By BD Bondy

I hesitate to call this an article about security cameras because we use our cameras more to watch the wildlife around our house. We have a camera devoted to what’s under our porch, for instance. Generally, we have a couple of cats under there, but often there are raccoons too. Sometimes a squirrel, mouse, bird, and once, a dog. 
 
The camera is also useful in letting us know who came over and dropped off some electronics. In front of the house we’ve seen dogs, a coyote, a baby bear, cats, raccoons. Behind the house we’ve watched bobcat, and an owl in the apricot tree. 
 
Same stuff at my mom’s house, capturing videos of javalina, bobcat, and other animals. If you have any interest in setting up a camera, then you should know that it’s pretty easy. We set up a camera a month back for the hummingbird that build a nest on an extension cord under the roof of our porch. I was able to use the cheaper indoor Blink brand camera as it’s protected. 
 
Our brand of camera overall is Blink. They come in multi packs if you want, indoor and outdoor, and plugin and battery. We have a couple that have security lights too. Choose which one you want for where, there’s a lot of flexibility. We have several that are outdoor, and they are a bit pricier. Usually you need a subscription to store the videos, but not always. 
 
For security purposes, you would want the cloud storage of videos, otherwise, the local storage could be taken along with other contents of your house. If security isn’t really the purpose, then a camera that does local storage on a flash drive would be fine. 
 
I have 2 articles to read about some ‘top choices’ of cameras by reputable magazines. 
https://www.cnet.com/home/security/best-home-security-camera/
https://www.nytimes.com/wirecutter/reviews/best-wireless-outdoor-home-security-camera/

Rick Rouse
Ricks Daily Tech Tips

As you probably know, scams of various types are ubiquitous on social media (here’s looking at you, Facebook).

Some scams run their course and are never seen again, but most just seem to pop up every now and then.

One of those recurring “pop-up scams” is a lottery scam targeting people who enjoy playing the Powerball and Mega Millions multi-state lotteries that frequently advertise massive prize payouts for the winners.

In one variation of the scam the scammer places a post in your newsfeed telling you that you have won a massive jackpot, and all you have to do to collect it is to pay a processing fee and/or give them your bank account info (so they can deposit your winnings – yeah, right!).

Another variation of the lottery scam requires you to purchase a “ticket” online. Of course there is no “ticket” because you can’t buy them from just any Internet rando.

In a slightly more benign version of the scam you are asked to simply “Like” the scammer’s fake lottery Facebook page in order to play.

They won’t ask you for any money or financial information, but after their Facebook page has attracted tons of Likes they’ll either use that page to perpetrate other scams or sell the page to another scammer.

Bottom line: If you want to play a lottery and have any real chance of winning (or at least not get scammed), you’ll need to either visit a local retailer and buy a physical lottery ticket or play via your state’s official lottery website or app.

By Rick Rouse
Rick's Daily Tips

​With all the hacking going on these days it’s important to always keep your Apple ID and your devices as secure as possible.

If you want to enable the strongest possible level of security for your iPhone, iPad, Mac and/or other Apple devices, you can do so by generating a Recovery Key for your Apple ID.

What makes a Recovery Key so secure is YOU will be the only person who has access to it as long as you don’t share it with anyone or allow it to fall into someone else’s hands. And without the Recovery Key there is no getting into a device without the passcode. Period.

Once your Recovery Key has been created the Account Recovery tool will no longer work for your Apple ID, and that will prevent a thief, a snoop or anyone else from using one of your “trusted” devices to reset the password to your Apple ID.

Important notice…
Important: While having the Account Recovery tool disabled will greatly enhance the security of your Apple account and your devices, it will also take away one of the tools you could potentially use to reset your Apple ID password should the need ever arise.

All of your account recovery eggs will be in one basket: your Recovery Key.

Therefore, it’s absolutely imperative that you never lose your Recovery Key because without it you’ll be locked out of your Apple account and devices permanently if your passcode ever fails to work for some reason.

In other words, proceed with caution and safeguard your Recovery Key.

In a nutshell, a Recovery Key is a special randomly generated 28-character code that you can use to help reset your password and regain access to your Apple ID if you ever forget it (or if it simply stops working for some reason).

Keep this special code stored away in a safe place (or preferably, in several safe places) and you won’t ever have to worry about getting permanently locked out of your Apple account and/or Apple devices in the future.

Now that the warnings are out of the way, if you want to ensure that your Apple ID and devices have the ultimate in security in place, you can generate a Recovery Key by following the steps on this page.

And now, I’ll just finish up with this…
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Did I mention how important it is that you never lose your Recovery Key, or share it with another person?

As to why, I can tell you that. I sort of did. But here’s a Chat GPT answer from that very question:

reCAPTCHA is a security feature developed by Google that helps to protect websites from spam and abuse. It uses a variety of techniques to verify that a user is a human rather than a bot, such as image recognition and puzzle-solving tasks. reCAPTCHA is commonly used on websites to prevent automated bots from submitting forms or accessing restricted content.
​
I had wondered that. It sort of seems obvious, but why it seemed to mistake me as a bot, I do not know. Sometimes I had to do those puzzles 4 or 5 times.
I’m including a YouTube video of that really upbeat science lady that has some great info on all sorts of things, this one is about ReCaptcha:
https://www.youtube.com/shorts/rme6PT7-CRI
 You should watch the video, it's good.
 
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