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Tech News & Commentary
Tom in St. Loius, Missouri listens to the Podcast asked: ”
I’ve had a free Yahoo account for 9 years and having had it since 2004, I’ve never had a problem until the last 10 months. My account has been hacked twice and everyone in my address has received a dubious link each time. I’m wondering how Yahoo accounts are hacked, I’m assuming they’re hacked and what can be done to prevent that from happening other than switching to gMail?
”
Tom, Yahoo is probably just as safe as the other guys when it comes to their email security.
People throw the term ‘hack’ around and they talk about hacking Yahoo Mail, hacking Facebook, hacking Twitter, and when people hear that … they think of some nefarious guy, in a dark room, watching walls of text go by on the screen, in front of a computer that makes weird beeping noises that normal computers haven’t ever made.
That’s TV… in the real world, the person “hacking” your account is probably not attacking Yahoo’s servers in any way, instead they’re probably just “forgetting” your password.
See, companies like Yahoo will make you choose a password with at least 14.000 letter and numbers, uppercase and lowercase with symbols… and when you forget that password, they let you set a new one by answering super secure questions like “what city do you live in?”.
Google has been pushing very hard to get your phone number, so they can let YOU change your password, or at least the person with YOUR phone, but pretty much every company is continuing their “dumb question if you forget your ultra secure password” policies.
Next time you log in change your password recovery settings, lie, but tell a lie you’ll remember and hopefully those guessing the answers to your security questions will fail in the attempt and move on.
Google has added two-factor authentication to Gmail, to try and combat account hacking. This fancy sounding technical term just means “to log in, it’s not just what you know, it’s also what you have.” In this case, your phone. You give Google a mobile phone number for your Gmail account, and whenever you log in they will send you a six digit code via text message to your phone. You must enter that code to log in.
You can set an option to have it remember you for 30 days on the computer you’re logging in from, so you will only be annoyed by it once each month, unless you are in the habit of logging in from many different devices. It will, however, send the text message each time you try and log in with a new device.
So if you get a text from Google with a login code, and you’re NOT trying to log in, then you know right then that someone is trying to hack your account.
All that being said Tom, WE wouldn’t advise you to switch from Yahoo to Gmail for security purposes, but for professional purposes. You might find this ridiculous, and it is, but people actually do in fact judge you based on your email address.
In the professional world especially, if someone doesn’t have an email address from gmail but instead has one from yahoo or even, dare I say it, AOL, they seem out of touch with the current standards of proper netiquette.
Think of it as your digital dress attire, you can either wear shorts and a t-shirt when doing business with people which would be yahoo or aol. Or you can wear a suit and use gmail. Based on what field of work you’re in, you can gauge which is more appropriate for you.
If you are not in any kind of business where first impressions are crucial, and honestly I can’t think of any off the top of my head where they aren’t, you might not be concerned with that sort of thing. But rest assured, it is a very real phenomenon.
For more information tune in to Hour 1 of our podcast.
Consumer Reports Feature With Mike Gikas
Samsung of course last week took the wraps off its new flagship Galaxy S4 smart phone. Consumer Reports Senior Editor Mike Gikas is here to tell us what he thinks about the latest handset from Samsung.
The “Into Tomorrow” team discussed the latest apps that they have been playing with recently.
• James recommends: Soundhound, FREE
“Don’t you hate it when a song you really like is playing but you can never figure out who sings it or what it’s called? Well if you download Soundhound, whenever a song is playing you can use it to tell you who the artist is and what the title is. The app will even recognize if you hum a song and display the lyrics for you as well. It’s always listed as a must have app and for obvious reasons. You’ll be the buzzkill of any party where they’re playing name that tune but you’ll never have to wonder who wrote a song ever again.” — James
• Mark recommends: Epic Rap Battles of History. , FREE
“ERB is a popular series of videos on YouTube started by a couple of guys who call themselves Nice Peter and Epic Lloyd. They pit famous characters and historical figures against each other in a battle of rapping insults. For example, Adolf Hitler vs. Darth Vader. The series has become wildly popular, bringing in some big guest stars. On their recent Santa Claus vs. Moses rap battle, Moses was played by real life rapper Snoop Lion. The ERB app makes it fast and dead simple to find and play your favorites. It’s free for iPhone or iPad. Give it a look. I promise you that you’ll laugh, and thank me for this recommendation.
” — Mark
What are your favorite Apps? Let us know at 800-899-INTO and we’ll feature them in this segment!
Tune in to Hour 1 of our podcast for more details
John Wandishin, VP Marketing & Product Development – Brother International
Craig in Tullahoma, Tennessee calling in via the App asks: ”
My son has a Nexus 7 and he has a bunch of pictures that somehow came from his Google+ account taking up disk space and he wants to know how to remove them. If you could help I’d be greatly appreciative.”
To delete photos from an album on the Google Nexus 7, you need to get in to “filmstrip” display mode. There are two ways to do that. If you open an album and tap on a picture, you enter the full screen picture viewing mode. If you pinch the screen to zoom out, you will enter filmstrip mode where you can swipe left and right through a scrolling slideshow of your photos.
Simply swipe down on any photo you want to delete, and it’s gone. It’s that simple. You can also get in to the filmstrip display mode right from the album display by tapping to open the album and using the selector in the upper left hand part of the screen. Choose filmstrip mode.
For more information tune in to Hour 1 of our podcast.
Titus sent the following email: “I have heard A lot of hype about the GS4 Is it really a significant improvement on the GS3?”
We would say yes, but that also depends on how you define the term “significant.” The Samsung Galaxy S4 has a bigger screen, a faster processor, more capacity, and a higher resolution camera than the S3 did. And I love the S3. But, most of what appears to be “all new” are really cool software enhancements over the old phone, and Samsung HAS said that GS3 owners will receive many, if not all, of those same enhancements via a software update.
If I were buying a new Android smartphone today, I would definitely put the GS4 at the top of my list. If I were due for an upgrade, and could buy the GS4 at a reduced price, I might upgrade just for it’s screen, which is not only bigger than the GS3 but also sharper and brighter.
However, if I were going to have to pay a significant amount for a new GS4, I would be very tempted to compare the two phones and see whether the things I felt I couldn’t live without were HARDWARE or SOFTWARE. And if it was the latter, I might stand pat with my GS3 and see whether Samsung pushes out an update soon.
Personally we think a lot of the talk surrounding the GS4 won’t be so much about big things but about little things that will go a long way with people. Not just the eye scroll feature which has received a lot of attention, but other little features like the automatic pause of a video clip feature when you look away from the screen. Look back and the video resumes. Or the camera-based translator that will allow you to take a picture of a printed document and convert it to a digital file.
Or the eraser mode, where users will have the ability to delete anyone or anything from a photo that they did not want to appear in it. Those little accents of capability are going to be what people talk about and appreciate with the GS4.
For more information tune in to Hour 1 of our podcast.
John in Decatur, Alabama sends the following email: “I’m having problems with Windows 7 Ultimate. When it starts up, it asks for a user. It used to not have the user on there and I was wondering if there’s a possibility to eliminate that.”
If you only have one user account on a Windows machine, you can bypass the welcome screen and log straight in by clicking the Start button, entering the command “netplwiz.exe” in the Run box and pressing Enter. Clear the check box beside “Users must enter a user name and password to use this computer.”
Of course, we’ll have those specifics on this week’s show page for you at IntoTomorrow.com — just visit the show page for the weekend of March 22nd. And … stay tuned … “Into Tomorrow”!
For more information tune in to Hour 1 of our podcast.
This Week’s Prizes for Our Listeners
Intuit: Codes for TurboTax Deluxe & Premier — File your Federal & State Income tax online.
Iolo: System Mechanic – Fix and speed up your PC… Automatically.
Covington Creations: Earbud yo-yo — A clever solution to tangled earbuds.
Brian David Johnson (Intel’s Futurist): Copies of his book – “Vintage Tomorrows” — A historian and a Futurist journey through Steampunk into the future of technology.