If You Use Time Warner You Might Not Be Able To Read This

There was (is) a huge outage on the Time Warner Internet Access Network this morning.  Starting around 4:30am a maintenance upgrade has gone horribly wrong.  Which is to say, if your on Time Warner Cable it’s likely you can’t read this (until your service is restored, anyway).

Here’s the constantly updating map of the Time Warner Network online status.  Just like weather radar…  Red is bad, green is good.

http://downdetector.com/status/time-warner-cable/map/

The cost of this?  Well, Time Warner won’t lose all that much money.  It’s not likely that they will give credits/refunds for a few hours of downtime.  But, if your business is on Time Warner, it could cost a ton of bucks.  Can’t process orders?  Credit Card and Check payments?  Access suppliers?  Put that big “one day” promotion online?  Can’t do that if your Internet is down.

Which brings us to the real purpose of this little screed about the incompetence that is Time Warner Cable’s latest faux pas…  If your business relies on the Internet (and few do not anymore), you really need to have a plan in place for when bad things happen.  It’s not always bringing in a competitive alternate Internet feed, either.

What you really need is a team of people that have “been there, done that” and work with them to make incidents out of your direct control nothing more than a minor hiccup…  Instead of a money draining loss.

Give OPENRSM a call (or email), and let’s get your business back online and have your business prepared for when bad things happen.

Change Your Passwords and UserNames Now

It appears that the “Russian Mob” has pulled off something big…  Stealing 1.2 Billion (yes, with a B) usernames and passwords from a wide range of sites.

Anytime something like this happens, OPENRSM suggests you change everything.  Including usernames, passwords, on all accounts and computers.

The New York Times has the story….

AT&T Has Security Breach, Doesn’t Bother To Tell Customers

Another day, another sad story about a big company losing customers private information, and not telling anyone about it.

In April, AT&T confirms employees of an outside contractor hacked customers’ information including Social Security numbers.  The contractors employees attempted to unlock phones to put them on another network.  Did they sell the names/SSNs?  Nobody (including AT&T) has answered that question, yet.

You can see AT&Ts full response as posted by the California Attorney Generals Office by following This Link.

Who’s watching out for your Company’s and Employee’s Mobile Data?  Helping to create the policies, procedures, and infrastructure to protect your data?

Give OPENRSM a call…  We can make it easy for you to secure your information.

How To Stop Annoying Interactive “Creepy” Ads

Have you noticed that when you search for something on Ebay, Amazon, Google, that the advertising on pages seem to know what you’ve been looking for?  For Example, look up “LED 3051 Strips” on Google and suddenly ads for lighting fixtures, Ebay auctions, LED suppliers and the like now appear on every page you look at.  It’s call “contextural advertising”.  Web sites are setting “cookies” in your browser that their advertising networks look at when you surf a page and then display advertising for the things you’ve looked for most recently.

Sometimes it’s okay.  You can find things that your looking for via an ad.  Sometimes it’s just creepy.  Don’t believe me?  Then google for “Hot Crossed Buns” and see what happens to the ads that are presented to you.  Yeah, creepy.  But, you can put a stop to sites that you don’t want tracking you (like Facebook) by using the Opt Out from Online Behavioral Advertising site.  A self-regulation effort that is honored by Ebay, Facebook, etc.  It’s not perfect.  But, it really helps.  Here’s how it works (from the page itself, which is located at http://www.aboutads.info/choices

• Find out which participating companies have currently enabled customized ads for your browser;
• See all the participating companies on this site and learn more about their advertising and privacy practices;
• Check whether you’ve already opted out from participating companies;
• Opt out of browser-enabled interest-based advertising by some or all participating companies, using opt-out cookies to store your preferences in your browser; or
• Use the “Choose All Companies” feature to opt out from all currently participating companies in one step. GO

Need even more powerful blocking?  Call, email, or simply CLICK HERE and OPENRSM can take care of it for your business.

OPENRSM Advises Changing AppleID Passwords Immediately

It seems to be Apple’s turn in the data wars between “fast buck” artists and real companies.

Apple iPhones/Pads are locking up all over Australia and the UK and being held for ransom by a scammer that has managed to gain control of the devices.  Apple has yet to comment but incidents in the US can’t be far behind.  The “Find My iPhone” service seems to be the only link between the users whose iPhones and iPads are being “held hostage” by the scammers.

From an article in  The Telegraph: “Currently there is only speculation about how the attacks have been carried out. Apple has not yet responded officially,”… “With the possibility that this attack is linked to your ‘Apple ID’, affected users are advised to change your Apple ID password as soon as possible.”

And, so you should.

OPENRSM Advises All To Change Ebay and PayPal Passwords Immediatly

Last nite, an official PayPal blogpost contained nothing but a title…  “eBay, Inc. to Ask All eBay users to Change Passwords.”.  Which was quickly taken down only after being tweeted and posted to Facebook many times.  Later, Ebay reported on it’s own official blog that their corporate network security had been breached…  In late February and early March.

What to do?  Log on to your EBay account and change your password!  And do the same with your PayPal accounts (as PayPal is owned by EBay and data is shared between the two (i.e. sharing the same corporate network).

You can view the offical Ebay blogpost at: https://blog.ebay.com/ebay-inc-ask-ebay-users-change-passwords/

Microsoft Raises Prices, Dramatically

Microsoft is having a difficult time with Windows8 and WindowsRT…  Companies and People arn’t buying it.  And, from the testing we’ve done so far, for good reason.

But Microsoft is taking a decidedly interesting approach to slow sales of a product EVERYBODY has said they don’t need, don’t want, and they can’t really see any improvements over previous versions (including Windows XP).  Their answer to the problems with their latest OS version are to raise prices, dramatically.

Microsoft has increased pricing on the following (non-complete) list of products:

• Lync Server 2013 400%
• Project 2013 Server CAL  21%
• SharePoint 2013  38%
• Windows8 License CALs  15%

So now, new PCs (which you have no choice which operating system is loaded on them) could start costing more under Enterprise Licensing policies from Microsoft.  All because people don’t want their products.  Pretty arrogant approach instead of giving customers what they truly want and need.

(information gleaned from an article located HERE)

AT&T Usage Billing and Refuses To Say How It’s Computed

It seems that AT&T is playing games with it’s new “Usage Billing” forumlas.  And it’s not pretty.

We spotted this article on Slashdot today.  One that our customers that utilize AT&T services should be very concerned with.  You see, AT&T is now billing for how much data you consume.  Which, on it’s face, sounds reasonable.  But in reality it has no basis in reality.  Slashdot user STOX‘ received his first AT&T bill that included usage billing and being a “high tech” guy, he went to check it out.  So, he measured exactly how much data (transmit and receive) he used with a reputable tool that looked at his router’s statistics to tell him the true numbers.  Comparing it to what AT&T was claiming he used there was a very large disparity.  A 20-30% disparity. 

So, he called AT&T and was informed that the way that AT&T computes data usage was “Proprietary”.  Which is a not so subtle way of telling us that they just plug in whatever number they want, tell us that we’ve used a certain amount of data, and bill for it.  With no way to tell if the billing is in error, accurate, or totally bogus.

Businesses and individuals  that utilize AT&T need to be very conscious about how they are being billed for data rate services.  If the ability to double check what your being billed for is hidden, how would you ever be able to know if your being billed accurately, fairly, honestly?

It takes both technical experience and a deep understanding of what just is and is not allowed to properly interpret telcom billing.  If your on AT&T it’s time to get ahold of OPENRSM to do a thorough review of the services you receive, and how your being billed for them so that you can know just what your getting and what the true costs are.

Windows8 – Now With In App Advertising!

Yes, you heard me right.  And HotHardware.com is reporting it, and Microsoft is confirming it.  Windows8 paid applications contain advertising.  Right now ads f

Windows8 Metro (i.e. no Start Button) Interface

or Coca Cola, Ford, and Samsung have signed up (among others) that will  show up in applications (like Finaance, Weather, News, etc.).

With a “normal” operating system and applications (that you pay for) you wouldn’t expect to have ads.  Free apps, sure.  Paid apps, no way.

And there are no notices or warnings, opt-in/out boxes, etc.  The ads are there and you can’t remove them.

I wonder how many people would pay for a Windows8 App that kills the onboard advertising?  It seems that Microsoft may have either created something to raise the ire of every business customer, or, created an opportunity for a clever programmer to join the millionaire ranks.

If You Are Using Sophos Anti-Virus You Need To Call

It has come to our attention that there are serious flaws that have been identified in Sophos Anti-Virus by security researchers at Google.

OPENRSM has never used, nor provided, Sophos Anti-Virus.  And it seems that our own internal evaluation to not provide or support Sophos has been sustained (for additional reasons) by Google.

You can read the 30 page report by Google HERE:

You can read more about the findings that Sophos is insecure HERE.

And you can always call 816-200-2220, or email [email protected] and OPENRSM will help you with your IT questions.