Author: David Harrison

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Keeping safe online …

The threats – real and perceived

Luckily, there’s plenty of advice and guidance available – often slanted particularly towards our demographic (ie oldies) …

Those two sites are particularly easy to follow and understand, but others are equally informative and targeted.

Your bank probably has guidance which it publishes online and which is accessible to everyone, not just their customers …

I’ll return to further information, guidance and references at the end of the talk, but first we need to look at a few issues, discuss some terminology that’s widely used and try and tease out what’s really important, and what’s just an inconvenience and then it’s up to you to judge where you find yourself on the scale of …

Terrified -> Apprehensive -> Sensibly Aware -> Relaxed -> Unconcerned

First let’s distinguish the difference between online security and online privacy. These are two different issues which are however linked. Sometimes you have to relinquish some privacy to receive a service – unless you choose to pay for it (and I’ve long been an advocate of paying for services if they do a job that is necessary); exactly how much privacy are you prepared to relinquish?

Security on the other hand is an absolute – you should not be prepared to accept less than your very best efforts . We’ll deal with that in the third part of the talk.

How do you relinquish your privacy, and how much of a loss of privacy is acceptable?

Some services could not be offered without income from adverts, or paid-for advertising – eg Facebook, twitter and instagram; and some eg Google and Amazon track and provide information to resellers if you don’t block them from doing so. As an example of how much value Google sees in getting knowledge of what you’re doing and where you’re doing it, they paid Apple $8bn recently to remain as the default search engine for any browser that’s running on an Apple device!

Incidentally, if you clicked on that link you’d have been asked whether you wanted to accept cookies – what exactly are they, and what do they do …

This article from Norton explains what they do quite well. Essentially, they record what you do on a website so that when you return some of the settings are remembered and applied. They do however also have a downside in that some can also act to track your activity once you’ve left the site. For that reason, you should disable in your browser the ability of third-parties to glean information from a cookie, and also to prevent them tracking your activity once you’ve left the site. You can at anytime, clear the cookies from your browser, and indeed on some internet browsers set them up to delete cookies when you leave (close the window) the site. You might also have noticed that my browser – Firefox – alerted me to the fact that Norton was using a Fingerprinting cookie itself …

… we’ll leave that for another day!

Another thing you might have observed when I opened the link in my Firefox browser was that the site requested that I enabled adverts to be shown. That is because Firefox, like Brave and Microsoft Edge, by default switches adverts off. These are often annoying and having a browser that blocks adverts, or if you use Chrome – using an ad-blocker like AdBlock Plus often makes for a more “pleasurable browsing experience” by limiting the intrusion you might feel upon your privacy.

Which brings us to browsers and search engines

Search engines are not created equal! Whilst Google is often thought to be the same as the internet and is often mistaken by U3A members to be an internet browser, it is in fact just one of a range of possible search engines that you can use to look for information on the internet. It uses a platform called Chromium to display the results of its searches to you through a browser called Chrome. However, other browsers – Microsoft’s new Edge, Brave and Opera all use the same underlying Chromium technology – the difference being they don’t track what you’re doing “to present the content that most meets your needs” (Google’s philosophy) and in some cases (eg Brave) they can actually prevent tracking of your browsing history. For the reasons given above, I use Apple’s Safari, or either Brave or Firefox as my internet browser.

So what safe and private search engine could you use as an alternative to Google. I use DuckDuckGo …

… but others I could have used might have been Bing, Yahoo or another one included in this article or in the list of articles at the foot of the post …

Finally, no discussion of Privacy can ignore Social Media and Facebook in particular. These applications if left to their own default settings are effectively personal information mining engines. They grab what information they can from you, and sell it on to whoever is willing to pay for it, or are indeed the platform for data mining, vis the Cambridge Analytica affair. Online retailers are not exempt from this and Amazon for instance has a wonderful record of your browsing history and who knows what they do with it! So look at this table taken from the recent Which? Publication – Staying Secure in a Digital World – and just check whether you need to change your settings, if you use any Social Media apps …

So that’s Privacy dealt with.

Should you be frightened?

The take away message I want you to have is Frightened – no; cautious – yes!

Online banking is very secure – a recent survey in Which? produced the following scores …

… plus you are protected and most of the banks are increasingly opting to adopt an online and mobile guarantee to refund you where you’ve been the innocent victim of a fraud. Here for instance is Barclay’s “Online and Mobile Banking Guarantee.”

They really don’t want to shell out money, so are trying to educate us to be wise to scams. So let’s take a scam test …

Banks are also often supplying software free (or at reduced cost) for you to install to protect your machine, to protect you from fraud – and of course themselves from having to pay out! I was recently offered a piece of software called Malwarebytes by the NatWest and although I have an Apple Mac computer which are well known to be relatively secure from Viruses, Spyware, Trojans and other malware, I installed it. I was pleased to note that I didn’t have any malware on the machine. We’ll return to this later!

Surprisingly you might think … it’s safer to use the mobile app on your phone, or tablet to do online banking and retail purchases than a web browser. This is because the app on the mobile device has to be verified by Google for Android (Google Play Store) or Apple for iOS/iPadOS (Apple Store). Whereas a browser could be infected, or compromised with malware. That’s something I’ve learnt from preparing this talk!!!

What is more with the advent of Two-factor Authentication (2FA) which makes use of a personal device associated with you, your phone which you’ve protected with your fingerprint, or facial image), is even more secure.

When you’re out and about and NEED to do an online transaction from your mobile – use cellular rather than WiFi. The latter can be really open to “sniffers”. [I must admit I try to avoid doing online transactions when away from a domestic network.] Alternatively use a Virtual Private Network (VPN) to connect through the Public WiFi “Hotspot”.

So we come to phishing and pharming, vishing and smishing – I kid you not! We’ll leave aside spear phishing because we’re not important enough for that! [Please excuse me not going into details on any of these. You can follow the links for further information.]

However the most scary scam I’ve been made aware of is one that befell a member of my family when they were distracted sufficiently to become the victim of SIM swapping.

I have discussed this with you before and you can read read the updated post on the public Thought grazing site.

Bruce Springsteen shouts out at his legendary concerts “Is there anyone alive out there?” I hope there are still many of you alive out there with me, because we now arrive at perhaps the most important part of the talk.

What should you do to protect yourself?

Some of these are really quite straightforward, some require some intervention by yourselves.

  • Keep your operating software up to date. This is particularly true if you’re a Windows user, and even more true if you are still running an older version of Windows than Windows 10. If you’re using Windows XP, Windows Vista or even Windows 7 you should seriously consider disconnecting your machine from the internet.
  • Install anti-malware, or anti-virus software if you’re a Windows user. Don’t pay more than you need to. Windows Defender from Microsoft is Free and for us relatively undemanding users more than sufficient. Keep it up-to-date as well! [As I said previously, your bank might be offering free software as well.]
  • Keep the software you use regularly up to date as well. Consider removing any software from your machine you don’t use – this is because software vulnerabilities are discovered sometimes quite a while after the software was first released.
  • Be cautious over installing extensions into your browser. These are often extremely useful and valuable tools, ie password managers, Dropbox, note taking, Google Back up and Sync, but if you don’t get them from the official sources then you might be importing vulnerabilities, eg spyware and trojans to your system.
  • Very seriously consider logging-out from social media and other retail sites when you’ve finished using them, especially Facebook, you just don’t know what tracking and logging of what you do, even where you are, if you’re logged in on a mobile device.
  • Free software is both a boon and a curse. Only download open source software from a reputable site such as Softpedia, and never try and get proprietary software for free. Read this article about Free download sites if you want to know more.
  • Remember the golden rule 1 – if it seems too good to be true, it probably is, so steer clear!
  • Remember the golden rule 2 – don’t speak to strangers (an oldie but goldie one, that); in other words if you don’t know where an email has come from – ignore it; if the website address looks a little strange – do an internet search on the company or organisation to check if the address you’re looking at is a spoof of the proper one.
  • Have more than one email address. Use one as your personal address, other ones you can use to “throw away”when you need to register to a website, but you’re unlikely ever to go back to it again. Or have an email address (UserID) specifically for online purchases. Splitting things like this reduces the risk of you being the victim of fraud.
  • Seriously consider using an email service that is NOT connected to your Internet Service Provider (ISP) – if you decide to change your ISP, and you should review them periodically, then you will have real problems if your email address is linked to their service!
  • You’ve got Spam filters running? Of course you have – but you better check! Probably your ISP, or email provider (eg Gmail, Yahoo, Microsoft Outlook or Hotmail) is filtering out what it thinks is spam, but occasionally some gets through. If that’s the case then you can always look at the real sender of your message.

You can also apply filters to divert incoming email into different folders in your email system. That reduces the amount of Junk that you need to review. [I’ve also advocated using the “native” email application for your device rather than rely on the web-based service the email provider has. Thus on a Windows device – use Windows Mail (or Outlook); on a Mac use Mail. You can then easily synchronise your email between devices from multiple email accounts. Tidy!]

So we come to Passwords …

… this is the point at which you need to consider intervention and changing your behaviour! You might also need to do a fair bit of work, but it’s worth it if you want to have a secure internet experience.

Let’s just see what using an insecure Password can lay yourself open to. Frightening eh!?

The most common password I use, has not been discovered on any pwned site. Phew!

What about the combination of your email address with your password has that been “pwned” (ie stolen through a data breach)?

Oh no! I’ve been pwned … but it was a long time ago and I’ve changed my password many times since then!
Ah! That’s better – my “throwaway” email and passwords are “safe”!

And if you want to see a list of which websites have been breached, it’s alarmingly long!

So … use a unique password for everywhere you sign on. There’s lots of tricks to achieve this; some of which I wrote about in a post quite a long time ago …

… but the real change of behaviour is to use a Password Manager – again I wrote about this a little while ago and linked it to using Two Factor Authentication, which I described earlier.

Password managers

I used to use LastPass and I believe there’s nothing wrong with it – despite the security scares last year, but other common ones are Dashlane and 1Password. Please make up your own minds after reading some Reviews and seriously consider using one. 

However the biggest change in Online Security which started last year with Apple’s announcement of the launch of its’ implementation of FIDO is Passkeys.

The Video and the Slides from the talk given to the Cardiff u3a General Meeting

Slides: https://thoughtgrazing.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/09/Keeping-safe-online.pdf

References

Which? webpages – Scams & older people

Which? Scam Alert Service – sign up for an email alert

Age UK webpages – Staying safe in your digital world and specifically How to stay safe online

Your bank, eg NatWest – mine has a Security Centre web presence and particularly they provide a number of Fraud Guides

I could give a million references to changing your privacy settings on Social Media, but here are a couple relating to Facebook, perhaps the most challenging service of the lot.

First – what Facebook unchallenged will want to get from you. You are able to disable (prevent) all or some of these … Sign up for Facebook – this is not sign-up site, it’s just one to educate you on the privacy you might give up without realising then How to change settings on Facebook and finally Securing Facebook: Keep your data safe with these privacy settings.

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Linux on Mac

Not a Spielberg masterpiece but something I knocked up this morning. There is one mistake in it, corrected in the second-half of the video. The Mac requires a 64-bit Linux distro, not a 32-bit one, so the same .iso file I used for the Dell Inspiron was used in trialling Ubuntu 20.0.4 on the 2008 MacBook Pro.

How I built a Ubuntu Linux 20.0.4 system on an iMac and tested it on an old MacBook Pro

I’ve also discovered that Etcher is available for Windows as well – go to pull-down button on this page. It might be worth looking at this as an alternative to Rufus.

The Ubuntu page that is mentioned in the video is here.

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Improving home network performance

This short note is written to advise on possible performance improvements you can employ if you feel that your network is “slowing down”. It may be that you just feel files, or pages, are taking longer to download, or display; or it may be that you feel it’s taking “too long” to connect to the remote site from your browser.

The first case can often be resolved by moving your WiFi router, if possible, to a better location. Remember that although WiFi can appear to go through walls and ceilings, the more you expect it to do, the worse will be the signal. So move the WiFi router and perhaps you’ll get a better signal. This is often not possible, so the next thing to consider is to use one of the ethernet ports on the back of the router and connect the computer to the router by ethernet cable, rather than using WiFi. This will always provide better network performance. This may not always be convenient so the last solution is to “extend” your network using either a WiFi extender, or a different approach called Powerline. This article explains the difference between the two and also includes a commentary on ethernet cable as well.

If you opt for Powerline, you will plug a unit into a 13amp socket near to your router and connect it with an ethernet cable to the router, and then on the same electric circuit (ring main) plug in another box which can be just another ethernet socket, or more likely it will have a WiFi capability. Systems from Trendnet, TP-Link, D-Link and others are amongst those you could purchase. Here’s a review of possible systems, most of which can be purchased from Amazon. It is possible to configure these to use the same SSID as your router, but you may have to make do with having a separate network when you connect to these points.

Alternatively, your ISP will often have a solution that will mean that you can use the same SSID for the extended WiFi access points, or you can purchase WiFi extenders (as described above) from Amazon which you can then configure to use the same SSID as your router. So that’s the first case taken care of. What if you just feel that your network is lazy, is there anything you can try to improve performance.

Well first – and perhaps you should have done this first anyway – you should check whether your ISP is delivering something near to the broadband speed it’s contracted to provide. We’ve talked about this before but test your internet speed using something like Speedtest. [As an aside, you can also download the Speednet app for your mobile device and walk round the house testing your signal this way too.] If that’s not the problem, and it just seems to take too long to make connections, then perhaps you should apply some new configurations to your router.

The first thing you can do is to see if you and your neighbours are battling to use the same wireless channels. The common ones used are 1, 6 and 11 as they don’t overlap. However for this reason, sometimes, routers might be “hard-wired” to use one of these channels and so two nearby networks might actually be using the same channel which could then be interfering with each other. Read this article to learn more about this, and then once you’ve tested your network and it looks as though you could be suffering this way, you’ll need to refer to your router manual (or talk to your ISP) to change the channel(s) you use. Why channels? Well because most routers now broadcast signals at two wavelengths – 2.4Ghz and 5Ghz. What’s the difference – read this article.

The other thing you can do is look at how your router is setup with its DNS server. Your ISP will have configured your router to use their DNS servers, but it might be that these are not the best ones for your locality – especially if you’re on a laptop and are moving about a bit! So what is a DNS server, and what does it do, and why might this be important?

A DNS server translates a URL (such as https://thoughtgrazing.org) into a sequence of numbers – an IP address – that instructs the modem that transmits and receives data going and coming from the internet where to go. This whole process is explained in some detail in this article. If you decide to change the DNS settings on your router, or just on a device, you can look at this article which shows you how to do it.

In my case, I’d been disappointed in the performance of my new Netgear Orbi routers which although they seemed to shovel the data around very fast, there was a noticeable lag/delay in achieving connections, and I’d also felt that the router was dropping connections more than it should. So, bearing in mind I have a Virgin Media Superhub that’s only running in modem mode with the Netgear Orbi router behind it, I changed the configuration of the router which was pointing at VirginMedia’s DNS servers to point at Google’s secondary DNS server. I also checked what channels were being used by nearby WiFi networks using the Mac’s Wireless Diagnostics tool described in this article …

… which indicated that I should change the 2.4Ghz channel that was being used from 1 to 11, and to set my 5Ghz channel to 161.

I left the DNS server setting on my devices to be ‘automatic’. This makes it much easier to “roam” away from the house with a mobile device. I then ran a test called namebench (from Google) to try and find the best DNS server for my home network, but you don’t need to do this. I would suggest you look at this article and then experiment with Cloudflare, Google, and OpenDNS perhaps in that order until you get a response to your internet request that satisfies you. Leave your ISPs DNS server in the list of servers (the third in the list below) – just-in-case.

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Notes from Zoom meeting – 23rd July 2020

Our last official meeting of the year, although please note the special meeting next Thursday when Phil and I will chat about creating a Linux machine on an old desktop or laptop, or just to run alongside your normal Windows, or MacOS from a USB-stick. You will need a 4GB USB-memory stick to fully take part in the session, and we would be grateful if you could let me know you’re wanting to join us as soon as possible so that we can send out some notes to you.

Sianed requested some advice on purchasing a PC for her journalist husband. The group provided a range of advice – a large screen, maybe look at an all-in-one. My advice … just make sure you can upgrade it (RAM, replace hard disk) and look to buy one with an SSD and as much RAM as you can afford up to your budget. Mario mentioned that you can AirPlay your iPad to your TV if you have an Apple TV box – that does work quite well. I’ve got one of the Generation 3 boxes.

Paul told us about his amazing (!) app to control his car provided by Toshiba; we all commented that was fine until it all started going wrong and was there a mechanical equivalent.

David reported on the comings and goings of life on the Esplanade. Alcohol was now an issue and there’ a campaign to make it an alcohol-free zone. He also mentioned the incursion of “mobile ethnic personnel” (using Paul’s terminology) but fortunately they didn’t stay long! The perils of living in Penarth, eh!?

Owen has been learning, and then applying himself, to PHP – a programming language for websites so that he can do some work on the backend of the Cardiff U3A website for creating forms, and other goodies. I suggested this was exciting, he didn’t seem that excited! With Python, that’s two new programming languages he’s had to grapple with since Lockdown .

Don survived an electrocution episode – I don’t think he actually described what happened, but it was something to do with his garage and a lawn mower. He’d had a printer problem which he’d solved by uninstalling the printer driver and re-installing it. That’s not the first time a member has had to do that with Windows recently. He also received advice from Stella on how to control ants (black pepper apparently) and told us about a cheap way to get a replacement key fob re-programmed at the house.

Renee said she’d welcome advice on insurance having used many online sites this week. One mentioned was Quotezone. I mentioned I’d been very happy with the Civil Service Insurance Society which you can use if you’ve had any employment in the Public Sector and have joined the Civil Service Pensioners Alliance, There’s also another group – the Civil Service Members Association (now presenting themselves as Boundless) which do deals including insurance I believe.

Margaret followed on the Insurance theme and mentioned that even though not a caravan owner she’d taken advantage of Caravan Club Insurance to protect their home during a longer than normal absence from home. She also mentioned she’d purchased a Logitech webcam for he PC which she’d installed and was using today. She’d also purchased headphones to improve her Zoom experience. She enquired about live-streaming because her church was considering using this as a means of accommodating parishioners who couldn’t attend socially-distant services. I undertook to look up potential solutions and sent some links on WhatsApp and will repeat these on our Computer Group Forum on this site. Anyone with any other ideas about live streaming please contribute to that Topic on the Forum.

Ted was considering getting a Raspberry Pi as a project but couldn’t think of anything other than a weather station to build. I’m sure an appropriate Google would yield many more ideas, and I know from buying one for my grandson there are books with project ideas in them. Phil showed us his Nature Camera which worked with his Raspberry Pi.

Jim is getting bored with sorting out his Google Photos and Albums but is getting towards the end of the task, labelling, titling and tagging as he goes. The next step is to start deleting photos on his phone. Good luck there. I think we had a session on that at the beginning of the year, didn’t we?

Christine had attended a zoom funeral that morning; had got her new Cello TV working with the Powerline supplied by BT (I think) and was doing something transferring photos from her phone – I’m sorry, my notes don’t help me be more clear!

Fred had found a wine supplier for his forthcoming important anniversary – FineWinesDirect (on Penarth Road); and had implemented WhatsAppWeb since the last meeting.

Stella was in the last week of her saga with BT and had found that tethering her phone to her laptop worked quite well, and better than her broadband. This is good news if she goes down the Network 3 Home Hub solution. We also discussed for David (F&C) the possibilities of a mobile dongle from 3 for a caravan if they decided they had to get away from the “mep’s” and other undesirables frequenting their front garden 🙂 Stella also told us about wetransfer.com as a service to transfer large files from one person to another. The link to the file lasts only 7 days though, but you do get notice that it’s about to expire.

Ann had successfully sorted out her WhatsApp images and videos and had found a new app that she could dictate her thoughts to – KeepNote. It’s an interesting addition to the plethora of note-taking apps. I’ve used EverNote for a long time, but there’s OneNote and Quick Note (both from Microsoft), amongst others.

We then discussed the way the group should run from the beginning of next session. I won’t say any more about this but it was a very useful discussion that helped me frame the email I sent to members after the meeting. We wanted more members to try Zoom and I offered to help anyone who wanted to try and use Zoom with one-to-one sessions. The next meeting will be a Zoom meeting on September 10th.

There was insufficient time to go through the media converter services I’d promised to demonstrate. I’ll write this up as a post on the public Thought grazing site, as I will edit the WordPress notes that are there, and also write up something on Facebook Privacy issues and also enhancing home network performance. That’s quite a bit of summer homework for me. I think I probably have to do something on Backup and Sync (specifically in the context of Google Photos) as my post on this is probably a bit out of date too. No rest for the wicked.

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Next year with the Computer Group

I sent a long email to members after our last meeting of the session yesterday and thought it probably a good idea to post it on the website as well for reference, and for comment.

We’ve just finished our last meeting of the year – 17 of us met in our virtual state for a lively and very good natured (that means fun) session. Courtesy of Jim, I’m attaching a screenshot of those of us who took part.

We discussed next year, and how comfortable we felt about meeting in person again, and there was a general consensus that it was just too early to commit now to meeting as a group in September. That’s regretable, but completely understandable and a reasoning that I’m 100% in tune with. Until we can meet as a Group, in the same way as we used to meet, I won’t feel comfortable – especially in the small Meeting Room at URC.

There are other venues we could possibly meet in, and the Committee will be looking at possibilities for the re-start, and we will keep a “watching brief”, but as Phil Edwards said – the acid test will be when a crowd is possible at a Cardiff Blues match. Until then I think all of us have very understandable worries. Add the issue of Public Transport and mask-wearing and  it really doesn’y make sense for us to take unnecessary risks when Zoom has been working so well for so many of us.

Over half the group has met at a meeting at some time since we started. The format of the meeting has been to go “round the screen” with attendees telling us what they’ve been up to, but more importantly the technology-related issues they’ve been facing. This has been very beneficial to all of us, so-much-so that I’ve rarely had to do much presentation. Being able to rely on the Group, or to “think on my feet” to provide solutions – it’s been great fun, and we’ve all learnt a lot I think. The Notes of the Zoom meetings have been written up and are on the Thought grazing website.

So … (and this is the point of this message) I wanted to let you all know that we’ve decided to continue with Zoom meetings for the time being. The first one of the new session being on Thursday 10th September at the usual time. They will then continue fortnightly (rather than 2nd and 4th Thursdays) like it used to be. I would like to encourage members who haven’t joined us on Zoom to consider giving it a go. If anyone would like me to help them setup Zoom ready for next session, please get in touch and we can arrange a one-to-one session to let you get some confidence on how it works. That’s how a few members in the attached screenshot joined Zoom and now they’re very active participants!!!

Zoom is always going to be a poor alternative to face-to-face meetings, but it has worked surprisingly well for those of us that have tried it out, and perhaps if you haven’t, then perhaps you might want consider giving it a go.

However, if you no longer want to receive these emails, and want to leave the Group, I would of course completely understand. Please let me know, or just leave the Group from the Beacon Members page. We would of course miss you and you could always rejoin once the “new normal” has been established! Your access to the Thought grazing website would in any case remain as long as you are a Cardiff U3A member.

Thanks for reading to the bottom of this long email.

Kindest regards. David.

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Notes from Zoom meeting – 16th July 2020

So we arrive at the penultimate meeting of the year – just one to go! A few apologies for absence with members being searched out by grandchildren being a very valid reason after so many weeks of separation. So what went on …

Fred asked for guidance on how to get WhatsApp working properly on his phone – we didn’t answer that one, but did suggest there was a way using WhatsAppWeb on a browser that would answer his question. I promised to send him a link – here it is – that would assist in getting WhatsApp working on a desktop/laptop.

Christine reported that her new Cello Tv was having some problems connecting to the Internet and her son had advised purchasing a BT Powerline adapter to provide a stronger single, or indeed hard-wire connction. I’ve used this sort of device in the past and they can get round the problem well. She then enquired … “what is the best 43″ TV at the moment?” This created a lively discussion and ultimately it comes down to what you actually want from your TV. For me it’s the display quality. Smart features can be added-on, but it’s the screen and the menu facility of the set that’s most important. For that reason I’ve chosen to purchase the new Samsung 43″ QLED set – when it comes into Richer Sounds. You may be able to get it elsewhere, but I’ll wait until I can get it from them as they were so helpful in assisting me get to the decision I’ve made. One thing I need to clarify after the meeting though. It’s only OLED screens made by LG that are used by Panasonic, Sony and others, not LED. The competing standard is QLED from Samsung which is probably not as good as OLED but it’s only Samsung that offers a 43″ screen at this improved picture standard. Our existing set is a 10+ year old 32″ LED, we are upgrading to a 43″ QLED. Hope that makes it clear.

Paul related his experiments with stop-start gmail and google calendar and has found a workaround by starting Google Chrome, and then re-starting it. This seems to fix the other problems. This does seem to point to a problem with Google accounts in some way and we talked a little about the Google Dashboard as well. These can be reached at https://myaccount.google.com/ and https://myaccount.google.com/dashboard respectively (when logged in). It would be well worth your time spending a little while on these two pages and perhaps refining some of your settings with Google services as a result. Paul also promised to tell us all in the autumn about his CCTV installation as he edges nearer to making a decision on the system he’s going to deploy.

John indicated that he’d like some guidance on the WordPress system, the differences between .com and .org installations and how to use the Block Editor. I offered to do something for the session next week and try and recommend a good tutorial/book for using the wordpress.com site.

Stella‘s problems with exiting from her BT Broadband contract continue – she’s only got two weeks left and they are sending her messages that would seem to be suggesting she’d lose connection to services such as her photos on iCloud. This is patently not accurate, but for her peace of mind we did suggest that she download her photos onto her laptop and perhaps move them to an external device for safe keeping. She should do that by going to https://icloud.com logging in with her AppleID and Password and then downloading the Photos from the screen that would appear. However one thought did occur to me afterwards. If you have supplied your BT email address to be your AppleID then you need to change that before the end of the month. This goes for any other services that you might have supplied with your BT email address as this will cease to be active shortly after the account is closed. So … check your online services and see if you have used a BTinternet.com email address on any of them and change that to (in your case Stella) your yahoo address. If you close your BT account your email will remain active for 60days and you will have the chance to migrate to BT Premium Mail which is a chargeable service – you will probably be chased to take this up, but it’s advisable to take the opportunity to move to a non-ISP dependent service such as Hotmail, Yahoo or Gmail. You do not have the opportunity of moving the mail messages from BT to another provider. Shame on you BT!!

Stella was also alarmed at having her account details flashed up on the screen which does appear to me at least to be strange thing to do, and she intends raising the matter with OFCOM. To top it all her connection to broadband has got worse and worse and it has taken up to 2 hours on occasion for her to connect to the Internet. Our sympathy is with Stella and we do hope she gets a good resolution from this and finds her Network 3 experience a happier one. [Jim is in the wings to provide assistance on that one.]

Ann wanted advice and guidance as to how to get rid of WhatsApp images and videos on her phone and both Christine and Paul gave advice on both. You can delete them off your phone by going to a specific album in your Photos on your phone, and delete them from WhatsApp by pressing on the image and choosing the Delete option.

David F&C queried the way that Photos were backing-up to Google Photos and we talked about the way that this happened. I mentioned I’d done something about this some time ago, but I fear that the post doesn’t quite hit the mark anymore – it needs re-writing, so here’s a link to Google’s page which is starting-point to learning a little about the wonderful world of Backup and Sync.

My contribution to the meeting was to mention my surprise and pleasure at retrieving monies from a Barclaycard that we only use when on holiday which is where our refund from Singapore Airlines had been sitting since the 28th May! I also mentioned a Facebook advert that enticed a friend to seemingly purchase goods from a well-known high-street name. Just don’t do it. Be very aware! I also talked about improving Network performance i the house and promised to write-up something about that, as I did to share some guidance on using Facebook. I will do both of these on the thoughtgrazing.com site as it may be of more than general interest to a wider circle and I do need to keep some interest in that site as well!

Finally I offered to do a little on transcoding – changing the format of videos, images and audio files – as well as the bit on WordPress, for the last meeting of the year.

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Notes from Zoom meeting – 9th July 2020

Another good turnout with 14 of us on my screen and such a well-behaved group of zoomers. Makes you think that perhaps we ought to be classified as “baby zoomers” doesn’t it? Anyway round the screen we wen, starting with a follow-up from the last meeting.

Owen had investigated the Gmail closing and opening issue and reported that this had been identified as a “problem” by others specific to Chrome. The suggested solution was to uninstall Google Chrome and then re-install it. However another suggestion was that you should look at the extensions you’ve loaded into Chrome. If this is the case it would be interesting to see if the same problem happens with Brave, or Edge, which both use the Chromium code that underlies Chrome. Owen also reported that the same problem had been recorded as being associated with using some Chrome-based apps such as Alexa, or even apps that accessed Windows itself, and being related to security settings in the browser. More work needs to be done before we get a definitive answer. I await the next chapter in the story!

Then we “went round the screen” starting with …

Ted, who pointed us to a post he’d written on using Google Maps – which is an interesting read, as is the other work he’s been doing with the Roath History Group creating a “virtual war memorial” and resurrecting work that he and David H had done in creating Heritage Walks (for a publication/website that appears doomed to never appear). Links to both of these projects – which prove (if proof was ever needed) that Ted has been having a very busy and productive lockdown – are on his Google Maps post. Ted invited us all to review and comment on the content and presentation of both pieces of work, please do so.

Fred has been busy doing DIY and preparing for “a big birthday”, and requested info on the availability of a Spanish wine. Owen was able to come up trumps with a local source from which it might be possible to get the wine. [I’m afraid I didn’t write down either the name of the wine, or the place where it could be purchased.]

Paul enquired about a pop-up that he’d been seeing recently inviting him to take-out a subscription for Acronis True Image. Both Owen and I agreed that this was back-up software. It had probably been packaged with the machine when purchased with a time-limited subscription which had now expired. Since Paul wasn’t using it, it was safe to ignore the invitation!

Stella had decided to go with getting Broadband via the 3 mobile network. From the website she wasn’t sure which offering Home, or Mobile, she should take. From discussion with Jim, it seemed likely that the Home Hub option was the one she should take. [I looked into this after the meeting and wrote to Stella and Jim with that advice. The important factor was to make sure you got a HomeFi (Huawei 535) Plus hub. The service should cost around £20-22 a month for a two-year contract and unlimited data.]

Renée reported on a phone scam relating to a Mastercard purchase she hadn’t made. Sianed told us she’s had a similar experience and reported it to Mastercard. I reported the excellent Mastercard “track and trace” system with stopped my card when I made a transaction on Amazon Australia, sent me a text message asking me to confirm whether the last three transactions had been made by me and to answer “y” or “n” by text, which I did and which then unblocked my card. All this took place within 1 min of the transaction and was done without interfering with the purchase with Amazon. Very impressive! She also had found a way of storingvideos from her gym on Fb, which meant that her problem (as reported on WhatsApp) with Vimeo, had been resolved.

Owen told us about Training he’d received from U3A about holding Virtual Meetings and particularly AGMs using Zoom. He had learnt a lot more about facilities in Zoom from that session and shared some of them with us including having co-hosts of a meeting. Marilyn asked whether it was possible to set up break-out groups (as she was now experiencing in a Welsh course run by the university), and Don added that these were being used by his church after the Sunday service, as well as using a poll during the service itself. We all expressed our grateful thanks to Owen for all he’s been able to do for Cardiff U3A during this difficult period and furthermore expressed the view that we were particularly fortunate to have someone with technical expertise “in charge” at such a challenging time.

Jim continues to weed his photo collection, a repetitive but in the end very valuable and useful task!

Sianed enquired about a problem encountered by her husband who was losing sight of emails which he had then to recover from the Draft folder of his mailer (Hotmail). Several suggestions were offered, including (and the most likely) that he had possibly changed “focus” of the browser by clicking on another window, which then caused automatic saving to draft; but the general advice was that if you were writing a long email you should do it in a text editor (not a word processor) – I use Evernote for instance – and then cut’n’paste the text into the email when you’ve finished, and then do any formatting in the email before sending it.

Don told us he’d been looking at the zoom controls (settings) on his machine after he’d had an alert that Zoom was using 90% of the machine’s CPU. We didn’t think this should be anything to be concerned about as his machine was well above the minimum specification for Zoom and he wasn’t doing anything much in the background. However, the general advice is that if you do find things are “slowing down” then you should look to see if there are processes running in the background, and close them down. Most Zoom problems are related to poor bandwidth, not CPU or RAM problems. He also reported that he’d been amazed to be able to purchase HP compatible cartridges for his printer from IJT for c.£20 as opposed to the £75 quoted from HP. David H reported that he’d been surprised to find Amazon prices beating IJT prices for HP cartridges, so the moral is shop around!

Phil was challenged on why “tattyjacket” as his email address and he revealed the Tatty Jacket (he plays accordion with a Morris Team). He also told us that the episode of The Chase he’d been seen on the week before was recorded more than 4 years ago, and he didn’t do any better the second-time round!!! He also told us about The Pilgrimage Way to Penrhys (and Stella told us the hill at the end was quite steep). [I’ve also written the word pop-up down – but have no idea what that was all about!]

David H, who will now be renamed David the F&C to avoid confusion with my good self, updated us on the saga of his meeting with the VoG Planning/Licensing Committee and the relative victory in stopping the licence for the fish and chip shop on the Esplanade being extended beyond 11:00pm. Now to tackle the odour problem. He also updated us on the Jigsaw website and told us that you can get puzzles of 500 pieces as well.

Finally I told the group that I’d had little time to do anything else but re-work the family website after the late intervention of my Australia-based IT son.

I then kicked off a discussion about this article from The Guardian, that I felt made for uncomfortable reading in terms of the type of society we were heading for.

I’m also including a few more links that I didn’t have time to mention in the meeting

About Internet Society

Consolidation in the Internet Economy

What are the Pros and Cons of Network Neutrality – I include this because of the discussion we had the previous week about less 4K movies on Netskills, and my thought that it might be related to tiering of internet service in the US.

Tim Berners Lee, on 30 years on, what’s next #ForTheWeb? and his idea of A Contract for the Web – we have discussed this at an earlier meeting, but it’s interesting to see the list of companies that have now signed-up for it.

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Notes from Zoom meeting – 2nd July 2020

I’m late again, writing up the notes, so it will be interesting to see whether my memory is better than the last time when this happened. My writing is worse than a doctor’s so that can tell you how bad it is, so between that, and my memory, please excuse me if I’ve forgotten something. In my defence however, I did all the actions required of me before I went for supper last Thursday, so I got them out of the way! You can see them in the WhatsApp group, and Paul added an item there as well about Printer Ink – of which more below …

Paul mentioned his Zoom quiz, and it appears quite a few of us are taking part in these; he also asked whether there had been any solution to the Google Mail problem which he’d raised a fortnight before (and I can’t remember what it was …) and which Owen had kindly “volunteered” to look into.

Fred (a self-confirmed “zoom virgin” – his words) had been mainly involved with various DIY projects around the house, something which I reluctantly have been engaged with as well!

David H told us about the preparations for his Vale of Glamorgan Planning Appeal video-conferencing session – we look forward to the report of how it went. He also let us know that for £3 his daughter had allowed him (legally) to piggyback on their Netflix account. [ Me, I’d have said thanks very much and then forget to pay :-)] Phil reported that he thought Netflix were reducing the number of films they were streaming in 4K due to bandwidth demand, but there’s plenty of 4K content on YouTube such as watching the BBC Tuning Page of years ago. [I wonder whether the reduction of 4K content on Netflix is related in any way to the tiers of bandwidth service that are being marketed in the US – something that the Internet Society campaigned strongly against as it heralded the introduction of two- (or multi-) tiered services which was against the philosophy of the Internet as being an equal service to all. I’ll look up a bit more on this before the meeting as it relates to the theme of Corporate Control of the Internet in a way as well.] David H also recounted his pleasurable engagement with computerised jigsaws and has written an article here – many thanks.

Stella recounted how her conversations with BT about upgrading her broadband were proceeding – they weren’t; every time she called them the price of what she was already getting was going up. We had a general discussion about broadband providers and I created a Topic on the subject here, that you might be interest in reading, and contributing to.

John advised us about an offer pushed through his door of his apartment in a group of flats inviting him to get broadband collectively for the residents for £39.99 each. We all thought this was a bit expensive. He also told us that he’d done a full migration to Win10 now on his desktop, had shed MS Office and was now using LibreOffice. He also told us that he had a new Covid-Project – taking pictures of clouds. Very restful. I look forward to seeing some of the outcomes if we ever get the Lightroom Pantry group going again.

Jim had bitten the bullet and decided to subscribe to Flickr Pro (£55.88pa, but reduced for 2-year subscription), and was pleased that there were no adverts as a result. He continues to weed his photo collection providing tags to them to assist in search recovery.

Renée was engaged in more and more Zoom meetings (3 that day) and all was going well.

Don had discovered an old Logitech 300 camera he had which he’d connected to his computer and which was improving what he could do because he could move the camera rather than rely on the built-in one. We then had a discussion about HP providing an email service (£3.50pm) to monitor ink levels and send out replacement cartridges when they were needed. Paul told us about IJT (details in WhatsApp group) who he’d found very good to provide replacement ink cartridges.

We celebrated with Ann her backup of the BIOS on her Lenova IdeaPad 320 (4Gb) before upgrading the BIOS and all the other work she was doing on the machine.

Phil told us about his latest project – a computerised (Raspberry Pi) microscope and showed us a picture of a dead fly to prove his success. He also entreated us to support a campaign he was thinking of setting-up to get things (what???? – my notes fail me) in the right order. He recommended a channel UKTV Play to watch loads of old TV. What he failed to tell us (perhaps he didn’t even know) was that he was to appear on a five-year old re-run of the The Chase that evening!

Christine recounted the sad demise of their TV which broke as it was being replaced by their new Cello set – perhaps it was trying to tell us something? Anyway, it’s in the skip now!

Finally, I talked about the installation of a new Netgear Orbi Mesh router and WiFi system which took up most of Father’s Day – the best use I could imagine for such an artificial American concoction. I also talked a little about the new Edge browser and difficulties a member of the Photographic Group had using it with Flickr, and I explained that this often happened with new browsers and old web pages which didn’t keep pace with technological change. His problem was solved by using Firefox. I expressed the view that I thought Firefox might be making a comeback as a secure and privacy-focussed browser and promised to look more into it for a meeting at some point in the future.

A couple of members (Mike and Marilyn amongst them) had nothing to report.

After the round-the-screen session I gave a brief demonstration of using the Block Editor to create posts on the site – I was delighted to see David H had used it in the last week.

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Demo of Gutenberg Block Editor

Watch this video from YouTube – amazing driving!

Below is an embedded link from Flickr …

Flowers-20200524-10247.jpg

But sadly, no easy way of linking to an image in Google Photos. You need to download the image to your local device and then upload it in the Image Block …

There are more links and videos which you can read, and look at, from links in the Help menu item – How to write an article.

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Notes from Zoom meeting – 18th June 2020

I’ve learnt my lesson from last week and am writing up the notes immediately. First a set of topical points/issues, and then a report on “What we do with our computers”.

Paul reported that he’d been experiencing Gmail opening, closing and then re-opening when using a browser on Windows? Is this a Windows thing, a browser thing (Chrome), or what? Owen was also experiencing it (but Renee on a Mac using a browser wasn’t). Owen undertook to investigate. Paul also asked whether anyone knew whether there was any advantage in responding to the request to Archive when prompted from Photos, or Mail on Google. I promised to look into this.

Renée reported that her Zoom meeting (one including participants from Italy) had been a great success. She wondered whether being “upgraded” to be given more time, when she thought she was only going to get 40mins was a standard thing. Group members seemed to think that maybe this only happened on a first call, others seemed to think if there was less than 3 participants the “upgrade” was standard; others thought the “upgrade” to more than 40mins could happen at any time – perhaps this is a factor of what the demand at any time might be?

Owen commented that some Zoom meeting hosts had implemented Mute participants on entry when it was a talk (History Group). I discovered that I could Mute All at any time – if I wanted. We’re all learning about this new technology!

Stella was still investigating a dongle, or method for connecting her TV to headphones using BlueTooth. We talked around the issue, resolved that if the BT version was higher than the device version, it should work; but then decided that actually what Stella required was a device similar to the one that Paul/Jim had researched for Marilyn – Paul suggested this one back in October (the Search facility in WhatsApp actually works!!!). I wrote then “I did a bit of googling on the bus on the way home, and all I would (probably stating the obvious) say is that what you should be looking for is a device that attaches a Bluetooth TRANSMITTER (or one that handles both Transmitter and Receiver states) to the Headphone Jack” and I sent this link to Marilyn in addition to the one Paul had sent.” In the meeting Phil suggested that Stella also look at this page.

Phil told us about a website he’d created for a Music application. You can see it, and try it out from this link. He also told us about the book he’d just finished – Teething Troubles – and which was available in eBook and print (from Amazon). More information about it is to be found here. He also invited us to use the quiz he’d prepared for his family, which is available on his website here with the answers here. He also thought you might like to see this from twitter.

Ann told us about her need for an Office application as she had misplaced her licence key for MS Office. She’d looked at Google Docs and OpenOffice but because she thought the documents were always stored in the cloud (they aren’t) she’d taken out a subscription to Office 365. I suggested that she looked at LibreOffice –  a successor to OpenOffice, and one that works better with PDF and .docx files (imho); it has the following components – Writer (word processing), Calc (spreadsheets), Impress (presentations), Draw (vector graphics and flowcharts), Base (databases), and Math (formula editing) all of which (to the best of my knowledge) are compatible with Microsoft’s packages.

Don told us about the positive experience he’d had using software from Wesley Media to attend an ex-colleagues funeral. When working on a tablet he was able to pinch the image to feel more intimately connected to the ceremony; something he couldn’t do on his laptop. He also reported that he’d tried using Brave, but had been a bit disarmed by the security controls which also incidentally prevented the software just mentioned from running on anything other than Chrome. I reported that this was quite normal and that some pieces of software are written just to run on particular browsers. Although Brave uses the same engine as Chrome (called Chromium) developers write code for specific browsers and so I often found I needed to use Chrome after I’d also tried it first on Safari (for the Mac). I also reported that I’d read some good reviews on Firefox recently, and this one too, and this might be an alternative to Brave if the security controls were too restrictive.

Christine reminded me that she was still researching a TV replacement and looking at 4K. The advice remains the same, it has to be a large display to make 4K useful and worthwhile. Also the quality of the display is related directly to the price you pay. Whether a less-costly option, such as Cello, is worth looking into – I wouldn’t like to say [Amazon]. My criteria would be as little SMART as possible (use a secondary streaming device, eg NowTV or Roku, or Amazon Fire, or Google Chromecast); as many HDMI ports as possible; optical output for sound (if you want to connect to a soundbar, AV system or HiFi) and the correct display size for the room – not in that order!! She also enquired whether anyone had used Jitsi Meet for video-calls. I said I hadn’t but I thought sticking with something I knew, Zoom, would suit me for the time being. I did say I would look into it though, as I would look into Cello.

We then had a general discussion about what applications we used on our computers.

Jim used some photo-editing software (Paintshop Pro, and ImageGlass – which was looking promising). He was a Fb user and used Flickr a lot as well.

David H valued the computer for access to online newspapers and apart from the Office applications he also used it for shopping and banking. He was a born again LastPass user!

Christine used her computer for general organisation – meetings, searches etc as well as buying/selling on Gumtree/eBay, printing labels and genealogy.

Don also used his computer for genealogy and printing (including labels) as well as the office apps and banking.

Ann (aside from her iPhone/iPad) used the computer for backing-up photos and music, ripping CDs, and doing office apps (eg accountancy). She particularly enjoyed watching the video content from the Hay Festival on her laptop.

Phil has an involvement in his websites, and uses Fb and twitter – which he said was valuable in times of crisis – I’m sure he has a keen and acute Fake News detector employed!He does online banking. We talked about the risks of online banking because Ann wouldn’t do it. With the recent enhancements to the web browser access to banking, it was probable that there was little difference in safety between mobile apps and the web browser access method.

Stella enjoyed music and DVDs on her machine as well as buying and selling. She also liked to be able to read foreign (Italian) newspapers which kept her in touch with events there.

Marilyn used her machine for photo-editing and had an Adobe Creative Cloud subscription. She watched quite a lot of YouTube videos to further her knowledge of photography, and followed a Welsh duo-lingo course online.

Sianed used her computer for banking, duo-lingo French and some proof-reading of documents sent to he by her children.

Owen was rarely far away from his computer with the U3A website, Beacon administration, Zoom administration and Writers Group internet presence to manage … but he did find time for Fb and banking!

Renée had discovered Zoom to be a pleasurable experience with friends and bookclubs. She loved the fact that you could attend conferences and take part in webinars without having to travel to London! She was also enjoying being taught IT by her grandchildren – Giffy. Another online banking user.

Paul did most of the above but enjoyed using the internet for researching prospective purchases. He also told us about a Dutch news aggregation site – DutchNews.nl which looks rather interesting.

And me … websites, photography, banking everyday (takes seconds and I remember the credentials to login because I do it all the time), researching (RSS reader – Feedly), bookmarking research (Pocket), publishing (Flipboard), music (iTunes -> Apple Music), etc etc.