon is controlling it. Also, that the option is already turned on and in order to not participate, you have to turn it off.

An article that is very against it is HERE.   He does use some profanity. He does NOT trust Amazon.

The Snopes blurb is HERE.   It’s short and to the point. It basically says it’s not the end of the world.

The third article, I think, is a more level headed explanation. You can read that one HERE. 
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If this topic interests you, then please do read the articles. For those of us in Abiquiu, this isn’t of the most immediate importance, as most of us are still trying to get decent internet and don’t have these Amazon devices. But many of our readers live in cities and towns, and this may very well be something that applies.  

First, I want to thank the 3 people that bought my MacBooks. I don’t usually sell computers, however, I needed to recoup some money and add to my kitty so I can keep buying parts for computers that I give away, and that helped BIG TIME! So, thank you Alicia, Katy, and Gail.
This week, I will talk about the Mac OS, in honor of those three lovely people.
First off is a video on 8 useful tips, target disk mode was my favorite which I didn’t know about. The printer icon one was also pretty great.  Click Here

And if that wasn’t enough, here is a youtube video of 25 tips for the MacBook that were posted by users, like you.

I liked this third one because it starts with removing login items. Those are jobs that start with the Mac, which don’t need to be running and slow the Mac down. On Windows 10 this is the Startup tab in Settings.   Click  

​So that should keep you Mac people busy for a while. Good luck!

Ransomware has been in the news recently. While I have known people who have victimized by ransomware, they are quite rare. They paid the $300 and got the encryption key and were able to recover their PC. Recently, the Colonial Pipeline ransomware attack appears to have netted the attackers $4.4 million. The attackers apparently netted $90 million in total before shutting up and presumably retiring or reorganizing. That article is HERE. 

I think for me, I’d just reformat my drive and start over. Hopefully everyone out there reading this has a good backup of what they would NOT want to lose, and has that safely in a drawer somewhere. My brother in law, David, sent me an interesting link about ransomware. Two actually. One link was saying Windows 10 had anti-ransomware software that you could activate, however neither he nor I were able to do so. The other link was a sensible discussion about ransomware, what it is, how to avoid it, and what to do if you get it. That article is HERE.
 
I’ve spoken about backing up your critical data for years. Have you done that lately? Pictures and documents are typically the biggies. A good option is to back data up to a service that has anti-encryption built in, like Microsoft OneDrive. Whatever you choose, don’t keep putting it off. 

A while back I posted an article on the tiff between Facebook and Apple pertaining to some disclosure and privacy options Apple was adding to their iOS. Facebook figured that folks would not like being told which apps were going to collect data, and they might opt out of that. Turns out, Facebook was right. An article on that is HERE.

Basically, Apple was changing the way apps ran, letting the user know that an app wanted to collect data on you, and allow you to say NO! Apparently, a study has been done showing that worldwide, about 12% were willing. That will likely prove beneficial for Apple in that they appear to be more concerned with your privacy. Sounds great right? Well, yes and no. It's good PR anyway. The truth though, not so much.

​In 2015 Apple had a security breach for 128 million app downloads. They chose to not mention it. An article on that is HERE.

It's a safe bet that huge corporations don't have my best interests in mind. The question becomes how much do I care, and what can I do about it? Well, it is a good question. I don't have an answer.

Recently, there’s been some published articles about Facebook not being happy that Apple’s latest iOS upgrade, 14.5, will offer some privacy options not previously available. Namely, to be told about an app wanting to track you and the option to opt out of that.

An article on that subject is HERE. 

So while I can sort of commend Apple’s “privacy concerns”, it’s really a drop in the bucket and I am doubtful it will change much, if anything. Facebook is currently making adjustments to conform? to this requirement from Apple. But let’s be frank, tracking is going on at a scary level, if you think too much about it. There are traffic cameras all over the place, neighborhood cameras on everyone’s doorbells, cameras on the insides and outsides of businesses. Then, everything you are doing on your smart phone has the ability to track where you are, what you’re browsing, what you’re buying. I don’t mean to worry you, it’s currently a part of life and the intention is consumerism. It is that consumerism that makes capitalism work, you can’t have one without the other.

That leads me to 3 movie references, Batman, the one with Heath Ledger, referenced Batman using everyone’s phone in Gotham to find the Joker. The second is 12 Monkeys, where Brad Pitt is in a mental hospital with Bruce Willis, telling him that if you aren’t a good consumer then you must be mentally ill and that’s why you get put away. And third, Ex Machina, where the AI inventor references his tapping into Google’s, Facebook’s, Apple’s photos & cameras, so he could get more data on facial expressions to make a more subtle and accurate robot, and those companies couldn’t complain since they were secretively using the data as well. Three great movies, check them out if you haven’t seen them already.
Finally, there’s another article on the idea behind Apple’s software changes and Facebook’s reaction you can read HERE. I thought it was probably a bit more in depth on what’s really happening between Tim & Mark.

And a fourth movie, “Commerce is our goal here at Tyrell. More human than human is our motto.” 
Hopefully you already know that reference.