Rick's Daily Tips

Apple has just recalled some MacBook Pro laptops. Is yours one of them?

Posted on June 21, 2019

Apple has just announced a recall of certain MacBook Pro laptops due to faulty batteries that could overheat and start a fire.

Most (but not all) of the faulty batteries were installed in MacBook Pros that were sold between September 2015 and February 2017.

Luckily, only one specific model is affected by the recall.

Follow these steps to find out if your laptop is one of them: [Read more…]

Guess what? You might eventually be able to beat a speeding ticket with the help of Google Maps!

Posted on June 18, 2019

Do you use Google Maps on your Android phone to help plan your trips and then navigate to those destinations?

If so, before long you might be able to use this extremely handy app to help prove your innocence if you have to go to court over a speeding ticket!

[Read more…]

ATTN Bloggers: Chrome is now flagging non-https pages as ‘Not Secure’ right in the address bar!

Posted on June 12, 2019

If you’re a blogger and your blog hasn’t yet been secured with SSL/TLS encryption you need to get that done ASAP!

Back in December 2017 I wrote this post warning bloggers about the need to get their blogs encrypted before Google started actively penalizing non-secured sites.

Well, that day has come…

Google recently rolled out an update to their Chrome browser that causes it to now flag unencrypted pages as “Not Secure” right in the address bar!

Up until recently it was widely understood that only sites that collected credit card data or other sensitive visitor information really needed to be encrypted, but Google has changed that by deciding to clearly mark non-encrypted pages as “Not Secure”.

To show you what I’m talking about, I took a partial screenshot of a web page that I knew to be unencrypted at the time I began writing this post (the site has since been encrypted): [Read more…]

Scam alert: Did you recently cross the US/Canada border? If so, your identity could be at risk of being stolen.

Posted on June 12, 2019

Have you recently crossed the international border between the United States and Canada?

If so, there’s a chance that hackers could now be in possession of photos of your face and your car’s license plate.

The U.S. Customs and Border Patrol Agency has just announced that one of the contractors that supplies facial recognition cameras for use at border crossings has been hacked, and the hack resulted in about 100,000 border-crossers having their photos and license plate numbers stolen.

In case you’re wondering what mischief the hackers can do with that very limited amount of information, the answer is a lot.

[Read more…]