The Word on Password Managers

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The vast majority of us are using weak (or potentially even worse – reusing) passwords across our many online accounts. This behavior makes a great target for cyber attacks. Criminals can use your compromised information to open bank accounts in your name, take out loans, ruin your credit rating, lock you out of your own data…it’s a real grab bag of nightmare scenarios! I know safety and diligence are boring and tedious, but the reality is cyber crime is on the rise – and these criminals are only getting more sophisticated. If you haven’t taken your cyber security seriously before, now is the time.

A huge step in securing your information online is taking a good hard look at your password habits. Last week, we talked about why you probably shouldn’t save your passwords in your internet browser. As an alternative, most security experts recommend using a standalone password manager. Let’s dig into the details of these services to help decide whether they’re right for you.

The Basics

A password manager is a type of software application that stores and manages your online login IDs, passwords, credit card numbers, PINs, answers to security questions, etc. These types of applications can even generate super strong passwords for you – since you won’t be tasked with remembering them, you can afford to get a little wild with the special characters and random letters/numbers. In addition to storing your passwords behind extremely strong encryption, the password manager itself does not have access to your passwords. Only you have the master password to access them (also meaning if you forget your master password, you’re out of luck).

When choosing a password manager, you will likely choose between a local/desktop-based system and a cloud-based one. The main difference between these two systems is how and where your information is stored. Local applications store your encrypted database in a local “vault,” which lives only on your device (and isn’t accessible over the web). Cloud-based systems store your information in the password manager’s servers, meaning you can access it from any device with the proper login information and authentication. The local application is the most secure, but it sacrifices some convenience and usability. Cloud-based is more user-friendly, but requires a level of comfort with having less control over where your information is stored.

The Good

  • The features that make for good passwords – at least 12 characters made up of a random variety of letters, numbers, and special characters – also make them very difficult to remember. A password manager generates strong passwords and remembers them for you.
  • Many password managers offer to scan your passwords and provide a security checkup. You’ll receive alerts if you are reusing passwords anywhere, if any of your passwords aren’t up to snuff, and if you have accounts on sites known to have had security breaches.
  • Some password managers offer a password auto change feature. The application will log in to your accounts with your saved credentials, update your password and save the new login information. Security experts recommend that we update our passwords at least once per year – a very time-consuming process to do manually. Password managers take a lot of the work out of this task.

The Bad

  • Switching to a password manager takes significant effort on the front end. Depending on how many online accounts you have, it could be a decent time commitment to get all of your online credentials saved to the application. The good news is that once you’ve done it, you’re set (and likely much safer) for a while.
  • Putting all of your password eggs in one basket can be a tough pill to swallow for some. If there is a security breach (not unheard of), the worry is that all of your passwords could be compromised. That being said, password managers are extremely secure baskets. We mentioned last week that browsers don’t make the best password managers because their chief concern is not security. The same logic applies to standalone password managers – these companies are in the business of cyber security first. As long as you choose a reputable company and create an extremely strong master password, you’re likely a lot safer than you would be without a manager.

The How

  • Do your research. You will first want to pick a reputable password manager. Experts recommend any of the big name applications (LastPass, Dashlane, and 1Password have the best reviews), but from there it will be depend on your preferences and needs. Wirecutter recently published a great review to help you decide.
  • Create a master password to end all master passwords. Your account is only as secure as your master password is strong. Go crazy with this one – it’s the only one you’ll need to remember. Once you’ve created an account, you’ll need to install any browser extensions and/or mobile applications.
  • Clear your schedule. You’ll need to work your way through adding all of your online accounts to the application. This is the time consuming bit. It may be helpful to keep a running list of your accounts as you think of them. I highly recommend using the password generator to change all of your passwords as you go.
  • Destroy the evidence. Purge your phone/browsers/desktop of any saved passwords. Throw out the post-its stuck to your monitor, delete the notes file in your phone, turn off password saving in your browser. If your application doesn’t offer it, set a reminder in your calendar to change your passwords again in a year (it’ll be a lot easier next time!).

Patient Computer Help for Grown Ups assists people with their Macs and PCs in the Chagrin Falls and Ohio City areas.

Should You Save Your Passwords in Your Browser?

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If you’re ready to pull your hair out over password management frustrations, rest assured you’re not alone. The average user in the US has over 130 online accounts. Since we all know never to reuse the same password across multiple accounts (right?), that’s 130 unique, complex passwords to remember! I won’t speak for you, but my brain wasn’t built for that kind of task. Consequently, for many of us, storing our passwords is a necessity. One popular option that has cropped up in recent years is browser password management. Whichever browser you use, you likely have been asked the question Would you like us to save your password? If you answered yes, the next time you visited that website it may have autofilled your password for you. How convenient! But is it safe?

Let’s break it down…

Encryption is Key

Browsers often save your passwords in a plaintext list, frequently accessible with only the password to your device (and other times through no password at all), and commonly with fairly weak encryption. Even if the data is strongly encrypted, the cryptography and implementation specifics often aren’t publicly reported, leaving the user at the mercy of the company’s claims and reputation.

Security is Secondary

You might trust a babysitter to make your kid dinner every now and then, but would you hire him as a full time chef? Probably not. Your babysitter’s job is (hopefully) taking care of your kid! Browser companies’ chief focus will always be providing the best browsing experience. Firefox, Chrome, Safari, and Edge are all locked in a battle to win our hearts, and they know what 98% of us care about – an attractive interface and an intuitive user experience. Protecting their users’ login credentials will always be secondary, if that.

Convenience is Costly

On top of potentially weak encryption and subpar security measures, the most convenient feature of a browser password manager – autofill – is inherently dangerous. Most people using a browser password manager are not opening the browser’s vault every time they need a password and copy-pasting it into the login box. Most users allow the browser to autofill login information for them. Unfortunately, recent research by the cybersecurity company Proofpoint discovered that some digital ad companies have been scraping this autofill data to collect email addresses. This methodology could easily be applied to any saved data – including passwords.

It’s Not All Bad News

There is another (slightly less) convenient, vastly more secure option – dedicated password managers. Next week we’ll go into detail on these and help you decide what’s best for you.

Patient Computer Help for Grown Ups assists people with their Macs and PCs in the Chagrin Falls and Ohio City areas.

Should you shut down your computer every night? What is sleep mode?

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One of the most common questions a new computer owner will ask is “Should I shut down my computer every night?”

The simple answer is no. Or, not necessarily. Or, it depends.

In the early days of home computers, we used to shut down our machines at least nightly, and during the day if it was going to be more than an hour or so between uses. Back then, computers didn’t really have the power management features they do now. A computer was either ‘on’, or it was ‘off’. A computer which was powered on but sitting idle was wasting power, generating a fair amount of heat, and adding wear and tear on the hardware.

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Patient Computer Help™ Earns Apple Consultants Network Designation-One of Only Five in Northeast Ohio

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PRESS RELEASE

For Immediate Release
May 2018

Patient Computer Help for Grown Ups™ Earns Apple Consultants Network Designation—One of Only Five in Northern Ohio

 

Chagrin Falls, Ohio – Patient Computer Help for Grown Ups™ (PCH) announced that it has become a member of the Apple Consultants Network (ACN). It is one of only 675 elite IT service providers in North America so designated. In northern Ohio, there are only five ACN members. Patient Computer Help is the only one of those five specializing in residential and small office consulting.

The Apple Consultants Network is made up of independent companies offering IT services based around Apple products. ACN consultants are trained and tested in the implementation and support of the latest Apple technologies (Mac, iOS, Network, Server) annually. Apple created the ACN as a group of consultants in whom they place their trust to work with Apple products. Apple consultants are the only service providers recommended by Apple Stores and on the Apple website.

Patient Computer Help™ supports people with computer and technology issues in their homes and offices, using either an Apple or a Windows platform. However, as a member of the Apple Consultants Network, PCH specializes in supporting Apple Macintosh computers, iPads, iPhones and Apple TVs.

The company also announced the recent appointment of Karen Poccia as Director of New Technology. “Karen comes to us after five years with consulting company Willis Towers Watson. She brings a fresh look at the evolving technologies and demographics that PCH supports,” said Bruce Corson, founder of the company.

He added, “Patient Computer Help is the only ACN in the area specializing in the residential/small office market. By choice, other Apple Consultants focus on the business market exclusively. If you’re a user in your home or small office, Mac or Windows, we’re ready to serve. Ask us anything; we promise we won’t roll our eyes.”

Patient Computer Help for Grown Ups™ has been offering personalized technology consulting services since 2009. We are your best source for patient, understanding help with your computer and other technology in your home or small business, whether Apple or not.

 

Press Contact: Bruce Corson 440-476-3351

Website: PatientComputerHelp.com

Email: bc@patientcomputerhelp.com

Two Sides of Net Neutrality

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Two Sides of Net Neutrality

As the Internet has grown into a vital service for Americans from coast to coast, a number of important issues have come up regarding the operation and management of the networks that comprise it. Chief among these issues is a concept called “net neutrality.” Generally speaking, net neutrality refers to the idea that all Internet service providers should treat all traffic equally, regardless of the content involved or its origin.

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Is my WiFi secure?

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Is my WiFi secure?

Because everything is done online these days, hacking and data theft are very serious problems. Your WiFi network can easily be compromised if it’s not properly secured. If you are like most people, once you have set up your wireless router, you may not think much about its security. As long as you have Internet access on any device you use, that’s all that matters. However, that is a big mistake because your personal and financial information can be vulnerable to hackers. There are several things you can do to ensure that your Wi-Fi is secure.

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How To Use Instagram

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Instagram is a social network that has distinguished itself from others of its kind with its mobile-first, image-oriented style. Rather than writing text posts, Instagram is designed around uploading images and short videos to your profile. It may take some time to get used to its format, but with practice, it’s a great way to socialize with friends.

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What is “The Cloud”?

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What is "The Cloud"

You’ve heard it before, that phrase, “the cloud.” People throw it around as a corporate buzzword, promote it as a selling point, and gild it like some sort of holy grail of computing, but what exactly is it? The answer isn’t always clear, but let’s go over some of the basic tenets to help better define “the cloud.”

In general terms, the cloud is the Internet. All that cyberspace between your coffee shop wifi and the servers that power Facebook, from Amazon to Bing to Pinterest, it’s all of those and the web of connections that ties them together. More importantly, it’s the infrastructure, and the idea behind it, that forms this mysterious cloud.

Accessible Anywhere

One of the main ideas behind the cloud is that everything is “out there” — stored on a server, or in all likelihood, multiple servers, on the Internet, rather than on the computer sitting on your lap. There’s little or no software to install, and in fact, most of the time you simply use the browser (i.e., Chrome, Firefox, Edge, Safari) already on your device to access the cloud. That means since it’s “out there,” it’s accessible from nearly anywhere: the public computers at the library, your friend’s notebook PC, your iPad, your Android phone — you get the idea.

No, we’re not just talking your files and photos, though that’s a large part of it. Now, entire applications run in the cloud. The technical name is “software as a service,” and it runs right in the browser, too. Google Drive is a prime example — when you normally would have used Microsoft Word or Excel on your desktop computer, you can now use Google Docs for word processing, and Google Sheets for spreadsheets and there’s nothing to show for it on your hard drive. It exists in the cloud. Of course, you can download the files, if you so choose, but, typically, there’s no toting around a floppy disk or USB thumb drive; you simply log in to the cloud from wherever you may be.

Works Everywhere

In the very near past, your choice of operating system could limit which software you installed on your machine. Now, it’s all taken care of for you: if you have a browser, you have the ability to run the software. Granted, the experience may not always be the best, say, on your phone’s smaller screen, but the infrastructure and the idea are still there.

No Upgrade Treadmill

Remember the time you bought that accounting software at your local computer store, then turned around the next week and a shiny new version had just been released? That’s right, you bought version 10 when version 11 was just around the corner. Now you have to pony up some more cash — maybe the full retail price, maybe just an upgrade fee — if you want the latest features. With the cloud, that’s a thing of the past. Sure, there are regular updates and improvements, but they simply replace what was already there in the cloud. The catch is, unlike the one-time software license fees of old, you’re typically now subscribing to that software as a service with a monthly or annual fee, so it’s a bit of give and take.

Built in Backups

Perhaps one of the greatest benefits of all this is if your computer crashes or your hard drive gets fried in a lightning storm, your files are safe out there in the cloud. Typically, data are distributed across multiple servers, perhaps multiple locations, and maybe even in multiple countries across the globe (which is also something to think about in terms of legal ramifications), so it would likely take quite the catastrophic event to wipe out your stuff.

So, now you don’t have to wonder what exactly you’re getting yourself into when you dabble in the cloud. There’s no real mystery involved: it’s simply businesses providing you services remotely from servers connected to the Internet.

Luckily, we at Patient Computer Help are here to help you navigate the cloud, should you have any questions.

What are SSD (Solid State Drives)? Why are they better?

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Your computer isn’t one of them.

Have you ever sat down at your computer and been forced to wait what feels like ages for it to get from starting up to actually letting you see your desktop? Ever clicked on a program and gotten annoyed by how long it takes to actually start and let you get to work, or tried to play a game that leaves you staring at a loading screen half the time? If you’ve been annoyed by any of those things, it may be time to think about upgrading to a Solid State Drive.

What is an SSD?

A relatively new addition to the personal computer scene, the Solid State Drive (or SSD, for short) is a tremendous improvement on the hard drives that PCs have been using since the 1980s. The standard, bulky hard drive is actually a magnetic platter that spins around when it’s being read or written to, kind of like a high-capacity CD inside a metal shell. It gets the job done, but its constant movement makes it far from silent, and even worse, it’s prone to failure as parts inside it start to break down due to wear and tear. One day, you might boot up your old computer only to find the hard drive has failed, and if it does, recovering the data may be time consuming and expensive, if it’s even possible. (We can help, if needed, with data recovery.)

Why are they better?

Upgrading to an SSD will take care of all of these problems right out of the box. Instead of using a metal disc to store its data, an SSD is made up of interconnected computer chips that store data in a way that is easily accessible to the rest of your computer. No moving parts. This results in a silent drive that won’t break down nearly so easily as a platter drive, but that’s not all. In addition to being physically sound, an SSD’s speed is out of this world. We’re talking Ford Pinto vs a Maserati. It’s a real difference.

When a mechanical platter hard drive is told to load something, it has to find it first. The disc has to spin, the reader arm has to move into place before it can do anything. Disc fragmentation occurs when large files have to be broken up into smaller pieces and stored in multiple places on the drive, making things even slower. Meanwhile, an SSD can instantly load any data on it at any time, and it automatically moves data around to keep every file intact. A switch from a hard drive to an SSD will have you seeing your operating system starting within seconds, programs that appear as soon as you click on them, and game load times that are over in a snap.

Even if you don’t want to throw out your old drive, there are still reasons to get an SSD. Most desktop computers are built to easily handle having multiple storage devices installed inside, you won’t have to wipe out your files and start over from scratch at all. By simply moving your files over and reinstalling programs that you want to go faster on your new drive, they will gain the speed boost that comes from using an SSD without the hassle of needing to backup and restore a thing, all while freeing up extra space on your old drive for even more storage.

Or, in a laptop, we can “clone” (make an exact duplicate) the existing drive onto an SSD and put that in the mechanical drive’s place. It’ll be like a new computer.

If you’re thinking about buying a new PC or upgrading your old one with an SSD, we here at Patient Computer Help are here to provide you with all the help you need. We will provide expert assistance with picking out the right drive for your needs and safely installing your new hardware to get you back out there and working faster than ever.

If you have any questions regarding Solid State Drives, contact Patient Computer Help.