Discover how mastering email communication can boost business efficiency, avoid common pitfalls, and ensure secure, respectful online interactions.
Turkey Revenge
The turkeys are pissed this Thanksgiving they are seeking revenge.
Germs Infest 60% of Americas Phones
60% of Americans sleep with their phones, harboring germs. Cleaning regularly with UV sanitizer or alcohol wipes can help keep your phone and bed germ-free.
Smartphone Sanitizing: A Practical Guide
Securely erase personal data from your old smartphone before recycling. Protect your identity from hackers—easy steps to follow.
Why Soft Skills Matter in Today’s Job Market
Boost your career with essential soft skills like communication, teamwork, and emotional intelligence. Learn why they’re crucial for workplace success.
8 Hacks to Reduce Your Cell Phone Bill
Are you spending too much on your cell phone bill? The average cell phone bill for a family of four on unlimited data can reach up to $2,670 a year. One of the reasons your cell phone bill is so high is the data plan. All those video chats, streaming services, and data-hungry apps mean you are using a lot of data on your cell phone. Statista says that the average smartphone user will use almost 9GB of data per month in 2021. All this cellular data usage comes with unexpected overages bills, too. No one likes sky-high cell phone bills. Here are some easy-to-follow tips to help you find ways to reduce your data use and reduce your cell phone bill.
The first step to reduce your cellphone bill is to know what you really need. Research says that 66% of Americans with unlimited cell phone plans consume less than 10 gigabytes of cell phone data monthly. These cell phone user could reduce their cell phone bill by an average of $268.44 a year without running out of cell phone data.
Wi-Fi helps you reduce your cell phone bill
Consistently connecting to Wi-Fi networks will reduce the amount of cellular data you use, and reduce your cell phone bill. This is important because watching a Netflix movie while using cellular data will eat up anywhere between 1GB to 3GB per hour. Wireless carriers divert cellular traffic to Wi-Fi to save money – so should you. Here are some tricks to reduce your cell phone bill.
1 – Turn on Wi-Fi – Make sure your Wi-Fi settings are turned on, and you are connected to an available Wi-Fi network.
2 – Turn off Wi-Fi Assist (iOS) and Smart Network Switch (some Android models). These built-in settings try to boost a spotty or slow Wi-Fi connection by using your cellular connection. These settings can use a lot of data.
- Android devices, go to Settings > Connections > Wi-Fi. Tap the three dots, select Advanced, and tap the slider for “Switch to mobile data.”
- Apple devices, go to Settings > Cellular or Settings > Mobile Data. Then scroll down and tap the slider for Wi-Fi Assist.
Limit your data usage
3 – Cap your monthly data usage – Android has a built-in feature that allows you to limit your cellular data to a set amount based on your billing cycle. Here’s how to set that up:
- Go to Settings > Network & internet > Data usage > Data warning & limit (or Data limit & billing cycle) to set the maximum amount of data you want to use for the month.
- Or, tap “App data usage cycle” to set the first day of your billing cycle.
Apple devices don’t include the same built-in feature to restrict your data usage. To keep an eye on your cellular data use on your Apple iOS device go to:
- Settings > Cellular or Settings > Mobile Data. (On an iPad, it may be Settings > Cellular Data)
- You can also reset your data usage for the “Current Period” here every month so you know how much you’re using each billing cycle.
4 – Update apps over Wi-Fi only – If your apps are set to update automatically, they may be draining your data over a cellular network. You can set your device to update apps over Wi-Fi only to reduce your cellphone bill. Once you do that, the apps will only update and use data when you’re connected to Wi-Fi.
- Android, go to the Play Store and tap Menu > Settings > Auto-update apps, then select “Auto-update apps over Wi-Fi only.
- iOS, go to Settings > App Store > scroll to “Cellular Data” and toggle “Automatic Downloads” to the off position.
Disable background app data
5 – Disable app data in the background – Some apps will continue to gather data in the background while you’re not using your phone. This may be a good feature for a news app, but not every app needs this feature. To turn this feature off for your apps
- Android, go to Settings > Data Usage to see which apps are using the most data. Tap on the app you’d like to restrict and disable background data.
- iOS, go to Settings > General > Background App Refresh. Here, you can choose whether you want this feature on or off completely, or just WiFi only. You can also toggle this on and off for individual apps.
6 – Disable display ads for your browser. Display ads auto-play videos that stream to your phone, so if you have a browser that helps you disable these ads, you save plenty of data and reduce your cell phone bill.
Turn off your phone
7 – Turn off your phone while asleep. It is likely that throughout the night, data will be used on the phone, especially if applications are running. You could save a lot of data and money over time by trying out this hack.
8 – Compress your updates. There are applications that can make your data usage around 5 times more efficient by compressing it. Take a look at the apps.
The downside, however, is that the company will be aware of the data you’re accessing. It all depends on if that is a price you’re willing to pay.
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If these hacks fail to reduce your cell phone bill, you have the option to change to a plan with a data limit in order to reduce your cell phone bill.
Related article
- The sneaky reason your cell phone bill is so high — it’s not always your wireless provider’s fault (MarketWatch)
Ralph Bach has been in IT long enough to know better and has blogged from his Bach Seat about IT, careers, and anything else that catches his attention since 2005. You can follow him on LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter. Email the Bach Seat here.
5 Reasons to Never Unsubscribe from SPAM Email
We all get unsolicited commercial emails, aka SPAM. Cisco’s Talos estimates that in January 2021 86% of emails sent were SPAM emails. That means that of the almost 145 billion emails sent 122 billion were SPAM email. The math works out to over 6 SPAM emails for each legit email. At best SPAM is annoying. At its worst, SPAM can be a threat to your PC and your personal information. SPAM email is a threat because 94% of malware is delivered by email, and one in every 3,000 email messages contains malware a payload.
SPAM email is big business
SPAMers can make millions per year. TechRadar says an average full-time SPAMer makes around $7,000 a day – over $2.5 million a year. They can make this kind of money because email spam costs them very little to send. Most of the costs of SPAM is paid by the recipient and the carriers. The SPAMers do not have to pay for all the internet bandwidth tied up in the delivery of their spam emails.
SPAMers send out millions of messages on behalf of online merchants who want to sell a product. SPAMers get paid for sending SPAM email messages, regardless of whether recipients buy any of the advertised products. They also re-sell their SPAM emails lists to other SPAMers. SPAMers can get up to $22,000 for a list of stolen email credentials. In some cases, these cybercriminals also get a percentage of the sale. For pharmaceuticals, the commission can be as high as 50%. A good example is “penis-related spam” which has a 5% click rate, meaning that 5% of the recipients actually open the spam mail and click on the link in the mail.
Why you get SPAM emails
There are a number of reasons why you get SPAM emails.
You are the victim of a data breach. Any company you do business with could be vulnerable. Check haveibeenpwned to see if your account has been compromised – smaller breaches might not be listed.- You posted your email address online. You put it on Facebook or other social media, on a website, or as a public comment. Once on the web, your email is considered fair game for SPAMers.
- At some time you opted in or neglected to opt out. When you signed up for something, buried somewhere was that little checkbox. You didn’t indicate you’d rather be left alone. The service for which you opted-in is either inundating you or they shared your email address with interested parties.
Never unsubscribe from a SPAM email
So how do you stop SPAM from flooding your inbox? The first step is do not unsubscribe from SPAM. Ignore the convenient “unsubscribe” button at the bottom of the message from the Nigerian prince. The “unsubscribe” button is a scam. The cyber-criminals to get more info about you and increase the number of SPAM emails you receive.
1. When you unsubscribe, you confirm to the sender that your email address is valid and in active use. SPAMers now know the account is active and the volume of SPAM you receive will most likely go up. Now that you have validated your address, the SPAMer will sell it to his SPAMer friends. Now you will get SPAM from a completely new source.
A Federal Trade Commission study found that more than half the time, responding to a “remove me” option resulted in either no change or more spam emails.
2. In addition to giving away your email address, unsubscribing delivers lots of information about your email software. Emails contain meta-information that hackers can use to devise attacks.
3. When you respond to the SPAM email, SPAMers think you are interested in the subject matter—whether it’s getting money from a foreign prince, a penny stock tip, or a diet supplement.
4. If your response opens up a browser window, you’re giving away even more information about yourself. By opening a browser SPAMers learn information about your:
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- Geographic location,
- Computer operating system,
- Web browser.
Additionally, the SPAMer can give you a cookie. A cookie allows the attacker to track you across any other websites they own. They will be able to identify you personally.
5. Worst of all, if you visit a website owned by a spammer, you give them a chance to install malware on your computer, even if you don’t click anything. These attacks, known as drive-by downloads, can be tailored to use exploits the SPAMers knows you’re vulnerable to—thanks to the information you’ve shared about your operating system and browser.
How to stop SPAM email
Use SPAM filters – SPAM filters work by looking at the nitty-gritty technical details of the email. What it’s about. What it says. How it says it. How many other people are getting that same email message? If it looks like SPAM, then the email is placed in your SPAM or junk mail folder instead of your inbox.
If you’re using webmail, like Gmail, Outlook, or Yahoo!, then you have a pretty good SPAM filter already. Gmail claims their SPAM filtering machine learning algorithms are 99.9% accurate.
You can improve the default SPAM filters. You need to train your SPAM filter. To train your SPAM filter – report SPAM every time that you find it in your inbox. Whether you use, Gmail Yahoo, Outlook or Thunderbird, you should take the time to learn and understand its SPAM filtering features.
When you flag an email as SPAM, your email app will use this information to refine its spam filter. The SPAM email filter will automatically get better at detecting SPAM emails in the future. This could be either globally if enough other people say the same things about emails like that. Keep flagging SPAM emails and the number of SPAM emails in your inbox should decrease – perhaps dramatically – over time.
Related article
Ralph Bach has been in IT long enough to know better and has blogged from his Bach Seat about IT, careers, and anything else that catches his attention since 2005. You can follow him on LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter. Email the Bach Seat here.
Category: Uncategorized |
Tags: 2021, Data breach, Machine learning, Malware, Security, Social media, SPAM, Unsubscribe
You Need a Strong Username
When securing you online accounts your username matters. A recent report from password manager provider Nordpass points out why you should have a strong username. They explain that an easy to guess username gives away half of the protection for your online information.
Strong passwords are vital to to securing your online information, but you shouldn’t skimp on your username. Nordpass found that most people use their actual name to secure their online usernames.
The blog states that usernames which include personal information are the worst. That is because when you use personal data to create your account, it helps cybercriminals build your profile. If you post a comment on Facebook with a username Becky1970 or ToledoTommy, that’s enough for an attacker to start a social engineering attack.
How to create a strong username
Here are some tips from Nordpass to help you create a strong username.
Don’t reuse your username on other accounts — this makes it easy to track you.- Don’t use your actual name.
- Avoid creating a username that’s identical to your email address.
- Don’t use personal information like your birth date, the city you’re from, or social security and ID numbers.
- Don’t use usernames that are the same as your password or may hint at it.
If these tips are too complicated – use a username generator.
Here are the 25 most popular usernames…
2020 Risky usernames
| Rank | Name | Times used |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | ???? | 875,562 |
| 2 | David | 470,646 |
| 3 | Alex | 451,546 |
| 4 | Maria | 438,485 |
| 5 | Anna | 387,660 |
| 6 | Marco | 352,629 |
| 7 | Antonio | 325,085 |
| 8 | Daniel | 310,096 |
| 9 | Andrea | 305,442 |
| 10 | ????? | 298,963 |
| 11 | Laura | 296,627 |
| 12 | Ali | 290,285 |
| 13 | ??? | 277,859 |
| 14 | Jose | 271,960 |
| 15 | Sandra | 264,886 |
| 16 | ??????? | 249,476 |
| 17 | Sara | 247,072 |
| 18 | Carlos | 214,261 |
| 19 | Ana | 212,049 |
| 20 | Michael | 198,312 |
| 21 | Marie | 194,530 |
| 22 | Francesco | 193,526 |
| 23 | Mehmet | 191,023 |
| 24 | Marta | 186,424 |
| 25 | Sarah | 184,996 |
Click here to see the Nordpass 200 most used usernames.
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For those of use that don’t know the most common username means ‘title’ in Thai.
Thankfully some key usernames are missing from this list: Admin, Administrator, guest, root, user.
Related article
Ralph Bach has been in IT long enough to know better and has blogged from his Bach Seat about IT, careers, and anything else that catches his attention since 2005. You can follow him at LinkedIn, Facebook and Twitter. Email the Bach Seat here.
Most Hated Business Buzzwords
Even after a year of working from home – some things never change. One of them is buzzwords. Merriam-Webster defines a buzzword an as important-sounding usually technical word or phrase often of little meaning used chiefly to impress laymen. And it seems people hate business buzzwords
The word-smiths at GetResponse, surveyed over 1000 people to identify the most hated business buzzwords. GetResponse asked respondents to tell them their most hated jargon terms. Here are the top five most hated business buzzwords….
5. Thinking outside the box
Wikipedia writes that thinking outside the box is a metaphor, which has become a cliché. It means to think unconventionally or from a new perspective. The term is widely used in business environments, especially by management consultants and executive coaches starting in the 1970s challenging their clients to solve the “nine dots” puzzle, whose solution requires some lateral thinking.
4. Raising the bar
The phrase originates in athletic terminology from around the turn of the century. It is from the track and field events of pole vault and high jump, where it is necessary to raise the bar after each jump to reach a new height record and increase the competition. In the workplace, bosses are continually setting new targets or goals for the workers to achieve, hence raising the bar there too.
3. Touch base
Merriam-Webster says this hated business buzzword comes from baseball where both runner and fielders have to “touch base” in order to be safe or record an out. Perhaps the idea of the “base” became associated with “home base” or place of meeting, before becoming the idiom we know today.
2. Teamwork
The origin of the word “team” goes as far back as the year 825. Grammarphobia reports it originally meant a set of draft animals. it’s derived from old Germanic sources having to do with drawing or pulling. In the early 1500s, the noun was first used to refer to people, either working together or associated in some joint endeavor. In 1886 this gave us the sports uses, such as “team player.”
The blog claims the verb “team” also showed up in the 1500s. The Oxford English Dictionary says It originally meant to harness or yoke, as a farmer might “team” horses or oxen. We still use the verb more or less this way, but with things instead of animals.
1. Synergy
Synergy is the most hated business buzzword. In the business world the term implies that, when the right two companies merge, they’ll produce a profitable synergy. Synergy became a trendy buzzword in the 1980s after it appeared in an Economist article (even though it’s actually been around since 1632). The idea of synergy was one factor in what became a “merger mania;” unfortunately, business synergy often turned out to be harder to achieve than to imagine.
Here is the entire list from GetResponse
2020's Most Hated Business Buzzwords
| Rank | Jargon Term | % who hate it |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Synergy | 4.29 |
| 2 | Teamwork | 3.43 |
| 3 | Touch base | 2.08 |
| 4 | Raising the bar | 1.96 |
| 5 | Think outside the box | 1.72 |
| 6 | Work harder | 1.72 |
| 7 | Best practice | 1.47 |
| 8 | Paradigm shift | 1.47 |
| 9 | The next time you feel the need to reach out | 1.35 |
| 10 | Empower | 0.98 |
| 11 | Keep up the good work | 0.98 |
| 12 | At the end of the day | 0.86 |
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I don’t use these hated business buzzwords at home. It’s not weekend talk. Buzzwords and jargon are generally the domain of “office speak.”
Why do we have jargon overload in the business environment? There are many possible reasons. People want to fit in and belong, be seen as an insider, or mimic their bosses so it seems like it’s the right thing to use hated business buzzword.
Related article
Ralph Bach has been in IT long enough to know better and has blogged from his Bach Seat about IT, careers, and anything else that catches his attention since 2005. You can follow him at LinkedIn, Facebook and Twitter. Email the Bach Seat here.
Everything in the Universe
Dominic Walliman is a youtuber, science writer and physicist. In this excellent video he attempts to illustrate and explain everything in the universe.
Related article
Ralph Bach has been in IT long enough to know better and has blogged from his Bach Seat about IT, careers, and anything else that catches his attention since 2005. You can follow him at LinkedIn, Facebook and Twitter. Email the Bach Seat here.