You have misplaced your mobile device; your phone or iPad or tablet is gone! Stolen! Lost! TIME TO PANIC! Yes? No, it is not time to panic (yet) as there are several ways to locate your device. If you locate the device and it has been stolen, not lost, ensure you contact the police rather than going to get it yourself.

Do the simple things first. Call your phone, can you find it that way? Someone else can possibly answer the call. Sending your phone a text, especially with a reward offer, can help too. Always apply common sense around meeting people to get your device back. If neither of these work then it’s time to get technical!

Can Android, Windows or Apple help?

Yes they can, by default, Windows, Android and Apple devices have limited capabilities to find your device. If you have not set your device up the standard way these may not work. Also unless your device has a keypad lock enabled anyone who can access your settings can turn these settings off. Apple and Android offer these services more of a way to protect your data on the device than stop/discourage theft, however see ‘Prevention is better than cure’ below. They also work only if the phone is both on and online.

Apple: Apple uses a cloud based service called “Find my iPhone/iPad/Mac”. You must have enabled iCloud and enabled “find my iPhone” on this device before this will work for you. Head over to icloud.com and log in using your Apple ID credentials. Once signed in, you should see your iCloud dashboard with different icons. Click on the “Find My iPhone” icon. From here you can see all your devices and their location. The device can be made to play a sound, in case you lost it down the back of the sofa! You can also activate “Lost Mode” which locks down the device and displays the message of your choice. As a last resort, and this will mean ‘Find my iDevice’ won’t work anymore, you can erase all data too (factory reset).

Android: The Android OS has a service called Android Device Manager (ADM). You must have enabled Location Services to locate your phone and also enabled remote wipe to wipe it. Head over to google.com/android/devicemanager and log in with your Google ID. From there you can see you devices and their locations, if enabled. Each phone will give you the option to ring, lock or (if enabled) as a last resort wipe the device.

Prevention is Better than Cure

As always it is best not to lose it in the first place, but being prepared for the possibility is second best. By default most mobile devices can be found, just ensure the settings are enabled as mentioned above and (for your security) enable some form of lock screen code. There are some apps that you can install now to really help you can recover your device in the future. These apps have anti-theft (and anti-malware in the case of Android) in mind, not just the data protection offered by default. For further help with these applications or any concerns with your mobile device contact us here at Technology Solutions

Android Anti malware and Anti-theft

Avast! Free Mobile Security http://www.avast.com/en-nz/free-mobile-security

ESET Mobile Security & Antivirus http://www.eset.com/us/home/products/mobile-security-android/

Android & Apple Anti-theft only: Lookout https://www.lookout.com/features/ios

So if you’re in need of some help tracking your device, or even just some friendly advice, get in touch with us.

To discuss how Technology Solutions can help your business call on 0800 878 878.

The Facebook Settings You Should Check

This year (2013) Facebook have made several changes to it’s privacy policy and your settings, if you haven’t looked at your profile settings lately then now would be a good time to do it.

If you’re like the most of us here, you like to share your social life with a select group of friends and not the rest of the world, there are a few settings you should make sure are in place going forward.

See your profile as others see it

First thing you should do is see how the rest of the world (except your friends) see your profile. Click the gear icon in the upper right-hand corner of your Facebook page and select Privacy Settings, now click Timeline and Tagging in the left pane, now click View As to the right of Review what other people see on your timeline.

If you’ve limited access to your timeline to friends only, the public will see only your profile and cover photos, a link for contacting you (which you can limit to friends of friends), the people you’re following, and the groups you belong to. A tip here, you can view your timeline as a specific Facebook user, click View as Specific Person at the top of the window and enter the person’s name.

Privacy Settings

You’ll find these as a drop-down option when you click the gear icon in the upper right-hand corner of your Facebook page on the Web. Here, you can tailor the audience for your posts. You can go back and make all your posts private in this section, access the Activity Log (see the next section), and determine how widely you want to distribute future posts by default.

You can also set who can contact you and how. This is where FB removed the feature “look up my timeline by name”, but you can still control who finds you by searching an email or phone number. We recommend you set these to “Friends” Only, and turn the Do you want other search engines to link to your timeline – Off.

Activity Log

In your activity log, you can view and edit your posts, messages, posts you’ve been tagged in, photos, likes, and comments. You can edit or delete any activity dating back to when you first joined Facebook. You can access your Activity Log via Privacy Settings – Use Activity Log.

Timeline and Tag Settings

After you’ve clicked into your privacy settings, look at the left-hand column for finer grained control of your Timeline and tags. If you want to know who’s tagging you in posts before your name publicly appears on someone’s timeline — and deny them if you choose — make sure the “review posts” setting is turned on. We also recommend you turn on “Review tags people add to your own posts before the tags appear on Facebook” and that you set “Who sees tag suggestions when photos that look like you are uploaded?” to No One.

We hope this helps and if you have any questions about Facebook security, or even just some free friendly advice, get in touch with us, 6-370 8093.

To discuss how Tech Solutions can help call us on 0800 878 878

Many individuals look upon the requirement to use and change passwords regularly as an evil inflicted by the Information Technology (IT) industry. What users should be aware of is that a password is no different than the combination to a safe and should be protected in the same way. Although you may believe your company and personal data would be of little or no interest to hackers, this often has no bearing on which sites are targeted. A large percentage of hackers are opportunists out to create petty vandalism and cause damage. Other hackers may be more interested in using your site to relay emails (spam) or viruses to others, thereby protecting themselves and implicating you. These are good reasons for making passwords difficult to crack or guess. This will make your site much less interesting to casual hackers and much harder for targeted hackers to infiltrate and abuse your computer systems.

Best Practice

There are many ways to crack or break passwords. For this reason it is essential all passwords be chosen with care and changed regularly. There are a number of industry ‘Best Practices’ which can help ensure the safety of the organisations data.

• All passwords should be at least 6 characters
• All passwords should contain at least one number
• Passwords should be changed regularly (at least every three months).
• Passwords should not be in the dictionary, names, dates or phone numbers
• Each password change should introduce a new password, which should be substantially different from all previous passwords (e.g. the password should not remain the same and just have a new number tagged on the end)

If possible these rules should be enforced by software to ensure compliance and the security of the organisation.

Do

• Use a password with mixed-case characters (e.g. aLEx54)
• Use a password with non-alphabetic characters, e.g., digits or punctuation.
• Use a password that is easy to remember, so you don’t have to write it down
• Use a password that you can type quickly, without having to look at the keyboard. This will make it a lot harder for someone to steal your password by watching over your shoulder

Don’t

• Use your login name in any form
• Use your first or last name in any form
• Use your spouse’s or child’s name
• Use other information easily obtained about you. This includes license plate numbers, telephone numbers, the brand of your car, the name of the street you live on, etc.
• Use a password of all digits, or all the same letter. This significantly decreases the search time for an intruder
• Use a word contained in (English or foreign language) dictionaries, spelling lists, or other lists of words.
• Use a password shorter than six characters

Some Selection Ideas

Often when people choose a random password it is then easily forgotten, although passwords can usually be easily reset, this can cause an overhead on the system administrator and waste valuable time. One popular way of choosing passwords that can be remembered is for the user to select a two syllable word, divide the word in half, reverse the order, and insert a number. For instance, the word SUMMER and the number 2 become MER2SUM. This becomes an easily remembered password (all the user must remember is SUMMER 2 and the rule), while still being difficult to crack or guess.

Switching letters for numbers is also a good method. Start with a normal word, say ‘computing’ and replace the i’s with 1’s and the o’s with zeros, so the password would become ‘c0mput1ng’. Use word abbreviations to create small simple phrases that are easy to remember. For example, “you too can be safe” would turn into “u2canbsafe”.

Taking a short phrase and using the first letter of each word can also be a good method. For example, ‘I like the beach in the summer’ would become ‘iltbits’.

Summary

The basic key with passwords is after avoiding all the common mistakes like using your name etc. It must be something you can remember. If you can’t remember it then you will write it down which is a big no-no. Second to remembering it is: the password should be easy to type.

So if you’re in need of some help with passwords, or even just some free friendly advice, get in touch with us on 0800 878 878