Rick's Daily Tips

3 great “back to school” laptops for students

Posted on August 5, 2019

Well, it’s August, and that means schools all around the country are starting back up for their fall classes.

In fact, several of the school systems in my area have already welcomed their students back into the classroom!

The start of a new school year always means shopping for items like notebooks, pencils and such, but nowadays many schools have added a notebook computer to their back-to-school shopping lists.

If you’ve been shopping for a new computer for the student(s) in your family, you’ve no doubt noticed that there are a ton of laptops to choose from.

Picking the perfect student laptop can be a daunting task, but I hope to make it a little easier for you by recommending three of my favorites. [Read more…]

‘Find My Device’ lets you locate and control a lost or stolen phone or tablet from another Android device

Posted on August 4, 2019

Google has updated their awesome “Android Device Manager” app and given it a new name.

It’s now called the more intuitive Find My Device, and it works even better than ever.

In a nutshell, this fantastic app helps you locate and control a lost or stolen Android phone or tablet using another Android device.

With all the personal information that’s stored on smart phones these days, it makes sense to do whatever we can to keep that data out of the hands of would-be scammers and identity thieves.

This app is a great tool for accomplishing that if your Android device ever gets lost or stolen.

Find My Device lets you use another Android device to: [Read more…]

Apple users beware: Complete strangers could be listening to your ‘private’ conversations.

Posted on July 31, 2019

If you use an iPhone, iPad or Apple Watch you know how handy Siri can be at times.

But what you might not know is Siri is constantly snooping on your conversations, and that even includes face-to-face conversations that don’t involve a phone call!

What happens is Siri records your conversations for use in training Siri to better understand how you speak and how it should respond to the things you say.

But Siri doesn’t do this “learning” all on it’s own. It has help from human contractors that Apple pays to listen to their customers’ recorded conversations and then provide feedback to help Siri improve.

[Read more…]

Scam alert: 100 million ‘Capital One’ customers affected by massive data breach

Posted on July 30, 2019

Do you have an account with the giant financial services firm Capital One?

If so, there’s a good chance that some very sensitive information about you was recently compromised in a massive data breach.

Yesterday Capital One published this press release detailing the incident.

You can read it for yourself to get all the details, but here are the most important takeaways from it: [Read more…]