Your daily dose of practical, easy to follow tech tips!
Countless people send and receive sensitive information via SMS text messages every day.
If you’re one of them you might be surprised to learn that the content of your texts are wide open to anyone who manages to intercept them, and that’s incredibly easy to do.
Truth be told, there are LOTS of folks out there who can, and do intercept SMS text messages, and as the article I linked to above explains, it isn’t limited just to law enforcement. [Read more…]
Question from Carl: I was listening to talk radio the other day and I heard a guy say that the strongest encryption methods in use today are so strong that they will never, ever be broken.
The host didn’t challenge him on that. In fact, he seemed to agree with him. I have my doubts though.
What do you think? Is current encryption technology so good that no one will ever be able to break it?
Rick’s answer: [Read more…]
Click here to sign up for my free Rick’s Tech Tips Newsletter!
Question from Carol: I have a blog and my web host recently installed a free Let’s Encrypt security certificate on it for me.
When I try to access the blog with https: in the URL instead of http: Chrome displays a warning that the site is insecure.
The strange thing is this doesn’t happen on every page, just on some pages (including the Home page). The rest of the pages are marked as secure.
I sent my web host a message a couple of days ago and another one last night asking what the problem could be but so far I haven’t heard back from them.
Do you have any idea what could be causing Chrome to flag my blog as being insecure?
Rick’s answer: [Read more…]
Question from Jennie: I overheard a conversation the other day that really interested me, and I want to see what you think about it.
A young man told his friend that hiding the WiFi network name in his router would prevent his neighbors from finding and connecting to the Internet over his network.
I live in an apartment building and I’m pretty sure I have this same problem right now.
I’d like to follow that guy’s advice but I want to make sure I can connect new devices of my own (as well as those of friends) to my WiFi network with the network name hidden. Will I be able to?
Rick’s answer: [Read more…]
Question from Mike: Chrome used to display the word “Secure” in the address bar to indicate that the webpage you’re viewing is encrypted.
I really liked that because I didn’t have to worry about hackers stealing my info if I typed anything into a form on that page.
A while back I noticed that Google has removed that “Secure” indicator from Chrome’s address bar.
Why on earth did they get rid of it?
Rick’s answer: [Read more…]