Greyman Technology

Photo by Leyre . on Unsplash So far I’ve shared the importance of protecting your personal email address and your personal phone number to decrease odds of getting hacked online by the adversaries. Up next is protecting our home wireless network from adversaries…and curious neighbors. A typical setup for home wireless network can consist of a generic SSID (Service Set IDentifier) network name, e.g. “Home-1X9D-5G,” and perhaps another network name like “Home-1X9D-2.4G.” These two names contain a randomized ID from the ISP (Internet Service Provider) and two radio frequencies, 2.4 gHz (gigahertz) and 5 gHz. While these wireless network names might be anonymous to neighbors, they still are being broadcasted to all within range. I find that concerning. Also, it might be tough to remember your network name when friends and family visit your residence and want to hop on your home wireless. ...

Photo by Gilles Lambert on Unsplash Back when I was growing up in the 1980s, a big bulky phone book would arrive on our doorstep about once a year. Pages colored yellow contained phone numbers and addresses for businesses, and white-colored pages contained names, addresses, and phone numbers of residents living in my town. I recall the pride neighbors shared about having their information available in this big book for folks to contact them to say hi. Fast forward to 2021. I’m not sure we would want our home address and home phone number documented in a phone book for all residents in town to access. ...

Photo by Salty Justice on Unsplash I believe there are four items in our online lives that we should make a commitment to guard and protect. The first item is our personal email address, a foundational component of life on the internet. I have no problem sharing [email protected] with my mother, my family, and friends whom I know and trust. However, I trust no online business. I am unable to prevent what they will do with my account information or whom they will sell it to. Data brokers, online marketing firms, and numerous other business entities pay cash money to online businesses for customer names, addresses, emails, phone numbers, purchase histories, and any other trackable metrics. This results in junk or spam email sent to my email account, unwanted phone calls, unsolicited itemas arriving in my residential mailbox, and other annoying intrusions. I don’t like this modern business practice. So I’ve done something about it. ...

Photo by Igor Rabanillo on Unsplash Preface: This particular technology topic is tough for me to communicate the benefits and “articulate the why” while preventing most folks from mentally checking out and shying away from considering its use in their online life. I hope that you will be patient with my attempt to explain what this layer of online security is and why matters to me. I appreciate it! ...

Photo by cottonbro from Pexels No one wants to be a victim of the Nightmare Scenario. I sure as sugar would never want my beautiful wife to start a conversation with me that begins with, “Christopher, I just checked our checking account online. We have a balance of $42. What happened?” When she uses my full name, I know I’m in deep trouble. ...

Photo by Ari He on Unsplash When I meet with a new client, I ask them three questions: Without telling me what your personal email password is, how many characters is it? When was the last time you changed your personal email password? Do you use your personal email password on any other online websites? My clients usually look crestfallen after I ask them these questions. However, they are not meant to shame them or make them feel guilty. As they often respond with, “10 characters”, “I can’t remember when I changed my password”, and “Yes, I use this password on a lot of my online accounts.” I gently encourage them to consider changing their personal email password to something a bit stronger. ...

Photo by Blake Connally on Unsplash The Background Two years ago, I signed up for a free account with www.retailwebsite.com. I used my personal email address, [email protected], and Seahawks12 as my password. I don’t want to have to remember a bunch of passwords for my online accounts, so I always use Seahawks12 for my password. I heard tech support at my workplace say a password should be more than eight characters and have letters and numbers in it. Go ‘Hawks! ...