Along with the many joys it brings—social media, online shopping, how-to YouTube videos—for 7% to 10% of people each year, the digital age has also created a special kind of misery: it’s called identity theft. While this particular level of purgatory isn’t inescapable by any means, you can get stuck there for a long time. And the financial and emotional havoc identity theft leaves in its wake takes many forms. You can be denied unemployment benefits or other government services because someone else is already using them. Your credit can be shredded. You can be left responsible for thousands of dollars in fraudulent bills. And the psychological trauma of identity theft is no laughing matter, either. According to a study by the Better Business Bureau, identity theft victims report being worried, angry, and frustrated (85.7%), violated (83.7%), and sad or depressed (59.2%). A study performed by the Identity Theft Resource Center found that a full 10% of victims have considered suicide. Yes, it’s that bad.
When your children are using devices that can connect to the internet, you should be using Parental Restrictions to protect them. Apple makes it very easy to set Parental Controls on your iPhone, iPad, or iPod Touch. These restrictions allow you to control a number of things including purchasing, internet browsing, downloading apps, and viewing explicit content. Learn more about Parental Restrictions on iPhone below.
There are parents who don’t let their kids play with technology. These old-school parents sometimes shame others for giving their kids screen-time, and they boast about how tech-free their kids are. Then there’s the rest of us. We’re the ones that need a few minutes of peace to cook dinner or just want the kids to be quiet on car rides.
Letting your children have screen-time doesn’t make you a bad parent. However, you should be doing everything you can to protect your kids and your wallet from the perils of the internet.
Parental Restrictions allow your children to use their devices and give you peace of mind while they do it. As a parent, all you want to do is protect your kids. The internet makes it easier for your kids to unknowingly interact with predators. To prevent that, use Parental Restrictions.
There is a common misconception that you have to be a tech expert to understand cybersecurity. That is simply not true. There is a lot that you can be doing to protect your personal computer and your entire business with little to no knowledge of cybersecurity.
Everyone is a Target
Cybersecurity threats affect everyone. You might think that your digital footprint is small, or that your data isn’t that important, but everyone is a potential target. You could be poor or have a bad credit score, but identity theft should still be a concern.
Cyber Criminals and Identity Thieves generally follow a practice of cast a wide net to catch a few fish. They don’t care what fish they catch. They are only looking to catch one or two people that are gullible or vulnerable enough to attack.
If you happen to be the fish that they catch, they could potentially leave you with even worse credit, in more debt, and little to no way to work your way out of it. In some cases, you might not even know that you are facing a cybersecurity problem until it’s too late.
Believe it or not, your phone is susceptible to viruses, malware, and phishing scams. Protecting your laptop or desktop computer is vital to protecting your data, but you should be keeping an eye on your phone too.
Your phone is in danger of catching a virus or malware from a variety of sources including:
Malicious apps,
Fake Wi-Fi,
Bad links,
Phishing Emails,
Phishing Texts,
And more.
Learn more about the dangers facing your phone and how to protect yourself below.
Traveling for business is required for many jobs. Working while traveling for pleasure is often a necessary evil for many small business owners as well. To protect you and your devices while you’re working on the go, you should understand the dangers of public Wi-Fi.
What is Public Wi-Fi?
Public Wi-Fi is any wireless network that can be accessed in a public place. This includes wireless internet at the airport, hotel, train station, library, coffee shop, and more. There is accessible wireless internet nearly everywhere you go. Some wireless service providers even offer Wi-Fi connectivity on major highways.
It may seem relatively harmless or even safe to connect to the wireless network at your hotel or local library. But there could be dangers lurking around every corner on these strange wireless connections. Dangers that you might not even notice or have any power against.
As small businesses, it’s important for us to be conscious of the security needs of our clients and customers. As a web development company, in particular, we must always be thinking about how to maintain the privacy and security of our clients AND our clients’ clients.
Collecting Information
As a business, it is necessary to collect information about your client. This information can be used for a variety of purposes from leads to newsletters or even internal research. The most important thing that businesses must remember when collecting any information from clients is to collect only what you need and maintain transparency.
There are a number of factors that impact the security of your password from the complexity and length or even how easy it is to guess by those around you.
To check if your password is secure enough, ask yourself the following questions. (And answer honestly.)
How long has it been since you last changed your password?
Do you use the same one for more than one website?
Net Neutrality has been in the news recently, but in our business, we find that a lot of people don’t truly understand what is going on. Let us break it down for you.
What is Net Neutrality?
Net Neutrality is the principle that the internet should be free and unimpeded. This ensures that freedom of speech is maintained. This seems a little scary, so let’s break it down a little further.
Frank Payton, the Uber Goober at Techno Goober, shares his thoughts on contact forms after over 10 years developing websites for one client at a time.
Websites Generate Sales Leads
The core of Techno Goober lies in our ability to produce a quality website that produces leads. The most important reason to have a website is to have an online presence. That online presence lends credibility to your company or organization. It would be nice that your investment resulted in some return though right?
One of the methods for capturing leads from your website has always been the contact form. The goal of the contact form is for the user to fill it out. Then you receive it and contact them resulting in sales. Sounds pretty simple, but the flaws are undeniable.
Over time, I have come to despise this required form of lead generation, but my hatred has put our client’s websites in a better position because of it.
Phishing scams can be dangerous for you and your online accounts. Your email provider, like Google, works very hard to ensure that its email clients are safe from phishing scams. However, that just means that when a phishing scam does get through it is especially deceptive.
What is phishing?
Phishing scams are emails, texts, or phone calls that try to trick you into clicking a link, revealing confidential information, or downloading a virus. These scams are usually easy to spot for a number of reasons, but, sometimes, they are incredibly difficult to spot leaving you vulnerable.
