Recycling

In honor of Earth Day (yesterday, yes, I forgot), I found an article about recycling your old tech stuff. It starts with properly removing all data so it's not recoverable (doesn't matter if everything is "deleted" if it can still be rebuilt), and it goes through all of the different ways you can recycle it. If you're like me (cough, or my family, cough), then you've probably accumulated a lot of junk. Like old mp3 players, old monitors, old desktops, and many other tech products like that. These are things you'll want to wipe properly and you probably don't want cluttering your house anymore. I recommend taking the time some weekend to do it, maybe as part of your spring/summer cleaning?? There are some helpful tips and steps listed in the article if you get a little lost or need some guidance. Happy (Belated) Earth Day!

http://www.pcworld.com/article/2035435/recycle-your-old-tech-gear.html

12 tips for PC users

I love these How-To articles on PCWorld. These are 12 PC tasks that you should do, but a lot of people don't. General maintenance will help you to get the best experience (and life) from your computer. I'll summarize them in a list here:

1. Clean your computer from dust and crumbs and gross stuff like that
2. Back Up your data
3. Guard against viruses and malware
4. Update Your Software
5. Organize Your Files
6. Remove files/programs that take up space (be careful!)
7. Encrypt
8. Change Passwords
9. Optimize Startup
10. Organize Your Inbox
11. Automate
12. Defragment Regularly

http://www.pcworld.com/article/2032032/12-must-do-pc-tasks.html

Post-World Backup Day: Hardware

World Backup Day was last Sunday (March 31)! So it's been about a week. I found a handy article about backup drives (although it didn't include information about backup software). It recommends getting a backup drive that is at least double your hard drive size. So if you have a 500GB hard drive, then get a 1TB backup drive. The article also goes through some options of the hardware of backup drives. Maybe my next post will be about software? Now, speaking of World Backup Day... I think it's time for me to go and backup all my data. My laptop is a little aged, so it's always good to be prepared!

http://www.pcworld.com/article/2032508/in-honor-of-world-backup-day-how-to-protect-your-data.html

Evernote was Hacked!

Oh no! Evernote is my favorite ever! They are requiring every single user to go in and change their password, which is a smart move on their part. It seems that it was a coordinated attack and that Evernote blocked the attacked when it noticed the suspicious activity. According to their blog, none of the data was accessed, changed, or lost, and none of the payment information was accessed either. Evernote posted in their blog some basic steps that you can take to protect yourself, for those who don't have any experience with security, and they've made it so you have to login and change your password before you can access your data and sync it up again. For more information about this exploit, you just need to check out their blog and any articles that may be about it!

http://evernote.com/corp/news/password_reset.php
http://www.techhive.com/article/2029974/evernote-reports-hack-attack-tells-users-to-reset-passwords.html

Protecting Your Wi-Fi

This article gave instructions of how you should change your wi-fi password. The nitty-gritty details weren't what I was too interested in, but I did enjoy that they pointed out that even the password to your network will need to be changed often, not just the ones to your accounts on online sites. People can still cause damage to you if you're not protecting the access to your network, so it's good to make sure that you have taken every necessary precaution to protecting yourself. It's not easy to have everyone in your household go and change their password, and they may all get really annoyed with you, but the protection that you gain from it is worth it.

http://www.pcworld.com/article/2026340/change-your-wi-fi-password-on-various-devices.html

Surviving

I got a little "click-crazy" with searching articles... and I found a fun one about creating a "survival kit" with a flash drive. Seeing as how cheap they are and how most everyone has one, I thought that this would be a great idea to touch on. It kinda links back to the previous post about being prepared for disaster and having a back-up plan (or multiple back-up plans!). First, I learned that there are lots of portable apps! I don't know where I've been, but I was very excited to discover these. Second, you can use a second flash drive to store SystemRescueCD on it. It is a free live operating system, Linux-based, so you'll always be prepared.

Now I want to go buy a couple new flash drives and prepare!

http://rikkitechthoughts.blogspot.com/2013/01/encryption.html
http://www.pcworld.com/article/2021326/turn-your-flash-drive-into-a-portable-pc-survival-kit.html