Carrots: The Root of Speedier Scrolling, Less Clutter

Carrots can provide useful shortcuts for navigation and decluttering your screen. You can find them almost anywhere on your screen. You’ve likely seen them and never paid much attention to them.

The carrot symbol ^ can be pointed in any of four directions on a screen – up, down, left, right – and carrots are most useful in File Explorer and Outlook, although they’re not exclusive to those apps.

Most of us will find carrots useful for doing a quick search in File Explorer. If you look at the upper left corner of File Explorer, you’ll see three listings: Home, Gallery, and your OneDrive. In Home, for example, you might find a screen to the right that shows > Recommended on the top row and > Recent, Favorites, Shared. If one of those three folders is highlighted, you can click on it and get a listing of files for a quick search. You can then open a selected file or simply collapse the listing by clicking on the downward-pointing carrot.

In the next grouping on the left, clicking on Documents or Pictures, for example, opens a dropdown menu of folders and subfolders (showing as many levels of subfolders as you have) to give you a quick look at your files. We’ve found it quicker to search this way than scrolling through our folder or subfolder lists of Documents or Pictures.

Farther down on the left are This PC and Network. Clicking the > carrots will show you more information about files on your PC or devices connected to your network. Again, they’re easily collapsable.

Similarly with Outlook, you can use carrots to expand or collapse your Favorites and the contents of each mailbox (account) that you have through Outlook. This can help you keep your screen less cluttered and more organized, helping to navigate the contents of each account more efficiently.

Working in Microsoft Word, if you keep the ribbon open and expanded across the top, you can access more options by using carrots for things such as fonts, sizes, colors, bullets in bullet lists, etc.

We encourage you to look for carrots in File Explorer, Outlook, and your Office apps. Looking at the results of each click may lead you to a new shortcut that makes your computing life easier.

Secure Your Email

Security measures such as encryption and 2FA help make email communications more secure, but they have their own issues for many users and fall short in some ways. Use them wherever you can, but remember that nothing works better than common sense, especially when you click on links in an email.

The majority of breaches of computer systems through email are user-initiated. A user clicks on a link – usually because of carelessness – that results in giving up login credentials for a website or a technology system. Encryption is no protection against a user causing a breach.

Security holes in encrypted email include human error, such as failing to encrypt messages or falling for phishing attacks, reliance on imperfect encryption in transit where servers may not support it, vulnerabilities on the recipient’s device like malware or unsecured devices, and issues with key management, such as weak passwords or lost private keys.

Let’s focus on those last two points. Securely managing and distributing encryption keys is complex. If private keys are lost or stolen, recipients may be unable to access their encrypted messages, and attackers could use stolen keys to decrypt emails. Easily guessed passwords for email accounts can be compromised, allowing attackers to access encrypted emails on a device.

Attackers can also exploit complex email systems by compromising intermediary servers or utilizing features that weaken security. These can include URL redirects to bypass encryption and deliver malicious content.

Instead of adding complexity, it might be better for most organizations to reemphasize some proven basics. One of them is 2FA. As imperfect as it is, 2FA can utilize a device such as a cell phone, which should be in the hands of the user. Yes, it can be defeated, but that happens if a system has already been breached and the attacker has changed the phone number and/or email address of the user.

The other basic is common sense. Don’t click on a link in an email unless you are 10,000 percent certain it’s correct and legitimate. AI is making it harder to detect malicious links, so users must be more vigilant. Don’t be in a rush, especially if you’re juggling several tasks. The safest way to respond to an email with a link or phone number is to open a browser and go to the website of the company. You should be able to find a phone number and maybe a legitimate email address to contact.

We can help you with email security in two ways. One way is to conduct a security audit of your email system to find and patch holes. The other way to help you set up 2FA systems, including biometrics and authenticator apps. Call us – 973-433-6676 – or email us to discuss your needs and possible solutions.

Authenticator Apps Can Protect You from SIM Swapping

We hate taking extra steps, especially if we think they’re complicated. But with the rise of SIM swapping, you might want to bite the bullet and get used to using an authenticator app.

The benefits of using an authenticator app for 2FA were illustrated by the problems of a new client who was victimized by a SIM swap of their phone number. The SIM swap caused untold problems, including untangling them based on hard-to-find phone records.

Again, just to recap from last month, SIM swaps happen when a bad actor is able to convince a carrier that they’re you and that you need to transfer your phone number to a new device. While the bad actor has your phone number hijacked, you lose your cellular service. You can’t make or receive phone calls or send or receive texts. If it happens for a short time and you’re not using your phone, you’ll never know it happened. If you’ve set up a form of 2FA that involves getting a code through a text message, you’ll never know about that, too.

An authenticator app is different. It uses a Time-Based One-Time Password (TOTP) algorithm to generate unique, time-sensitive codes for 2FA. The apps are set up on a mobile phone, and the process can be difficult for some. We suggest professional help to avoid untimely problems down the road.

When you type in a link from a computer or a phone to link the app to an online service, both the app and the service’s server use a shared secret key and the current time to independently generate the same time-sensitive codes. When a user logs in, they enter the code from the app, which the server verifies by comparing it to its own generated code. The verification code almost always comes in on your cell phone, and the authenticator app automatically regenerates the code every 30 seconds.

The key point here is that the authenticator app is tied to your device, not your phone number. So, if the bad actor tries to enter a website or app link that uses an authenticator app, they will not see the code. It will come to your device. If you don’t recognize the reason for that code being sent, it’s a big, bright flag that someone may have hijacked your phone number or breached your security in some way.

Of course, the website or online app being accessed must offer an authenticator app as a security measure. More of them are offering it as a security measure, and you should take advantage of it wherever you can. If you’re on your computer, you need to have your phone handy, and if you’re using your phone, it will take a little juggling. But it’s well worth the effort.

We can help you set up Microsoft Authenticator or any other authenticator app. Call us – 973-433-6676 – or email us to learn more about the app and get help setting it up.