In the “online world” that we live, I hear two different stances when talking to people about accessing and managing their money online, some – old school – say “I never buy anything online nor do I use online banking” whilst others confidently assert that “it’s safe and easy, I’ve never had a problem”. So what is the truth? As always, the truth is somewhere in between these two extreems.
Read this entire article »As many of you already know, I do like to mix computing with other things, cycling, astronomy etc. Well, this month we are going to have a look into the perplexing world of astro photography!
Ordinarily you would need a lot of expensive equipment to take pictures of the big wide universe around us but now with a new website its all possible now from without even venturing outside. Read this entire article »
Few things in “modern” computing time have made as much of a dramatic difference to the speed of computers as solid state hard drives. Computer technology and speed increments over time, we know that. I’m regularly asked “Why is my computer slow?” and of course the answer is “it depends”, it depends on a number of different things but it normally comes down to only three – the type and speed of the processor, how much RAM the computer has and the type of hard drive. It’s this last part that we are really interested in exploring this month. Read this entire article »
It’s becoming more and more important to take care of your online activities, your passwords, the places you visit and what you do. With companies like Facebook having millions of their users accounts’ compromised recently it’s a real possibility that some of your personal information has fallen into the hands of hackers and therefore criminals.
On the 30th September 2018 Facebook lost 30 million of their users’ account details to hackers who had exploited a vulnerability caused by three bugs on the Facebook system. It’s likely that you will already have been contacted if you were one of the unfortunate 30 million people involved, however if you want to be sure then visit the page https://www.facebook.com/help/securitynotice whilst logged into Facebook and scroll to the bottom. You will see a blue highlighted section titled “Is my Facebook account impacted by this security issue?” and below that will be a message detailing whether or not your account was affected.
This, and all of the other high profile hacks brings me onto another great website that can check to see if your email address has ever been associated with any hacked sites. It tells you which sites and which information has been compromised. Armed with this information you can at least decide whether you want to continue to use the services of the companies that breached your data and if you do, you can take steps to change your password and lock down your security on those affected sites.
If you go along to https://haveibeenpwned.com you’ll have the option to check your email address in the search bar at the top of the page. Click the “pwned” button to find out whether your email address has ever been compromised and on which sites – you’ll see this information if you scroll down a little.
If your account has been compromised, then you can assume that whatever password and email combination you used is now known by hackers, so the first thing to do would be to change your password on the site that was hacked. The next sensible thing to do, would be to change your password on any other un-compromised sites where you use the same combination of email address and password as this is now not safe.
You see, once a hacker has this information, they know that many people use the same email address and password for multiple different services, so better to be on the safe side and change any accounts where you use the same email address and password. Also a good idea moving forward would be to use a different password for each service that you use, yes I know this means more things to remember but it also decreases the chance of multiple accounts being compromised at the same time.
Ok, so here we go again! As you know I love ‘home automation’ and since I’ve taken possession of a few Amazon Dot’s, I’ve been so impressed with how easy Alexa is to talk to that I have started to investigate what else she might be able to help me with.
So, the first thing I found she could do was use a ‘smart plug’ to enable her to be able to turn things on and off. In our bedroom we have a couple of bedside lights – and now we also have the HS100 from TP-Link; this little gadget plugs into any wall socket and allows you to plug anything in to it – once configured the smart plug can work with your mobile phone or tablet OR Alexa! Yes, you’re right, so now as I walk into the room I can demand “Alexa turn on the lights in the bedroom” and after a second or so I hear a reassuring response of “Ok” and then the lights turn on – magic! Read this entire article »
Do you still work? Perhaps you’ve retired to Spain early and don’t yet collect your UK state pension or perhaps you’re close to retirement and want to know whether you’ve contributed enough to receive a full UK state pension when it’s time. These are all questions that most of us here on the Costa Blanca and further away may ask ourselves from time to time – I know I did!
I also remember how it used to be, i.e. in order to find the answer, you had to write to the HMRC back in the UK and ask them to kindly send you on a statement of your contributions. Well I recently found out that online services have finally reached the good old jobs and pensions department of the UK government! Read this entire article »
Ok, well this one has been in the news quite a lot recently – as in how Facebook may have been playing fast and loose with your personal information. It’s a great one for the conspiracy theorists of course but there is a reasonable amount of truth in the stories, of course the devil is in the detail. Did most of the people who had their personal information used give their concent by signing up to the Facebook third party apps in the first place? I guess we will never really know the full truth of it all, but whilst we ponder, there is something positive that you can do to discover exactly what information Facebook store about you and your friends by using their new service which allows you to download and view all of this information. Read this entire article »
We all use the Internet. Whether we realise it or not the Internet has become such an integral part of our day to day lives. Most of us use computers (PC’s, laptops, tablets, smart phones) to look at information stored on web pages, this is called browsing or surfing the Internet and one of the “tricks” that computers use to try to speed up this process is a copy of the information you download on your computer, when you go to a website, on your computer. This is called cache (it’s pronounced “cash”). Read this entire article »
Amazon Smile has been around for some time in the US, enabling users who purchase from amazon.com to gift a percentage of their purchase price to the charity of their choice, according to public record the amount donated to date is over $69 million!
Amazon Smile has (as of the end of last year) come to amazon.co.uk so if you purchase goods from the UK Amazon site then you can sign up to send a small percentage of your spend direct to your favourite charity. Read this entire article »
This month we finalise the series in which we have reviewed various ways that you can speed up your computer, we have already covered identifying and replacing the hardware in your computer and this month we will look at the software options you can use to get the most out of your computer. Read this entire article »