Logins without passwords are increasingly common, and something Microsoft has been pushing hard lately. Going “passwordless” does not mean you no longer need authentication; you just use something other than a traditional password. Think of those codes you sometimes get when logging into a website, often financial sites. Passwords suffer as an authentication method for …
Category Archives: Privacy
OCR, SPAM increases, Enhance Old Photos
Being able to copy text embedded in an image will soon be easy in Windows 10 and 11 as part of Microsoft PowerToys. In the next few months, with PowerOCR, you will be able to select part of an image with recognizable text to be converted and put in the Windows clipboard as text for …
Is Windows Trusted Platform Module (TPM) Update Needed?
Windows 11 is coming. Are you ready? Or does it even matter? There has been a flurry of excitement and agony around the system requirements for Windows 11. Microsoft is insisting on a fairly recent version of a security hardware component called Trusted Platform Module (TPM), which can protect against potential malware and ransomware attacks …
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Protecting While Sharing
When loaning your smartphone to someone else, you can do a few things first to limit what they can do. On iPhones, turn on Guided Access (Settings>Accessibility, and slide on Guided Access), and use Passcode Settings to set a different code from your normal unlock code. Explore Time Limits for other options. Limit use to …
No More Passwords?
Apple, Google, and Microsoft are working to end passwords. Before you cheer too loudly, review what they are trying to do. This does not mean that there will not be a need for some type of authentication. Have you ever tried to login to a website and had to get a one-time code sent to …
Windows Tips, Text Mistakes
I love how Facebook researchers find the darnedest things. The latest out of their labs (actually an internal study from 2018) is that they found that using Facebook increased loneliness more than other activities its researchers surveyed, including video games and watching TV. As more people “discover” Windows 11, they find things like dark mode …