How To Stay Safe While Being Social Online

How do you balance being social with staying safe online??

These days it is common for people to happily share all sorts of their private information online. Unknown to the actual users this sharing builds information stores that can easily become a one-stop goldmine for fraudsters.
Staying Safe Online

It’s not exactly the intention everyone has when they sign up to a social network site (as the whole point of most of their networks is to share your life with your friends) but this social sharing depends on us making certain privacy sacrifices.

So how do you balance being social with staying safe?

On Facebook alone, the average person shares 13 pieces of personal information ranging from a fairly innocent name/email combo, all the way to their mothers maiden name and home address.

It doesn’t sound like a lot, but those 13 pieces have the power to unravel your life within minutes.

Even checking in at home has become the norm for some people, helping to create a multi-dimensional online identity. The details are available to anyone who cares to look, whether they’re a friend keeping in the loop or someone with a much darker agenda.

The problem is that you don’t know who’s looking at your profile or why they are looking.

For example, someone could try accessing your email account by clicking the ‘Forgot password’ link. The email service follows its security rules and asks identifying questions like ‘which high school did you go to? What is your pet’s name?’ These most common identifying checks and their answers are probably available on a lot of peoples Facebook page.

Once your email address is compromised, hackers can use that to break into other services by going through, clicking ‘Reset Password’ on site after site, account after account – since they have full access to your email. So there’s nothing stopping them from compromising all your online accounts.

7 Ways To Secure Your Facebook Without Missing Out on the Fun

  • Preview your profile as others see it (ie see if you can login on a friends account to see what they can see).
  • Review what should and should not be visible to strangers.
  • Consider only sharing partial details, like birth day and month, but not the year.
  • Only ever ‘friend’ or ‘connect’ to people you know and trust.
  • Be wary of duplicate or ‘odd’ friend activity – hackers will often clone or hack a friend’s profile and initiate an urgent and uncharacteristic request (usually for money).
  • Update your past privacy settings too.
  • Set default future sharing to ‘friends only’.

Need help securing your social media privacy? We can help– contact us today on 08 8326 4364 or via email at su*****@dp*********.au.

3 Reasons To Upgrade Your Computer

The business case for faster & better computers

Older desktop and mobile devices run slow and may cost your business in repairs and downtime. They also lack the latest security technologies which may place your business and customers at risk.

Broad Choice of Form Factors

Check out the following for some reasons to upgrade your current computer.

1. Increased Productivity

Increased ProductivityDevices powered by the latest 6th generation Intel Core processors deliver up to 2.5x faster performance compared to systems five years or older. Mobile devices also have 3x the battery life compared to 5 year old systems. A new device wakes in an instant and are up to date so users are never left waiting. New computers also run the latest MS Windows 10 and associated MS Office software suite all with no issues.

2. Hardware Enhanced Security

Hardware Enhanced Security

Safeguard your business data with hardware enhanced security. Windows 10 introduces secure authentication with Windows Hello and Intel RealSense Technology.

3. Broader Form Factor Choice of Form Factors

Broader Choice of Form Factors

New form factors allow you to choose from a wide range of designs. Current form factors include:

  • The traditional tower computer.
  • Space saving All-In-Ones.
  • Mini or ultra small form factor computers
  • Tablets
  • Hybrid and 2 in one laptops
  • Traditional laptops
  • Ultrabooks.

You also don’t need to sacrifice flexibility for memory, storage space, ports etc as most of these options are full configurable.

Get the performance and security you need to move your business forward with a new PC. Contact us now to discuss your options.

Merry Christmas and All The Best For 2017

To all our clients, Facebook friends, Youtube subscribers and blog readers we wish you all a very Merry Christmas and all the best for the New Year.

Instead of sending cards this year we have made a donation to the Hutt St Centre in Adelaide and have made the video below for you all to enjoy and hopefully have a laugh. 🙂

Over the Christmas / New Year period we will be on a skeleton staff so please contact us
ASAP if you require any type of work during this period.

Once again if we don’t see you before then all the best for Christmas and the New Year and we hope to see you again in 2017!

Should You REALLY Click That Button?

All of us have had that pop up that just won’t leave. It’s hounding you to upgrade your software or change some sort of setting and clearly it has zero intention of giving you a rest. That software wants to be upgraded or that setting changed and it wants it now.

update

Begrudgingly you click the “Yes” or “Ok” button and let it upgrade in the background or change that setting. Maybe now it will leave you alone to get some work done but instead of doing something positive you quickly discover it’s given you the exact opposite. Your essential hardware no longer works, you’ve got errors all over the place, and that application no longer runs at all.

The urgent popup was more of an instant downgrade.

Before you click that nagging upgrade button, consider the following:

Is the popup for legit software?

Do you have that software already installed on your machine? Does the popup look dodgy with poor spelling or grammar? If so it may be a virus or piece of malware trying to install on your machine.

Will this upgrade benefit your business?

Some upgrades are only cosmetic. They look great and the developers pitch them as the latest and greatest, but without additional innovation on offer – you’re better off waiting for a version with some actual benefits.

Is the upgrade going to work with your current systems and processes?

If your project management software no longer talks to your scheduling software, you’ve got a problem. It’s reasonable to expect the upgrade to have gone through robust testing and bug fixes, but even the mega corporations are caught out in an instant.

Is your current solution still an option?

Developers cease support of older software versions after a certain date. In these cases, continuing to use an outdated version leaves your system vulnerable, without patches and security updates. If your software is at the end of its cycle, you’ll need to upgrade regardless. This, however, gives you the perfect opportunity to revise your selection and make some experienced decisions – upgrade or replace.

On the other hand, if the upgrade is going to have a positive effect on productivity, efficiency or customer satisfaction, definitely put it on your to-do list. Hold off for just a few days or weeks while your IT technicians research any conflicts that might arise.

Being an early adopter isn’t always the best idea. Sometimes you need to let your other software packages catchup – compatibility issues will always be an issue. It’s more important than ever before to take your time and research the upgrade to see how others have fared – before things come crashing down.

Call us for a quick compatibility check BEFORE you click any popups.