Business Built Freedom

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Learn how you can check if you have an account that has been compromised in a data breach at https://dorksdelivered.com.au/blog/173-email-hack-alert.

Watch this episode on YouTube! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m3Ni3399OEk 

SECURITY ALERT. YOUR ACCOUNT HAS BEEN HACKED. PASSWORD! MUST BE NEED CHANGED There are few of these emails that are going around very similar to this here and what you're going to find is they don't have your email or password. That is a lie. What they do have though is a password to an account that you've used on a website in the past.   This could be any sort of website you signed up for. A newsletter or anything like that. Websites get hacked. Companies get hacked. It's inevitable that sometime in the future a big company or a small company that you know will get hacked. Dropbox has been hacked, Sony has been hacked, eBay's been hacked. Huge companies get hacked, small companies get hacked. What these people are preying on is actually something that I brought up in the last newsletter which you can do a lookup on the website, have I been pwned? What they're preying on is you don't change passwords. If you don't change passwords and you get something like this which has your password in it, you freak out. They continue on to explain that they put malicious code in your operating system and that you're a disgusting person and you shock of the reach of your fantasies. They've never seen anything like this. I didn't know that such content should be seen so exciting. And you have such fun times on these sites. Made screenshot using program from camera on your device. And then goes onto say that they have all your contacts and they're going to spread that around everywhere and make you feel like an idiot. Websites get hacked. Companies get hacked What's to be learned from this? Change your password regularly. That's a big one. Make sure you change your password. You look at this and go, "Oh, that's a password I used two years ago. Clearly not right. What's go with this?" And you just ignore it. If you don't change your password regularly, you're going to stress out. You're not going to know what's going on and you're going to contact your IT company and they're going to explain to you what I've just said to you already.  Keep on top of changing your password. If you do get an email like this, they have genuinely got a password from a website that they have hacked that you have signed up for in the past. It's very unlikely that they've got access to your computer. It's very unlikely that they've got access to your contact list and it's hopefully it's very unlikely that you're going to send them some dollars in bitcoin. For this one, $105 is a nice price to pay for your data. If you don't do it, they're going to delete the password and then release of the data in 48 hours. Don't fall to trap. Change your password and you know this is just a bogus email. If you don't change your password, you're going to stress out. If you do change your password, you're not going to stress out. Keep your passwords secure. As I said in the last newsletter, we had a have I been pwned site which is a fantastic site that we've promoted in there that you can do a checkup to see how many different websites have been broken into that have your details. Keep an eye on that website. If you'd like to know more information about potentially how to keep your password secure, let us know. Most of the time, just use a password manager. Be smart about what you do with your passwords. Don't tell other people your passwords. Don't sign up for shit you don't need. Anyway, hopefully this has been helpful and look forward to seeing you again soon.  

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Are you struggling with a slow Internet connection in Australia? Try our favourite speed test sites at https://dorksdelivered.com.au/blog/181-speed-test-struggling-with-slow-internet-in-australia.

Watch this episode on YouTube! https://youtu.be/klJ4olRw_B0

The internet is just so slow. I can't even download this document! Netflix isn't streaming, how am I going to Netflix and chill? I'm just going to have to settle with chilling, I guess. So, internet speeds do go up and down depending on peak times and things like that, but it can also be internal problems or factors with the systems and infrastructure that you're using. If you go to these websites, there's one called Oz-speed-test, and another one called speedtest.net. You can actually use these tools to gauge how fast your internet is right now.

It's a good idea, don't just do it right now when it's slow. Don't only do it when it's slow, do it when it's quick. When you go, "Man, that loaded quickly." Jump onto the website and check it out because what you'll find is if the numbers line up it's not your internet it's something else that's going on in your system. There could be a virus scan or an update going through for something. Check out those results and see what happens. It's a good idea if it's your home network to make sure everyone jumps off so that the test isn't disrupted by maybe one of your kids or your partner jumping on YouTube. 

Similarly, if it's your work network you want them to jump off so any collaboration tools, Skype or whatever they're using at the time isn't impacting the results that you're seeing. Ultimately though, if you notice that it seems slow at a certain time each day or something like that it could be congestion on your network and this could be down to a bottleneck because the Telco that you're with has oversold in the area that you're in or it could be anything to be honest. 

We don't have very great internet connections here in Australia but these tools will give you a little bit more insight into the speeds that you're getting and a little bit more insight into maybe why these are happening. Even just getting the kids off and the other staff members off the network will give you faster speeds so if your computer is slow give them the flip or check out the website at least. Keep safe.

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Read more about the down detector site Aussie Outages: https://dorksdelivered.com.au/blog/186-aussie-internet-outages

Watch this episode on YouTube: https://youtu.be/mqRzbn_w-sQ 

Mum! The Internet's down! I'm bored! No one wants to hear that, and what's worse in business is if your internet goes down, you're up shit creek. Most businesses stop. Now, you're going to have staff yelling at you, going, "Oh, I can't get into Xero. I can't do this. I can't access our cloud based application." Out loud they're saying that. In their mind, they're going, "I can't jump on Facebook. I can't jump on YouTube. What am I going to do on my lunch break?"  And it's a big upset.  Either way, it's a loss of production for your business and a headache for your home life. There's a website called aussieoutages.com and what it does is it lets you know if there's any services that are down in the area, or any services that are down online.  So, if your kids jump onto Xbox Live or whatever it might be, or Netflix, you can jump on this website and it will tell you if Netflix in the area or down globally or whatever the catchment area is of how far that spread goes. It also shows you different providers. So maybe Telstra's down or maybe Optus is down or whatever the go is. You can click on it, and got to your area and you can see a map and see if maybe it's just you and no one else is having this probably, or maybe there's a huge spike in the amount of people that are reporting issues with that telco.  It's a really, really handy website to be able to work out what's going on and make sure that you didn't just have too many winos the night before that resulted in maybe you kicking the cord out of the router or something like that or unplugging something by accident.  It gives you a bit more insight before you jump on the blower and drop some dosh on an IT guy or some other service that you might have to pay for to bring it up and running. You don't want to be on the phone talking to those people on hold for a long time and finding out that it's just your cord and you feel like an idiot.  So instead, go to that website and you'll at least know if it's your connection or if it's a bigger fault that you probably can't do anything about. Still good to report it obviously.  You might be wondering, "But Josh, my internet is down. How do I go to the website?" Very good question. I'm glad you asked. And the answer to that is hopefully if your mobile phone's down, you still have an internet connection that you can choose at home, your landline, or your partner's phone. Or if your landline internet connection, your NVN or ADSL service is down, hopefully, you can jump on your phone. And if not, think outside the box. Take a 50/50, phone a friend, and see what they say when they go to the website and look up your area.  Jumping into storm season around southeast Queensland. We're going to be getting more and more. So, this is an invaluable tool for you guys to jump on and check out. Stay good.

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Now to start off, you have to understand what is the internet of things? It is simply any internet connected device that you have around your home that might be able to help you in some way. For instance, you can get light bulbs or locks for your doors, remote control gates, and a bunch of other different things that you can automate with your phone or any other devices which will make your life easier…or that's the intention.

Now, the internet of things is a really, really cool, really, really cool idea and it's fantastic. I am completely up to my ankles in internet of thing devices. Every light bulb in the house, I can change the colour, I can change the temperature, I can change the brightness, I can do them in groups. I've also got a sprinkler system with 16 different zones so I know that my tomatoes are getting the right amount of water while the natives are getting less water. All the plants are thriving, not getting any root rot and you're not getting any moss growing, because I have it set to automatically water at the right times.

As for my gates, as I'm approaching the house, it knows that it's my car and it knows that it's me and my gates automatically open to let me into the property.

So the internet of things is really, really, really cool, and as I said before, idea. There's a few limitations. So the address range of how many devices you have on the internet is 4.3 billion addresses with your current IPV4 technology. The internet of things means that where before there might have been a family that had one external address, the internet of things when they're connected externally is increasing this exponentially.

I can comfortably say that on my internal network, I've over 150 different devices that are all talking with each other and that would mean that I'm taking up 150 addresses just for this one house where only 10 years ago, 15 years ago, it would have been one or two addresses. So, there's a significant change in the way that things are working.

A lot of the internet of thing devices have the potential to be broken into. People buy them off Ebay, and people buy them from from suppliers without knowing much about them or about their brand, and most of them communicate to some external cloud service. If that cloud service gets broken into, that can lead to a back door into your network, and when you're relying on the internet of things that can be a dangerous cocktail waiting for disaster.

Imagine you've got someone that's looking to break into your home. Instead of before them breaking them breaking a window, all they have to do is break through some code that might already be vulnerable because you've bought something from China that wasn't protected appropriately and then they're in the house. You're alarm system's off, your door's automatically opened itself up, and you come home and your stuff's gone.

The good news is, for the internet of things, most people that are using these devices are minimalists so when they broke into the house, there wouldn't be anything to steal! But this can have other widespread complications. If the hacker upgraded what's called the firmware, which is a bit of code that runs on the hardware chips of these devices, there is a risk that they could make things overheat, change the ways the fridges are operating and have your food spoil, order things online that you wouldn't have otherwise purchased, and a plethora of other things, you need to just make sure that you're staying protected.

The big issue with internet of things devices and where security is going is we've got so many more passwords now to manage than ever before and with every extra password that is insecure, there's an extra window of opportunity for a hacker to break in and where before the might have been just able to read your emails, now they could jump into your cameras, turn on your taps, and open your house.

I can definitely say that my house is 100% connected with the internet of things in a very secure way. Over time, it's going to impact every sector imaginable. There's no reason why it wouldn't. Being able to have every room and every classroom at 7:00 in the morning or 7:30 start to turn on the heaters in the winter months and the air conditioners in the cooler months, or have the lights come on and the computers be ready to use, is going to be more efficient for the students, more efficient for the staff and teachers, and overall give a better experience. Much better for the environment as well because they'll have less of a carbon footprint.

When calculating out the amount of electricity that a school uses between 6:00 p.m. and 7:00 a.m., for their computer tower use alone not the monitors, the average school in southeast Queensland uses around $480 of electricity in that 13 hour period. If we were able to have everything turn off at 6:00 p.m. and turn on at 7:00 a.m., we're saving the schools literally thousands and thousands of dollars and saving the environment at the same time. It's a win win.

It would be very sensible for the internet of things devices to go into different schools and to go into any environment where there is a need for improvement and you want to have reliability and accountability.

That's the other thing the internet of things can bring to you very easily is the ability to pull out data and usage statistics. I've got a company that we're working very closely with called True Energy Metrics. What they do is they create these devices which tell you how much electricity every device in your house uses and you can see if there's any spikes, peaks, or changes over time and that in turn lets you change and adjust your habits and you can see that in real dollar figures. Compare your numbers to your neighbours if they've got the same devices in there and work out why are they paying so much less for electricity for their fridge versus your fridge and maybe it's time to upgrade if your fridge isn't efficient anymore and the seals have broken on it or something like that.

Most internet of things devices can be retrofitted to any house. I live in a cottage style home that is around 40 years old and the whole house is completely automated with cameras inside and out, automatic locks, the whole lot. Hell, my fish pond even automatically tops itself up and tells me when there's a leak through these devices.

The internet of things is an amazing transformation in the way that we use technology in the real world. Long live the internet of things!

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Read more: https://dorksdelivered.com.au/blog/190-how-to-deal-with-spam-this-holiday-season 

Watch this episode on YouTube: https://youtu.be/Sg6ila5tWns

Ho, ho, ho, ho! You better look out, you better not cry, spam's coming back to you from the mail guy.

Okay, we might not be great at making rhymes but it's a serious problem around this time of year. 269 billion emails were sent and received in 2017. You're going to notice a lot of spam coming in and it's not just in your digital inboxes, you'll get a lot of junk mail in your physical mailboxes as well and that's because all these people want to market you and they want to bombard you to make you buy stuff you don't want, you didn't need, that you throw out in a couple of years because it broke and you never used it. 

The important thing is this is a great time to prune all those e-mails. When you get a heap of different e-mails coming through, go through them and click on the unsubscribe link. This will get a bunch of e-mails that'll be gone for the rest of this year, including this one if you click unsubscribe.

This is an option if you don't enjoy the content and it doesn't make your life, I don't want to be talking. Anyway, yeah, just make sure go down to the bottom of the e-mail, it's normally just down there or reply with unsubscribe and most of the e-mails that go through to you will slow down and stop. It's a great time to utilize this.

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Make sure your systems are patched and up to date: https://dorksdelivered.com.au/blog/196-how-to-prevent-being-hacked-this-holiday-season 

Watch this episode on YouTube: https://youtu.be/2AvogFO7aHk

This is the season to get hacked! Around Christmas time we see the amount of attacks on websites, workstations, servers, businesses, and cloud infrastructure increase exponentially. Make sure that your systems are patched and are up to date, and be on your toes for any scam calls, or scam letters that might come in the post, or scam emails, or anything like that because they are an all-time high around now. A great example of this would be the $800,000 that is being taken over the last four weeks from the current scam that's going around about the ATO, so very close to home there. Be on the lookout. Be diligent. If someone asks for something and they don't know your name, ask them for more details. They should know who you are. When they say your birthdate, and your first name, and your last name, and your address. Give them a bit of a....., you tell me what one of them is or what are they. You tell me. I'll give you the last three letters if you give me the first two. Just make sure you keep on your toes. Otherwise, look up the details online if you get a suspicious call. You're not friends with anyone in Nigeria. You're not, so just delete that email. Don't even, ignore it. Don't. This goes for most emails that have that same sort of thing. Regardless of what they say, you might or might not have the three-inch toolset, but you need to just make sure, just delete them. Not important. Be on the lookout. Make sure you get rid of any potential harms. Don't fall victim. Merry Christmas!