Password Security with LastPass

There is a ton of information available on good password practices and I wouldn't presume to have any new wisdom to add.  I found a good summary on Mental Floss and if you follow their suggestions you can greatly improve the security of your various devices.  

Specifically, I'd encourage you to consider suggestion #6, "Start Using A Password Manager".  I know the major browsers offer the option to remember and apply your passwords automatically but that doesn't help much if you use different browsers on different devices.  Using a password manager can integrate your information across multiple browsers and multiple devices, making it easier create and apply a unique and strong password for every site that requires a login.  Making your security convenient is the best way you can make your security more stronger.

I've been using LastPass as my password manager for nearly a decade and I highly recommend it.  Not only is it available for free with all the crucial features, it can also be expanded to serve your family members, your team, or your business at various paid levels of service.

Reboot

Telecom Equipment & Consulting is... well, just Harry Braithwaite.  

I've been working in telecommunications since 1983, shortly after the AT&T divestiture. Lots of things have changed in the industry since that time but the biggest changes have come about in the last decade.  The emergence of VoIP (Voice over Internet Protocol) ended the careers of many "phone guys" as we lost our customers to "computer guys".  Now those same customers are abandoning local vendors and turning to national providers like Windstream and RingCentral and cable companies like Comcast and Charter for Hosted VoIP solutions that eliminate almost all the hardware once required to provide voice and data communications.

Until the last several years, I had always been one of those local vendors, working directly with my customers on a first-name basis.  My job was to install a system specifically tailored to the end-users’ needs, and then maintain and repair that system in an ongoing relationship with the customer.  In many ways, each system was uniquely built for the business, and for the people, who would use it. All of that changed with the emergence of Hosted VoIP as the dominant technology.

I no longer work directly for the end-user and I rarely get to see the same person twice.  My real customers are the support desks and operations centers that contract me to do their site work. Even when I work for a repeat customer, I'm really just talking with whoever is taking calls when I happen to check in.  Though the part I play in the process is crucial, I miss the satisfaction of exploring the unique challenges of end user operations and then devising and implementing a solution for that fit their needs. Much of the knowledge and skill I’ve accumulated over the years is no longer applied at the hands-on level where I operate.  Issues like circuit design, traffic volume management, call routing, and systems integration are now handled at a remote, centralized level and technicians like me are left feeling like a human commodity, interchangeable with any warm body capable of following relatively complex instructions.

I miss the sense that I’m solving problems and making a difference and I realize that I had come to depend on my customers for much of my social interaction and sense of connectedness. I guess what I’m saying is that I’m not seeing this blog as just about technology.  It happens to be one of the things I’m best at so it will probably be mentioned often, but I’d also like to leave the occasional rambling thought here and see if anyone has a response. I hope you do...

Back To Basics

I was reminded today that old school often has its benefits.  Like most of us, I have my phone set to automatically backup photos to the cloud.  I send everything to OneDrive because that's where I keep all my business records.  My phone is an Android so I also send copies to Google Drive as a second backup.  This afternoon, I discovered how many thousands of pictures I've taken in the past few years!

I was searching for a photo in Drive and was startled at how long the machine churned just to display the file list. Duh! In OneDrive, I routinely move recent photos out of the "root" Photos folder down into directories and subdirectories based on customer, year, and month.  It's just easier to sort through recent photos that way. I haven't been doing that in Drive because I don't access those files on a regular basis.  I never realized how bloated the Pictures folder was becoming.

So... cell phones have made it easy to amass thousands of digital images and sophisticated search functions have helped us forget about basic good housekeeping habits that date all the way back to DOS and beyond.  The maxim remains that a rational root/branch directory structure pays off, and the same principle holds true with email... rational root/branch labeling can sometimes find an email where multiple searches have failed.

Telecom Equipment & Consulting:

Personal Productivity Applications:
A new page on the TEC website with some applications that can make you more productive, online and in the real world.

'via Blog this'

Bits from Bill: Dangerous Downloads on Legitimate Websites & Search Engines

Bits from Bill: Dangerous Downloads on Legitimate Websites & Search Engines:

'via Blog this'

I've often recommended using CNet's Download.Com site as a safe source for downloads but this points out a subtle but important caveat to that recommendation. When searching Download.Com, the first several listings on the search results page will invariably be "sponsored" matches, which means they're paid ads and following those links may lead you to the a malware or "scareware" site that will infect your system. One obvious solution is to skip over these "sponsored" matches, even if they look legitimate. Another technique is to use the 'SORT BY' option to re-order the screen. This usually dumps the paid ads and gets you to the real sources.

Good luck,

Harry

(FAQ) Mitel SX200 Why isn't my call accounting receiving call records?

This is a common issue and I wrote this FAQ for the Mitel Forum on the My Phone Techs
for anyone troubleshooting this problem.


(FAQ) Mitel SX200 Why isn't my call accounting receiving call records?: "- Sent using Google Toolbar"

Scareware and Ransomware

Oh for the old days when we only had to guard our computers from viruses! Then came adware, spyware, malware, and botware. Now we have scareware and even ransomware. I've had to do some pretty extensive work recently for several clients, just to remove this stuff.

Scareware is a fake anti-virus program often picked up through spam or even by a seemingly harmless download. These programs copy a few files onto your disk which are then targeted by a fake anti-virus popup warning that "Your system has been infected with a virus. Click here to remove the infection". The popup window isn't easy to close or minimize, and will reappear when you restart your computer. It's made to look like one of the recognized antivirus programs, or even a Microsoft product, so this ploy often works. Once you've clicked the link, the "anti-virus program" removes the fake virus and loads new ones for next time. Eventually, you're convinced you have a serious problem and agree to upgrade to the paid version. Now you've handed over your credit info card and enough other stuff to make you vulnerable to identity theft. The process often continues until your computer becomes practically useless.

Unlike scareware, which Ransomware begins in much the same way but cuts to the chase, making a demand for money so you can regain use of your computer. They use proxy servers and botnets to hide their identity so your options are to pay up or scrap your machine.

So, what's the answer? Same as always, be careful what you do, where you go, and what you click. Have a good backup routine and some emergency software that can help you regain control of your machine. More on that later...

Good luck,

Harry

Free security program downloads

DECT telephones

DECT telephones

DECT is an acronym for Digital Enhanced Cordless Telecommunications. Like most acronyms, it's a way of making a simple concept sound more technical and more marketable.

Approved in 2005 by the FCC for use in the US, DECT is a new standard for cordless phones and headsets, using the 1.9GHz frequency range to connect the base and handset. It provides superior sound quality and improved range, compared to the 2.4GHz and 5.8 GHz technology which it has largely replaced.

It's primary benefits of DECT 6.0 (the current DECT version) are:

• DECT devices have up to 2-3 times the range of 5.8GHz phones.
• Significant improvement in sound quality
• Because they operate on a different frequency range, there is no interference with wireless network devices, a major problem with 2.4GHz and 5.8GHz phones.
• DECT devices are more resistant to interference from many sources of static and noise, such as microwaves, flourescent lights, and copiers.
• because of the separation of frequencies. rejection of interference and static from other wireless devices.
• Extended battery life and talk time due to DECT's improved efficiency
  

Remote Telnet & FTP

OK, I admit it, I'm old... but I'm not so old that I can't learn new tricks.

Instead of being dragged kicking and screaming into the new era of telecom, I'm busily scratching and clawing my way up to the next level. That includes such things as domain name resolution, gateways, subnets, and port redirection and the obligatory new alphabet soup of DHCP, TCP/IP, VLAN, and DNS.

Anyway, I'm feeling self-satisfied right now because I've just set up one of my Mitel SX200 ICP systems for both remote Telnet maintenance and remote FTP backup/restore to online storage. I'm sure that sounds absurdly basic to young techs who cut their teeth on TCP/IP. But, then again, I confuse the heck out of most of them when I talk about serial ports pinouts, ASCII characters, and ACK/NAK flow control... and I gave up on explaining the telco color code because their eyes glaze over if I go past White/Brown.

So as you read this, lift your glass to my dogged determination. And if you pass me somewhere on the Information Superhighway and notice my left-turn signal blinking, be kind enough to Text me a gentle reminder.

Harry

ProcessQuicklink from ProcessLibrary.com

ProcessQuicklink from ProcessLibrary.com

This is another excellent source of information about the inner workings of your computer. Most of us know how to pull up Task Manager and the 'Applications' tab is pretty helpful in sorting out the status of the programs currently running on your system. Sometimes, just clicking 'End Process' on a balky application is enough to clear the log jam and get you back to business.

Next to 'Applications' is the 'Processes' tab. There you'll see a long list of the things that are going on in the background and sometimes you can spot the one that's hogging resources and relentlessly pushing the CPU to 100%. While some of these files have reasonable names like ' OUTLOOK.EXE', some of them are written by guys that never leave the basement unless they're running low on Mountain Dew. They name their programs things like 'btwins.exe' or 'jqs.exe' and that's not a lot of help, is it? If one of those is out of control, how do you know what you're messing with if you shut it down? And how do you know that they're even legitimate parts of the programs you want on your system?

That's where ProcessQuicklink comes in. It puts an icon beside every running process that takes you directly to it's entry in Uniblue's Process Library. There you'll find out that "btwdins.exe is a part of the Microsoft Windows Operating System which deals with Bluetooth functionality and should not be terminated" and "jqs.exe is a jqs\r belonging to Java(TM) Platform SE 6 U5\r from Sun Microsystems, Inc.\r".

As always, a little knowledge can be a bad thing. Before you start shutting down processes, be sure you know what you're messing with. It would be smart to backup anything you're working on and close any running applications. Making a Restore Point might be overkill, but it wouldn't hurt anything either.

Mike Lin's Home Page

Mike Lin's Startup Control Panel

It seems that every program you load on your machine adds something new to the startup process and, before you know it, there's stuff going on you don't know about and maybe don't want happening. Your system takes longer and longer to start and seems to drag more and more as time goes on. It seems to me that anything that gives you more information or control over startup is a good thing. I've used this utility to do just that for several years and I highly recommend it.

The Startup Control Panel give you a direct look into all the different processes that load as your system starts. It's easy to access from the Windows Control Panel and it lets you selectively disable or delete them. A word of caution though: You're messing with the Registry here so be sure to know what you're doing. Creating a System Restore point before any changes would be a wise step.