New Router Vulnerability Surfaces

Router Vulnerability Leaves Many Unprotected

Yesterday the US Department of Homeland Security’s “Computer Emergency Readiness Team” issued a statement stating that a feature available on almost every router had been discovered to have a security vulnerability. But don’t worry just yet. While the vulnerability is widespread, it is not particularly serious, and this particular feature has been known to be problematic for a while.


In order to turn it off, the easiest way is to consult your router’s manual. If you don’t have this, log into your router’s admin page first. To find out where this is, hold the Windows key between the Alt and Ctrl keys, then tap the r key. Type “cmd” and hit enter. Type “ipconfig” and hit enter. After the text “Default Gateway” there will be a string of numbers and periods. Type these into your browser’s address bar and hit enter. Use the username and password provided by your internet service provider to login. Every router is different, but when you find a toggle for “UPnP” or “Universal Plug & Play,” turn it off.

So what does this service actually do? Does disabling it hurt anything? The answer is almost assuredly no. UPnP is actually concerned with controlling devices over the internet, so unless you regularly use your physical devices like printers or scanners from over the internet, there’s no way turning this off will hurt. In fact, it might already be disabled simply because it’s had problems in the past. Disabling UPnP can’t hurt anything.

Vulnerabilities like this have existed for a while, and many more certainly exist that people are not aware of. That’s one of the reasons why becoming aware of a virus does not necessarily mean that it has recently entered the world. Many people may have had viruses that entered through a vulnerability and even had computer repair to have them removed before the actual vulnerability is found. So don’t worry when you see alarmist warnings about new viruses – mostly they just want to catch your attention.

To make sure you stay protected from these threats in the future, just remember the basic rule of internet surfing (as well as real surfing) be careful! Most of these vulnerabilities will only cause problems if you let something in in the first place. Make sure to stay updated with your current virus protection software like Microsoft Security Essentials and to call computer repair before things escalate!

Nerds On Call Reviews Blackberry 10

Nerds On Call Reviews BlackBerry 10: Back from the brink?

The BlackBerry used to be the undisputed queen of mobile computing. In the days when "smartphone" wasn't even in the culture's lexicon, a little company named Research in Motion developed the BlackBerry, a device which could manage your email on a phone, unheard of in 2003. The company has gone through many iterations of their software and their edge has been lost in recent years with the arrival of the iPhone and Android options. The company, however, has refused to sink. In a highly-anticipated press conference, they announced their new line of phones and new BlackBerry OS, which promises to be redesigned from the ground up. They also announced their name change from Research in Motion to simply "BlackBerry." So is it enough to bring the floundering company back from the brink? Possibly.


Possibly the best and certainly the most innovative feature in BlackBerry 10 is the keyboard. It scans through your emails and messages and generates a list of most-commonly used words and sentence structures. That way when you type, the word that you are most likely to type next appears above the next letter you'd have to type to spell the word. It's a good replacement for touch-typing, as the majority of smartphone users have had to resort to hunting and pecking on virtual keyboards.

The new Operating System also includes many other features: an iPhone-like voice recognition package, a camera that lets you choose pictures from before you took them, an improved app and content store, and built-in Flash support. Add to this the usual host of phone improvements and you get a pretty solid phone. Only time and software updates will tell if the new phones will be able to reclaim some of BlackBerry's territory in the smartphone market, but it looks to be a promising challenger. For the tech enthusiast or the businessperson who's looking to use a more "serious" phone than some of the options offered by iPhone or Android, it's a great choice.

Claim Parental Tablet Control Before It's Too Late

Parental Tablet Control: What you need to know

If the family computer has been getting a lot of miles on it lately - perhaps you have one or more youngster in the house clamoring for screen time - you may be in the market for a second PC to share the load.  Some parents may consider a tablet PC because of its cheaper price tag, but handing an un-monitored internet-connected device to your child has risks.  Luckily, there are parental controls you can easily activate to protect your child from the wild west of the internet.

Restrict the YouTube App: Even watching their favorite Muppets song on YouTube can be dangerous.  From the "suggestions" of additional content to explore, to the profanity that pops up in user comments, there's stuff there that you just don't want young ones to see.  Also, you obviously don't want your kids to simply search YouTube and watch whatever results from their search.  That's where Safety Mode comes in.  Activate it by toggling "Safety: On" at the bottom of the YouTube screen – log in to lock it in this mode.  Not only is content restricted, but comments under videos are screened and restricted for profanity, allowing for a safer YouTube surfing experience for your kids.


Note: if you disable Safari but don’t disable the ability to install apps, your child can simply install an alternate browser such as Chrome to gain unhindered access to the internet.

The bad news is that there's no option to establish specific user profiles, so if you put restrictions in place for your toddler, then want to use the device for yourself, you'll need to remove the limitations every time.  This means you have to remember to turn them back on before you set the iPad down.  As any busy parent can attest, this is a sure path to failed parental control.

Also, I've found that if you restrict applications to 4+ (for example), some applications are completely unavailable, like Netflix, which you may want to allow.

Kindle Fire users with small children should consider FreeTime Unlimited, a subscription service available for $5/month ($3 for Amazon Prime members).  Kids have unlimited access to age-appropriate content such as books, games, movies and TV shows from Disney, Sesame Street, PBS Kids and Nickelodeon.  You can establish screen time limits, even for specific activities.  For example, you can allow unlimited reading time, but limit game play to 30 minutes a day.

Individual profiles for each user allow you to personalize access by who is logged in. This is a definite advantage if you’re planning to share the tablet between family members.  Not only will it mean that your 3-year-old's games aren't clogging up your screen when you log into your profile, it lets adults access age restricted functions without having to disable parental controls.

Barnes and Noble's Nook has integrated parental controls right out of the box.  It supports up to six user profiles and each can be customized for web access limitations and in-app purchasing with separate viewing libraries for each user.  When you set up a profile for a child (enter their age in their profile), by default the store is open but is limited to kid-friendly apps and requires a password before purchase.  You can change this in the settings if you want stricter controls.

Set your own surfing standards with K9 Web Protection (www.k9webprotection.com, free, available for iOS and Android).  It’s a child friendly browser that categorizes webpage content, allowing parents to block specific inappropriate material such as pornography, violence, drugs and gambling while protecting against phishing and malware.  It has enhanced anti-tampering guards and reports to monitor web activities.  You can even set time restrictions, so you can block web access when homework is supposed to be done.

The great thing about a tablet is that you can easily put it away when it’s time to disconnect.  Your best parental control is you!

 

 

Facebook Graph Search Begins Testing

Facebook Graph Search: A new era of search?

Facebook has its sleeves rolled up and it’s off to work on something new. Don’t worry though; this change won’t come in the form of yet another visual redesign of the site. It’s something much more subtle, and with luck much more significant. Mark Zuckerberg, the founder of Facebook, hopes that this new project will one day even compete with Google.

The new project is called graph search. It “is designed to take a precise query and return to you the answer, not links to other places where you might get the answer,” according to Zuckerberg. Facebook hopes that graph search will be able to aggregate all the information that the community compiles on local results, such as restaurants, and do recommend a location based on user content.


The tool will be rolling out to a limited number of people at first before becoming more widely available, a strategy which Facebook has implemented consistently. Once the focus testing has completed, it will become available for all users. It’s already been an internal project for more than a year.

So what does this mean for you? Well for one, it doesn’t mean that you need to review your security settings. Almost everything will be staying the same…for now. No new information will be available to anyone else. The only real change here is that your photos are a little less private. However, it’s only if someone uploads a picture of you that you don’t want up. It’s a little harder to get rid of it with graph search, but you still have the option to untag yourself or ask the uploader to remove it. Facebook is really trying to stay on their users’ good side following their numerous security scandals.

As for the future though, it means that we could see Facebook start to branch out into more unique services. Facebook and Google have always had a certain level of rivalry, but as time goes on that rivalry could get more intense as they start to impose on the same market. While it’s speculation at the moment, Facebook will probably sell your data to advertisers as time goes on. It’s simply how they make money. None of it will be connected specifically to you as a person, but it will be out there. Remember the maxim: if you’re not paying for it; you’re the product.

CES 2013 Part 2

NERDS ON CALL: CES 2013 Part II

There were many exciting product announcements and prototypes demoed at this year’s Consumer Electronics Show, but few so plentiful as next generation gaming innovations.  Whether you dedicate a large part of your free time video game playing or are simply intrigued by the potential uses of virtual reality in the future of computing, CES 2013 didn’t disappoint.

Nvidia, known primarily as a manufacturer of graphics cards and chipsets, announced that they’re joining the likes of Nintendo DS and Playstation PSP with the Nvidia Shield.  “Project Shield” is a handheld gaming device that resembles an Xbox controller with a flip-up screen.  The quad-core portable gaming system runs an Android open platform OS that Nvidia hopes will encourage game developers to create new content inspired to take advantage of the device’s advanced graphics capabilities.

You’ll be able to play Android games or if you have a compatible Nvidia GTX graphics card in your PC, you can stream games over WiFi.  This enables users to continue a game on the couch or in bed that you normally would have been tied to your computer to play.

The ability to play full fledged PC games on a handheld unit is exciting, but you’re still limited by the fact that you must be within WiFi range of the computer running the game.  Not so with the Razer Edge Gaming Tablet.  Available this February, this Windows 8 tablet has a processor and graphics chip capable of rendering current generation PC game graphics never before accessible on a tablet.  This means that you can play full-graphic PC games on the device, even when you’re offline.

An optional snap-on Game Pad Controller case adds side controllers to access controls with your thumbs while holding the tablet like a steering wheel.  For more traditional functionality, a mouse and keyboard are available.  The main drawback is price: the basic version will start at $999, significantly more than your average tablet.

For those who already own a tablet but lament the lack of on-board graphics processing, Nvidia had another exciting announcement.  Its cloud gaming project, Nvidia Grid, will be made available to gaming manufactures to license and will allow supported games to be played on Nvidia’s server, not the user’s device.  This means that gamers will be able to play high resolution games on a multitude of devices by streaming over the internet, even devices that don’t have a graphics chip capable of playing the game otherwise.

Nvidia Grid will render graphics in the cloud.  Imagine playing World of Warcraft on a tablet, for example, even one with a slower processor and/or weak graphics processing ability.  Your gaming will be limited only by the stability of your internet connection and the resolution of your screen.

Finally, the Oculus Rift virtual reality headset lets you feel as though you are stepping inside your video game.  It straps to your head like a black box over your eyes and then uses a multitude of sensors to measure how your head is moving in three dimensions.  That motion is translated to how your character moves in 3D space, allowing you to feel like you’re in the game.

While only a prototype was available at CES, it will ship to software developers in March so that they can create content for it.  No hint as to when will it hit shelves or how much it will cost, but truly effective virtual reality carries a wealth of other technological possibilities.  From improving the computing abilities of the mobility impaired, to allowing for mechanics, surgeons, or a multitude of professionals to work remotely, virtual reality is sure to change how we interact with our gadgets in the years to come.

[nerdsbio]

Bits Vs Bytes Explained

Bits vs Bytes: What's the Difference?

If you’ve ever shopped for internet packages or tried to buy storage, you’ve run into the bit/byte issue before – and you may not even have known it. It’s a concept that everyone who uses computer should at least familiarize themselves with. After all, it’s like not knowing the difference between kilometers and miles!

When computer speed or storage is measured, it’s done using two units and their derivatives. The first unit is the bit, and the second is the byte.


This means that when you see an advertisement for internet service at a rate of 1 Mb/s down, it’s not quite what it seems. The K, M, G, or T before indicates kilo, mega, giga, or terra. Those are Latin prefixes for thousand, million, billion, or trillion, respectively. So here’s the math for a megabit: a megabit is actually 1,048,576 bits, which is 2 to the power of 20. Bit notation uses SI, which is based on factors of 2, instead of 10, like our normal system of counting does. What this ends up meaning is that the internet service can only provide a paltry 0.125 megabytes per second, which is an eighth of what it looks like it’s advertising.

You may have noticed that your hard drive, which you bought because it advertised 500GB of storage, is reading a different number under system properties. Because of the way storage is calculated, a 500GB hard drive actually has 536,870,912,000 Bytes, or 512,000 megabytes. Then some of that storage is taken for the drive’s internal functions.

Anyway, to cut a nerdy rant short, companies will sometimes try and rely on the fact that you don’t know these differences in order to sell you a sub-par service. To be fair, it’s not an easy subject to wrap your head around but if you keep in mind that a small b means 1/8^th speed, you can navigate your way around some of the issues that will come up.

Curtail Teen Computer Use

Teen Computer Use: Understanding and Managing

Clearly, many teens and tweens spend a lot of time in front of their computers and texting on cell phones -- and much of that time is spent social networking. But is it that all bad? Surveys show the answer to that question is… no.

Common Sense Media in a recent study found that in over 1000 teens, 13 to 17 had a pretty healthy perspective on social media.  “Teens are aware of the dangers of excessive usage and the online potential of cruelty. However, most young adults say social media and technology positively affects their social and mental well-being. Social media helps teens communicate easily with friends. Surveyed teens also believe social networks help them to be more outgoing, confident and less depressed."


Set limits on Overall Screen time:  I think that it’s important to set family limits on overall screen and electronics time. I have found that many parents forget about the handheld gadgets when thinking of “screen time,” limiting TV or computer time but not cell or iPad use, for example. As parents it’s our job to help our kids set healthy habits for electronics use and that starts by establishing when it’s acceptable to use electronics, regardless of how many email accounts, social media profiles, video games or chat groups they participate in. I think that your teen can decide what they want to use their “connected time” for (within reason, of course) and the number of electronic activities they participate in shouldn’t increase overall daily time limitations.

If, for example, the house rule is no more than two hours a day spent with leisure electronics activities, your teen’s choice to spend those two hours playing Wii is theirs to make – it just means they won’t have time to update their Facebook status about it. Some parents have found success with a system to earn additional screen time through chore completion, reading or physical activities which would allow a kid that got carried away and used up their time to “buy” a few extra minutes.

Clear Choices, not just “House Rules:” It’s important that teenagers be given the reasons behind your choices, not just arbitrary rules. Reducing distractions to improve school work and allow family together time are great reasons to limit overall electronics use.

 

Be Specific:  Make your family rules device-specific and control the device so you don’t have to spend as much energy policing behavior. “No texting when doing homework” will be easier to enforce if you make it a habit to collect cell phones and internet-connected devices when everyone walks in the door. Once homework is done, phones can be handed back under the parameters you are comfortable with. Everyone puts their electronics away and the TV turns off at meal times and for the last hour before bed, for example.

As for the in between homework done and dinner time, or on the weekend when there’s no homework to do? It’s ok to have different limits on different days, so long as you’re consistent. If you make usage rules on the fly you’re going to get push-back every time you try to get your kid to disconnect.

Set the Example:  Set family rules that even the adults abide by. If you say “no phones at dinner,” but then pick up yours to check a text it sends the wrong message. Use your own challenges to highlight why you are using tools like parental controls to help them stay focused. Did you lose an hour trolling Pinterest when you should have been working? Admit to your lapses and let them know that you’re working to reduce tech distractions in your day as well.

Control if Necessary:  Parental control software like Netnanny allows you to limit access to specific sites by setting time restrictions, both to limit when the sites can be accessed (say, only 5-6pm and 7-8pm) and setting a total limit on computer time for each child. It can be challenging to limit distractions when kids are using the computer for their homework. These types of tools work in conjunction with parental oversight to keep your kids on track and focused on their studies.

I also really like the Mikko Que (http://www.insightmediaintl.com/) as it allows parents to set personal limits on all devices (TV, gaming consoles, etc). When the time’s up, Mikko will physically disable the device so your kids can’t argue or cheat their way around your limits.