Rick's Daily Tips

Keep your Facebook messages private by encrypting them with Cryptocat

Posted on September 10, 2015

Between the NSA’s increasingly intrusive snooping and hackers intercepting our web traffic, we can no longer take Internet privacy for granted.

But if you use Facebook’s messaging system, there are a number of simple and free ways to keep your private messages private. A great example is a handy free service called Cryptocat.

Once you add Crytocat’s browser extension to your computer’s web browser(s) and/or install the app on your iPhone, all of your Facebook messages will be encrypted before they even leave your computer. [Read more…]

Q&A: Why won’t my LG G3 phone connect to the Internet?

Posted on September 8, 2015

Question from Gina: Hi Rick. I need help!!! I have an LG G3 phone with 4G-LTE. For the last few days I’ve been unable to connect to the Internet over the Sprint network.

The phone gives me an error message stating that it’s unable to connect to the network. I can make and receive phone calls just fine and I can use the Internet with Wi-Fi. It just won’t connect to the Sprint network.

I’ve checked all the settings and nothing seems to be set incorrectly. Can you tell me how to fix this?

Rick’s answer: [Read more…]

If you’re staying with Windows 7 or 8.1 to avoid Windows 10’s privacy issues, you need to read this.

Posted on September 2, 2015

snooping By now you have probably heard that by default, Windows 10 is pretty nosy about your browsing and computing habits. After all, the new Windows’ privacy issues have been well documented.

If you’ve made the decision to skip the upgrade to Windows 10 in order to avoid those privacy concerns, guess what? A handful of recent Windows Updates have brought some of Windows 10’s nosy “tracking features” to Windows 7 and Windows 8.1. [Read more…]

Review: Dell Inspiron 15 i5548-2500SLV 15.6-Inch Laptop

Posted on September 2, 2015

dell-inspiron-15-i5548-2500slv These days it’s easy to find a laptop for as little as $200, and if all you need is a basic laptop for Internet use, most of them would probably serve you pretty well.

But if you need a machine with more oomph for running Photoshop or some other resource intensive task, you’ll be better off getting a laptop with a faster, more powerful CPU, more RAM and a larger hard drive.

The Dell Inspiron 15 i5548-2500SLV 15.6-Inch Laptop meets that need quite well.

This superb machine has everything a power user needs. In addition to its powerful Core i7-5500U 2.4 GHz CPU, 8Gb of RAM and 1TB hard drive, it also comes with all of the following: [Read more…]

Awesome news: New update to Chrome kills auto-playing Flash ads

Posted on September 1, 2015

Don’t you hate it when you have several Chrome tabs open and all of a sudden one of them starts playing a video ad at full volume?

I sure do because those stealthy (and irritating) video ads that pop up out of nowhere are often startling and almost always difficult to track down and pause.

Well, thankfully auto-playing Flash ads are now a thing of the past in Chrome (or at least they soon will be on your machine). [Read more…]