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Tag: tech tip tuesday

Tech Tip Tuesday: BCC Me… PLEASE!!!

Tue, December 22, 2015 Published by

I’m sure you’re all very familiar with getting emails that have multiple recipients in the address field. The typical scenario is sending an email to recipients who are directly involved in the discussion with possible indirect participants who are CC’d or “Carbon Copied”. However, when someone wants to share news or information they can get a little overzealous with the “To” list. Then when each recipient “Replies All” everyone gets a copy. Like a group text! Ugh! While there is good purpose and intent with the Reply All command in certain situations, an email with 50 or more recipients can become quite annoying to some. Not to mention how much email it builds up in people’s Inbox and in the email server database. Well there is a better way!

Bcc stands for “Blind Carbon Copy.” This means that if you add 20 recipient names in the Bcc box, each recipient will only see their own. Then if they choose Reply All, only the sender will receive a copy. As I said before, if you’re addressing a small group where each recipient needs to view the collaboration of the email, this is useful. But if it’s sharing some personal news or advertisement, Bcc is a good way to curb the potential Email Gone Wild scenario. You may also want to use Bcc to keep other recipients email addresses private to the group. Respecting peoples private information is very important these days.

As useful of a tool that Bcc is, you may experience a few problems. Bcc is widely used by spammers. For that reason some junk email filters may flag them as junk when an email arrives with the recipient name in this field. Making sure you’re on the Safe Senders list of whoever you are sending to will keep this from happening. Here on campus this will not be a problem. Another possible problem is using distribution lists in the Bcc field. If a recipient has any rules in place to sort emails by recipient, this will cause them problems. However, sorting is usually indicated where repetitive emails arrive for a specific reason. And lastly, many email providers limit the number of recipients to try and repress spammers. You will get errors and warnings if this is the case.

So how do you use this field? Each email client is different, including the many webmail options, but the CC and Bcc options are usually very obvious and easy to get to. On campus we use Outlook for email. At first glance when you open a new email you won’t see the Bcc option. But if you click the “To” button, a dialogue box will appear with the whole campus list of email users and distribution lists. At the bottom of this box will be the “Bcc” field. Use it the same way you would the “To” and “CC” fields. Maybe practice using it with a few coworkers or friends. So the next time you want to send out some cool info, the Bcc field will prevent you from becoming the origin of an EMAIL STORM! Lol!

“RAM” – Noun or Verb? Animal or Action?

Tue, December 1, 2015 Published by

Neither! At least when you’re referring to computers. 🙂

RAM is actually an acronym which stands for “Random Access Memory”. Because of this, it’s reference is typically shortened to “Memory”. For example, How much memory does your computer have? It’s size or capacity is measured in powers of 2 and these days the increments are in Gigabytes or “GB”. For example, 4 GB, 8 GB, 16 GB, 32 GB etc. Without a doubt, RAM has the greatest effect on computer performance. If there’s not enough, it can choke and slow your computer to a crawl no matter how fast the processor is. The processor actually relies on RAM to do its job. Imagine RAM as being the top of your desk. The bigger your desk is, the more things you can work on at the same time. If you have a tiny little desk, chances are you can only work on one thing at a time. So still the question remains, HOW MUCH?? To be honest, there’s no exact science for determining this. It’s kind of up to you and your intended computer use. But here’s a road map to help.

All software programs and applications loaded on your computer will take a bite out of available RAM while in use. Including your operating system and antivirus which are always running many services in the background. So if you add to that by opening more programs and applications, you continue to subtract from available RAM. This means the biggest consideration when determining the amount of RAM you may need is how many applications do you intend to use “at the same time”. The most typical user will have email open while browsing the Internet or social sites like Facebook (4 to 8 GB). A more heavy user may do that but add to it heavy word processing, PowerPoint presentation or publication creation (8 to 16 GB). And an even heavier user may be a photographer or graphics artist engaging in heavy duty photo editing and movie creation (16 to 32 GB). So you see, while I’m sure any salesman can convince you that more is always better, in the end only you hold the answers to “How Much” RAM you really need. Be aware, It’s possible to reach overkill if you don’t truly need it and additional RAM seems to come with a pretty hefty price tag. The beauty is that it can be upgraded later if you find you really need it. So don’t stress. Think about what you might need and go for it.

Passwords, Passwords, Passwords!!!

Tue, November 24, 2015 Published by

Never before has so much information been so accessible to so many people electronically. Welcome to “The Internet”. In many ways the “Information Age” is a wonderful time to be alive. But as is often the case, there is a dark side. The same technology that makes it really easy to store, search and view all of this information also makes it possible for others to get hold of personal information. When it comes to using computers and the Internet, we are challenged to create a plethora of user names and passwords to protect our information. But how do you make up a username and password that will be easy for you to remember but impossible for anyone else to figure out? Here’s some advice…

First of all, there are good passwords and bad passwords? An example of a bad password is any word that is in the dictionary or a name. If someone wanted to “crack” your password using computer software they would probably start with lists of common passwords like that. So don’t make it easy for them. For the dedicated “password cracker” there are actually huge lists of common passwords available online. Also, when you hear on the news that the accounts of the XYZ Company or the ABC Website have been hacked, those passwords can end up on websites where other hackers can access them.

So what makes for a good password? Here are some basic suggestions:
DOs:

  1. Avoid common names, dates, phone numbers or things easily associated with you.
  2. Avoid common words or phrases as they would be the first thing checked by password cracking software.
  3. Use a combination of numbers and letters. For example, substitute numbers for letters and letters for numbers in a word or phrase. “H!Th3r3!”
  4. Make it something you can remember all by yourself. Think of a sequence or acronym.
  5. Try to make it at least 8 – 16 characters long. Obviously the longer the better. Cracking gets exponentially harder with each additional character.
  6. Plan on changing your password often. Experts suggest changing your passwords at least every 6 months. Your employer may require it more often.

DON’Ts:

  1. Don’t use naturally occurring keyboard sequences like “qwerty” or adjacent combinations.
  2. Never share your password! Protect them like you do your SSN. With either one, anyone can pose as you.
  3. Don’t write it down anywhere! That’s just a given. Once again, don’t make it easy.
  4. Avoid using the same password for multiple sites or applications. Cracked once and they have everything.
  5. Avoid saving passwords. What’s convenient for you is convenient for a hacker.

Whether it’s about protecting the money in your bank account, restricting access to your email, or protecting employer information, you’ll need to have good usernames and passwords to protect yourself. Choose wisely.