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Can Anyone Really Track Your Phone’s Precise Location?

It’s 2019 and everyone willingly carries a tracking device in their pockets. People can have their precise locations tracked in real time by law enforcement, the government, and advertising companies. It may sound like dystopian fiction, but it’s a reality.

How law enforcement can track your location
AT&T, Sprint, and T-Mobile all sell data — including geographic locations associated with customer phone numbers — to a variety of sketchy third-party companies. This data, for instance, can be used by the bail bond industry to track people down, sometimes as accurate as a few hundred feet of their location. There’s not much oversight and rogue bounty hunters have access to the data. And this isn’t even a new problem.

Back in May 2018, The New York Times reported that this could happen. After the story broke, cellular carriers promised to do better. AT&T, Sprint, and T-Mobile have all promised to stop selling this data to aggregators. And it appears that Verizon already stopped before the New York Times story.

How the government can track your location
It’s worth emphasizing that the government itself can still get access to your location data from your cellular company. They just need to get a warrant, then serve that to your cellular service provider.

If the technology exists, the government can get access to it with a warrant. It is quite a change from decades ago when the government had no way to track people’s real-time locations with a device that’s nearly always on their person.

The government doesn’t even need to get your cellular company involved. There are other tricks they can use to pinpoint your location with even better accuracy, such as by deploying “stingray devices” near you. These devices impersonate nearby cellular towers, forcing your phone to connect to them.

How advertisers can track your location
It’s not just your cellular carrier. Even if your cellular carrier perfectly safeguarded your data, it’d probably be very easy to track you thanks to the location access you’ve given to apps installed on your smartphone.

As innocuous as they may seem, Weather apps are particularly bad. You install a weather app and give it access to your location to show you the local weather. But that weather app may also be selling your data to the highest bidder. You likely didn’t pay money for your weather app, so the developers will need to make money somehow to keep the lights and servers on.

The city of Los Angeles is currently suing the Weather Channel, saying that its app intrusively mines and sells its users’ location data. Back in 2017, AccuWeather was caught sending its users’ location data to third-party advertisers — even after updating the app to remove that feature.

It’s best to avoid giving third-party apps access to your location. Stop using third-party weather apps and use your phone’s built-in weather app instead.

How your family can track your location
Your phone is capable of determining its location and sharing it in the background, even if the screen is off.

You don’t need to have an app open. You can see this for yourself if you use a service like Apple’s “Find My Friends,” which is included on iPhones. Find My Friends can be used to share your precise real-time locations with family and friends. After you give someone access, they can open the app, and Apple’s servers will ping your phone, get your location, and show it to them. Of course, this is only with your permission, but it just shows how pervasive this technology is.

What’s The Difference Between Internet, Intranet, & Extranet?

The terms intranet, Internet, and extranet are often used interchangeably; however, there are some important differences between them. To better understand these differences, it is useful to look at the prefixes.

The prefix intra means within, inter means between, and extra means beyond. So how does this translate to online-based networks?

Basically, the Internet is an open entity that anyone in the world can access. It is open to everyone who has a working computer or device and appropriate Internet access.

An intranet is a private network that is typically limited to authorized users.

For example, most major organizations operate some form of intranet that only employees of the business can access and use. Intranets are usually employed to support a corporate culture and objectives and provide a platform on which employees can share information, communicate, collaborate, and network.

They are generally faster than the Internet because the information is stored on local network servers as opposed to being accessed from data centers throughout the world.

An extranet combines some elements of both the Internet and intranet. It is open to people both within and outside an organization; however, only people who have pre-arranged authorization can access it. An extranet is a restricted network that some, but not all, members of the public can access. A company may develop an extranet to create a mechanism by which it can connect with suppliers, customers, and other external agencies without making the content visible to the general public.

Why You Should Consider VoIP For Your Business

A growing number of small businesses are switching from traditional landlines to VoIP (Voice over Internet Protocol) systems. While it can be an uphill task to overhaul the entire telecommunications system of any small business, it is definitely worth considering in light of the ever-increasing costs of traditional services. In fact, according to In-Stat, almost 79 percent of American businesses use VoIP phones, a 37 percent increase since 2009.

VoIP is a method of making phone calls using the internet as opposed to using typical landlines. VoIP services integrate IP phones, which look pretty much like traditional office phones, except they plug into an internet connection with an Ethernet cable.

Cost effectiveness
The biggest VoIP attraction is low cost. Since it is internet-based, hosted systems usually require little to no hardware investment apart from routers, Ethernet cables and the phones themselves, which are offered at reduced prices. According to estimates, the monthly service fees can run up to 40 percent less than traditional phone lines, and many providers offer monthly services with no long-term contracts.

VoIP is particularly cost-effective, if you have employees working from satellite offices or telecommuters. A telecommuter can take a VoIP phone home and make calls by plugging it into his home internet connection to make and receive calls on the company lines at no additional cost.

Other benefits
Certain VoIP service providers have introduced mobile apps that allow workers to make and receive phone calls on their mobile devices using the company phone numbers. Their privacy is therefore protected since they do not give their personal phone number. In addition, the company owns the line so if an employee leaves, calls are routed to the company rather than the employee’s cell phone.

Drawbacks
While the mobility and scalability of VoIP systems are attractive features, there are some drawbacks to consider. For instance, since phones depend on an internet connection, if the connection fails, the phones would be dysfunctional. You can still as a precaution measure automatically drive incoming calls to voicemail or redirect them to the user’s cell phone.

In addition, bandwidth problems could affect the quality of the calls made. If other office activities are consuming the greatest portion of bandwidth, calls will be filled with pauses and clicks, and dropped calls may also occur. There might also be extra charges for connecting to mobile phones or conference calling, and many VoIP providers don’t offer 911 services or charge extra for it.

The future
The increase in VoIP adoption is undeniable, and analysts predict that it will become the predominant business phone service over the next decade.

Inside The United States Of Cybersecurity

Thomas Fox is president of Tech Experts, southeast Michigan’s leading small business computer support company.

Last year, Alabama and South Dakota passed laws mandating data breach notification for its residents.

The passage meant all 50 states, the District of Columbia and several U.S. territories now have legal frameworks that require businesses and other entities to notify consumers about compromised data.

All 50 states also have statutes addressing hacking, unauthorized access, computer trespass, viruses or malware, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures (NCSL). Every state has laws that allow consumers to freeze credit reporting, too.

While those milestones are notable, there are broader issues when it comes to legislative approaches to cybersecurity across the United States. There are vast discrepancies and differences among states when it comes to cybersecurity protection. [Read more…] about Inside The United States Of Cybersecurity

Tech Giants Are Branching Into The Medical Field

Jason Cooley is Support Services Manager for Tech Experts.

In early 2018, Amazon announced a partnership with J.P. Morgan and Berkshire Hathaway to restructure healthcare for its combined 1.2 million employees.

This partnership between juggernauts is a stepping stone for Amazon, who has many irons in the fire when it comes to healthcare.

Already, Amazon has been selling medical supplies and equipment. Using partnerships with some of the largest distributors in the U.S., they are making headway and have applied or been approved for all state-by-state licenses needed.

They have also been working on AWS, which is Amazon’s cloud business, to compete with Microsoft Azure and Alphabet’s Google Cloud to provide cloud-based solutions for medical practices and health start-ups.

Amazon’s most exciting prospect in the health field may be Alexa. Amazon’s Alexa has quickly become one of the most used, highest rated, and most reliable voice assistants out there. Amazon has started a partnership with Merck to award $125,000 to the best use of Alexa to battle diabetes.

The idea is exciting, but maybe not as exciting as hospitals experimenting with Alexa. Surgeons may use Alexa to create checklists and sharing important information with discharged patients.

We may see a day where Alexa is the tie-in to our appointments with doctors. Imagine having a digital visit set up by Alexa, using a camera to interface with your doctor, and having Alexa capable of sending your prescriptions to the pharmacy.

The possibilities are endless and Amazon knows that. They are dedicating a lot of time an effort to streamline health services – making a nice profit, but also saving money for the average consumer.

While Amazon has an interesting path and a widespread take on where it can make a difference, Apple is also making some headway.

Apple has started beta use of its health record system. Apple utilizes FHIR (Fast Healthcare Interoperability Resources) in the health record app.

FHIR is technology being used across the country in an attempt to make interoperability and cooperation the standard in healthcare.

First discussed back in 2013, Apple has been working hard to make its own mark. In 2016, Apple acquired Gliimpse, a personal health record company. Apple has used that software, along with FHIR to build out their system.

In 2018, they added EMR data into the phone’s health record and shortly after announced their API would be available to third parties to work on applications that would tie-in with health records.

This has allowed patients to transfer their records to their phone and allows other apps to use that data as well.

Games like Pokemon Go and Oscar utilize the step tracker built in to health records. A restaurant chain called Sweetgreen logs meals ordered into the health record.

Continued use could create endless possibilities for managing our own health.

More than 120 different healthcare companies are part of the beta testing for Apple’s health record.

Much like Amazon, Apple’s ambition does not stop there. Apple also has a similar trajectory to that of Amazon. They believe in a day where there is Telemedicine, virtual appointments, and health information at your fingertips.

These two aren’t the only ones trying to get in on the healthcare game. Of course, tech giant Google is also working on being a large part of future medical developments. Tech and healthcare are both evolving and it appears like they will be on the trip together.

CPU Basics: Multiple CPUs, Cores, And Hyper-Threading

What’s a central processing unit (CPU)?
The central processing unit (or CPU) in your computer is the brains of the operation. It’s a small computer chip that sits atop the main circuit board (motherboard) of a computer. It performs the computational work, such as running programs or applications.

It’s the core of your PC, smartphone, or tablet, and it’s what makes the whole device run as it should. At its core, a CPU takes instructions from a program or application and performs a calculation.

The executed instruction, or calculation, can involve basic arithmetic, comparing certain numbers together, or moving them around in memory.

Since everything in a computer is represented by numbers, those kinds of simple tasks equate to what a CPU does. It’s what facilitates everything from starting up Windows to watching a video.

CPU clock speed, or clock rate, is measured in Hertz – generally in gigahertz, or GHz. A CPU’s clock speed rate is a measure of how many clock cycles a CPU can perform per second. The clock speed used to be enough when comparing performance.

Things aren’t so simple anymore.

A CPU core is a CPU’s processor. A core can work on one task while another core works on a different task, so the more cores a CPU has, the more efficient it is.

A CPU that offers multiple cores or hyper-threading may perform significantly better than a single-core CPU of the same speed that doesn’t feature hyper-threading.

PCs with multiple CPUs can have an even bigger advantage.

All of these features are designed to allow PCs to more easily run multiple processes at the same time – increasing your performance when multitasking or under the demands of powerful apps like video encoders and computer aided design (CAD) applications.

What is hyper-threading?
 Hyper-Threading (simultaneous multithreading) is a process where a CPU splits each of its physical cores into virtual ones, which are known as threads.

Hyper-threading allows each core to do two things simultaneously. It increases CPU performance by improving the processor’s efficiency, thereby allowing you to run multiple demanding apps at the same time.

Multiple cores
 Originally, CPUs had a single core. That meant that the physical CPU had a single central processing unit on it. To increase performance, manufacturers added additional “cores,” or central processing units.
A dual-core CPU has two central processing units, so it appears to the operating system as two CPUs.

A CPU with two cores could run two different processes at the same time. This speeds up your system because your computer can do multiple things at once.

Multiple CPUs
 Most computers only have a single CPU. That single CPU may have multiple cores or hyper-threading technology – but it’s still only one physical CPU unit inserted into a single CPU socket on the motherboard.

Before hyper-threading and multi-core CPUs came around, people attempted to add additional processing power to computers by adding additional CPUs. This requires a motherboard with multiple CPU sockets.

The motherboard also needs additional hardware to connect those CPU sockets to the RAM and other resources. Systems with multiple CPUs also consume more power.

Systems with multiple CPUs aren’t very common among home PCs today. Even a high-powered CAD desktop with multiple graphics cards will generally only have a single CPU.

You’ll find multiple CPU systems among supercomputers, servers, and similar high-end systems that need as much number-crunching power as they can get.

Top 5 Cybersecurity Predictions For 2019

Thomas Fox is president of Tech Experts, southeast Michigan’s leading small business computer support company.

Cyber threats are a genuine danger for businesses, no matter their size or industry. Companies that face data breaches are likely to fail within months after the attack, according to the National Cyber Security Alliance. Security issues can ruin your reputation and cause expensive damage to your company.

In 2019, we are already predicting increased cyber crimes to steal more data and resources. The FBI reported that over $1.4 billion in losses were experienced by companies and individuals in 2017.

These expenses come from increasing security, losing information, losing physical resources, ransomware payouts, scams and more. The most significant sources of cybercrime included: [Read more…] about Top 5 Cybersecurity Predictions For 2019

Challenges Of Staffing In An Increasingly Tech World

Jason Cooley is Support Services Manager for Tech Experts.

“Good help is hard to find.” It’s something you have probably heard before. It has been said for generations.

Hiring fresh graduates is always tough as they are unproven and likely accepting their first jobs in their field. Hiring experienced workers costs more money and they most likely need better incentives to switch jobs.

However, fresh graduates may have more experience with recent industrial developments – and experienced workers may not feel the need to adapt to new innovations until it’s absolutely necessary.

So what happens when all paths forward intersect? Where experienced workers are becoming underqualified as the requirements of their jobs change? Where younger people want more than they are worth because they have general technical skills to go along with their chosen path?

This affects the workforce as a whole, not only IT. Much like any other field, we have our own challenges with staffing as time moves forward. Careers in IT obviously have a broad range of computer skills as a requirement, but there are industries where using a computer wasn’t always needed.

Working retail in today’s world will no doubt require use of a computer for most employees from time to time. Selling insurance? Most, if not all, processing is done on a computer. A loan department at a bank is going to use a computer and so are the tellers. Gas station? Fast food? All are places you will typically see computers and other technology in use.

It can be intimidating when industries like construction move away from pen and paper. Your accountant uses computers, and now you probably will too. Major trucking companies may leave the paper logbooks behind in lieu of digital recordkeeping.

So what happens to the employee at the construction company who has been there for 20 years with no computer skills? He is a foreman and all reporting is now done on a tablet then uploaded over a VPN to the main office every day. It’s a complex new skill to learn, especially when put against those who can operate tech with no effort…and who are asking for the same (or lower) salary.

For some people, they may feel like they have to learn a whole new career just to keep up with their own. As challenging as it is for the veteran employee, the same challenge can be had for a new hire. You face the challenge of not only the day-to-day job duties, but also with learning how to use five new pieces of software.

The challenge for employers is probably the most difficult. Keeping your old employees may be just as hard as finding new ones.

As new systems are implemented, experts of antiquated processes become dispensable if they can’t become acclimated. Hiring a recent graduate gives you an employee who knows those new systems, but they may be too “green” and make mistakes experienced workers already learned, adding stress to the environment.

Depending on the size of the company and the industry, there will always be unique staffing challenges. Not everyone will be forced to use a computer or a tablet for work, or you may not be able to employ someone who isn’t proficient with one. As tough as the market is for job seekers, I’d argue it’s a lot tougher on those tasked with hiring the next class of experts.

One thing that’s clear is that we aren’t going to back-track on technology due to the benefits. For every industry, modernization is becoming a matter of “when” rather than “if.” Employees and employers alike will have to keep up.

HTTPS And Why The Internet Still Isn’t Secure

Frank DeLuca is a field technician for Tech Experts.

HTTPS stands for “Hyper Text Transfer Protocol Secure” and it is the secure version of HTTP, the protocol over which data is sent between your browser and the website you’re connected to.

Most web traffic online is now sent over an HTTPS connection, making it “secure.” In fact, Google now warns that unencrypted HTTP sites are “Not Secure.”

So why is there still so much malware, phishing, and other dangerous activity online?

“Secure” Sites Have a Secure Connection

In previous iterations of Chrome, it used to display the word “Secure” along with a green padlock in the address bar when you were visiting a website using HTTPS. Modern versions of Chrome simply have a little gray padlock icon next to the navigation bar, without the word “Secure.”

That’s partly because HTTPS is now considered the new baseline standard. Everything should be secure by default, so Chrome only warns you that a connection is “Not Secure” when you’re accessing a site over an HTTP connection.

The reason for the removal from displaying the word “Secure” is that it may have been a little misleading. It may have easily been misconstrued to appear like Chrome was vouching for the contents of the site as if everything on the page is “secure.” But that’s not true at all. A “secure” HTTPS site could be filled with malware or phishing attempts.

HTTPS Does Not Mean A Site is “Secure”

HTTPS is a solid protocol and all websites should use it. However, all it means is the website operator has purchased a certificate and set up encryption to secure the connection.

For example, a dangerous website full of malicious downloads might be delivered via HTTPS. The website and the files you download are sent over a secure connection, but they might not be secure themselves.

Similarly, a criminal could buy a domain like “www.bankofamerica.com,” get an SSL encryption certificate for it, and imitate Bank of America’s real website. This would be a phishing site with the “secure” padlock, but again, it only refers to the connection itself.

HTTPS Stops Snooping and Tampering

Despite that, HTTPS is great. This encryption prevents people from snooping on your data in transit, and it stops man-in-the-middle attacks that can modify the website as it’s sent to you. For example, no one can snoop on payment details you send to the website.

In short, HTTPS ensures the connection between you and that particular website is secure. No one can eavesdrop or tamper with the data in-between.

HTTPS Is An Improvement

Websites switching to HTTPS helps solve some problems, but it doesn’t end the scourge of malware, phishing, spam, attacks on vulnerable sites, or various other scams online.

However, the shift toward HTTPS is still great for the Internet. According to Google’s statistics, 80% of web pages loaded in Chrome on Windows are loaded over HTTPS. Plus, Chrome users on Windows spend 88% of their browsing time on HTTPS sites.

This transition does make it harder for criminals to eavesdrop on personal data, especially on public Wi-Fi or other public networks. It also greatly minimizes the odds that you’ll encounter a man-in-the-middle attack on public Wi-Fi or another network.

It’s still no silver bullet. You still need to use basic online safety practices to protect yourself from malware, spot phishing sites, and avoid other online problems.

Wannacry Ransomware Continues To Be A Problem For Some

It’s been almost two years since the outbreak of the Wannacry ransomware epidemic. Unfortunately, all this time later, some companies are still dealing with the fallout. According to the latest research, Wannacry is still infecting hundreds of thousands of computers around the globe.

WannaCry is a ransomware worm that spread rapidly through across a number of computer networks in May of 2017. After infecting Windows computers, it encrypts files on the PC’s hard drive, making them impossible for users to access, then demands a ransom payment in bitcoin in order to decrypt them.

A number of factors made the initial spread of WannaCry particularly noteworthy: it struck a number of important and high-profile systems, including many in Britain’s National Health Service; it exploited a Windows vulnerability that was suspected to have been first discovered by the United States National Security Agency; and it was linked by Symantec and other security researchers to the Lazarus Group, a cybercrime organization connected to the North Korean government.

As grim as that sounds, it’s not all bad news. After all, the malware has been rendered harmless by the now famous “kill switch” discovered by Kryptos Logic security researcher Marcus Hutchins, who found a glaring flaw in the design of the software. The flaw allowed him to register a domain and encode it with instructions that would keep the ransomware component of Wannacry from activating and actually encrypting files.

That, however, did nothing to get rid of the malicious code infecting legions of PCs around the world. Sadly, much of the code remains in place on infected machines, silently lurking in the background. Kryptos Logic is uniquely positioned to know, since they control the kill switch domain and have continued to monitor traffic to it since building the kill switch on it. To this day, their site continues to be pinged by new IP addresses as the now toothless infection continues to spread.

It’s not hard to see why the removal of a piece of malware that has been rendered suddenly toothless takes a lower priority for busy and often harried IT security professionals. Leaving the code in place on infected machines is not without risk, however.

It is possible, however unlikely, that the hackers who built the program to begin with could find a way to get around the kill switch. If that should happen, then we’ll be facing the full fury of the epidemic all over again, something no one in the field of digital security wants to contemplate.

The bottom line is simply this: If you were impacted by Wannacry when the outbreak initially occurred, it’s worth double checking to make sure that all traces of the malicious code are gone from your network.