CAVEAT EMPTOR!!!

“Buyer Beware!” is a more important warning than ever before if you’re buying phones, computers, tablets and other electronic devices online. We all like online bargains, but the looting that took place as peaceful demonstrations fell apart will put a lot of stolen goods on the market. It’s a fact of life – not a political or social statement. Here’s what you need to know.

First, mobile phones, tablets and computers have built-in tracking. If the merchant from whom the devices were stolen reports the identifying information to the manufacturer, a message can be displayed as soon as the device is connected to any kind of network. It will tell the user that the device is stolen and cannot be put into service.

Second, in all likelihood, if you bought tainted goods on the internet, you bought it from a less-than-reputable seller, which means you won’t get any support from the manufacturer or a cellular network carrier. We can’t say for sure, but a manufacturer or merchant who knows where a stolen device is could initiate action to get it back.

Third, if you used a credit card, your account information is now in the hands of people who can monetize it at some point.

In short, you’ll have no consumer protection, and you could have a lot of liabilities. That puts the onus squarely on you to make sure you visit only legitimate merchant websites and buy from legitimate sellers.

Everyone can expect to be bombarded with offers from sellers, legitimate or not. We’ve been bombarded for years. Some offers come through phishing expeditions, which can look legitimate but may have one slight change from a seller that might be familiar to you. You might see an ad on a website, and that can be a tough call. Huge businesses have been built – legitimately – by tracking your browsing history and then sending you ads. It’s easy for a “fencing” operation to set up a website that has every appearance of legitimacy.

Our advice is simple. Only click on links that you are 100 percent sure are legitimate websites. Only buy electronics from legitimate sources. They may be well-known retailers as well as vendors vetted and supported by services such as Amazon. You can be reasonably assured you are getting a legitimate product and that your credit card information will be properly protected. And if your product is defective or not what you expected, you should be able to exchange or return it within a clearly stated policy.

If you have any questions about a product you’re shopping for, don’t hesitate to ask us about its properties or things to look for in a seller. Call us – 973-433-6676 – or email us if you have any questions.

Double Check, Triple Check

In times of crisis, cybercriminals know how to take advantage of our generosity with online scams. They come in all shapes and forms. You need to double check and triple check every email you get requesting money or action, and you need to do the same for every link you have an impulse to click.

At this point, I think we’re all sophisticated and careful enough to take a close look at the emails we get. We know to hover over a name we know to see the email address from where the message was sent. You know, for example, that you likely won’t get an email from me generated from a service in Russia – and you know to call me to see if I really did send you an email from a Russian address. You’ve got to step up your vigilance. Don’t be afraid to question anything – and never open an email or click a link in an email if are not completely sure it’s legit. A cybercriminal can use the link you click or the file you download to get into your computer and hold your data for ransom or steal vital personal or corporate financial data.

This is important because you can expect a lot of emails from people and organizations purporting to be charities to help victims of the Covid-19 crisis and hardship from civil unrest. There are many good, legitimate organizations helping good causes, but there are bad ones, too. While a specific “charity” may not plant a virus or ransomware in your computer, they will get your credit card info (bet they didn’t offer a mailing address to send a check), which they can sell many times over on the dark web.

This goes beyond email. We’re too click happy when it comes to news and entertainment sites, clicking away at any headline or teaser that sparks our interest. In our time of crisis, news sites get our attention, especially if there’s something outrageous regardless of whether it supports our beliefs or not. Aside from whether it’s true and from a reliable news source, it could also be a way for a cybercriminal to hijack your computer. The same goes for pop-ups on less-than-reputable websites.

We’re getting a lot of calls to clean up infected computers, and one incident illustrates the problem. After we cleaned a client’s computer of a problem generated by clicking on a questionable site, the client immediately clicked another piece of clickbait and had an immediately re-infected computer. We all need to use good judgment when we click on something we find – or something sent by a friend.

You can further protect yourself by making you have up-to-date antivirus and malware software installed and running on your computer. We also recommend you regularly check for updates for all your application software and hardware firmware and make sure you install and run them. We can help you with fixing problems and preventing them. Turn off your computers or technology infrastructure if you find something behaving strangely or performing slowly and call us – 973-433-6676. Call us or email us if you need help with selecting, installing or updating antivirus or malware protection software and to set up an automated system to handle software and firmware updates.

The Death of 99 Cents

We sometimes get so hung up on not paying one cent or a few dollars more for a service that we don’t see the forest for the trees. As we make more use of technology for our business and personal lives, it’s helpful to put the economics into perspective.

We have some truly amazing technology available to us, and we’ve grown to appreciate it as we spend more time at home. But we sometimes get too hung up on keeping our costs low, and in the process, we lose performance or entertainment joys because we didn’t want to spring for more RAM, a bigger hard drive, a newer phone or better TV or content streaming plans.

The time I spend discussing the benefits of a 99-cents-per-month iCloud storage plan – at an hourly rate that’s a lot more money – is sometimes mind-boggling. That said, the plethora of choices always boggles the mind.

A lot of our consternation comes from the marketplace. Within most of our lifetimes, we had cable TV, which was provided by a carrier that won the right (or franchise) to serve a community. It was that or watch over-the-air, which in metro New York was mostly seven VHF channels and a handful of UHF channels. Cable gave you all those channels plus others, such as ESPN, CNN and a host of out-of-town TV stations, especially those that carried local baseball teams. The Atlanta Braves became “America’s team” because Turner Broadcasting System was ubiquitous. You also could add two premium services, HBO and Showtime. TV was separate from your telephone service. Your local phone company provided your internet service.

Through regulatory changes, phone companies entered the cable TV market, and cable companies entered the phone market. Satellite TV entered the market, and then the cable and phone companies each offered TV, internet and phone service, followed by home alarm systems. That led to the “triple play,” which offered bundled services at “discounted” prices. Even with packages, prices continued to rise – and keep that in mind as we go along.

When package prices rose, customers questioned the concept of paying for channels (or content) they didn’t want. At the same time, it seems like content providers decided to start their own premium channels, and many services have popped up to offer some of their own content plus “skinny bundles” of channels offered by the cable companies.

Now, you need to be selective about these factors:

  • What content do I want to watch?
  • What content can I give up?
  • What quality levels am I willing to pay for?

Let’s unpack and repack these questions.

There is a lot of programming overlap. You need to look at what each content provider offers – and that’s an exhausting search – to see which providers have the most of what you want to watch and when you want to watch it. You can keep your cable either as a service or as streamed content, or you can subscribe to services that offer combinations of live programming, including TV programs, news and sports in addition to their own premium programming. You could wind up paying more than you pay for your cable service, and you may or may not have the same choices within your budget.

You can save some money if you are willing to give up some of your choices. If you never watch sports, for example, you can find packages without them. But if you’re getting Disney Plus, you’re likely going to need to take the ESPN package as part of it. If you want sports, that’s good. But you may also be paying for it as part of another package, such as YouTube TV or Fubo TV. You can research all the combinations until you drop, or you can just jump into the water. Most every service offers a trial period, and the best advice we can offer is sign up, try it and make sure you cancel it before recurring charges start.

Then, there’s quality. Netflix, as you know has three levels: $8.99 as of this writing for a single device, $12.99 for two devices and $15.99 for four. If you want HD quality, you need the $12.99 package. If you want 4K, you need the $15.99. If you just bought a new TV with the latest bells and whistles, why would you not spend an extra $4 per month?

Along with programming quality, remember, too, that you need to have adequate internet service to handle the bandwidth you’ll require to enjoy your content. And, you’ll need to have a good network infrastructure to handle it all, whether it’s strictly for entertainment or for business and school, too.

We’re happy to educate you about the economics of technology to help you make a smart decision. We’re also happy to work with you on the installation and configuration of whatever technology you choose. But ultimately, it’s up to you to decide on your comfort level with whatever you spend. Our advice is don’t cheap out on the hardware because it’s much more expensive and difficult to change.  For online photo and video storage and TV or streaming content, you can adjust up or down as you see what you need. Call us – 973-433-6676 – or email us to help make sure you have the technology you need to enjoy life during these tough times.