Category: Tips

Accounts and Passwords, Security, Tips

Use Your Swarthmore Credentials Only at Swarthmore

Nick

Your Swarthmore “credentials”, the combination of your Swarthmore email address and password, should only be used with Swarthmore College on-line services.  These credentials should never be used for personal accounts at non-Swarthmore websites. Websites are regularly compromised and users email addresses, along with passwords, are subsequently stolen.  A short list of popular websites that were recently compromised follows: eHarmony LinkedIn Last.fm Yahoo Voices The Student Room Formspring Android Forum techradar Philips Sony Entertainment etc… If you use your Swarthmore credentials for a non-Swarthmore account and that website gets hacked, your Swarthmore on-line services would then be readily available to the … Continue reading Use Your Swarthmore Credentials Only at Swarthmore

Security, Software, Tips

Update EVERYTHING!

Nick

… please!! Besides running up to date Anti-virus, one of the best ways to keep your computer from becoming infected (and then losing access to it while it gets re-imaged, etc.) is to keep your Operating System and applications up to date.  Over the past few weeks, most major vendors have updated their software.  If you run applications from any of the following vendors, you should upgrade that software as soon as you possibly can: Microsoft Windows Mac OS/X and iOS Adobe Reader, Flash, Shockwave, etc. Mozilla Firefox & Thunderbird Google Chrome Oracle Java Apple Quicktime & Safari Below are … Continue reading Update EVERYTHING!

Accounts and Passwords, Email, Security, Tips

How Do You Like Your Phish?

Nick

Phishing remains an ever popular way to get computer users to install malicious code or visit sites that they didn’t choose.  Many of the phishing attempts here at Swarthmore seem to fall into one of two categories: –          Email account and/or password related –          Government related (i.e., IRS, Federal Reserve, ACH, etc.) It should be pretty easy to recognize the first category since Swarthmore ITS will never ask for your password in an email and will never disable your email account while actively enrolled at or employed by the college. As for emails that appear to come from the U.S. … Continue reading How Do You Like Your Phish?

Tips

Learn “Things Everyone Should Know” by David Pogue at The New York Times

MK

If you’ve ever been working with your smartphone or computer and thought, “there has to be an easier way to do this”, it turns out you’re most likely right. David Pogue’s recent articles at The New York Times, “Ins and Outs of Gadgetry” and “25 More Things Everyone Should Know” offer tips and tricks to make the technology-related aspects of your life easier. In these articles Pogue covers a wide range of topics from filling out online forms, to spotting “phishing” attemps in your inbox. Below Pogue addresses the practice of capturing screenshots on both Windows and Mac OSX platforms: … Continue reading Learn “Things Everyone Should Know” by David Pogue at The New York Times