Category Archives: Technical Suggestions

Technical recommendations and suggestions about electronic devices and internet security.

—– Car Prowler —– New Tricks to Enter Your Car

Neighborhood Security, Safety, Technical Suggestions

A friend just let me know about a new trick thieves have to get into your car. You may remember a series of car break-ins in Seattle where several cars parked outside of condominiums were entered without damage, and the owners swore that they were locked when the owners went to bed.

The trick for entering a modern locked car depends on two things: (1) The car must be new enough that it only requires that the car key fob be present in the vicinity for the car to unlock and be started. (2) That the thief has a new  device which captures the fob signal and amplifies it so that it appears to be in the vicinity of the car.  The whole thing is explained in an article on the Edmunds.com web site: https://www.edmunds.com/car-news/technology/how-to-protect-your-car-from-keyless-entry-hacking.html

-Reboot – Do It NOW!

Neighborhood Security, Technical Suggestions

Last week, the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) released a statement saying that all consumers and small businesses should reboot their Wi-Fi routers and NAS devices.

The above has been showing up in newspapers and on the Internet recently.  It is a must do, so if you haven’t already done so, reboot your routers now before the Russian hackers who created this problem make problems for you. Here is some general knowledge: https://www.cnet.com/how-to/fbi-wants-you-to-reset-router-heres-how/ .  Click on this link or copy and paste the link to your browser to get more information.

Note:  James Mears sent me this link which is less technical than the one I provided.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/posteverything/wp/2018/06/06/why-the-fbi-wants-you-to-reboot-your-router-and-why-that-wont-be-enough-next-time/?utm_term=.ecbeeae4ade1

Microsoft Scams

Neighborhood Security, Technical Suggestions

The other day my wife received an e-mail purportedly from Microsoft with the subject:  Suspicious Message: “We are having some time trouble online identifying your… system”

She quickly identified it as a Phishing message and forwarded it to me for reporting. I needed to send Microsoft the complete headers for the message, which meant I had to get them from the message on her computer, but it was a Mac, not the PC I was used to. After some painful manual manipulations between OutLook for Mac and PC versions I was able to extract the required information for the Microsoft Abuse Reporting Site.

I took the message headers, pasted them onto the original message and forwarded them to abuse@microsoft.com .  I received a reply from Microsoft stating that the message WAS NOT from them (which I already knew) and giving me a link which contained a lot of valuable information I wanted to share with our BLOG community.  See the link below:

https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/safety/online-privacy/phishing-scams.aspx

If you get a suspicious message purportedly from Microsoft, your bank, some agency like the FBI, Social Security, etc.  You can always forward it to abuse@(Microsoft, your bank, etc.)  Most agencies will respond to messages addressed to abuse@(whatever agency you want).  Remember to include the full header so that it can be investigated.