In some court documents, it was disclosed that in order to obtain evidence that an ex-employee had leaked Windows 8 information to the net. This combined with statements from the probably has many people wondering just how private their information stored in online services such as social networking, email and cloud storage is. You might just be surprised at how much of your data is actually used in one form or another. Continue reading
Why You Should Have More Than One Browser on Your PC
How often do you see reports of a new exploit being found that can compromise your computer system? These are serious because many of these flaws are exploited even before they are announced. The web browser is the number one way that people access information on the internet and it is also the biggest target for security exploits.
This is one of the primary reasons that I recommend that computer users have more than one browser for their computer. Web browsers are programs that we use daily for all sorts of things. You could be reading your email through a service like Gmail, watching videos through YouTube or Netflix, catching up with social media on Facebook, or just reading the news. When a security flaw affects such a critical program, it can really cause issues. After all, it is impractical to just not use the web until the flaw is fixed as that could be days. By having multiple browsers such as Internet Explorer, FireFox, Chrome, Safari or Opera on your system, you give yourself an alternative to use until a company patches any major security flaws. Of course, make sure to keep all versions of the browser updated to avoid any other security problems.
Microsoft is now looking to remove for most if not all users sometime in 2016. This means that many users that are on older versions of the Windows operating system should really look into getting another browser outside of Internet Explorer installed on their computers in order to ensure they have a secure computer in the coming years.
Rant: Do We Really Need Connected Smart Appliances?
Display From a Samsung Internet Fridge
Is Technology Now Boring?
Remember when you got your first HDTV, tablet or smart phone? These devices opened up a whole new world of possibilities for consumers. The pictures were better, they were easier to use or they just allowed us to do so much more when we were not at home. For the past couple of years, consumer interest in technology has lapsed. The devices we have from several years ago are good enough. Manufacturers still try to entice consumers with bigger, better and newer devices but consumers just are not as fascinated by them. What is it about technology right now that has caused consumers to essentially ignore buying the latest and greatest? Continue reading
What Makes a Bad Free To Play Game
For the most part, consumers can get a lot of benefit from Free To Play games. After all, you can essentially play them for free as long as you have the discipline and patience to not spend any money on them. I have played a huge number of PC and mobile games yet spent probably no more than $50 on the games over a period of several years. This includes such titles as World of Tanks, Planetside 2, Lord of the Rings Online, Angry Birds Go!, Marvel Puzzle Quest, Plants vs. Zombies 2, and Puzzles and Dragons. The problem is that there are many pitfalls to the various Free To Play games that either make them dangerous for people to play or just flat out frustrating that they are not fun or just bad. Continue reading
How Free To Play Games Make Money
Obviously it takes time and money for a developer to create a game. Offering that game for free to players is certainly not going to recoup the cost of developing the game. This is why for years and years, games had a purchase price. Free To Play games break this mold by removing the cost to the player but obviously not entirely otherwise the games would not get developed in the first place. Instead, most games rely on a number of tried and true methods for convincing players to provide them money. This article looks at the many different methods that developers use to try and coax some money from the players who are not required to pay a single cent to play a Free To Play game. Continue reading
The Good and Bad of Subscription Software
While free to play has been gaining in popularity when it comes to computer games, more and more software companies have been switching away from a pay for product model to a subscription model. Why on earth would they turn to this model rather than having just a standard paid user license? In some cases, the move to a subscription model makes a lot of sense while in others it makes no sense at all. So how does a consumer know whether some software they want for their computer is worth paying a monthly or annual fee for versus just outright buying a copy of it? Continue reading
Streaming Box or PC? Which is Better For Online Video
Streaming Device or a PC?
My wife and I cut ourselves off satellite TV over a decade ago. It was a very interesting move for us as that made the only source for our TV usage either DVDs we purchased or our subscription to Netflix. With the rise of more streaming services, a greater number of people are turning to streaming only services instead of paying huge cable or satellite bills. The downside to this is that you must have some sort of device that can stream content. This is now a standard feature for most consumer Blu-ray players and HDTV’s. For those without such a feature, there is always the option of using a streaming device such as the Roku, Apple TV or Amazon Fire. But what if I were to tell you that you might be better off with a smaller PC to use in a home theater setup? Continue reading
Just How Effective Is Phishing And How To Avoid It
For those not familiar with the term, phishing is essentially a method that security hackers use to try and trick individuals to divulging information about themselves and their accounts through false websites designed to look legit. Millions of these emails are sent and received by users across the internet on a daily basis. They use a variety of different tactics but the primary goal is to get a victim worried enough that they will follow links provided without checking their validity and then giving up information. In essence, this is a form of social engineering that many con artists use.
While most of those phishing emails end up in junk folders or trash bins, users still end up clicking on those links from time to time. Google has been studying these scams for some time as they often get reports of fraudulent sites. Based on their data that have came up with some statistics about how effective they can be. Now they have shared results and stated that the most effective site has a 45% conversion rate of getting users that visit it to turn over information. Even the least successful ones still have a conversion rate of around 3% which is pretty good considering how many messages are sent.
The report goes even further than just the conversion rate that phishers have on their web pages to get information, but also how quickly that information could be used to compromise the persons information. They found that within the first hour, 20% of the accounts associated with information provided to such websites are compromised. So what can one do about this? Continue reading
Tame Your Tech Tools or Cables With Grid-It
Have you ever needed to find a tool to work on your PC or get a cable for that one device but had a hard time finding it among all the tech clutter? Let’s face it, I have a drawer full of various cables and tools. Most of them I don’t use very often but inevitably the one I need seems to be buried beneath a ton of ones that I don’t. There are plenty of ways that you can organize such things. I’ve taken to bagging some of my lesser used cables to get them out of the way or sorting them by type. Another solution is to try and keep frequently used items in an easy to access space. This is a solution that the Grid-It organizer is designed to tackle. Continue reading