Category: Advice

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Online banking and shopping – 10th October 2019

Welcome & Boot-up
Introductions for the last time!
What do you want / expect from the Group?
Please tick your attendance, pay £1.50 and agree that you want to join the “Thought grazing” website I run where the notes of the meeting are posted, and if you are interested in joining a WhatsApp Group.
For those who’ve expressed an interest in “Thought grazing” and establishing a WhatsApp Group, I’ll send out an email following the meeting with UserIds and Initial Passwords for new members. [You can change your password if you want to – I’ll write a post that explains how you can do that.] The Password for Protected pages on the website is the same as everyone’s initial UserId Password, namely – Ca3rdyddU3A
Does anyone have any difficulties in connecting to the Thought grazing website?
Does anyone want to join the WhatsApp Group but is unsure how to do it?
[Note for self … I need to add member to Contacts on my phone, then I can see them in WhatsApp to add them as a member of the Group. Easy when you know how … duh!]
Incidentally Paul has written a post detailing how you can add WhatsApp to a Tablet.
Do we all know the difference between Google and an Internet Browser?  – Don’t be shy. This is perhaps the most important thing to be sure about before we go any further. Two links to look at – Just google it … and the notes from the first meeting last year.
What’s happening to Digital Projects? Well the first one has been announced, it’s a re-run of a Digital Photography course using Adobe Lightroom and the first session is next Wednesday at Cornerstone on Charles Street at 10:00am.
Which brings me to our webpage on the new website, has anybody other than Paul and David had any ideas? Paul has suggested this for the photo – https://pixabay.com/photos/computer-laptop-work-place-mouse-2982270/ – seems a good one to me! David suggested a photo (at least on the page) of Turing’s first computer; or it could be Leo – the one at Lyons Coffee; or even both!
Any other ideas?
Visits. We agreed visits to the Barclays ‘Maker Space’ which Mario will arrange for us, see details below …
In addition, as part of our community commitment,  we have also opened a new office in Cardiff designed to help businesses grow and start up in Cardiff. Great for budding Entrepreneurs (which statistics show can be high in the over 50s)  and inventors. Part of the Eagle Lab office hosts  a “Maker Space” that houses laser cutting, vinyl printing, 3D printing, electronics equipment including soldering etc. It has a distinctly digital feel too with a really switched on Engineer running the lab. We can host groups there and would be happy to chat with your Digital Projects group and your Science groups coordinators, to discuss with them what is available there and whether they would like to bring members along to take a look at the facilities, or host a meeting there. Please feel free to ask them to contact me and I can discuss what they need, what we have, what we can do to support your members.
… in the approach to Easter, and also a visit to the new BBC Centre after Easter.
Fred has offered to contact Brains and their new brewery at Cardiff Gate for a visit before Christmas.
I was unsuccessful in my first attempt at getting a visit to the Computer Centre of Cardiff University, however a second request targeted more closely at a tour of the Machine Room was successful, so I’ve said I will try and arrange that after Christmas.
News and other issues raised
Renee asked about opening compressed files in emails on an iPhone. We got some way to solving that one, but agreed to take it onboard as a conversation on the WhatsApp Group. I must confess to having forgotten about this – apologies.
I’m convinced there was something else that I’ve forgotten, can you help me?
Finally Catalina – the new operating system for the Mac – was released this week (as expected). My advice, as ever – and this is true for Windows as well, is to wait – let others suffer the pain, rather than you, and as I’ve detailed before there may be issues for some of your apps. I’ve switched-off Office 2011 already as my default app on my Mac for opening Microsoft Office files, it’s now the Apple programs that open these for me, but you could chose Open Office, Libre Office or Google Docs – they are all compatible with the .docx, and .xlsx file formats. Here’s how you change the default apps to open a document for MacOS …
These screen shots are taken from my iMac running Mojave, but they should be pretty similar for older versions of MacOS …
To change which application a document opens in:
1. Right click on the document’s icon.
2. Choose File > Get Info.
3. In the Info window, click the disclosure triangle next to “Open with,” and choose an application to open the document from the “Open with” pop-up menu.
4. If you want all documents of this file type to open with the same application, click Change All.
The important thing for you to get rid of any vestige of Microsoft Office is to press Change All…
In my screen shots I have used Pages (Apple’s Word Processor), but you could use Open Office, Libre Ofiice or Google Docs.

Gear Guide
Has anyone bought, or obtained anything recently they’d like to tell us about? It doesn’t have to be a computer, laptop, tablet or phone – just something that’s digital, ie used a computer processor in some way?
Apps Galore
That slot in the meeting where members are encouraged to share their experience (and possibly excitement) at a new app they’ve started using for their smartphone, tablet, laptop or desktop machine.
What’s IT all about?
Not this week
Online banking, transferring money and shopping
A subject which brings fear and trepidation into most of us. Should we even consider using our computers when we need to supply personal information to “the internet”, and in particular information about our bank and credit cards.
I would be foolish to say it’s completely safe, as my story last year detailed, but taking reasonable care you should be OK.
Discussion
Online banking, debit and credit cards
Safe as long as you don’t leave your machine logged-in; you don’t use it from a free WiFi access area; and you password your machine with a reasonably strong password. The banks have recently all upgraded the process of logging-in that should make access for no-gooders more difficult.
Here’s a useful link that summarises the different levels of protection offered for credit cards, debit cards and PayPal (see below).
Discussion
Then there’s ApplePay and Google Pay – does anyone use them?
Paypal
You may have assumed that PayPal was only of use when purchasing from eBay, Gumtree or Preloved, but it can be used – when a website provides the option – as an easy way to pay for goods online, as you can tie your PayPal account to a debit or credit card. As the article quoted above mentions, PayPal has it’s own payment protection scheme, but if you tie a Credit Card to your PayPal account, you will get the protection offered by your Credit Card.

You can also transfer money (abroad as well) using PayPal by transferring the money directly to another person’s PayPal account. This is not the cheapest way of doing it as the Exchange Rates are not the most favourable, but it’s easier than transferring using your bank account. Although written by a competitor, this article summarises the ways you can send money overseas.
Discussion
Your money abroad
As mentioned above there are ways of easily transferring your money abroad of which perhaps the best known is TransferWise. It’s relatively easy to set up an account, and you can immediately see the cost of transferring money abroad compared to what it considers its competitors. You can even obtain a free MasterCard to use as you roam across Europe, the US, Australia, NZ and the UK.

Which? Review of using TransferWise
However, there’s a newcomer on the block which is even cheaper that’s worth taking a look at – Revolut. Both TransferWise and Revolut offer an app for your SmartPhone to allow you to do easy switching of money from your domestic bank to your online account, and Revolut also links to ApplePay. It’s easy to open a Revolut account, you transfer some funds to it and obtain a Visa Debit Card which you can then use in any ATM abroad, at low exchange rates and zero fees.

Here’s a comparison from Money Saving Expert of the Transferwise Debit Card with Revolut.
Here’s a link to a Which? Report on Challenger Banks and Revolut – you may not be able to see this – I have a Which? Online Account.
Discussion
Enough of Banking – what about shopping?
This could go on for a long time! Your experiences, please?
Any really good examples of a great online shopping experience?
Hints and tips:
Use all the facilities the retailer offers, especially if (like Amazon) they provide Two Factor Authentication (2FA) to protect your account; so it’s safe to store credit card details, and addresses on the site.
Use lists to save items you are interested in, but don’t want to purchase just yet; use your order history to re-order goods.
Remember, if you’ve relatives abroad you should look to open accounts with the local Amazon, or search for retailers in their countries that deliver – it’ll be far cheaper than sending it by post, but if you have to post look at this site – Parcel2Go – which you can use for UK postings as well and which you can arrange a local pick-up as well as pick-up from a local shop.
 
 

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Watch out for Catalina!

I was asked last week about a message that had appeared on a Lightroom 4 users’ screen with this warning …

… scary eh!?
Well yes it is but if you’ve got a relatively new Mac you do have the choice NOW of making sure you have the latest version of software that will support older versions of Lightroom, and do an upgrade to Mojave (v.10.14) BEFORE Catalina (v.10.15) is released later this year – probably in October. That way you’ll be nearly up-to-date with your version of MacOS and that may be sufficient for you if you don’t feel the need to have the latest version of MacOS.
If you have Lightroom 6 installed (or even 3, 4 or 5), you may be getting the message above EVEN THOUGH it is a 64-bit app. This is because the Installer/Uninstaller and Activation code software is 32-bit. That means the software “should” continue to work, but you won’t be able to re-install it to a MacOS of Catalina (v.10.15), or later.
The only other alternative if you want to stick with Adobe Lightroom is to swallow hard and subscribe at £9.98pm to the Photography Plan of Adobe’s Creative Cloud programme. You do get Photoshop as well as what Adobe call Lightroom Classic, plus their in the cloud version of Lightroom which they (confusingly) call Lightroom!
Adobe detail the changes and implications in this blog post. Another post from Laura Shoe Training gives more information here.
UPDATE: I’ve just read this really useful and interesting article from the magazine MacWorld – I suggest you read it too – and I’ve found out that Microsoft 2011 and Picasa (amongst others on my iMac) will not work with Catalina. Whilst I’m not particularly concerned about losing either of these as there are alternatives I’m already using – such as (in the case of the former) Google Docs, Open Office, Libre Office or Apple’s Pages, Numbers or Keynote applications – it’s better to be prepared and to have made the decision to move before I have to jump! Also in the case of Picasa, that I haven’t got anything in the database that I haven’t catalogued elsewhere – I think that unlikely, but I ought to check!
I’ve also stumbled upon an entry in “About This Mac > System Report …” which you get to from the Apple Icon in the top-left corner of your desktop. Go to Software and if you’re running Mojave there’s an entry called Legacy Software. Look at that and you’ll be able to see quickly what software is unlikely to work in Catalina. If you’re running an earlier version of MacOS go to Software and click on Applications and look for non 64-bit applications (a column to the right of the window).
Other links worth following …
MacOS 64-bit – what it means to you
32-bit app compatibility for Macs with current Mojave operating system
 
 
 

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Adding Whats App to a non SIM card Tablet / Pad

Equipment Required: Tablet, £1 Pay As You Go SIM card, Spare Mobile phone.
You probably have a Whats App account associated with your phone.
You may have a tablet and wish to use Whats App on that tablet.  This method gives you a second Whats App account – separate from your original one, – Don`t confuse the two !
1    Obtain a £1 PAYG  SIM card from any store
2    Insert the SIM card into the spare phone, there is no need to make any calls, or send texts & hence no requirement to “Top Up” the SIM card
3    Record this phone number and leave the phone turned on
4   On Your Tablet, Download Whats App from Google Play or Apple Store,Select a name you wish to be known as on this Tablet account (different from your normal Whats App account on your normal phone)
5    When the App requests the Tablet to provide a VERIFICATION phone number, enter the Phone Number of your PAYG SIM card from step 3
6    Whats App will send a verification Text to the phone, Confirm the Text if required
7    You are now up and running and can Whats App to and from the Tablet, you can now switch off and forget about the spare phone as it is no longer required.
Enjoy…..
Paul

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WhatsApp location finder.

If you want to share your location with a friend eg if your delayed on a train – WhatsApp may come in useful.

  1. Open individual chat or group chat, in text box, tap the paper clip icon. Tap Location in the box that pops up, (ensure you’ve already allowed whatsApp access to your location)
  2. On next screen a google map of your exact position appears, and below this a list of nearby locations as well as the option to share live location.
  3. Tap Share Live Location & choose how long to share your location (can be between  15 min -1 hour  & 8 hours)
  4. You can also add comment here eg train running late.
  5. Tap the Send arrow,  you’ll then see your location on the app map & an option to Stop Sharing – which can be used any time
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Android System Update

What a week!  I was getting to the end of the extra data allowance I bought after the Windows update, when I noticed Android was doing an update to my phone.  I managed to interrupt it, hopefully before the allowance had been used up completely.  I’ve now been able to let it finish.
It might be something for some of the group to keep an eye out for.

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Another Windows 10 Update / Internet Explorer

This update apparently was because I’m using an old version of Windows 10 (?!), which won’t be supported after November (?! again).  Once again I had a hint one was on the way, because a few times last week I lost control of the cursor, presumably as the update was being downloaded.  It was finally installed this morning, taking about an hour.
On another matter, a member of the Photography Group had some trouble logging in to some sites, and finally took her laptop in to the shop she bought it from.  It turns out she was still using Internet Explorer as her browser, which is now past its ‘use by’ date.  She is now using Firefox, (but as we know, other browsers are available).  Does that help anybody?
 

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Windows 10 Updates

Just to say that I couldn’t go into town for lunch yesterday, because my laptop insisted on installing two updates when I tried to shut it down.  Each one took about an hour, and since then there have been a couple of smaller ones.
I had a clue that something was up when I was prevented from finishing an email for about twenty minutes, presumably due to an update downloading. Something for you to watch out for.
Looking at Windows Update in ‘settings’, I see that there are some more, which I can install when I am ready. That won’t be for a couple of days though, when a new data download month begins for me.

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URL shortening and bookmark managers.

Jim has pulled me up about my use of long rambling URLs in emails I send him – I confess, it was laziness. I could (and should) have installed Bitly – which is a URL shortener which can be installed as an extension in my browser. I needed to create a Bitly account but having done that it works across my various browsers and also on my iPhone (Android app here). I have done that now – perhaps you’d like to look at it.
Another extension you might want to consider is a development of the  bookmark managers (ie diigo, and the now retired Delicious) which allows you to save links to websites to re-visit later, and also read offline. The one I use is Pocket, it’s how I construct the News item for the meetings. I just save pages between meetings and then before a meeting I review them, and cut’n’paste links to this site, and sometimes (when I remember) also to the Flipboard site.

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Scams, SIMs and security – 27th June 2019

Boot-up
Feedback from the last meeting (John). Any progress with websites from anyone else??
Thought grazing: Jim posted on Google Photos, Google Drive and Backup and Sync. This is Google’s blogpost on the changes they are making and here is the help document explaining what will happen after July 10th.
I posted about using URL shorteners and reminded you how I use Pocket and Flipboard.
The Computer Group for next year. We’ll meet as we meet now, every second and fourth Thursday of the month.
Digital Picture Frames – anyone use them? I’ve had Nix recommended to me. Alternatives – try Foliobook on an iPad, or a screensaver linked to Dropbox on a Desktop PC.
Travel and digital photography.
SMART meters, SMETS2 and Hive. Discussion on options – switching suppliers. Hold off for now?
How do Password Managers Work?  Should you use one? Which one should you use?
Anything else, issues, problems.
News
Apple’s WWDC Showcase summary – loads of updates and new hardware. The 8-minute video summary. Apple’s promotional videos from the event. Apple splits iPhone and iPad operating systems by introducing iPadOS – what’s new in both?
What new features will there be in iPadOS? Mouse support for the iPad. Finally, external drive support for the iPad – this is how it will work.
New features for MacOS – Catalina coming in the autumn.
Apple’s iOS 13 will provide some protection against spam phone calls.
New features in iPadOS, iOS and MacOS for photographers. Click here and here too!
Apple finally kills off iTunes!
New features for Dropbox on the Apple platforms.
What Wireless Security are you using, and should you consider changing your router?
Don’t charge your phone/tablet under your pillow at night – and other electrical tips!
Identity Theft
This will probably be one of the most challenging posts I’ve ever attempted to write because in all truth, I don’t think we really still know what actually happened to my daughter’s online identity, let alone wholly knowing how it happened, but I’m going to try and explain the sequence of events as an alert to you all, and a reminder to us too!
Some background and a plausible explanation of why she got herself into the situation she found herself.
She’s been self-employed for a short while now, working as a freelance journalist, and had just submitted her first tax returns in that capacity.
She’s working from home, with two young children with one under six months old and both very demanding of her time.
The family is living in my local son’s house whilst they “do up” their new house.
She’s adept at multi-tasking (obviously too adept as it turns out) and is (as many of her age are able to do) capable of nestling her phone between chin and shoulder whilst doing other tasks!
What happened next!
She had a phone call purporting to come from HMRC – we’re presuming this was just a fortuitous coincidence from the fraudster’s point of view – saying that she had a refund owing. As explained above she thought this was quite possibly the case! She was told to click on a link to complete the process of getting the refund. She had her youngest son on her hip, was preparing a meal and was “distracted”. She filled-in the required information from the link!!!!
Agh! No!
Shortly afterwards (same day) she presented her credit card at a supermarket and payment was refused. She realised something was wrong. She found she didn’t have access to her online banking. She contacted the bank by phone. They “supposedly” froze her account but it was apparent that at least two transfers of money had been made to someone who was a Payee in her account – why? That’s the clever bit of the scam, I’ll explain later!
More payments appeared to have been made … help!!!
How could this be? The account was frozen … wasn’t it?
Get the family involved!
Having a son who’s an IT expert comes in useful, especially if he lives on the other side of the world! He worked through the night (day) in securing as many of her accounts as he could. Changing passwords, which were admittedly rather weak and used more than once (should have listened to Dad) – but they had no idea just how much data had been downloaded, or indeed just how much they had to start with as a result of perhaps a previous “pwned” event.
Having a local son who’s also very practical and logical helps also. He suggested that she contact the payee and tell them about the payment and request it be refunded. What transpired next turns out to be the “clever” part of the scam, although on this occasion it wasn’t conducted very expertly because they attempted multiple payments to the same payee. The payee confirmed that they’d had this payment, wondered what it was and had been a bit puzzled as to why Mr X had contacted them and requested a refund to a bank account because “he’d made a mistake”. This was obviously NOT the same account as that from which the payment had originated and turned out to be the way the scammers were hoping to transfer funds from the hi-jacked bank account to their own! Fortunately, my son’s suggestion alerted the payee and they advised their bank NOT to transfer the money.
Phew! How did this all happen when the bank account was supposed to be frozen?
The key to this scam was getting control of my daughter’s mobile phone number. She didn’t realise it immediately, but soon became aware that it had been “stolen” through a scam called SIM swapping. This usually is done by a distressed person going into a mobile phone shop and pleading for a new SIM with a phone number “because their phone has been stolen” and “it’s absolutely imperative they have their number back immediately as there’s something very important happening right now”.  This is described here.
Why do they want to do this? Because they can transfer calls to the rightful owner of the phone to their own phone.
Why do they want to do this? Because they can then request the bank account to be unfrozen, and also use their access to the phone number for any number of authorisation features.
And what is more they can lock you out of your phone accounts.
How did they do this in this case? Well GiffGaff is an online service provider and they have stated that they did everything they were supposed to do to authenticate the request for a SIM swap – but it is evident that there are serious weaknesses in their processes. They have stated they are looking at this for the future. Just Google “GiffGaff SIM swap Fraud” to see what is returned – it’s frightening!
So what happened next, and was there a happy ending?
Well, believe it or not, even with a personal visit to the bank and assurances that no more payments would be made, the bank did allow the account to be unfrozen and transfers out of her account were attempted. A second visit to the bank resulted in heartfelt apologies over the way their fraud department had handled the problem and a complaint being raised by the branch against their own department on my daughter’s behalf – I don’t know the outcome of that!
Well, there was a happy financial outcome. Thanks to the prompt action and thinking of my local son, the initial transfer was halted. It’s not conclusive whether my daughter could have received compensation (as detailed here) as she was the instigator of the problem through her own mistake (the HMRC phone call). All other attempted transfers were eventually trapped by the bank and refunded to her – so no financial loss.
However …
Much more significant than the potential financial loss was what it did to her confidence. She insisted on getting a new phone, because she wouldn’t accept any advice from any family member (especially me) that there wasn’t anything on her phone that wouldn’t continue to monitor her.
She also lost all confidence in using any online systems – which up until then she’d been very reliant upon.
She also lost a lot of confidence in herself as she realised just how gullible (but extremely unfortunate) she’d been … but the positive side of this, and the main reason for sharing this is that she’ll be much more careful in the future!
Postscript.
We don’t know whether the identity theft side of this will ever be resolved. We all know that a huge amount of information is held on us on the internet. We all know that some websites have had their security breached and identity information stolen. We don’t know what was held by others about my daughter. She was a public figure, a journalist on a national newspaper, they now have the potential to add even more information to their database about her if they managed to download information from her email (and other) accounts before my son locked them down. We just don’t know.
There was a mysterious book that arrived at her house with a cryptic message in it.
There have been some scamming emails purporting to come from her since this event.
We just don’t know whether these are connected to the fraud event or are just strange random occurrences … and I suppose we never will know just how much additional information they may have downloaded – emails, photographs, documents, etc. etc. Very frightening.
NatWest Guide to Fraud
Some privacy tips for iPhone users.