As an individual you might wonder “Why would someone want my information?” or “What could a hacker get out of having access to my account?” The truth is, it’s nothing personal 99% of the time. Nefarious people (hackers) might find your information as a result of a recent breach of a major service provider or they may be targeting an organization through a Phishing Campaign, Social Engineering or a vulnerable website. The damage that can be done with a single set of usernames and passwords is paramount.

In this week's episode, I run down a few reasons why it's more than just access to an account you have and share some tips and tools to help you generate better passwords.

Password meters

https://password.kaspersky.com/

https://howsecureismypassword.net/

Hacked/Affected account lookup

https://password.kaspersky.com/

https://haveibeenpwned.com/

https://breachalarm.com/

Used to show how easy it would be to hack other accounts if you use the same password everywhere

https://namechk.com/

https://namecheck.com/

Password Keepers & Creation Tools

https://lastpass.com/

https://www.dashlane.com/

https://1password.com/

Historical Password Posts

Everyone needs a change sometimes - Comrade Technology April 2014

It's Time to Go Green - Comrade Technology July 2015

There is light at the end of the tunnel I promise you. However, for the next couple years yet we are all going to be stuck with having to remember a bunch of passwords for a whole plethora of accounts. Some of which we only access once or twice a year.

October is National Cyber Awareness Month and in this week's episode, I will share some tools and tips on setting great passwords, using different ones on each site, and most importantly discuss why it is so important to follow all these standards for password creation in the first place.

I GET IT. You're sick of all this security talk. Why can't companies figure it out and protect your information better? 

That is a really good question.

...and I don't have a solid answer for you. For instance, at the end of last month (Sept 22nd) Yahoo! announced that upwards of 500 million of their accounts have been stolen in a hack. The sickening part is they could have been taken 2 years ago and Yahoo! is just now announcing it.

We've all been there, having to pay someone back for that soda they bought you or for picking up the dinner tab because you actually did forget your wallet. Maybe you left it in your other purse - who knows? The fact is you owe someone money for something and you just assume get it taken care of immediately.

Protecting your home wireless network is paramount. Keeping prying eyes and rogue devices off of your personal internet connection is no doubt important but did you know how you have your network configured at home could be affecting how secure you are when you are staying in hotels or enjoying a latte with a friend at your local coffee shop?

Apps come and go.  Great ones are a dime-a-dozen but sometimes when a great idea hits the market only to be pushed out by the big guys you get a little bummed out. Meerkat shutdown this last week. I used Meerkat right away and they pretty much got squashed by Twitter's Periscope. 

I'm Guilty! I switched to Periscope too.

But now I'm asking for forgiveness and trying to make it up. The creators of Meerkat took all their skill and know-how and created a group video chat app called HouseParty and it can be downloaded here (iOS) and here (Android)

No Excuses! I slacked off this week and I didn't get a full episode recorded. However, I am excited to announce that I have some great high-quality episodes in the works leading into the end of the year.

In this episode I list a dozen or so apps that I highly recommend you give a download and try out while traveling locally by car or flying somewhere as well as some apps to use while at your destination.

Getting There

- Travel by car: Waze - uses Google Maps and adds some helpful features to your travel maps, including police and accident locations as we traffic congestion and nearest gas stations

- Travel by Air: App In The Air - free app for importing your airline information. Will help you keep on time with travel updates for when you should be at the airport, checked-in, through security and boarding. Will even help you communicate and get all your text messages while traveling internationally.

- Tracking Family: Life360 - a great app to use to track family and friends temporarily while on travel. If you need to have a car in your motorcade drop off for a while, no big deal because they will be able to see where you end up during the whole duration of your trip.

One the Way

- Field Trip - Learn about history and fun tips in your current location

- Ingress - Pick a side and stick with them to battle around the world for property and landmarks.

- Pokemon Go! - Gotta catch them all... That's all I'll say about that one.

Where to eat

- Yelp - discover great locations and venues for activities, food, and drink

- Swarm - Make every place you eat or visit a game and earn rewards for doing so.

- Foursquare - My personal favorite. Find shops, restaurants, and venues in your location and they the best tips from those who have been there before.

Making memories

- Prisma - Artificial Intelligence for your photos. Turn every photo you take on vacation into a fun work of art.

- Snapchat - Use fun holiday and location filters to add some spice to sharing your fun weekend pictures with family and friends.

- Google Photos - You are going to need a place to backup all the amazing photos you take so do me a favor and listen to this week's Tech Tuesday Tech Short and learn about Google Photos and why you need to be using it.

//giphy.com/embed/NvwLXMoF3fUze

via GIPHY

Thank you all!

For all the listens and share. Our download and listener count is on a steady incline and I owe it to all of you for your support. We do this for all of you and we can not do any of it without you.

NOTICE: I apologize for the background noise. I was out enjoying a little outdoors myself while recording this Tech Tuesday Tech Short on Google Photos.

Almost everyone I know complains about running out of storage space on their mobile phone. Some people have a lot of messages they could get read of or a couple apps they don't use anymore that they could delete, but the majority have a ton of photos.

This Labor Day holiday you no longer have to worry about not having space on your phone to save that candid photo that you take while on vacation. 

Everyone should be using Google Photos - https://photos.google.com/ and have the app installed on their iPhone or Android device.

This is such an amazing tool and you will not regret installing it before you head out for one last long summer weekend.

This is Part 2 and the wrap-up of the question - What is the cloud? We recap what was talked about in last weeks episode as well as try to give a very high-level overview of what cloud services can do for us in our everyday technology exchanges. 

In this episode we discuss:

- The 3 types of cloud platforms (IaaS, PaaS, and SaaS)

- How pieces of cloud services can fit into each of those platforms

- Scalability and Productivity

- Arguments against cloud computing

- How to secure and have backups of your data in the cloud

- and tips on how to create and use secure passwords

There are countless cloud apps and software services you can use. Getting a grasp on the right ones for what you need can be difficult. So much so that you may never know where to start. If you want some short and simple tips to help you become more familiar with technology please join our newsletter and you will receive a short email every Tuesday with some quick tips you can take action on immediately.

If you can't wait that long contact us here and we can get started right away answering your questions.

This week's Tech Short is about SnapChat memories. If you aren't using SnapChat yet, now is the time to get started. If you have used it before you may be interested to know some of the amazing features SnapChat is now offering with their addition of 'memories.' Take a quick listen and see what you think.

Cloud computing revolutionized the way we use our technology. We touch multiple cloud services on a daily basis but might not understand how you are using them? Are you using them to their fullest potential?

In this part 1 of 2 series we discuss:

- What the cloud is

- Where the cloud came from

- Where it is located

- Who can access the cloud

- and some of the services that are available