Triona's Tech Tips

By now you’ve heard the controversy about employers demanding the Facebook passwords of prospective and current employees. As described on one of my favorite sites, the always irreverent Register:

…some employers aren’t happy with just seeing the public part of applicant profiles; they’re actually asking prospective employees to turn over their Facebook login and password… Other companies are requesting that prospective (and presumably current) employees “friend” HR reps or background-checkers on Facebook. Others are requiring applicants to log in to their Facebook accounts from a company-owned computer…

Facebook users, you are served
Oh, dear. I believe the technical term for this is “being served.” And the world is answering, “It’s on,” because this is stupid on a level normally associated with putting salt in one’s coffee. Sharing passwords is one of the cardinal sins of IT security. You just don’t do it. EVER.

What cracks me up is that, in my industry, this would backfire. On the contrary, it’s a great way to weed out people who have no business working in IT:

HR Person: “Could I have your Facebook username and password, please?”

IT Applicant: “No. That would violate Facebook’s terms of service, and is against the standard password rules used by every sane IT department on this planet.”

HR Person: “Congratulations! You’re hired!”

Just say no to sharing passwords
Facebook has weighed in to remind people that sharing passwords is against its terms of service, and the government’s considering the matter.

I have no beef with prospective employers searching the Internet for anything I may have publicly posted. If my posts reveal too much because I didn’t understand privacy controls, that’s my problem. (And I realize that’s not the easiest task for a lot of people, which is why I blog on Tech Tips; to help people learn the fundamentals of using their computers.)

But demanding personal Facebook passwords? Where do we draw the line? As the Reg points out:

If a company requires you to give them an intimate view of your social networking pages during the interview process, might there be something in the employment agreements that gives them the “right” to take a second, third, or fourth look – whenever they want to – after you’re hired?

And might there be something that gives them the right to scrutinize other things, like your email account, bank account, personal offline correspondence…? I have seen some companies take advantage of the current economy by forcing employees to work ridiculous hours, or take on the jobs of two or three people. People are so scared to be unemployed that they are willing to put up with things they’d never have tolerated before. Is sharing Facebook passwords one of them? Do we have to sacrifice our personal lives for the chance to scrape together a living?

What to do if your employer insists
My personal stance is unequivocal. I refuse to share passwords with anyone, employer or not, but I’m a freelancer and can pick and choose my gigs. What about those who don’t have the luxury of standing on principle? They may feel they have no choice but to violate their own privacy and allow employers access to their personal accounts.

I suspect this whole thing is going to get shot down by public opinion, but something similar could occur in the future. What should you do if you are in this situation? My advice tends towards a strong preference for saying not just no, but hell no. Do you really want to work for a company with that level of disrespect for its people? Is it one of those dungeons of despair that sucks your energy just by being there? Because I can’t imagine the morale of such a company would be very high. I’d consider it a major warning flag that there may be other reasons for staying very far away.

What do you think? Share in the comments!

Security software isn’t just antivirus anymore, and it’s not just for your computer. Today’s security solutions encompass the ever-changing ways in which we use technology. Unfortunately, many people don’t realize the importance of upgrading.

One subscription to rule them all
Companies like Symantec, McAfee, BitDefender and Kaspersky are recognizing consumers’ need to protect their mobile devices by offering subscription-based options. This is the future of security for consumers, in which one subscription covers everything including computers, smart phones and tablets. It’s especially convenient for busy people on the go and families with multiple devices.

Social media support
Integrated support for social media like Facebook and Twitter has become standard. Even so, we still live in a world in which removal tools aren’t crafted until after viruses are already in the wild. To fight that, we’re seeing better detection capabilities and heuristics.

Consumers should replace old versions
Unfortunately, security vendors have made it so easy for consumers to continue the subscriptions for their old programs that people aren’t encouraged to upgrade to the latest versions. The idea was to make sure people didn’t let their antivirus expire, and at the time that made sense. In retrospect I’m wondering if we’re shooting ourselves in the foot.

The difference between renewal and replacement
If you renew your security software you keep the version you have for another year. When you upgrade or replace, you purchase the latest version of the software for a year. Usually the upgrade is slightly more expensive, which is why many people opt for renewal instead. And it’s not always clear why the fifty-dollar antivirus is cheaper than the eighty-dollar antivirus.

It’s confusing because most people look at their subscription date rather than the version date of the program. They see their subscription ends in 2013… but the program itself is dated 2009, and that means it’s not current.

Security vendors need to improve purchase process
I understand why vendors offer the option of renewal. The thought is that basic antivirus is better than nothing, and there’s something to be said for that. But I see a majority of people going for renewal because the purchase process is vague and because renewal is cheaper.

I take security vendors to task for not altering their sales strategy. They need to explain WHY upgrading is so much better than renewal. Maybe we need to discontinue renewal entirely.

If nothing else, make the purchase process crystal-clear. People deserve to know what they’re buying, and I think they will pay the additional cost for an upgrade if they realize the cheapest option is also the least effective.

Subscribe free to Tech Tips, and don’t forget to follow me on Twitter @trionaguidry for breaking computer news and other geeky stuff.

Social media sites are proliferating like crazy. You can’t possibly need all of them, which is why you should sign up for each and every one. In today’s Northwest Herald, I explain why you should sign up for social media sites even if you don’t intend to use them.

When your name is your brand, reputation management is vital. But even those of us who don’t hobnob with the stars need to keep an eye on our online identities. A simple solution is to create profiles that contain your name and correct contact information. Again, you don’t have to use these sites if you don’t want to, but at least you are findable, and findable is a necessity in an age of digital overload.

In the article I mentioned the example of someone who has vowed never to use LinkedIn, only to discover they have a LinkedIn profile. Usually such orphaned profiles have incorrect or outdated contact information. It’s up to you to find out what’s already on the Internet in your name and make sure it’s correct.

Google Maps is another one I mentioned in the article. I frequently hear from people who are stunned to learn their businesses are on Google Maps – especially those who run their businesses from home. You would not believe how much stuff is out there about all of us. It gets aggregated from various sources of content that are beyond our control, and before we know it our entire lives are online.

But you can use this to your advantage. Whether you are running a business or maintaining your career, we all need to market ourselves. All you need to do is make sure you have profiles on the major social media sites, and point those profiles to your web site or blog.

(And if you don’t have a web site or blog… this is WHY you need a web site or blog. You need an online brochure, one consolidated place that says, “This is me.” And, I might add, one that you can control yourself, unlike social media sites which will come and go over time.)

You don’t have to use these sites, although I encourage you to explore them. The point is, you should sign up whether or not you intend to use them. If you don’t, someone else will.

At minimum, you should be on LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter. You should also have a Google account (although if I were you, I wouldn’t go sharing everything I do with them) and also an Apple ID if you use any iDevices. It wouldn’t hurt to have a Yahoo! account either. Other sites include YouTube and Google+ (you’ll connect to these with your Google account), Flickr (connect with Yahoo!), and Pinterest. Of course there are many others, but this is a good starting point.

In April look for my brand-new seminar, Social Media Marketing On The Go! We’ll talk about how to combine social media and mobile devices to pack some punch into your online marketing. See my News and Events page for details and registration info.

Subscribe free to Tech Tips, and don’t forget to follow me on Twitter @trionaguidry for breaking computer news and other geeky stuff.

Word on the street is that traditional computing is dead and the tablet is king. While you still need a computer for heavy-duty tasks, much of your everyday work can be done on an iPad.

First, some pre-planning. What do you use your computer for, and of those things, what do you want to do on the iPad? For most people the answer usually includes, at minimum, email, surfing the Web, and word processing.

You may also be interested in using social media like Facebook and Twitter from your iPad. If so, I’ve got a brand-new seminar coming in April called Social Media Marketing On The Go! that might interest you.

As an example, let’s say you want to use your iPad to access email, LinkedIn, and Facebook. You also want word processing plus a way to display business presentations on a projector and screen.

Email
Email’s a snap thanks to the iPad’s built-in Mail app. However, accessing your mail and moving your mail are two very different things. The first is easy. The second is difficult to impossible depending on how you read your mail now.

This could be a whole discussion in and of itself, but here are the basics. There are two ways to read mail. Either you read it in your Web browser (called Web mail) or you have an email program like Outlook (called an email client). With Web mail your mail lives on a server, while email programs pull your mail to your local computer. So, your mail might live on the Internet or on your computer depending on how you read it.

If you’re using Web mail you’re all set. If you’re currently pulling your mail into a program on your computer, however, you will not have access to your archived mail. If you want to keep using your email program but also check mail from the iPad you need to tell the iPad to save all your mail on the server. When you check mail from the computer everything, including the mail you already saw on the iPad, will be delivered. (This may sound familiar, because it’s exactly how Outlook works if you have more than one computer.)

It’s really easy to mess up email and have some of it going one place and the rest going another. That’s why you need to plan your email strategy. If you’re not sure, or just want a quick email account to use on the iPad, you might want to sign up for a spare Gmail or Yahoo! account to keep things separate.

Social Media
LinkedIn and Facebook have apps for the iPad, but there are tons of other options too. The nice thing about using an iPad for social media is the convenience. Have a quick update? You can just type it and send in a matter of seconds. You can also use social media dashboards to consolidate your efforts.

I’ll be talking about this more in April in conjunction with my new seminar, Social Media Marketing On The Go!

Word Processing
This is a little trickier, because the iPad doesn’t save files the way you’re used to. If all you want to do is move documents between the iPad and your computer, the easiest way is to do so via iTunes. But the process is a little counterintuitive in the same way Mountain Dew is a little caffienated.

(An aside to Apple: Seriously? You develop an incredibly easy-to-use interface (iOS) but you can’t figure out a better way to manipulate files than clunky import/export? *facepalm*)

Here’s how the process works, using Apple’s Pages word processor as the example.

1. You create a file on the iPad, or open a file you’ve created previously.
2. You work on the file.
3. You export the file to iTunes in whatever format you want (usually Pages’ native format or Word, since PDFs aren’t editable). This is the important step and the one that’s not intuitive.
4. You go into iTunes on your computer, select the iPad, then Apps, then the app that you created the file in, and click Save As to save it on your computer.

Conversely, to get a file from your computer onto the iPad:

1. In iTunes, go to the iPad, then Apps, then the app the file is in.
2. Add the file, then sync the iPad.
3. In the Pages app on the iPad, go to Documents, then hit the + to add a document. Tell it to get the document from iTunes and the one you want should be there. Again, this is the tricky step.

Not only is this process clunky, but you’ll get warnings that the file on the iPad is newer than the one in iTunes, or vice versa. And it only works with supported apps like Pages.

Presentations
The most difficult part here is not the presentation software, but hooking the iPad to a projector. You have to have the right adapter. Apple carries all sorts, the one you probably want for a standard PC projector is the VGA one but it will depend on the projector.

For your presentation app you probably want Apple’s Keynote. It’s like the Ferrari in the parking lot that makes all the Volvos look pathetic. At $20 it’s pricey but so sweet you may never want to look at PowerPoint again.

At this point you should have a nicely configured iPad that does most of what you want. As you use it, you’ll discover there are other things you just can’t live without. Fortunately, as they say, there are apps for that. If you subscribe to Tech Tips by email you’ll receive my bonus product reviews including some of the iPad apps I recommend.

Have you ditched your computer for an iPad? Share your experiences in the comments!

Are you interested in Twitter, but not sure how to get started? My column in today’s The Northwest Herald tells you how to get the most out of Twitter:

If youʼve never used Twitter, itʼs like the headline scrawl across the bottom of your favorite news channel, except that these headlines are written by you and me. Follow someone on Twitter and youʼll receive their latest mini-messages, and you can send mini-messages of your own.

Businesses are using Twitter to keep in contact with customers, advertise events, promote special offers, and grow relationships. Skeptics might doubt that one can do business via Twitter, but my direct experience says it works.

Here’s how you can start using Twitter in just a few easy steps.

1. Sign up for Twitter
Your Twitter name is your identity, so choose wisely. Also make sure you are using strong passwords that are not in use on any other site (especially financial sites or other social media sites like Facebook). Twitter has some nice resources to get you started including Twitter Basics for beginners.

2. Find people to follow
What are you interested in? Most news outlets have Twitter feeds, as do many newspapers, periodicals, television channels… anyone who offers content is offering it on Twitter. Some of your friends and colleagues are using it, too. As you start using Twitter, you’ll gravitate toward people with like interests. For example, a news outlet might retweet a link you like from a blogger, and you might decide to follow the blogger on Twitter for more of the same kind of content. To follow someone, go to their Twitter page and click the Follow button.

3. Send your first tweet
Remember: relevant, concise, and interesting. When in doubt a good quote always works. Retweets that you find interesting also work, but remember, posting too often is as bad as not posting often enough.

Some examples of tweets (sent by yours truly):

4. Invite people to follow you

Start with people you know personally, then the people they are following. You’re most likely to get followers in small trickles rather than big waves. And don’t forget to interact with your followers! Twitter isn’t just headlines, but a multi-way conversation. A conversation might go like this:

5. More Help With Twitter
Here are some additional resources if you need help with Twitter.

Tech Tips articles on Twitter
Search for keyword Twitter and you’ll find my previous articles on the topic.

Twitter Help Center

Chris Brogan: 50 Ideas On Using Twitter For Business

How are you using Twitter for your business? Share in the comments!

If you’re not familiar with iPads and Facebook, 2012 may be the year you join the crowd. In my Tech Trends column in this month’s McHenry County Business Journal (digital edition here) I talk about how this may be the year everything changes:

Mobility, social media, and cloud computing are taking the world by storm. Consumer IT is affecting everyone from enterprise-level organizations to small businesses, and back to the consumers themselves. It’s a rapid and sometimes vicious cycle in which failure to follow the trend could cost companies much-needed momentum.

Here are five ways you can stay on top of these emerging trends.

1. Make a mission statement
Everyone should have a mission statement for online marketing, businesses and individuals alike. What are you trying to accomplish? Do you want people to buy products, sign up for your email newsletter, visit your blog? Explain how you are uniquely qualified to help. If you’re marketing yourself rather than a business, your mission is to demonstrate to employers how you are uniquely qualified.

2. Contribute value
You get out of social media what you put into it. Follow people with valuable content and contribute valuable content of your own. Note that the converse is also true: you can and should stop following people if they do not provide you with information you find useful.

3. Seek balance
If you’re not posting often enough, people will lose interest. If you post too often they’ll be overwhelmed. Find the right frequency for you based on your mission and target audience. This is where mobility and social media go hand in hand. If you think of a good LinkedIn status, use your smartphone and post it. It takes far less time to actually do it than to write “Update LinkedIn Status” on a to-do list.

4. Delve in
Don’t be afraid to experiment! Sign up for Facebook, add some apps to your iPad, and most of all read, read, read about these emerging technologies.

5. Subscribe to Tech Tips by email, RSS, and Twitter
And here’s a good place to start. Follow Tech Tips and get your feet wet with someone who isn’t going to laugh if you make mistakes. Email subscribers receive bonus tips and product reviews. Be sure to follow me @trionaguidry on Twitter for breaking tech news and other geek goodies. If you’re not on Twitter you can visit my blog where you’ll find my Twitter feed in the right sidebar. Don’t know how to RSS? Check out my info on RSS here.

How are you planning to use mobility and social media in the new year? Comment and share your thoughts!

You’ve probably heard the buzz about SOPA and PIPA, a pair of bills being considered by Congress. Proponents of the bills say they are necessary to protect intellectual property rights. Opponents argue that SOPA is nothing more than censorship.

This usually isn’t an opinion blog, but on this one I have to take a stand. SOPA is an abomination that must not pass.

Some are urging a blackout as a protest against SOPA. I considered it, but decided not to. The purpose of this blog is to educate people about computers, and I can’t think of a better way to protest SOPA than providing the information you need to oppose it yourself.

The problems with SOPA and PIPA are many, censorship being the main issue. But there are technical problems with these bills that make them cumbersome and ineffective. They might actually make the Internet less secure by interfering with standards that exist to keep it that way (e.g. DNSSEC). As an IT expert and an advocate of free speech, I oppose these bills and encourage you to do the same.

There’s plenty of news coverage out there, and I’ve gathered some that help explain the SOPA/PIPA debate.

This one has a list of the sponsors, so you known whom to contact.

• PCMag: The Right Way To Protest SOPA (John C. Dvorak)

And this one will let you contact your legislators too.

• Public Knowledge: This Bill Seriously Screws With The Internet

More information here:

• reddit: A technical examination of SOPA and PROTECT IP [aka PIPA]
• The Register: A preview of SOPA: Web shut down before my eyes
• PCMag: Top Five Objections To SOPA, PIPA
• PCMag: Where Do You Stand On SOPA, PIPA? (interviews with PCMag staff on the issue)

And, I can’t conclude without pointing out that, as always, you need to make sure you’re clicking on bona-fide resources regarding SOPA and not some malware scam taking advantage of the headlines.

• eWeek: SOPA Web Protests Sure To Inspire Malware Distribution Scams

What do you think of SOPA and PIPA? Do you support or oppose them, and why?

Ever type the wrong Web address by mistake? Did you know that cybercriminals snatch up typoed domains in order to create tempting lookalikes?

Typosquatting is the practice of registering a domain that is a typo of a common site, like goole.com instead of google.com. Most people don’t notice their typos, especially if they land on a site that looks similar to the one they expect. While some of these typoed sites are innocuous, others can contain everything from malware to password harvesters.

Security firm Sophos did an interesting study of typosquatting, and concluded that malware is actually the least of your problems if you wind up on a mistyped site. However, that’s not to say you shouldn’t be concerned about viruses.

More worrisome is the old bait-and-switch game. Sophos describes a situation in which you mistype apple.com and end up on a lookalike page that invites you to download iTunes. Except it’s not iTunes, it’s a site offering “unlimited music downloads.” And it doesn’t even give you that much, just access to some online forums of questionable value.

Another example of bait-and-switch is the brand ripoff. Many of the typos for search engine Google go to search engines that aren’t Google, but use the Google logo and serve up “results” that earn clickthrough cash for the squatters. Fake competitions and surveys also bring in the dough.

How can you avoid typosquatting?

• Be careful what you type.
• Check the address bar to confirm the site you’re on.
• If things don’t look right, quit your browser and try again.
• Hover over links without clicking and look at the status bar at the bottom to see where they go.
• Use bookmarks to avoid typos.
• Don’t rely on history instead of bookmarks, in case mistyped links linger there. (History shows where you’ve visited, bookmarks are shortcuts to links you visit frequently.)
• Don’t try to click through a mistyped site to get to the real page, even if you are offered a link to do so. Quit your browser and start again.

In February I’ll give you the inside secrets on How To Ditch Your Computer For An iPad. And if you’re not receiving Tech Tips by email, you’re missing out on bonus tips, tricks, and product reviews. Subscribe free to Tech Tips, and don’t forget to follow me on Twitter @trionaguidry for breaking computer news and other geeky stuff.

Is it possible to have a truly offline computer? As I described in my recent column in the Northwest Herald, the short answer is no. Even if you don’t need the Internet, your computer does. You can still be infected by viruses even if you’re not online. In fact, your computer will turn into a silent hotbed of virus activity just waiting for the opportunity to infect others. The older the computer, the worse the problem.

The article isn’t available online, so I’ll give you the gist of it:

Pretend you have a Windows 2000 computer that never goes on the Internet. Using it is like traveling through time, ten years into the past. There are plenty of old friends installed: Microsoft Office 2000, Acrobat 5, Internet Explorer 6, programs that were standards at the time but have long since been replaced with newer versions.

You might think you could continue to use this computer in isolation, maybe for basic word processing. It doesn’t matter as long as it doesn’t connect to anything, right?

But, let’s pretend your printer dies. No point in word processing if you can’t print. The new printer says that it’s not really Windows 2000 compatible, but you might be able to find some software on the Internet. You try to log on but poor Internet Explorer 6 can’t handle a modern web site. And, behind the scenes, a virus just snuck through holes in IE6 to infect your computer.

Unaware of the virus, you decide to use your Windows 7 laptop to download the printer software to a USB flash drive. Another virus hitches a ride from the laptop to the desktop, a virus that can’t run under Windows 7 but is more than happy to infect Windows 2000. The Windows 2000 computer is now a hotbed of virus activity, and the only symptom is that it’s increasingly slower.

Other viruses join the party, and pretty soon that Windows 2000 computer is spewing all sorts of junk that infects your Windows 7 laptop, your smartphone, your iPad… then your email and Facebook accounts get hijacked and suddenly your bank is calling about missing funds.

I’ve received a few responses from folks with older computers, disagreeing with my opinion. Most of the responses included the observation: “I’ve been running this version of Windows for umpteen years and I’ve never had a virus.” If I may add… that you know of.

In fairness to these folks, yes, I do know people who use Windows 98 or Windows 2000 without the world grinding to an earth-shattering halt. Most of them are retirees or others who don’t use their computers often. In such cases we try to keep the computer functional for as long as we can. But there are others who – in my opinion – are doing absolutely lunatic things with ancient computers. Like trying to run a business with them: payroll, marketing, the works. And that gives me the screaming heebie-jeebies because there are SO many ways it can go disastrously wrong for both you and your business.

Most viruses and malware show absolutely no signs of their presence. It doesn’t matter if a Win98 or Win2000 computer has antivirus installed or not, because any antivirus capable of running under those versions of Windows is incapable of detecting new threats. It’s like taking a police officer from 1912, dropping him into 2012, and expecting him to cope with modern problems for which he has no frame of reference.

Friends, I’m saying these things to help, not to hinder. I think one reason many people are reluctant to change is because it truly is difficult to get used to a computer with a different interface. Like when we moved from DOS to Windows 95, or Windows XP to Windows Vista and 7. A new interface puts us on edge, even old salts like me. It’s annoying to spend half your morning trying to figure out how you used to do something, but that’s technology, and the only thing you can do is adapt.

You may find it easier if you keep in mind that computers haven’t really changed all that much since the 1980s. Saving a file, typing a document, finding a contact’s address, these things are still the same. It’s the look-and-feel of the computer that has changed, plus the ability to access more information faster. Even the Internet is pretty close to what it was when I started using it twenty years ago. Today I’m using RSS feeds and Facebook chat instead of Usenet news and UNIX talk, but the fundamentals remain.

What do you think? Is there life to be had in old computers, or are the security risks too great?

For 2011, let’s avoid the obvious computer gift choices and look at some that are purely for fun.

Etch-A-Sketch iPad Case
And yes, there’s an app for that.

HTML for Babies
Now your infant can learn web design before he or she can walk.

Tron Legacy / Tron Classic on Blu Ray
Admit it, you’d rather have a real-life lightcycle. Who wouldn’t?

Computer Engineer Barbie
It’s about time, although it’d be really hard to walk across a data center in those heels.

Chocolate Han Solo In Carbonite
A delicious bounty of chocolate goodness.

I wish all of my readers a safe and happy holiday season! In January we’ll talk about how Mistyped Web Sites Lead To Malware. Subscribe free to Tech Tips for bonus tips, tricks and product reviews, and don’t forget to follow me on Twitter @trionaguidry for breaking computer news and other geeky stuff.