Your daily dose of practical, easy to follow tech tips!
Question from Charise: I read that with all the hacking going on we need to check the strength of our passwords with an online password checker.
I did a Google search for the term “password checker” and a bunch of them came up. The thing is, I’m wondering if it’s safe to use them.
I’m a little leery of typing my passwords into a form on a website that I don’t know anything about.
Are those password checker websites safe to use? [Read more…]
Have you ever forgotten the password to one of your online accounts and clicked on the “Forgot password?” link in order to reset your password?
If so, you might have been prompted to input the answer to the security question(s) you created when you opened the account.
Security questions are intended to identify you as the legitimate account owner in the event that you forget your password and need to reset it.
What’s more, they are also sometimes used as a second level of security to augment the security provided by the password. If you can’t answer the security question(s), you won’t be allowed to log in to the account, even if you know the password. [Read more…]
Rick’s Tech Tips Newsletter
A while back I wrote a post on securing your Wi-Fi network in which I briefly mentioned the importance of keeping File and Printer Sharing turned off unless you have a good reason for actually using it.
In a nutshell, disabling File and Printer Sharing will prevent a hacker from being able to access the files on your PC if he/she somehow manages to connect to your local network.
Well, it occurred to me last night that I probably need to write another post explaining how to disable File and Printer Sharing in your particular version of Windows.
Well, here it is… [Read more…]
Rick’s Tech Tips Newsletter
If you’re like most Internet users, your email inbox probably contains several old messages that contain the usernames and passwords for some of your online accounts.
As you probably know, many services send new subscribers/customers a welcome email containing the username and password they’ll need to enter in order to log into the account. [Read more…]
Germany’s Friedrich-Alexander University conducted a study to determine how many Facebook users click on links without knowing the people who posted them.
To say the least, the results are shocking.
The study found that approximately 40% of all Facebook users click on links that were posted by people they don’t even know, let alone trust.
What’s more, they also found that a whopping 56% of email users click on links in emails from unknown senders, the vast majority of which are likely phishing emails sent by hackers and online crooks. [Read more…]