So once again I’ve been a bit slow with the Notes. Apologies. I’ve been waiting for a couple of things which I’ve now received – thanks Paul, Jim and Fred and I’ve also needed to write a couple of short posts on URL shorteners and taking screenshots – now done. That being done, what else happened?
Margaret had received a book from her son who worked at the Met Office in Exeter and she read from it to illustrate just how much the computing power had increased there over the recent past.
Owen reminded us that the U3A AGM was coming up as a Zoom event.
John reported that he was still coming to terms with his new iPad Pro, and expressed some problems with sync’ing Apple email. I hope we sorted that out, but if not please raise th matter again.
Don was having problems with his Google settings, and I remarked that it would probably be a good subject to look at at a meeting. He also indicated he’d value some advice on a wildlife camera – I obliged with information after the meeting. It was felt that WiFi probably wasn’t the best way to transmit the images, and that if power to the camera was necessary that might restrict positioning.
Jim indicated he was still thinking about replacing his laptop. I gave some advice after the meeting, both to Jim and to the WhatsApp group.
Paul told us about his encounter with PayPal and Pre-approved or Automatic Payments. I attach his notes here …
I did not know these existed until I made a purchase from Google. My PayPal account automatically paid from one of my debit cards without any further selection from myself regarding my preferred funding source etc. So I investigated…
Not obvious you have them, or where they are Not easy to Find in PayPal Headings, as they are then called “Automatic Payments” Log in to your Pay Pal account Go to Settings (Gear Wheel type icon) Go to Payments Go to Manage Your Automatic Payments and then Select Click on Show Active & Show Inactive as nothing may be displayed ! Select item from the list to change or deactivate.
… and you should have removed the Pre-approved or Automatic Payment.
Fred reported back on his conversations with Digital Communities Wales and his minute of discussions is attached below
“ Fred D reported back on the minuted action aimed at establishing the need for support/contact arrangements for isolated/disabled households, amongst others, as highlighted in media /TV reports & whether there could be a role for group members individually or collectively
Following consultation with Jenny Sims the work of Digital Communities Wales was highlighted ;The organisation has received an £800K WAG grant to address Digital Exclusion & the Web-site gives a clear indication of wide ranging all Wales supported projects including involving those as above.
Following discussion it was decided to invite the SE Wales Programme Manger (Matthew Lloyd) to participate in the next (19/11) group Zoom meeting; It was also recognised that this activity could in, due course, be of interest to the main U3a branch & wider network”
In her absence, by email, Jenny reported My good news is that my digital working party’s recommendations have been approved and the National Pensioners Convention will launch a campaign on February 1st to help more older people get online and support those who cannot or do not wish to be online.
Subsequently Fred sent me this message from Cardiff County Council …
Further from my telephone conversation earlier I (Katie Rapell) wanted to clarify some of the initiatives and projects that we are currently running:
Tablet Gifting Scheme – Due to be launched formally in the coming days. Will seek to provide the most vulnerable in our community access to a FREE data enabled tablet which they can keep. Eligibility applies, applications are subject to assessment.
Digital Surgery (Digital Drop in sessions) – one to one digital advice available over the phone or via video call, current turn around response is 2-3 hours. This service is open to anyone and welcomes any digital query. This service used to be face – to -face in hubs, and also offered a repairs service but due to Covid -19 we have had to move online. Typical enquiries involve :
How to download apps or access information online
How to enrol in Adult Learning courses online or access council services
Online benefit or tax applications
Scam help service, to identify potential correspondence from fake or scam services and verification of email.
Installation of broadband advice and signposting
referral for training or activities
Basic digital skills courses (BT Skills for Tomorrow) – In partnership with BT, We offer a one day basic digital skills course that is delivered through the Learn My Way platform. The course is tailored to personal need and is accredited.
Progressive/ Industry aligned digital skills courses – In response to the growing digital sector, we have been collaborating with local industry to develop progressive digital courses that will complement the technology industry in Cardiff and globally.
Thank you so much Fred and Jenny. We look forward to meeting with Matthew and Jenny on Thursday. The Council is due to launch it’s initiative this week through Facebook, twitter and press releases.
Phil gave a live demonstration of how an Amazon Echo Show device could work, and he was confident that it could pass his “granny” test – if he had one!!
Ann raised an issue she was experiencing with Libre Office and databases. This arose from a WhatsApp conversation where she and Maragret had been very helpful in providing some guidance to a friend of Paul, who was trying to set up a database for slides. I undertook to investigate the problem and was able to confirm that the Java Runtime Environment needed to be installed. I’d done that successfully on my MacOS system.
A good attendance to our meeting of 15 members, plus 1 guest – the convenor of Porthcawl U3A Computer Group, Martin Patten (a former work colleague of Paul).
We started by me doing a quick review of the last meeting with a couple of updates from the Meeting Notes, and also the Topics created on the Forums. I urged all members to make use of them. Then I did a run through of what I’d sent to the Thought grazing Flipboard magazine – news so-to-speak – accessible also from the Thought grazing “home” page. In particular I highlighted the NASA daily photographs, which are spectacular, and which you can now set to be your homescreen on an iOS device – something I’m definitely going to set up. I mentioned that Microsoft will be trying to persuade users of Windows 10 to move to the new Edge browser more – as it has “settled down”; and I referred to the article about the NHS App – which I will also link to from the post that I wrote after the last meeting.
I ended this part of the meeting with a short video of a new Ring (Amazon-owned) security drone that flies around your house – which was by way of an introduction to Paul who took over the next part of the meeting to talk about CCTV and his experience of installing a system recently.
So then we turned to members issues, concerns and questions.
Phil had been on holiday in Builth Wells (having left pre-lockdown lucky couple – we were unable to go to Raglan, so had to cancel our short break). He reported on hospitality venues use of the Track’n’Trace QR code (or not) which was a bit hit and miss in Powys. He also reported use of a bread-maker, but I’m struggling to see the relevance. As this was the first mention of the NHS App, a lively discussion and debate ensued on the appropriate use of an Excel spreadsheet which was out of date – probably by a factor of 13years plus as the .xlsx format replaced .xls in 2013. More important was “why use a spreadsheet?” Phil has sent me this graphic which is lovely …
Sianed reported a recent HMRC scam she’d received – wanting to give her money back … as if!!! This prompted me to mention the scam I’d heard of recently which attempted to extort £900 from a person who’d crossed a “county line” – the first offence apparently would result in a £90 fine. However, this is disturbing in that it would indicate that someone must be watching CCTV cameras on the A470, and then doing a check back (somehow) on the DVLC database of car registrations and ownership. Watch-out, there’s a scam about! Sign up for the Which? Scam Alert service as well. Following the meeting I received this on my phone …
… which is totally believable isn’t it. Just type-in the URL above and if your browser is working properly you’ll get an alert.
Following this I noticed that this one had appeared in the Which? Scam Alert Service
John reported his gmail problem from the previous meeting had been resolved by the classic uninstall/reinstall procedure. One that we can all do well to remember.
Don told us about his experiments using a Logitec 300 camera as a wildlife camera. This seemed to be work OK, but he was having problems mailing the resulting file using Gmail. It seemed that Outlook was necessary to do this. I promised to look into this. He also mentioned that Flash was possibly involved, and I alerted users to the perils of Flash and the fact that Adobe had stopped supporting it as had most web browsers. He also had come across a Raspberry Pi online course from the University of South Wales, which reminded me that I’d not mentioned the large number of online courses available from FutureLearn and the Open University.
Owen reported on his experience of having to learn Python so that he could attempt to create a link to the Cardiff U3A website from the online calendar in Beacon. He’d also had to move from Access to SQL Server as a database platform. [If Cardiff U3A members know the difference between a database and a spreadsheet – why doesn’t Centrica, or whoever Track’n’Trace had been contracted out to!!!]
Paul had offered his Vodafone phone the chance to learn to swim, it had declined and was now on an unintended holiday with Vodafone for repair!
Fred and Jenny had a conversation about the issue that Fred had raised at the previous meeting. I’m afraid my notes were a bit sketchy and incomplete so I don’t want to attempt to re-produce them – on the subject of IT assistance to residents in care facilities during the pandemic. Jenny, felt that a considerable amount of money had been offered, £800K. Fred was unsure whether it was going to sheltered housing as well. Anyway, I agreed to send them, their email addresses so that they could correspond offline.
Jenny reported that she had a complete new suite of kit – laptop, iPhone and BT fibre but was now a bit daunted at setting-up a Zoom conference. Owen pointed her to the Cardiff U3A webpages which might be of help.
Jim updated us on the trials and tribulations of his Broadband problem, and offered the theory that perhaps performance was in some way affected by the school gate times. It might, as students leave school each afternoon. At other times the bandwidth is acceptable. He also mentioned he’d been using Audacity. Both of these items he’d added as a Comment after the last meeting. You’re all encouraged to do likewise!
David Hughes thanked us for the suggestion of going to Tesco to get a new phone – he now had two Samsung A21’s. He also told the group about his horror story of trying to get rid of malware and crashing his computer. Luckily a local repair person (in Penarth) had been able to restore the machine and he’d got a more recent copy of Microsoft Office in the process. [NB You better just check that it can be upgraded – ie, do you have a licence. Worth a phone call.] He also advised us that subscribing to online concerts from the Barbican (and perhaps elsewhere) can be a bit “iffy”; but he reported that he had been able to get his money back.
Renee reported that she was having trouble with her Virgin Media connection and that it was not just her in the neighbourhood. She also reported her experience of using the NHS app and wondered whether people had looked at the Settings to see what could be gleaned from the Notifications. Furthermore it would appear that if you got a notification from Google (ie from an Android phone) you should wait for the second notification before getting alarmed.
Here are the slides from the presentation. The links unfortunately don’t work from the slides, but they are added below the relevant slides in Orange type.
At the meeting yesterday someone, I believe it could have been John, asked how you could move bookmarks from one browser to another. It’s a good question, and I’ll try and answer it below, but perhaps an alternative answer is even better and that’s what this post will also address. But first, exporting and importing bookmarks for the common browsers.
However Microsoft has been changing it’s browsers quite a bit over the past couple of years. Internet Explorer was phased out for a bespoke re-write which was called Edge; this in turn was then completely re-engineered to use the same Chromium platform as Google Chrome, Brave and others, which was called NEW Edge. Confusing eh!?
Internet Explorer – read this article [Internet Explorer 11 was the default browser for Windows 10, but you may find that it’s been replaced in one of its automatic upgrades by Edge]. For all older versions of Internet Explorer including ones for versions of Windows older than Windows 10 – you might like to look at this article.
Edge – if you’ve got the NEW Edge browser rather than the old legacy EDGE version (which should still be on your machine, as should Internet Explorer 11, if you’re running Windows 10) – this is probably the easiest way of exporting your bookmarks/favourites from a Microsoft browser. Alternatively you should look to see how you can run Internet Explorer if you’ve got the OLD Edge installed on Windows 10. Then you could use the notes above for Exporting from Internet Explorer. Alternatively upgrade either of them to NEW Edge and use the first link in this paragraph to export your Favourites. Simples!
Note: Exported Microsoft Favourites (Bookmarks) are stored as .htm (HTML) files.
There must be a better way, and there is! You could use a third-party application such as Evernote, which can not only store Bookmarks, but also whole articles through the installation of a Browser Extension which allows you to “clip” content to a “note” in your Evernote datastore held in the cloud. Evernote has long been a favourite piece of software of mine and I pay an annual subscription to get an extended service from it, but there is a really good free version which you can use to trial it and see if you like it. The screen shot shows that you can save the whole article, or just part of it. [One great feature is that it only saves the article, not the additional content, sidebars, panels, etc which often hold ads.]
Alternatively, you could use a Bookmark Manager such as diigo. Again this sits as an extension in your Browser and every time you want to save the link to a website, you click on the diigo extension, and perhaps add some tags to help you find the site at a later date …
… and after pressing Save Bookmark, it saves the page with a brief excerpt …
Finally there’s Pocket which combines bookmarking with a facility for offline reading of webpages. This used to be a great feature when trains didn’t have good WiFi and you could catch-up on your reading, but it’s still a very useful way of storing web content for reading away from the Internet and it’s the way I store all articles that I come across that I’m going to use in Computer Group meetings. Again, you can install a browser extension for all the major browsers that makes it very easy just to click on a webpage and it’s immediately saved and synchronised to any device that has Pocket running on it.
Looking at the bar in the browser above (Brave) you can see icons for LastPass, Pocket, Feedly, diigo, Evernote, AdBlock Plus, GoFullPage (full page screen shot), Push to Kindle, and Flipboard plus the extension to open the Extensions Library. Of course the screen shots for an Android or iOS device would be different; these are just taken from a browser running on a desktop or laptop.
Extensions are really neat, BUT only install ones from the Extensions Library of your Browser. Generally Chrome Extensions will work in Brave. That’s probably a topic for another post at some later date.
Thanks Jim for the visual reminder of who was Zooming
We had apologies from Sianed and Owen.
I decided I ought to sit down immediately after the meeting to write up some notes this time. The first part of the meeting focussed on the NHS Covid-19 App which is the subject of a separate post. I’ll keep that updated as the days and weeks roll by, but please also make comments in the Covid-19 Forum, I’ve created a Topic for the app there as well.
As well as showing Forums and Topics (which I hope you will grow in time to use more than WhatsApp) I showed the Flipboard magazine for Thought grazing in which I’ll post articles for the fortnight prior to a meeting as the recent Computing/IT/Digital News. There’s a link to it on the Home page of the site too. I also enquired who used twitter as I had created a @thoughtgrazing account some time ago. Only four of you used twitter (and only occasionally at that), so I decided not to put any more effort for the moment into promoting, or using, that social media platform. It was noted that at times of crisis that twitter was probably the best means of finding out what was going on.
I took the opportunity of leading-off with what I’ve been up to since the last meeting, highlighting a really useful piece of software to scan for duplicate photos – PhotoSweeper (which cost me £9.99 form the Apple Store). I thought it was available for Windows PCs as well, but apparently not. The other piece of software I found when I came to wanting to share an old blog post with someone and found that the link to an embedded map no longer worked, was an upgrade to the OS OpenSpace Maps Plugin for WordPress websites which is now even better. This new Plugin (and the output from it) is called OS DataHub Maps and links to it are included in the first of the above relevant links.
So we moved to participants.
David was unconsolable that his phone didn’t appear to be able to take the NHS app and wanted advice on where to buy a no-contract smartphone. From the advice that was given – Carphone Warehouse, Argos, Amazon (used), Tesco – it was generally felt that Tesco (Western Avenue) would be a good starting point as they had a specialist desk to help people buying phones. He also praised the response he’d had from Public Health Wales on an enquiry about Covid and Indoor Bowls, and also the Vale of Glamorgan on the help and documents they’d provided on the subject of Public Space Protection Orders which he was progressing due to anti-social behaviour on The Esplanade at Penarth.
Mike was interested in the Covid app, which his wife installed whilst I was talking about it; Stella had a bad throat and couldn’t talk, and Marilyn had nothing to mention apart from reminding me about Tripod advice – which I’ve now given her!
Christine reported that she now had a fully-functional Cello TV connected to the Internet so she could partner her husband playing online bridge. Success. Paul reported he’d just purchased a similar TV for his garage – and Android TV – which was seemingly very easy to set up and connect to his other devices. She had to buy a wireless mouse (Bluetooth) to make it work as a computer though.
Fred was very concerned about the way that Zoom was not being used in Care Homes to bring residents and families closer together during these difficult time. He was going to pursue the matter through his policy connections, and I suggested that perhaps we ought to raise it with Owen as an issue U3A might like to raise nationally, or make a representation to a suitable body. Phil recommended the Amazon Echo Show device as an inexpensive device that would suit this purpose well. Don related that Liverpool FC had purchased iPads for all the Care Homes in their area (presumably not the Blue part of Liverpool).
Jim had been having troubles with his mobile broadband router and it looked now that being on the edge of a wireless zone (for Three) and maintenance work going on currently together might be the reason for the drop in bandwidth. The purchase of an antennae had don nothing to help, and keeping his window open was not going to be an all-the-year solution!
Margaret related her experience of online retail which had resulted in her being unable to route the gift that she’d wanted to send to her daughter but which she discovered too late (more than 30mins) she’d directed to her home house. Paul felt that District Selling Act should allow you to return any goods within 7 days – I’m not able to comment upon whether this does apply in this case, or not, as the mistake was being made by the purchaser, not the retailer and presumably the 30mins is the time from order to dispatch.
Don had experienced a recent PayPal scam, and had subscribed to the Which? Scam Alert Service. He was also considering how the images from his garden wildlife camera could be viewed on a computer. I offered to help if he was experiencing any problems which might involve AVI to MPEG conversion – perhaps using Handbrake, and also capturing a JPEG image from a movie.
Renee had been experiencing outages from VirginMedia; she’d had a reasonable response from the Support desk when she complained about the increase of £20 in her bill. The Retentions department gave her a re-worked cost £1 less than she was paying now. It pays to complain.
John enquired how to reverse the Gmail forwarding he’d implemented for his and his wife’s Gmail accounts – I pointed him towards the Settings > Forwarding options where he should be able to disable the feature.
Phil told about his discovery of Musescore which will enable him to read the music he needs to be able to play his newly found “love” his bassoon that much better as it can print scores larger. He also commended the use of Google Docs as a suite of applications which you can use to store and edit documents on any device, in the cloud.
What is really a sad state of affairs (and here I stray into political waters – dangerous, I know) is that the Track and Trace (outside Wales, where we have tried to do things much more locally and involved local Public Health experts from an early stage much more) is that it does appear to be putting the cart before the horse. The app should have been in place before they allowed the pubs/hospitality outlets to be opened. It should have been made mandatory. You shouldn’t have been able to enter unless you scanned yourself in (or failing that supplied a verifiable name and address. Mini-rant over!
So it’s available on iOS devices from the iPhone 6s onwards, and Android devices from 2017 (Android 6) onwards. You download it from the appropriate app store.
This is how it works …
I’ll get back on to this following the meeting. Please post Comments, or ask Questions below, or raise a Topic in the Covid-19 Forum.
Screenshots from installing the app on my iPhone 6s
The app is highlighted on the App store (at least for Apple) today …
… download and install, and start the app …
You will be asked a couple of questions, including an age enquiry …
… and then a Privacy section, which is actually very good and worth reading. The developers have done all they can to make you aware of what the app does, and how it protects your privacy.
So if you click on the Privacy link you will be taken to the UK Government website that gives you more information, after first informing you that it uses cookies …
You might like to click through to the Welsh pages to find out more about Local restrictions …
… then you need to supply the first part of your postcode. The developers have acknowledged there’s a weakness in the app currently in that if you move your location, you can’t change it in the app. They are working on a workaround/fix/upgrade. This would apply if you were to go on holiday somewhere else, or if you were a student moving away from your home.
Having done that you’re into the app, it starts scanning and you’re on your part of the Covid-19 Tracing community.
You can see that north Cardiff is at a Medium risk level (as I believe the whole of Cardiff is) …
… and then you have access to the other features of the app, as shown below …
My apologies. My mind must have been a hundred miles away … or I was looking forward to the sunshine that I knew was coming at the beginning of last week. Anyway, I spent a few days in the garden, tidying-up, we had some friends round for “vintage tea”, and we looked after the youngest grandson a couple of times. Thus … I forgot to write up any notes. I can’t even distinctly remember who was in the meeting. I can remember a few apologies, but just in case I forget someone, I won’t even try to list them as I don’t want to offend.
Anyway, we had what I can only describe as a “jolly” meeting, the highlights being Phil’s contribution on his window to the outside world via YouTube and his new magic device, which he’s written up in the Computing and all things Digital Forum. Also the new exchange currency – diabetic cookies – which are now in open circulation for bribery of members. We also offered to help Mario upgrade his laptop which had (shock horror) Windows Vista as its operating system.
The focus of the “technical” part of the meeting – was reminding you about Forums and Topics as well as the gentle reminder about News being posted in Flipboard. I’ll continue to put news items there – that way we get more time to talk and exchange views, and raise issues in the meeting.
If there was anything of great importance that I’ve forgotten – please remind me and I’ll edit these notes. In fact if anyone can remember anything about the meeting – please let me know 🙂
On the Computer Group Zoom call today, Mario advised that his Sony Vaio machine was running slow when connected to the Internet and using Firefox.
The immediate suggestion was to clear the browser cache (Internet History and Cookies) but then it became apparent it was running Windows Vista as well.
Should Mario upgrade his laptop to Windows 10? That depends on the spec. of the machine – let us know Mario and perhaps we can give some advice.
Should the machine be upgraded to Linux rather than Windows 10. It might as well be because there’s no similarity between Vista and Windows 10, so there’s a learning curve anyway and Linux will run much quicker on an older machine AND the default browser on Ubuntu Linux is Firefox anyway.
So here’s a topic which anyone can comment upon and give advice and experience. For me, I think the Linux route is worth exploring. I’ve just “upgraded” an old Dell Inspiron laptop running Vista to Linux and it runs much faster than it did using Vista and it would never have taken Windows 10!
Luckily, there’s plenty of advice and guidance available – often slanted particularly towards our demographic (ie oldies) …
Those two sites are particularly easy to follow and understand, but others are equally informative and targeted.
Your bank probably has guidance which it publishes online and which is accessible to everyone, not just their customers …
I’ll return to further information, guidance and references at the end of the talk, but first we need to look at a few issues, discuss some terminology that’s widely used and try and tease out what’s really important, and what’s just an inconvenience and then it’s up to you to judge where you find yourself on the scale of …
First let’s distinguish the difference between online security and online privacy. These are two different issues which are however linked. Sometimes you have to relinquish some privacy to receive a service – unless you choose to pay for it (and I’ve long been an advocate of paying for services if they do a job that is necessary); exactly how much privacy are you prepared to relinquish?
Security on the other hand is an absolute – you should not be prepared to accept less than your very best efforts . We’ll deal with that in the third part of the talk.
How do you relinquish your privacy, and how much of a loss of privacy is acceptable?
Some services could not be offered without income from adverts, or paid-for advertising – eg Facebook, twitter and instagram; and some eg Google and Amazon track and provide information to resellers if you don’t block them from doing so. As an example of how much value Google sees in getting knowledge of what you’re doing and where you’re doing it, they paid Apple $8bn recently to remain as the default search engine for any browser that’s running on an Apple device!
Incidentally, if you clicked on that link you’d have been asked whether you wanted to accept cookies – what exactly are they, and what do they do …
This article from Norton explains what they do quite well. Essentially, they record what you do on a website so that when you return some of the settings are remembered and applied. They do however also have a downside in that some can also act to track your activity once you’ve left the site. For that reason, you should disable in your browser the ability of third-parties to glean information from a cookie, and also to prevent them tracking your activity once you’ve left the site. You can at anytime, clear the cookies from your browser, and indeed on some internet browsers set them up to delete cookies when you leave (close the window) the site. You might also have noticed that my browser – Firefox – alerted me to the fact that Norton was using a Fingerprinting cookie itself …
… we’ll leave that for another day!
Another thing you might have observed when I opened the link in my Firefox browser was that the site requested that I enabled adverts to be shown. That is because Firefox, like Brave and Microsoft Edge, by default switches adverts off. These are often annoying and having a browser that blocks adverts, or if you use Chrome – using an ad-blocker like AdBlock Plus often makes for a more “pleasurable browsing experience” by limiting the intrusion you might feel upon your privacy.
Which brings us to browsers and search engines
Search engines are not created equal! Whilst Google is often thought to be the same as the internet and is often mistaken by U3A members to be an internet browser, it is in fact just one of a range of possible search engines that you can use to look for information on the internet. It uses a platform called Chromium to display the results of its searches to you through a browser called Chrome. However, other browsers – Microsoft’s new Edge, Brave and Opera all use the same underlying Chromium technology – the difference being they don’t track what you’re doing “to present the content that most meets your needs” (Google’s philosophy) and in some cases (eg Brave) they can actually prevent tracking of your browsing history. For the reasons given above, I use Apple’s Safari, or either Brave or Firefox as my internet browser.
So what safe and private search engine could you use as an alternative to Google. I use DuckDuckGo …
… but others I could have used might have been Bing, Yahoo or another one included in this article or in the list of articles at the foot of the post …
Finally, no discussion of Privacy can ignore Social Media and Facebook in particular. These applications if left to their own default settings are effectively personal information mining engines. They grab what information they can from you, and sell it on to whoever is willing to pay for it, or are indeed the platform for data mining, vis the Cambridge Analytica affair. Online retailers are not exempt from this and Amazon for instance has a wonderful record of your browsing history and who knows what they do with it! So look at this table taken from the recent Which? Publication – Staying Secure in a Digital World – and just check whether you need to change your settings, if you use any Social Media apps …
So that’s Privacy dealt with.
Should you be frightened?
The take away message I want you to have is Frightened – no; cautious – yes!
Online banking is very secure – a recent survey in Which? produced the following scores …
… plus you are protected and most of the banks are increasingly opting to adopt an online and mobile guarantee to refund you where you’ve been the innocent victim of a fraud. Here for instance is Barclay’s “Online and Mobile Banking Guarantee.”
They really don’t want to shell out money, so are trying to educate us to be wise to scams. So let’s take a scam test …
Banks are also often supplying software free (or at reduced cost) for you to install to protect your machine, to protect you from fraud – and of course themselves from having to pay out! I was recently offered a piece of software called Malwarebytes by the NatWest and although I have an Apple Mac computer which are well known to be relatively secure from Viruses, Spyware, Trojans and other malware, I installed it. I was pleased to note that I didn’t have any malware on the machine. We’ll return to this later!
Surprisingly you might think … it’s safer to use the mobile app on your phone, or tablet to do online banking and retail purchases than a web browser. This is because the app on the mobile device has to be verified by Google for Android (Google Play Store) or Apple for iOS/iPadOS (Apple Store). Whereas a browser could be infected, or compromised with malware. That’s something I’ve learnt from preparing this talk!!!
What is more with the advent of Two-factor Authentication (2FA) which makes use of a personal device associated with you, your phone which you’ve protected with your fingerprint, or facial image), is even more secure.
When you’re out and about and NEED to do an online transaction from your mobile – use cellular rather than WiFi. The latter can be really open to “sniffers”. [I must admit I try to avoid doing online transactions when away from a domestic network.] Alternatively use a Virtual Private Network (VPN) to connect through the Public WiFi “Hotspot”.
So we come to phishing and pharming, vishing and smishing – I kid you not! We’ll leave aside spear phishing because we’re not important enough for that! [Please excuse me not going into details on any of these. You can follow the links for further information.]
However the most scary scam I’ve been made aware of is one that befell a member of my family when they were distracted sufficiently to become the victim of SIM swapping.
Bruce Springsteen shouts out at his legendary concerts “Is there anyone alive out there?” I hope there are still many of you alive out there with me, because we now arrive at perhaps the most important part of the talk.
What should you do to protect yourself?
Some of these are really quite straightforward, some require some intervention by yourselves.
Keep your operating software up to date. This is particularly true if you’re a Windows user, and even more true if you are still running an older version of Windows than Windows 10. If you’re using Windows XP, Windows Vista or even Windows 7 you should seriously consider disconnecting your machine from the internet.
Install anti-malware, or anti-virus software if you’re a Windows user. Don’t pay more than you need to. Windows Defender from Microsoft is Free and for us relatively undemanding users more than sufficient. Keep it up-to-date as well! [As I said previously, your bank might be offering free software as well.]
Keep the software you use regularly up to date as well. Consider removing any software from your machine you don’t use – this is because software vulnerabilities are discovered sometimes quite a while after the software was first released.
Be cautious over installing extensions into your browser. These are often extremely useful and valuable tools, ie password managers, Dropbox, note taking, Google Back up and Sync, but if you don’t get them from the official sources then you might be importing vulnerabilities, eg spyware and trojans to your system.
Very seriously consider logging-out from social media and other retail sites when you’ve finished using them, especially Facebook, you just don’t know what tracking and logging of what you do, even where you are, if you’re logged in on a mobile device.
Free software is both a boon and a curse. Only download open source software from a reputable site such as Softpedia, and never try and get proprietary software for free. Read this article about Free download sites if you want to know more.
Remember the golden rule 1 – if it seems too good to be true, it probably is, so steer clear!
Remember the golden rule 2 – don’t speak to strangers (an oldie but goldie one, that); in other words if you don’t know where an email has come from – ignore it; if the website address looks a little strange – do an internet search on the company or organisation to check if the address you’re looking at is a spoof of the proper one.
Have more than one email address. Use one as your personal address, other ones you can use to “throw away”when you need to register to a website, but you’re unlikely ever to go back to it again. Or have an email address (UserID) specifically for online purchases. Splitting things like this reduces the risk of you being the victim of fraud.
Seriously consider using an email service that is NOT connected to your Internet Service Provider (ISP) – if you decide to change your ISP, and you should review them periodically, then you will have real problems if your email address is linked to their service!
You’ve got Spam filters running? Of course you have – but you better check! Probably your ISP, or email provider (eg Gmail, Yahoo, Microsoft Outlook or Hotmail) is filtering out what it thinks is spam, but occasionally some gets through. If that’s the case then you can always look at the real sender of your message.
You can also apply filters to divert incoming email into different folders in your email system. That reduces the amount of Junk that you need to review. [I’ve also advocated using the “native” email application for your device rather than rely on the web-based service the email provider has. Thus on a Windows device – use Windows Mail (or Outlook); on a Mac use Mail. You can then easily synchronise your email between devices from multiple email accounts. Tidy!]
So we come to Passwords …
… this is the point at which you need to consider intervention and changing your behaviour! You might also need to do a fair bit of work, but it’s worth it if you want to have a secure internet experience.
Oh no! I’ve been pwned … but it was a long time ago and I’ve changed my password many times since then!Ah! That’s better – my “throwaway” email and passwords are “safe”!
So … use a unique password for everywhere you sign on. There’s lots of tricks to achieve this; some of which I wrote about in a post quite a long time ago …
… but the real change of behaviour is to use a Password Manager – again I wrote about this a little while ago and linked it to using Two Factor Authentication, which I described earlier.
Password managers
I used to use LastPass and I believe there’s nothing wrong with it – despite the security scares last year, but other common ones are Dashlane and 1Password. Please make up your own minds after reading some Reviews and seriously consider using one.
However the biggest change in Online Security which started last year with Apple’s announcement of the launch of its’ implementation of FIDO is Passkeys.
The Video and the Slides from the talk given to the Cardiff u3a General Meeting
Your bank, eg NatWest – mine has a Security Centre web presence and particularly they provide a number of Fraud Guides
I could give a million references to changing your privacy settings on Social Media, but here are a couple relating to Facebook, perhaps the most challenging service of the lot.
The first thing is, to see if there are any updates available, you go to Settings – Update & Security – Windows Update.
That is worth doing anyway, but I want to tell you about my experience with “Feature update to Windows 10, version 2004”. I started that running yesterday afternoon, and it finally stopped downloading this morning, seventeen hours later. I now have to decide when to install it. I’ll let you know how that goes.
My laptop is seven years old, and I use mobile broadband, so your experience might be different, but still …
