Sneaky Assistant

We all love a new update, and I certainly love to see what Apple have included on their latest patches or operating systems.

However, sometimes the small additions can get overlooked, and today's article is to make you aware of one of them.

It's called 'Wifi Assist' and its tucked away in... No, not in your WIFI settings but in your MOBILE DATA settings. Go into Settings, Mobile data and scroll to the bottom and you'll see a little switch there.

When it is switched on, it will monitor your Wifi signal strength and when it deems that it's too weak, will divert your data through your mobile phone providers data plan.

Now that might seem to be really helpful at first... Until you realise that your Monday night Netflix Film evening in the distant corner of your house on your iPad was channels through your Data Plan.  

Spiralling Data Costs on your mobile plan? Maybe so, maybe not, but it's worth being aware of this feature and how it works.

Simply switch it off to force your mobile device to use Wifi all the time it's connected to it regardless of the signal strength.

I'm Over Here (Which Means I'm Not Over There)

Today, more than ever, people interact with social networking by means of their mobile devices, bringing images and unique interactive data to the masses.

We've often seen images of our friends on Facebook, or Twitter, or Instagram etc, with a location tag linked to the image.  Gradually our photo's on our devices get organised to location, so we can quickly find images we took when were were on our holiday in some sunny or fun location.

However, with this exciting and interesting addition, comes a word of caution - particularly if our privacy settings are not closed down enough.

With today's technology and search engine power, it is not too difficult for a criminal to build up a picture of your movements if your location services are switched on to public access.  They'll be able to see and work out where you are by following your twitter account, your Facebook account or your Instagram account and know when you are at various locations.  And of course, while you are in a new location... you are NOT at home.

It might be easy to conclude that nobody knows where you live, but with a few deductions, a few checks on the names of the friends you have, or the school you attended or place you work, your address details could easily be discovered.  We'll let your over imaginative thoughts conclude what could happen if a criminal knew where you lived and when you were not at home.

So what can we do about it?  

Let's not be party poopers and suggest that we don't take photo's of our holidays (although the thought of going through hundreds of "and this is another picture of that sandwich we ate in France" photo's does make us consider this). No realistically it would be a far better idea to ensure that our location services are restricted to friends and family and make sure that those we have listed amongst friends and family are just that. Friends and family.

Technology will always have it's place in society, it's made enough of an impact to never go out of fashion in today's life, but its also open to abuse. And abused it is. It's used to advance everything, including crime.  So by doing our part, we can reduce the risk of it happening to us.

Default Password? No Thank You!

Have you ever been in a location where you need Internet access and you use your mobile phone as a Personal or Portable Hotspot.  Essentially you use your mobile phone's Internet connection as a WIFI for your laptop or other devices.

Upon setting this up initially, you might find that your device will provide you with a password to use. How convenient! However, you might give consideration before making use of that connection.

In a recent test, researchers found that the list of words selected for these default passwords was little under 2000, and with equipment that could try 390,000 guesses per second, were able to crack the password in under a minute.

Have you evaluated your password recently ? How secure is your password ? Social networking is an open book when it comes to your life, is your password made up of names of places or children or maiden names - things that could easily be guessed from the locations of your photos, or list of children you mention in your posts?

Why not see how secure your password methodology is? Follow the link below and try out a few passwords to see just how secure they are:-

http://password.social-kaspersky.com/en

Certainly consider changing any default password that your device thinks up. Why not put THAT password in the web site above and see just how secure it is?

BYOD

With mobile technology becoming more and more accessible to the general user and the advancement of such technology over the years, it's not uncommon to see people taking their tech into work with them or using such technology instead of work issued equipment.

BYOD or Bring Your Own Device has steadily become a bit of a nightmare for IT Departments because staff are keen to use their devices through work networks, but as ownership of the equipment belongs to the user and not the company, it becomes hard to impose restrictions upon the levels in which the user may gain access.

Is there an answer? Not an immediate or clear one, no. The reason is that staff want access but don't want their equipment touched by the IT team and the IT team don't want the users to have unchecked access or confidential work data on a personal device.

There are a few options:-

• Have a "Use our equipment or nothing" policy. This will cost the company a little more if technology is required. It will also mean that the user may possibly carry around two phone devices, but the security control on the work device remains under the control of the company.
• Allow personal devices within the workplace and hook them onto an independent WiFi router which bypasses the main network, keeping the two separate.
• Allow personal devices to be used, but maintain a strict watch over what kind of company information is accessible to those users

I don't think that there is a perfect scenario. Each company will have to make a decision on the trust and size of their personnel, but with a bit of planning and ensuring that policies are in place, BYOD can be beneficial to all.