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Microsoft Family Safety

Microsoft has a wonderful proactive family or child safety type of feature that is very nice and extremely useful. It monitors your kid’s web browsing, Apps use, and overall screen time. It sends a weekly report to the parent. It is all set up through the parent’s Microsoft account. This service is free and super easy to use. Your child does not even need to know about it. I know, I know, this makes some uncomfortable. But remember – you are not ‘Big Brother’. But you are Mommy or Daddy.

It is a very good idea to peruse the simple, emailed weekly report – you never know when your child will start to wander into potentially dangerous areas of the Internet. It takes under 30 seconds to review.

In sum:

“Add kids to your family to help them stay safer online. Adults in the family can view reports of kids’ online activity, limit how long and when they use their devices, and help make sure they don’t see inappropriate websites, apps, or games. Manage family settings online at account.microsoft.com/family, and changes will be applied to any Windows 10 device the child signs in to. You can also add adults to your family who will also be able to apply settings to children in the family. ”

http://windows.microsoft.com/en-US/windows/set-up-family#set-up-family=windows-10

I get this weekly ….

FamSafety

 

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Windows Phones, Lumias

Interesting piece on the latest Windows Phones. Microsoft continues to struggle in finding their place in the smart phone world. It is too bad, because personally, I think they are fantastic overall.

“Microsoft Sacrifices Lumia 950 And 950 XL For A Stronger Surface Phone”

Announced in October 2015, and released a month later, the Lumia 950 and Lumia 950 XL smartphones have not set the world alight. The first ‘out of the box’ Windows 10 powered smartphones occupy a curious pivot point in Microsoft’s plans. What do they tell us about the direction of Microsoft and how it will approach mobile in 2016?

Between them they represent the end of a line of smartphones that stretches back to Nokia’s 2011 decision to go with Windows Phone rather than Android, They also represent Microsoft’s future attitudes to smartphones as a single element of a wide range of Windows 10 powered devices all living on the same code-base, all sharing information, applications, and data, through Microsoft’s cloud-based services.

The two handsets build on past glories, and point the way towards a potential future. Unfortunately it is a very unclear future. With CEO Satya Nadella focusing on Microsoft’s software and cloud services it means that much of the functionality that made Windows Phone a commendable choice in the past is no longer exclusive to the Lumia handsets. You can run Microsoft’s cloud services on iOS and Android easily, and in terms of process and workflow there’s little difference between Windows, Android, and iOS.”

Read it here

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Big Google

Is it me or is the ‘Google’ on the  search page much bigger than it used to be? I thought my browser window had been ‘zoomed’ to about 125% or similar. But it turns out, this is their new super-sized word logo ;> It takes getting used to, if you ask me.

But it does get them NOTICED, that much is certain.

goog

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Windows Security, UAC

Security settings for Windows 10 are very important! In the Control Panel or via an “Ask Me Anything” search [Cortana – just type ‘Security’], can be found System and Security. The Firewall and anti virus/spam, and Internet Security [Edge + IE Browser ] are certainly must-haves.

But also required should be User Account Control(UAC)  Settings. Although these may involve an extra click or 2 when certain functions are started or Windows Apps opened, it is WELL WORTH IT. A simple additional prompt asking you to verify whether you want to make a change can save you loss of your identity or money,  or a complete system crash. What happens if your PC, laptop or tablet is secretly taken over by a group of hackers? Well, they would have to force UAC off or try to install small software to handle their nefarious goals, but you can stop them if a prompt occurs out of nowhere [in which case, run your Antivirus or Malwarebytes quickly!].

Why take chances? It is best to have all of these services active. Think of all of these settings as insurance, but it’s free.

Win10-Security

Win10-Security2

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Wordfence WordPress Security Plugin

WordPress is so ubiquitous these days on the web, but hopefully more developers will keep up with the security needs of their sites or at least delegate to someone to maintain after their site is built.

This ‘Wordfence’ security plugin is very impressive. It can do a site scan, block IPs or countries [China, anyone?], and give a live screen of current connections. It does much more as well, especially if the free version is upgraded to the paid version.

It has over 1 million installs as of September, 2015. There is a reason for that – even the free tools are very useful and can provide a fair amount of security. I recently installed this plugin on ‘Riguy’ and it is exactly what is needed for a security blanket.

wordfence

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Samsung Galaxy S6 and Microsoft Office Apps

When worlds collide, and even … coexist.

“This might sound surprising but Samsung Galaxy S6 will be packed with Microsoft Office (free Office 365 subscription), OneDrive, OneNote and Skype. These probably aren’t the only ones to be included, but are mentioned in the report.”

It’s not a report, it is a fact by now, but it shows that this report was accurate. Microsoft Office is indeed included. Microsoft has been very aggressive with getting Office installed on various non Microsoft tablets and OS’s.

Read up on it

 

 

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Critical Windows Security Flaw and Fix Released

Microsoft has released a major Critical Windows Security Flaw and fix. By critical, I mean they went outside of their normally rigid ‘patch Tuesday’ [twice a month] schedule and released this fix on-the-fly, so to speak.

From Mashable:
“The flaw is in the way the Windows Adobe Type Manager Library handles OpenType fonts. In practical terms, if someone running Windows visits a website that contains embedded OpenType fonts or a specially crafted document, an attacker could execute code on his or her computer.

“An attacker who successfully exploited this vulnerability could take complete control of the affected system. An attacker could then install programs; view, change, or delete data; or create new accounts with full user rights,” Microsoft wrote in a security bulletin.”

The Windows update tool in modern Windows OS can handle this.

Critical Windows Security Flaw + Fix Article

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D-Link Wireless Camera FTP Storage

We had a few break ins in the neighborhood recently so I decided to set up an outdoor surveillance camera. But I needed to upload motion detected videos to an FTP type of site. So I had to provide for video file storage for an outdoor WiFi based security IP camera. I will use a D-Link video camera and a cloud based location to store the videos. As this is for home use, there is no server. I used to have servers at home, but nowadays, I work off Azure or other Cloud based companies and it is no longer needed or feasible: the server is cloud-based. Besides, home servers are too loud, although I when I had them at home, they were pretty nifty ;>

Anyway – here are the home Surveillance Video Project specifics!