Category Archives: Article

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This free Windows 10 upgrade offer still works. Here’s why — and how to get it

The vast majority of Windows PCs sold in the past four years included Windows 10 licenses, and businesses who have stuck with Windows 7 have typically done so by exercising downgrade rights. They’re free to install Windows 10 anytime, without having to jump through any hoops. On PC’s that were originally sold with older versions of Windows, Microsoft’s calculus is pretty straightforward: It’s in the company’s best interests to see those old Windows versions retired. …

ZDnet.com click the link to read the rest of the story. Our FREE Tools can help!

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To Change a Habit, Get Extreme. Progressively.

When it comes to gaining control over bad habits, like eating food we know isn’t good for us or succumbing to distraction… a technique… that worked wonders for me. I… “progressive extremism,” …To apply this technique, start by identifying the behavior you want to stop doing. For example, say you’d like to stop eating processed sugar. Taken all at once, cutting out the manufactured sweet stuff is too big of a goal for most people to quit cold turkey. Instead, think of just one specific sugar-laden food you’re able to cut from your diet and remove it from your life—sort of like the way a religious adherent or vegetarian gives up pleasures others might enjoy. …

BehavioralScientist.org click the link to read the rest of the story. Our FREE Tools can help!

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OneDrive adds Personal Vault option for private files and photos

A new feature in the consumer version of Microsoft’s OneDrive lets you store sensitive files in the cloud with extra encryption and authentication options. But you’ll need an Office 365 subscription for unlimited access. …

ZDnet.com click the link to read the rest of the story. Our FREE Tools can help!

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SIM Swapping Is the Biggest Security Threat You Face, and Almost No One Is Trying to Fix It. Here’s Why It Matters

Imagine you try to log into your bank account one day to setup a payment on your mortgage. You realize that something’s wrong when the bank’s website tells you you’ve entered the wrong password. That’s strange, you think as you click the link to “reset your password.”  It’s an easy process, but first, the bank requires that you prove you’re actually you, by sending a simple text message with a six-digit code to the mobile phone number on file. But when you request your code, the text never comes. …

Inc.com click the link to read the rest of the story. Our FREE Tools can help!

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Ransomware incident to cost Danish company a whopping $95 million

Demant, one of the world’s largest manufacturers of hearing aids, expects to incur losses of up to $95 million following what appears to be a ransomware infection that hit the company at the start of the month.  This marks one of the most significant losses caused by a cyber-security incident outside of the NotPetya ransomware outbreak…

ZDnet.com click the link to read the rest of the story. Our FREE Tools can help!

What would it cost your business, if it took weeks to recover?

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Stop Complaining Your Phone Is Addictive, Become ‘Indistractable’

Convinced technology was becoming a problem in his own life, Nir Eyal had been reading every book on tech addiction he could find, and testing out the many techniques proposed for combatting its overuse.  “None of those techniques I read about–like digital minimalism or digital detoxes or digital sabbath–worked,” he says. “All those books tell you it’s no one’s fault but it’s technology’s fault. And so I tried that stuff. And it didn’t work. … learning to become indistractable, to control your attention and choose your life, is the skill of the century, because if we think the world is distracting now, then wait a few years.

Forbes.com click the link to read the rest of the story. Our FREE Tools can help!

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Are the People Who Take Vacations the Ones Who Get Promoted?

Americans are taking less vacation time than at any point in the last four decades. Why? According to Gary Oster, Managing Director of Project: Time Off, “Many people don’t take time off because they think that it will negatively impact their manager’s perception of them. But, that isn’t the case at all.” If you or someone you know needs to be convinced to use your vacation time, here’s a list of reasons why it just makes good business sense: …

Harvard Business Review click the link to read the rest of the story. Our FREE Tools can help!

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The Simplest Way to Generate a Major Breakthrough

Some business coaches focus on intensity. They advise you to take “massive action” in order to get the results you want. This can be helpful occasionally , but, in my experience, it’s usually better to focus on consistency…

MichaelHyatt.com click the link to read the rest of the story. Our FREE Tools can help!

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99% of all misconfigurations in the public cloud go unreported

Today’s data breaches often seem to be caused not just by malware infections or external threat actors, but human error, insiders with an ax to grind, and simple security failures. Some companies will bury their head in the sand, attempting to ignore responsible, private disclosures of data leaks, while others will act rapidly when their information — and reputation — is at stake.

According to new research released Tuesday and conducted by cybersecurity firm McAfee, titled, “Cloud-Native: The Infrastructure-as-a-Service Adoption and Risk,” the majority of IaaS misconfigurations are going unnoticed. …

ZDnet.com click the link to read the rest of the story. Our FREE Tools can help!

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Buying a new router? Understand these Wi-Fi basics first

Shopping for a new router can feel overwhelming, especially if you don’t really understand what you’re looking for. There’s lots of jargon to wrap your head around, plenty of hyperbolic claims about speed and coverage to sift through, ISP limitations to take into consideration — and that’s before you try to comprehend the newfangled features that come with emerging, next-gen Wi-Fi tech.  But there’s no need to feel paralyzed if it’s time for an upgrade. If you understand some key basics, you’ll have no problem …

Cnet.com click the link to read the rest of the story. Our FREE Tools can help!

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Silicon Valley is terrified of California’s privacy law. Good.

In a little over three months, California will see the widest-sweeping state-wide changes to its privacy law in years. California’s Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA) kicks in on January 1 and rolls out sweeping new privacy benefits to the state’s 40 million residents — and every tech company in Silicon Valley.  California’s law is similar to Europe’s GDPR. …

TechCrunch.com click the link to read the rest of the story. Our FREE Tools can help!

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How Much Is Your Privacy Really Worth?

Facebook alone hauls in about $30 per year in revenue per North American user, or about $2.50 per month, and, of course, it’s just one of the countless companies tracking your online behavior. …

Medium.com click the link to read the rest of the story. Our FREE Tools can help!

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The ultimate smartphone guide to killing spyware and stalkerware

This guide will run through what spyware is, what the warning signs of infection are, and how to remove such pestilence from your mobile devices. …

ZDnet.com click the link to read the rest of the story. Our FREE Tools can help!

Did you find anything on your smartphone?

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Why Visuals Are the Most Powerful Way to Sell Anything

Almost every day, I have to impress upon a client that telling their customers that they believe in something or are committed to something is almost useless without a clear visual to back it up. Because it’s visuals that stick in our minds. We think in pictures. If you can plant a positive picture in the mind of whomever you’re trying to persuade, you are that much closer to getting what you want. …

Medium.com click the link to read the rest of the story. Our FREE Tools can help!

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Simjacker attack exploited in the wild to track users for at least two years

Simjack exploits a technology residing on the SIM card, the attack also works independently of the user’s device type.  “We have observed devices from nearly every manufacturer being successfully targeted to retrieve location: Apple, ZTE, Motorola, Samsung, Google, Huawei, and even IoT devices with SIM cards,” researchers said.  The only good news is that the attack doesn’t rely on regular SMS messages…

ZDnet.com click the link to read the rest of the story. Our FREE Tools can help!

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Being ‘Indistractable’ Will Be the Skill of the Future

The truth is, we overuse video games, social media, and our cell phones not just for the pleasure they provide, but because they free us from psychological discomfort.
Distraction, then, is an unhealthy escape from bad feelings. …

Medium.com click the link to read the rest of the story. Our FREE Tools can help!

How do you resist distractions?Join the conversation on our Facebook Page!

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An In-Depth Look Into All The Ways Google Tracks You in 2019

Have you been wondering how Google tracks you? What kind of data does it collect? What is this company doing with all that (incredibly personal) data? Well, I’ll do my best to untangle this purposefully-created mess of misleading marketing messages and hard-to-read privacy policies.

Medium.com click the link to read the rest of the story. Our FREE Tools can help!

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5 Ways to Be Respected in Every Conversation

If you’re a leader right now or a young person aspiring to be, let’s have a moment of honesty. Your rights, when you enter into leadership, do not get broader, they get much more narrow.

Medium.com click the link to read the rest of the story. Our FREE Tools can help!

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Google hit by antitrust probe from 50 attorneys general

Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton on Monday announced an antitrust investigation into Google, with the participation of 50 attorneys general. … The investigation will focus on the search giant’s dominance in digital advertising.

Cnet.com click the link to read the rest of the story. Our FREE Tools can help!

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Facebook, Microsoft: We’ll pay out $10m for tech to spot deepfake videos

If AI-generated ‘deepfake’ videos are going to spread like wildfire and cause social chaos in the future, it’s probably going to happen on Facebook… The aim is to create tech that everyone can use to detect when a video has been manipulated with AI.  However, to do that, it needs to have a larger dataset of deepfake content to work with, and so far the industry doesn’t have it or a benchmark for detecting deepfakes, according to Facebook.

ZDnet.com click the link to read the rest of the story. Our FREE Tools can help!

What else can we do to fight these fake videos?

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Scammers find powerful way to impersonate you and empty your bank accounts

Criminals are using AI-generated audio to impersonate a CEO’s voice and con subordinates into transferring funds to a scammer’s account.  … The Wall Street Journal reports that the CEO of an unnamed UK-based energy company thought he was talking on the phone with his boss, the CEO of the German parent company, who’d asked him to urgently transfer €220,000 ($243,000) to a Hungarian supplier. However, the UK CEO was in fact taking instructions from a scammer who’d used AI-powered voice technology to impersonate the German CEO.

ZDnet.com click the link to read the rest of the story. Our FREE Tools can help!

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33 Things Successful Leaders Have Given Up

The advice here is harsh and it will help you understand leadership and the traps that exist. … Let’s look at those successful leaders we all admire and what they *don’t* do. What these leaders don’t do says more than what they actually do. …

Medium.com click the link to read the rest of the story. Our FREE Tools can help!

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Cybersecurity alert: 34% of vulnerabilities found this year remain unpatched

The overall number of reported vulnerabilities in the first half of 2019 has dropped slightly from last year, but risks remain high…

TechRepublic.com click the link to read the rest of the story. Our FREE Tools can help!

How quickly do you patch fixes to these vulnerabilities?

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Wi-Fi 6 Will Be Here Soon. What Is It?

Wi-Fi 6 is the latest generation of wireless connectivity technology. It hasn’t really launched yet, but it will be here this fall, so tech makers have been building support into devices this year as a means of future-proofing their products. Its faster…

Wired.com click the link to read the rest of the story. Our FREE Tools can help!

How soon will you upgrade to wifi6?

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States preparing for ransomware voter assaults

The challenge: lock down the most exposed part of the nation’s election system.  … A ransomware attack in 2020 could prove devastating, preventing voters from registering or poll workers from confirming voter eligibility, officials say.

Cnet.com click the link to read the rest of the story. Our FREE Tools can help!

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How to write great emails - and why it matters

Many people loathe email, but I love it. Used well, it can enhance productivity and communication. It can streamline workflows and clarify meaning. A well-composed email also raises the profile of the sender.

Jotform.com click the link to read the rest of the story. Our FREE Tools can help!

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Ransomware hits hundreds of dentist offices in the US

Hundreds of dental practice offices in the US have had their computers infected with ransomware this week, ZDNet has learned from a source. The incident is another case of a ransomware gang compromising a software provider and using its product to deploy ransomware on customers’ systems.  In this case, the software providers are The Digital Dental Record and PerCSoft…

ZDnet.com click the link to read the rest of the story. Our FREE Tools can help!

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Addicted to distractions? How to reclaim your focus and shut out the noise

It is easy to think that being distracted is just the inability to focus, when in fact, it’s more complicated than that.  As Seth Godin, the content God himself, said in one of his essays:  “If you’re not paying, you and your attention are the products.”  We let ourselves get sucked into an endless cycle of distraction while the gatekeepers are busy selling our attention to advertisers.

Medium.com click the link to read the rest of the story. Our FREE Tools can help!

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Phishing attacks jump by 21% in latest quarter, says Kaspersky

The number of worldwide phishing attacks detected by Kaspersky hit 129.9 million during the second quarter of 2019, according to a new report from the security vendor.

TechRepublic.com click the link to read the rest of the story. Our FREE Tools can help!

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Ransomware attacks have more than doubled this year

Ransomware attacks have more than doubled this year, as criminals turn to powerful new forms of file-locking malware and additional attack techniques to conduct campaigns that are more lucrative than ever before.

ZDnet.com click the link to read the rest of the story. Our FREE Tools can help!

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