How To Protect Your Digital Data – Or Else!

What could be worse than losing your tablet or smartphone and having somebody access your social media accounts, business information, and contacts?  Well, OK, identity theft.  And that could happen, too.  But not if you’re a bit proactive.  Here are just a few basic defenses for you.

My first line of defense is a simple one.  My tablet, laptop and smartphone all have a screen lock.  My smartphone auto locks after 2 minutes of inactivity (which admittedly is sometimes a real pain), my tablet locks after 5 minutes, and I manually lock my laptop anytime I step away from it.  Yup, rest room break, out for lunch, meeting with a colleague – it gets locked.  Luckily, you can set the time interval for the auto lock to whatever you prefer.  The important thing is that if you lose your device (or it gets stolen), it will be harder for somebody to access your services and accounts.

Think about social media. On my smartphone and my tablet, I stay logged in to certain sites unless I specifically click ‘log out’.  Many don’t because they’d be logging in a hundred times a day. Lose the phone and anybody now can post in my name, solicit my friends, and in general cause havoc with my life.

Something that still amazes me is the number of people that do not back up their devices.  Please, back up your data.  With cloud storage this is so easy.  Afraid of the cloud?  Buy an external drive and let it run at night.  Storage has never been cheaper and you won’t go into a cold sweat if your device gets trashed.

Get and use a quality anti-virus software.  These programs have developed so much that they detect bad web sites, dangerous files sent to you anonymously and many other threats that you’ve not heard of yet.  I opt to pay for a well known package that protects three devices for an annual subscription.  That is ‘cheap insurance’ to me.  Some free programs are good, too, but lack all of the features.

Keep your software up to date.  It’s a royal pain when your operating system wants to constantly ‘update’.  Often that requires a reboot, at least on the laptop.  Still, these updates often take care of newly discovered security threats as well as fixing old bugs, so it really is worth it to do the update.  You don’t have to do it immediately if you’re in the middle of something, but do it sooner rather than later.

Be careful of the apps you install and read the installation prompts!   I recently had an alert to update two applications, one needed to let my web browser operate properly, and another program that I use multiple times daily.  On installation, one wanted to change my ‘preferred browser’ to something different and the second one wanted to install web browser ‘tool bar’ that I didn’t need.  Often the tool bar installation changes your web home page and many other preferences.  A simple click on the ‘decline’ box was all it took to not let that happen. Entertainment apps in particular can install unwanted features.

Beware the “crazy good offer’.  Usually it’s something like, “for our 125^th anniversary we’re giving away 125 bottles or cases of ‘x’ totally free”.  Or cartons of cigarettes.  It could be anything.  The link you click on has a similar name but is not the company web site.  These folks are fishing (phishing) for your personal info or for marketing data.  If it sounds too good to be true, it probably is.  Keep your antennae up! And don’t nibble on the bait.

If you have real estate questions, you can contact me at anytime for straight answers or referrals to somebody that can help better than I.  

image courtesy of Stuart Miles/freedigitalphotos.net

Dealing With A Computer Failure

In July of 2007 I had to replace a ‘legacy’ laptop. Purchased new in 2001, it served me well. I had indications that it was flaking out and I backed up my data religiously. I didn’t expect another issue like that so soon. The new laptop was great and I was happy.

The laptop that replaced that first one started having issues, too. I found out that there was a recall on it, but the only recourse was to send the entire machine in. Service techs told me it would be “three or four days”, but I know better than that! There was no option for having parts shipped to a local repair shop - my laptop would have to go on the road.

Just then, it started working well again. I thought I had scared it into submission. But I purchased a Seagate FreeAgent Pro backup system just to be sure. It installed easily and did instant backups. If I created or saved a new file, or altered an old one, they were shipped to the backup drive instantly.

I’m so glad that I did that. I had an irreversible failure on the replacement laptop and I just can’t be without a computer for business purposes. So I went out and bought a new one. The retail outlet installed the Office 2007 software that came with the laptop as well as the Norton 360 anti-virus program, and they created the three recovery CD’s for me, too. If you’ve ever created these CD’s you know that it takes a really long time.

So I have a current and complete backup. I can at least see and answer email via my smart phone. Hey, this won’t be horrible, I thought.

I had to purchase Outlook 2007, but the local repair shop I use said that they would install Outlook and transfer my Outlook files for me and I would just have to configure the email settings. No big deal, I thought. While they were doing that, I figured I’d have them take all of my data and picture files over to the new machine, too.

Because of the enormous amount of files and pictures (hi res, of course) that took over a day and a half.

I got the machine back, configured Outlook and started ‘catching up’. Some emails were bouncing back, but not all. The error message indicated that I had a configuration error, but my checks didn’t catch it. Earthlink web support found it quickly and fixed it via ‘remote control’. You give them permission and they connect to your machine via the web and can poke around and change settings. Very cool and very fast.

Then, I discovered that much of my software wouldn’t re-install onto the new machine. The reason? The old system was Vista 32-bit, the new one had Vista 64-bit OS. Great. Even though there is a basic pdf writer on the system, I needed something a bit more robust, so I had to purchase PDF Creator. My Corel Paint Shop 2X (I still had the license key) wouldn’t take the key because it’s a different product (32 vs 64 bit versions). Great.

And I was having trouble finding some of my old software CD’s, too.

At least all of my web based systems worked and I can do about 85% of what I need to do immediately. The upshot is that my laptop failed about 6pm Tuesday night. I spent that evening messing around with it. I went out and got a new laptop Wednesday morning, but couldn’t pick it up until about 4:30 pm because of the setup/install. I went home to install some of what I could, catch up on email, and make an appointment with the local shop for the next (Thursday) morning.

They had the laptop for the Outlook install and data transfer until 7pm (closing time) Friday night. So I lost three full business days and still am not back to where I was with the software.
I also found out that my HP C4100 All-In-One printer/scanner/copier wouldn’t work with Vista 64. Great. Luckily the HP C4400 All-In-One that I had at my office was OK, so I just switched them.

And I thought that I was prepared. Sure, I could jump on a colleague’s machine for a quick venture into my web-based business systems, but it’s not the same when you’re used to working on your own timetable.

After this episode, I thought I’d share some tips for your computer readiness.

First, always, always, always have a good, complete and current backup. Spend the money to do this. If you can’t set it up yourself, pay somebody to do it for you. Make sure that it is working.

Second, don’t be afraid to burn old documents to a CD or DVD for long-term storage, or to move them to an auxiliary (external) drive. If you need to restore your data that will cut down on the time frame involved.

Third, have a central location in which you store your software CD’s, licenses, etc. If you need to setup a new machine you don’t need the distraction of looking for your software, too.
Fourth, when selecting the new machine, understand that there will be other expenses. You may need to buy new software (or at least newer versions). You may need to buy new hardware, like the printer I mentioned above.

Of course, you can try to ‘match’ the operating system. But I believe you have to stay current because technology changes so fast. It makes no sense to me to buy ‘old tech’. I will send in the broken laptop for warranty work and it will go to my wife upon its return, along with the HP C4100 series All-In-One unit. Now I need to get new software to synch with my smart phone and I’m back in business.