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Staying Safe with Wi-fi
Wi-Fi radio connections to the Internet at home, the office, and even in your local coffee shop are no longer a futuristic novelty but a convenience that many users rely upon every day. With ease, however, may come a very unrealistic feeling of safety. As you might suspect, broadcasting your personal data through the air is not without hazards. Consequences can be quite serious, like having your computer directly accessed by hackers, with your confidential information, documents, and credit card numbers stolen, or it being used for other illegal activities for which you might be blamed. It does happen. Recently, a panicked customer called in. He had received several serious DMCA complaints and threats from a giant media company that claimed he had illegally downloaded their content – either music or movies – and they had the right Internet address. Yet, the man hadn’t done anything wrong except to use his Wi-Fi at home wide open and unsecured. Some unscrupulous neighbor must have profited from his naivety. The customer’s still waiting to see if the complaining company will take further steps against him, but meanwhile one of our techs set him up with strong WPA security to prevent further stealthy theft of his connection. Basic Home and Office Defense Proper set up is critical. Most of the steps to protect your computer should be implemented from the moment when you first set it up for Wi-Fi. While it’s impossible to … Continue reading
Posted in Security, Tips and Tricks, Tutorials
Tagged encryption, firewall, security, WEP, Wi-Fi, WPA
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Handy Tip for Browsing the Web on a Slow Internet Connection
If you are using a slow internet connection from a laptop or desktop computer, try this trick to use the lightweight “mobile” version of many popular websites. These sites are designed for small screens and lower-bandwidth smart phones, but they’re quite functional and perfect for computers with slow internet connections. Just follow these steps: You need to use the Firefox web browser. Download Firefox here (it’s free) and install it if you don’t already have it. This may take a while if you have a slow connection. You’re using Firefox to view this page now, right? Good… Click here, then click the + Add to Firefox button. Proceed through the steps to download and install the User Agent Switcher Firefox extension, then restart Firefox. In your Firefox menu, go to Tools -> Default User Agent -> and select iPhone 3.0 That’s it. Test it out by going to CNN. You should be automatically redirected to CNN’s lightweight, mobile site – the address is http://m.cnn.com/. This should work for the “major” websites like Google, Yahoo, YouTube, Facebook, etc. To turn this behavior off, go to Tools -> iPhone 3.0 -> and select Default User Agent. You can easily switch between mobile and full versions of websites by changing this setting. This can be useful any time you are using a slow internet connection including • using a dial-up internet connection • using a slow public wi-fi access point at a coffee shop, hotel, airport, etc • using internet tethering through … Continue reading
Posted in Online Tools, Tips and Tricks, Tutorials
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Search Engine Round-Up
Google reigns as the undisputed king of the jungle, but there’s plenty of other critters in this zoo. Despite – or perhaps because of – its predominance and scope, Google may not be the best for every inquiry where personal privacy concerns or a particularly obscure topic is involved. What follows is a list – by no means comprehensive — of some current search engines. They are divided into two types: general or open in nature, and specialized or closed. The major difference is that specialized search engines are either dedicated to a particular topic, or limit the search arena to preselected categories usually from a drop-down menu or scrolling pane. These days, neither type of tool stands as alone as they once frequently did. If general in nature, they may be part of a huge content portal offering numerous other services, like maps and translating tools and email. Specialized ones are just as likely to be a feature of large sites, such as online department stores and libraries, but just about every merchant with a website has a some search capability available. We’ll only be able to look at a few samples of the most popular, useful, or offbeat ones.