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#PSA: How To Lock Down Your iPhone

Posted in Tips with tags on February 28, 2017 by itnerd

These days, you cannot take security for granted. And that includes locking down your iPhone from people who would want to get some of your personal information. If you want an example of how easy it is to get personal information from a locked iPhone, try these Siri commands with a random iPhone that is locked:

  • Siri, who am I
  • Siri, navigate me to home
  • Siri, show me my recent calls

What you’ll see is that the contact card belonging to the owner of the phone will appear. Plus Siri will route you to the address of the owner of the iPhone. Finally, you’ll see the last call that was made from the phone. And you get all of this while the phone is locked. That’s not good. What’s worse is that this is how the iPhone is set up by default which is a bit of a #fail from a company that values privacy. I’ll also add that the Today View, Apple Wallet, notifications as well as control center are also exposed for anyone to see by default on the iPhone. Any of those could expose personal information, and having the control center available could be leveraged to disable the phone’s ability to connect to cellular networks if it is stolen. Which means that you won’t be able to find it or remote erase it using iCloud. For those reasons, I suggest that you take the time to lock down your iPhone. I will admit that by doing so you take away some convenience, but you will make your phone a lot more secure. Here’s what I would suggest that everyone disable:

  1. Go to Settings
  2. Go to Touch ID & Passcode
  3. Enter your passcode
  4. Disable the following:
    1. Today View
    2. Siri
    3. Reply With Message
    4. Home Control
    5. Wallet
  5. Now go back one level and go to Control Center
  6. Disable “Access On Lock Screen”

By doing all of that, it will take away most of the ways that your personal information can leak out. For bonus points, you may want to consider disabling Notifications View under Touch ID & Passcode. I didn’t do that as I find that it is handy for me to have notifications from my various apps pop up on the screen. But if there’s info from those notifications that you don’t want a third party to see, it is worth considering whether you should disable it or not.

The next thing that I suggest that you do is not only improve your passcode, but set your phone to self destruct. I’ll start with the former. Most people use 4 digit passcodes which means that there are 9999 possible combinations. That sounds like a lot, but it really isn’t. Someone with a lot of time on their hands, like a border agent for example, will take the time to crack the passcode. Thus try using a 6 digit passcode or better yet an alphanumeric code for improved security. Now to the part about self destructing the phone. No, you cannot set the phone to self destruct in 5 seconds like they do in Mission Impossible. But iPhones do have a feature that erases the data on the phone after 10 failed passcode attempts. You can enable it  like this:

  1. Go to Settings
  2. Go to Touch ID & Passcode
  3. Enter your passcode
  4. Enable “Erase Data”

Now, you don’t want to enable this unless you back up your iPhone on a regular basis using iTunes. But in my case, I use iCloud Backup which automatically backs up my phone is plugged in, locked, and connected to WiFi. That means that I always have a backup that I can fall back on should the need arise and I can get my phone back to a working state anywhere. Not to mention set up a new phone with the same settings if I have to. Here’s how you set it up (This is assuming that you have set up iCloud before hand. If not, you should create an iCloud account as it is free to do so and it gives you 5GB of storage):

  1. Go to settings
  2. Go to iCloud
  3. Go to Backup
  4. Enable iCloud Backup

One thing to note is that it will only backup your health data, accounts, and phone configuration info. It does not backup music, apps or pictures. But music and apps are easy to restore from your computer using iTunes on your Mac or PC. Ditto for photos if you’re not using something like iCloud Photo Library which keeps your photos in the cloud.

Full disclosure: I use a 4 digit non-obvious passcode (in other words, one that isn’t easily guessed or is tied to anything else in my life) and I have the iPhone set to erase data. My logic is that this configuration will keep my data away from prying eyes because the phone will erase itself after 10 failed passcode attempts. This is on top of the fact that I use Touch ID to unlock the phone which means I am not entering the passcode most of the time. But you have to decide how paranoid you want to be on this front and what steps you’re willing to take to protect yourself.

Now, all of this sounds like a fair amount of work. But I ran through this and it took me 20 minutes to set all of this up. In my mind, that’s a good investment of time to make sure that your phone is locked down and doesn’t reveal personal information about you should it fall into the wrong hands. Thus it is something that every iPhone user should do.

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macOS Malware Is Now A Very Real Threat… You Need To Protect Yourself

Posted in Tips with tags on February 23, 2017 by itnerd

I’ve been saying for a few years that Mac users shouldn’t feel smug about their perceived level of security. Anything on any platform can be hacked. In the case of macOS, there have been very few real threats to speak of, and most required some level of user interaction which meant that unlike those who use Windows, macOS users had nothing to worry about.

Those days are over.

We’ve seen in the last couple of weeks some scary malware that is brought to you by the same guys who hacked the US election. Plus just yesterday, we’ve seen the appearance of ransomware on the macOS platform. Crude yes, but it is still very concerning. It’s a sign that attacks on the macOS platform are on the rise and getting more sophisticated. In fact I predict that 2017 will be the year of macOS malware and Mac users will experience what Windows users experienced in the early 2000’s when malware exploded on the Widnows platform. That’s bad news for anyone who runs a Mac. But you can protect yourself and do so easily.

First, you need to run an antivirus app. Yes. Seriously. If you don’t have an antivirus app on your Mac, you will get pwned sooner or later. I’m currently running Sophos on my fleet of Macs, but there’s other options from Bitdefender, ESET Cyber Security and AVG among others for you to consider. Whatever you choose, choose something to protect yourself.

Next are the things that I file under the category called common sense:

  • Only install apps from trusted sources such as the Apple app store or from well known developers. In other words, running pirated software is not an option. For bonus points, make sure that under your “Security and Privacy” settings, ensure that “Allow apps downloaded from App Store” is checked. That way it provides and extra layer of protection.
  • Never type your password into dialog boxes that randomly pop up (unless you are installing an app that you trust of course) as that can be the sign of malware trying to set up shop on your system.
  • Some types of malware are distributed via social engineering attacks like “Spear Phishing” which is a social engineering attack targeted at a specific individual. This article from CSO can help you mitigate these specific kinds of attacks. But for a more general view on how to stop social engineering attacks, this article can help with that.

Finally, I would advise against using Oracle Java and Adobe Flash on your Mac (or your PC for that matter) as they are common attack vectors for malware creators. Realistically, you likely won’t miss anything by not having them and you will make your Mac a whole lot more secure.

Do you have any other tips that I didn’t cover here? If so, please leave a comment below and share your thoughts.

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Hey IT Nerd! What Do I Do About Poor Online Reviews?

Posted in Tips on February 3, 2017 by itnerd

I got a question from a medium sized business owner yesterday:

Hello IT Nerd. I am getting really negative reviews from ex-employees on a site called Glassdoor. I was wondering if there was any way to lessen the impact of these reviews as they are now affecting my ability to recruit and retain employees? Would it be wise to use a service that specializes in removing these sorts of reviews to solve this problem? 

Thank you. 

Thanks for the question. If you don’t mind, I’m going to first answer this question from a general perspective as I think that would be of value to the majority of readers who will see this.

Sites like Glassdoor and Indeed which let employees review employers, or Yelp or Google reviews which review everything from shops to restaurants can really have a negative effect on a business when the business in question gets a negative review. Now if you get the odd negative review on one of these sites, you can chalk that up to the law of averages as not everyone is going to like your product or service. But if bad reviews are consistently being put online, chances are you have deeper issues within your organization that you need to address. Or perhaps you have some sort of online troll that is out to get you. Though from my experience, while that does happen, it is not a common occurrence.

Now, how do you deal with a bad review? In my opinion, your best strategy is to deal with it head on. Reply to the review and ask for details. Show empathy and offer to engage in a conversation via the phone or by e-mail. If the person does reach out, work with them robustly and earnestly to resolve whatever issue that they have. This approach will do two things for you. One is that it will win you fans if you follow though 100% of the time. The other thing it will do is that it will bring to light the trolls that are out there as they tend to not to respond to this approach, or they respond negatively which will out them as being a troll. One other thing that may also work for you is to have those people who’s concerns you’ve addressed post a follow up review to illustrate that you’re open to feedback and willing to address concerns that are brought to you. As for using a service to “erase” these reviews. I am not a fan of that personally. Reviews can only be deleted if they cross a certain threshold of being inaccurate or hostile. Plus it’s up to the review site in question to make that happen. On top of that, even if you do pay someone to delete those reviews and they can actually do that, you’ll often get a boomerang effect where negative reviews will either come back in spades, or you’ll get accused of covering up your problems, or both. Thus I don’t think that paying for one of these services is money well spent.

Now to your specific question about ex-employees posting negative reviews about your company. I will say up front that I know nothing about your company. Nor am I a HR expert. But I believe that much of what I said applies to your situation. My thinking is that there’s some issue inside your company that is making these people default to leaving negative feedback. Most likely it is starting while they are working for you. Thus on top of employing the strategies that I mentioned above, it may be wise for you to engage those who are currently working for you to understand if there is anything that is going on inside your company that is making this happen. Maybe by doing that, you can avoid this situation entirely.

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How To Check To See If Insecure I0T Devices On Your Network Are A Threat

Posted in Tips with tags , on October 24, 2016 by itnerd

Last week, there were some very high profile attacks that utilized insecure Internet Of Things devices such as cameras, DVR’s routers, printers and the like. The quesiton is, how do you know if you own any of these devices? Bullguard Security has created an IoT Scanner to help you to find out. Head to the site, click the scan button, and IoT Scanner will tell you where you stand. I recommend that you do the quick scan and the deep scan to ensure that you’re safe. 

Now, if IoT Scanner comes back saying that your network can be breached, that means some device that’s connected to your Wi-Fi network has an open port that makes it accessible from the internet. You should either look to close the open ports if you can, update the firmware of the IoT device in question if you can, or turn if off you can’t.

Remember, this is a starting point to make sure that your network is secure. But you should really make sure that you do simple things such as updating firmware and software to make sure that your network stays secure. 

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Upgrading My Wife’s MacBook Pro With An SSD

Posted in Products, Tips with tags on October 7, 2016 by itnerd

My wife inherited my old MacBook Pro when I moved to a MacBook Pro With Retina Display. It works for what she needs to do. But I knew that I could do one thing that would make it better for her. Replace the old school hard drive with an Solid State Disk which is better known as a SSD. Now, what do I gain by doing that? Here’s a quick list:

  • Speed: SSD’s are insanely fast. They allow a computer to boot in seconds and not minutes. Applications will also start way faster.
  • Durability: With no moving parts, SSD’s can survive bumps and other rigors of life that would damage an old school hard drive, which makes them perfect for portable computers like the MacBook Pro.
  • Power Usage: With no moving parts, SSD can consume less power than an old school hard drive. That translates into longer battery life. How much longer depends on your use case.

SSDs have dropped in price to such a degree, that they are only a modest preminum over a old school hard drive of the same capacity. That makes them way more accessible than they used to be. For example, the computer that my wife has had an option for a 512 GB SSD for $700 CDN when it was new. Now you can get a SSD of that capacity for a third of that price. Case in point is this SSD:

IMG_2698.jpg

This is a 500GB Samsung EVO 850 SSD. Its MSRP is $250 CDN, but you can find it for just over $200 if you look around hard enough. It’s highly rated by Mac users as being a great balance between price and performance.

First next step is to clone the data from the old school hard drive to the SSD. To help me with that is this piece of kit from Thermaltake. It allows me to connect almost any type and physical size of hard drive via USB to any computer. I use it to help my customers move data from their failed computers or old computers to new ones. But I used it to mount the new SSD so that I could format it and use Carbon Copy Cloner to clone the contents of the old drive to the new one.

Now swapping out the drive is easy if you’re used to working on computers and you have the proper tools. The tools in question are a #0x25 Phillips screwdriver and a T6 Torx screwdriver. As for how you do it, here’s a video from Other World Computing that shows how to do it. It took 15 minutes for me to swap the drive out and I took the opportunity to use some compressed air to clean out the inside of my wife’s MacBook Pro as these things seriously collect dust. After putting everything back together, I then powered on the MacBook Pro and after a 1 minute delay caused by the fact that it had to account for a SSD being installed in it, it fired right up. I rebooted it cold a number of times after that to confirm that it was fine. I then reactivated Microsoft Office, renamed the new SSD to “Macintosh HD” from “Untitled” and fixed the Carbon Copy Cloner backup tasks that were still referencing the old drive. 

Speaking of booting, here’s a comparison of how fast my wife’s Mac booted with an old school hard drive, and with an SSD. In both cases, I had FileVault2 encryption enabled:

Old School Hard Drive: 1 minute and 4 seconds

SSD: 15 seconds

That’s quite the difference. I also test opened applicaitons and they opened instantly. I really think that when my wife sees this, I might get a really big thank you as it really starts to level the playing field between the two of us when it comes to the computers that we use.

One last note. Some people out there will ask about TRIM support. When an operating system uses TRIM with a SSD, it sends a signal to the SSD every time you delete a file. The SSD knows that the file is deleted and it can erase the file’s data from its flash storage. With flash memory, it’s faster to write to empty memory. But if it has to write to an area of the disk that has data, the data must be erased before it can be written to. This causes your SSD to slow down over time unless TRIM is enabled. TRIM ensures the physical NAND memory locations containing deleted files are erased before you need to write to them. The SSD can then manage its available storage more intelligently. I decided to enable TRIM for this reason and if you want to do it, here’s a document that explains how. Just make sure you have a backup when you do it. 

Take it from me. Besides adding RAM to a computer, an SSD can really take a computer that is a few years old (in this case, we’re dealing with a 3.5 year old computer) and breath new life into it. It doesn’t cost a lot and it’s not hard to do.

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Getting Ready For macOS Sierra

Posted in Tips with tags on September 19, 2016 by itnerd

Apple macOS Sierra is due to hit the streets tomorrow. Before you upgrade, you should make sure that your Mac is ready for the upgrade. Assuming you meet the system requirements, here’s what you need to do to get ready:

  1. Update your Mac: Make sure that your Mac has all the up to date patches and system updates not only for the OS, but for applications too. In terms of the latter, this website can help you with that, as well as let you know if the application will work with macOS Sierra.
  2. Run a disk checking utility: For most Mac users, this means Disk Utility. But you can also use Diskwarrior which is my utility of choice. This way, you ensure that your disk is healthy prior to the upgrade.
  3. Back up your Mac: System updates should work 100% of the time. But sometimes they can go sideways. Thus having a backup is vital. You can use Time Machine with an external hard drive, or you can use a third party application such as the ones from this article that I wrote a few years ago. Another reason to backup is that if you hate macOS Sierra, you have a fall back strategy.

It sounds simple and it is. If you do these three things, you can feel free to upgrade via the Apple App Store sometime after 1PM on September 20th which is when macOS Sierra will be available. After you upgrade, take some time to run all your applications to confirm that everything works. Sometimes, you’ll trip over an application that you need which doesn’t work. At that point, you may need to see if there’s an update for the app or do a reinstall. 

Are there any other tips that you’d suggest? If so, post a comment and share your tips.

 

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How To Increase The Security Of Your iPhone

Posted in Tips with tags on March 30, 2016 by itnerd

Seeing as security is now top of mind because of the FBI vs. Apple fight, I figured it was time to discuss ways to make your iPhone even more secure. Why should you care about any of this? Simple. A lot of us keep a lot of personal info on our phones. Thus if they fall into the wrong hands and they are not secured properly, that will simply end badly for you. Thus these tips are ones that you should really consider following:

  1. Use Touch ID: If your iPhone supports fingerprint unlocking which is also known as Touch ID, use it. This will ensure that you not only make your phone more secure, but it also secures purchases from  iTunes, the App Store, and other apps. Here’s a link to instructions detailing how to enable Touch ID.
  2. Use a complex passcode: Most iPhone users are used to using a four digit passcode. The problem with that is it means that the bad guys have 9999 possible passcodes to choose from which means that they can brute force attack the phone by trying different combinations of the passcode until they hit the right one. If you are running iOS 9 or higher, you have the option of using a 6 digit passcode which makes it a lot harder for the bad guys to guess what your passcode is. If you’re really paranoid, you can also use an alphanumeric passcode which is guaranteed to drive the bad guys insane. Here’s a link to help you to set up a passcode to match your paranoia level.
  3. Set your phone to “self destruct”: Another thing that you can do is to set your phone to erase itself if the passcode is entered wrong 10 times. That way, if your phone is lost or stolen, you can be reasonably sure that if you can’t erase it remotely via iCloud, a bad guy who tries to brute force their way into the phone is going to cause it to erase itself. Go to Settings > Touch ID & Passcode and turn on Erase Data to enable this feature. Needless to say that you should have a backup at all times if you enable this feature. More on backing up your iPhone in a moment.
  4. Use Find My iPhone: There are two good reasons to use the Find My iPhone beyond being able to find your iPhone. The first is that you can issue an erase command which will wipe the contents of your iPhone if it is stolen. The second it activates Activation Lock which ensures that if your phone is erased in anyway, it cannot be reactivated. Thus making it a high tech paperweight for the bad guys that they can’t resell. Here’s a link to everything that you need to know about Find My iPhone.
  5. Disable Control Center (and maybe Notifications and Siri too): While it is handy to have Control Center available to say use the flashlight feature without unlocking the phone, bad guys can use it to put the phone into Airplane Mode which takes away your ability to remote erase or track a stolen iPhone. This can easily be disabled by going to Settings > Touch ID & Passcode. While you are there, consider disabling Notifications so that nobody can see who you’ve been messaging, and Siri so that she can’t accidentally give away any of your information.
  6. Don’t back up your phone to iCloud: One of the things that came out of the FBI vs. Apple fight was that backups to iCloud are not encrypted and are accessible by Apple. That’s a #fail. Thus I would suggest that you should only backup your phone to your PC or Mac and you should encrypt those backups so that nobody but you can restore them. Plus as an added bonus, this method will backup more data than a normal backup would. Specifically, Apple Health Data, WiFi data, website browsing history, and saved passwords. The cool thing is that none of this requires any extra effort to do on your part beyond the initial setup. Here’s a link to a document that will help you to set this up.

Do you have any tips that you’d like to share so that everyone can make sure that their iPhone is as secure as possible? If you do, please post a comment below and share your wisdom. By the way, all of these tips can be used for iPad users as well.

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Tip: How To Build An OS X El Capitan Boot Disk

Posted in Tips with tags on October 1, 2015 by itnerd

Current Macs don’t come with physical media anymore. So where does that leave you if you need to reinstall your OS? Well, Apple says to use the Recovery Partition to do it. That’s a special section of your hard drive that has everything you need to fix common issues and reinstall your OS. That’s great, but what if your hard disk is dead? Then you have a problem. This is the reason why I always create a bootable USB drive with the OS that my Mac currently runs. This is important because if you go to the Apple Store to have them put the OS back on your Mac, they will only put the OS that your Mac came with. That may be two or three versions behind.

So, how do you create a bootable USB drive? I’ll describe two ways of doing it. Then I will tell you which one I prefer:

Method 1: Diskmaker X

The easiest method to make a USB install drive is with the free program, Diskmaker X. Here’s all you need to do:

  1. Download the El Capitan installer from the App Store and Diskmaker X.
  2. Insert an 8GB (or larger) flash drive formatted for the Mac in the OS X Extended (Journaled) format using Disk Utility. Be advised that Diskmaker X will nuke everything on the drive. So either back it up or use a drive that can be erased.
  3. Start DiskMaker X, choose El Capitan from the list of options, and follow the prompts.
  4. Go away for 30 minutes. It will be done by the time you return.

Method 2: Use OS X to do it

I’ve had problems sometimes using Diskmaker X. But fortunately, OS X has its own way of doing this built into the OS. The catch is that you have to do way more work and be really comfortable with working from the OS X terminal. If that’s you, here’s what you do:

  1. Download the El Capitan installer from the app store.
  2. Insert an 8GB (or larger) flash drive and give it a name. In my case, I named it “ITNerd” (no quotes). Make sure the drive is formatted for OS X Extended (Journaled) using Disk Utility.
  3. Open up Terminal by going to Applications –> Utilities.
  4. Type (or copy and paste) this command into Terminal then press Enter: sudo /Applications/Install\ OS\ X\ El\ Capitan.app/Contents/Resources/createinstallmedia --volume /Volumes/ITNerd --applicationpath /Applications/Install\ OS\ X\ El\ Capitan.app --nointeraction
  5. Type in your password when prompted and press Enter.
  6. Go away for 30 minutes. It will be done by the time you return.

My preferred method is method 2, but feel free to use either method. One last piece of advice. Use a quality, name brand USB drive for this purpose. That ensures that you are less likely to discover that it does not work when you need it most.

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Tip: How To Prepare To Upgrade To OS X El Capitan [UPDATED]

Posted in Tips with tags on September 30, 2015 by itnerd

Today is the day that Apple releases their latest version of OS X. Dubbed El Capitan, it is basically a release focused on stability and performance improvements with only a limited amount of new features. Before you upgrade to this or any other OS, you need to prepare your system for the upgrade so that things go smoothly. Here’s what I would suggest:

  1. Check to see if you can run El Capitan: Here’s the bottom line. If you can run Yosemite, you can run El Capitan. But if you need some reassurance, here’s the list of Mac hardware that can run El Capitan:
    • MacBook (Late 2008 Aluminum, or Early 2009 or newer)
    • iMac (Mid 2007 or newer)
    • MacBook Pro (Mid/Late 2007 or newer)
    • MacBook Air (Late 2008 or newer)
    • Mac mini (Early 2009 or newer)
    • Mac Pro (Early 2008 or newer)
  2. Run Disk Utility or a utility like DiskWarrior: By doing this up front, you fix potential disk related problems that may send your upgrade horribly sideways.
  3. Ensure your existing OS is up to date: You can do that by running the App Store application or through Software Update. I find that when I do that, “bad” things are less likely to happen.
  4. Make sure your apps are up to date: This is REALLY important as El Capitan brings significant changes to how OS X works and your apps need to be up to date to work properly. I tend to check RoaringApp’s software compatibility list to make sure that everything that I rely on has a version that works with whatever OS I am updating to. If there are to many non compatible apps, I don’t upgrade.
  5. Back up your data: This is cheap insurance in case things really go south during the upgrade. But I am constantly shocked by how many people don’t do this. I’ll make it really simple. Read this. Then do it and if you have a disaster, you can recover from it easily.
  6. Consider waiting a day or two after the OS becomes available: Unlike you, I need to have the latest and greatest of everything on my system because someone will ask me to train them on it or fix it. Most of the people reading this aren’t in that position. Thus waiting a day or two while the suckers early adopters like me dive head first into upgrading their systems and discover, remedy, and document publicly all the weird problems that are sure to arise may be a wise strategy.

If you’ve done all that, you can upgrade with confidence. As an aside, I will be upgrading later today on both of the Macs in my household and I will post a review of the new OS tomorrow.

UPDATE: OS X El Capitan is now available on the App Store for download…. All 6.5GB of it.

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iOS 9 Tip: Consider Turning Off WiFi Assist

Posted in Tips with tags on September 29, 2015 by itnerd

If you’ve recently upgraded your iOS device to iOS 9, you may want to turn off a new feature called WiFi assist. Now the big question is why? This feature was designed to help you in situations where your WiFi connection isn’t the best by automatically switching over to cellular data so that you can do whatever it is that you need to do. Plus you won’t need to manually disable WiFi in that situation. The catch is that if you have a capped mobile phone plan, you’re going to consume more data That may not be desirable for some.

If you want to avoid using this new feature, head over to Settings –> Cellular and scroll all the way to the bottom and look for the WiFi Assist setting:

IMG_1675

Turn it off. Declare victory and have a beer.

🙂

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