A lot of you are now forced to work from home - some love it, some hate it, some know already what to do, some entering new territory. 

Over the next couple of days I will be providing you with some information that might be helpful to settle into the new situation. 
Most companies are not fully prepared for the 'working from home' set up and I will try to optimise your home experience. Please contact me if you have specific questions.
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The most important advice I found in that brilliant space of internet was:
Get up in the morning, wash, dress & go to your desk!

To stay in touch with your colleagues as well as many social contacts - 'zoom & prosecco' is apparently a thing - video conferencing is a very important tool.
​Here a list of do and don't when you are in a conference call:

• Make sure there is light in front of you to brighten your face and no light sources behind you - otherwise your face looks very dark. Candle in evening meetings making a nice look.
• Keep your hand and body movements to a minimum, no walking around.
• Don't move the screen, especially no turning between portrait and landscape.
  It will make your conference participant dizzy. 
• Clear the clutter behind you, a bright, empty wall is best.
  Some videoconference software even have the option to blend a picture in.
• Sit in front of the camera, make sure your face is showing in full,
  but not much of the rest of your body.
• Try to look into the camera, this gives the impression of eye contact.
• If the option is there, connect yourself audio wise via your phone with a good headset. The microphone and speaker of your computer giving a lot of echo and crackling.
• Mute your speaker if someone is talking for a longer period, like during a presentation. Less noise helps the concentration.
• Do not eat, no chips, no nothing, even drinking might sound deafening through the microphone
• Try to keep family members out of the room
  - this is especially important if confidential matters are discussed. 

Tomorrow I will share with you my favourite softwares for video meetings online.
​Stay tuned, safe & sane.

yours helpfully 
fraulein tech

I tried and failed to create how-to videos instead of written blogs. I won't do that again soon, but I don't want to hide from you this little gem of my trials.

… until you understand your technology set up.
How many of you, when asking IT questions don’t feel satisfied with the answers you get?
You might feel stupid, or concerned about the cost (talking to professionals costs money), and trying to find out answers by googling online can sometimes make things more confusing.
I urge you to keep asking until you think you understand what is going on with your computer, your phone, your tablet…
Get a little notebook and write down what you don’t understand, write the answer, draw a picture, do whatever helps you to understand your data and files etc and how to access them easily and in an organised way.
You don’t need to understand every technical detail, but you should know the following
+ Your email address plus the backup email address, your password and where is it stored (e.g. Google, Apple, Microsoft…)
+ Your data places: where are they stored and backed up and how often?
+ Your website: Where did you buy your domain, where is your website stored and what are the logins?
+ Logons & passwords: Do we have a password safe and where is it? Or is it in a notebook, OK if kept under lock.
+ Do we have any automated workflows and where are they set up and controlled (not the technical details about how they are set up but where)?
+ Which software licences do we own and pay for? Under which name are they registered (tip here: never use an employee address and name)
Theis information is vital if you divorce your IT person (a contractor, the MSP, employee or business / private partner).
keep asking – yours helpfully – fraulein tech - claudia

“I don’t do computer; I don’t understand all these words” you might say but bear with me.

Let me draw a comparison: When getting your  driver’s licence you also learn some basics about the technology of the car; the fuel goes in here, and here the oil, the car needs water here and sometimes more air in the tyres, you have to keep the key close to you and remember where you parked the car. If a light starts blinking on your console you look up what it might means, or you call your mechanic and tell him the yellow waves light blinking. When the temperature goes into the red area you know you have to stop. There’s no need to understand every screw in the motor, how much torque the tire is attached with, the chemical components of your fuel or the 4-stroke cycle of the Otto motor.
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It’s the same with technology: How does one type, use the mouse, the WiFi modem, keep the password safe, my data location and how to get there. If something strange comes up and I ask Aunty Google or call the trusted IT support person and tell them that there is an error message “blah blah blah” when doing this and that. Who cares about CPUs, processors, Tera- Giga- Peta-, MHz, graphic cards and and and…

Yes, you are absolutely right in comparison to driving a car the computer is so much more complicated. But an average user doesn’t need to know the details but needs to be aware of some facts to be in control. The big difference: We all had to take driving lessons and pass a test. Most of us just started using a computer, tablets and smart phones without much introduction and training. And definitely no test passed.
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My suggestion: Get some help to drive your Information Technology and ask the questions until you feel safe on the road and can enjoy the benefits that come from using technology more effectively.

Stay safe & in control – yours helpful – claudia from fraulein tech

​If I suspect something, what can I do?
Tests have shown that most of the Android virus scanners won’t be able to identify the spyware. Further information and a lot of details about these tests and stalkerware can be found here in GitHub.
In most cases the installation needs a physical installation, that means the stalker needs access to the unlocked phone. The following settings need to be set: Allow “unknow sources” in Google Play Protect. iPhones are harder to be infected but not impossible.
Occasionally the installations could have been done via a download link in an email, like a lot of spyware and phishing attacks.
How do I get rid of it? And what else should I do?
The most secure way: FACTORY RESET of your phone. Before you do

• Check if you have all passwords to email accounts, SIM card PIN and other security access codes
• Make sure all your photos are backed up in the cloud (Google Photos iCloud, OneDrive etc) or to a computer
• Note down all your email accounts
• Move all documents you store only on the phone to the cloud or PC
• Write down all applications you had installed and used regularly (makes your life for reset much much easier)
• Then follow instructions of factory reset:

https://support.apple.com/en-au/HT201252
https://support.google.com/nexus/answer/6088915?hl=en
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NEVER give your phone to anyone unsupervised! – Stay safe – yours helpfully – claudia from fraulein tech

you may contact me any time for an audit on your IT set up.
- stay save and enjoy the world outside the screen - yours always helpfully - fraulein tech 

today i like to write a little bit about my favourite subject: computer training on the job:
in my 20+ years on various IT service desks, i experienced regularly employees without adequate computer training are stressed and wasting a lot of time to find solutions on their own.
a general training like 'MS word advanced' covers most of the time too much content, the employee comes back at his/her desk and can't implement the new gained knowledge because the desktop looks difference, the file structure is more complicated, templates are missing etc. etc.
the transfer of the know-how into the day-to-day tasks is often frustrating. that means that a lot of money and time spend by the employer is wasted...
computer training on the job might be the solution: i will first have a look at the IT set up in the company, talk to the staff and manager about the tasks that seem to be too inefficient solved by the systems, and the goals that want to be achieved. i will tailor a training program for the employee, held on their desk while doing day-to-day tasks. we may create short cuts, templates etc. right there on the spot. afterwards the employee will get a document summarising the information learned that day. these training sessions take maximum 3 hours. a couple of weeks later another session will be scheduled to answer further questions, deepening the gained knowledge and assess the further need of training areas.
please feel free to contact me if you think that might a solution for your office.
be in charge - yours helpfully - fraulein tech

.now you found a good password, where to store it? in your brain! no just kidding, i can't remember where i left my keys and the names of my kids - no way my brain will manage my 100+ passwords - yes there are that many easily for an online active person: work + shopping sites + emails + bank accounts + forums + subscriptions + + +
one option would be to write them down in a dedicated little notebook. this option is very safe because it is offline but easy to be lost or found by family members (nobody want teenager go on a shopping spree).
the computer option would be a password safe (called as well a vault, manager or keeper). here is a list of my favourite ones with some 2 pence added.

• ​lastpass - is very highly rated and stores your passwords easily in the cloud, it has a two factory authentication option and an extension for nearly all browsers. i personally prefer to store my database offline - this brings me to:
• keepass - is a really free, open source developed application that has apps on all platforms like android, iOS, windows etc. It can be store in cloud or local. the local storage is my preferred method for security reasons - the downside is one has to be very strict in regards to backups and transfer of updated files.  
• sticky password - is free and has similar setups to lastpass. my favourite feature is that it can synchronise inside a wifi. this combines the convenience of synced passwords across several  devices without possible compromising due to cloud storage.

​let me know if you have any questions - ​stay save
yours always helpfully - fraulein tech

for one and all: not password and not 12345678
your passwords are the key to your data, and this includes your health record, your money, your secrets....
the same way you normally keep your key to your front door close to you and you do not cut copies you hand over to random people from the street, keep your computer password protected.
one point is to have good passwords, unique to every account (your email, your bank account, your twitter account) should all be different (in a future block I will talk about how to be able to remember them all).
to understand what are the elements of a good password, you might like to see how hacker work. no hacker is sitting on a screen manually typing endless password combinations. a good hacker - means a very bad one - is using simultaneously hundreds of pcs that he/she hijacked and using huge databases of known passwords to hack an account. if they find the entry door to an account e.g. to your mailbox they will be able to reset other passwords easily or they use the same combination on your other account like twitter, facebook

• first a good password is long, very long, because then more combination are possible and might not be in a hacker database. 
  do you want to see if your password is already compromised, you may have a look here: https://haveibeenpwned.com/Passwords 
• a good password is unique (see above)
• a good password contains lower case, capital letters, number and special signs, the best if allowed: a space
• a good password you are able to type and remember

great! how is this gonna work, you say. easy i say, use a sentence and change it slightly
her an example:
  - i love to watch lord of the rings (25 letter with the spaces, not bad)
  - i lOve tO wAtch lord of the rings (some capital letters, keep going)
  - i lOve tO wAtch lo3d of t4e ring5 (welcome, the numbers joined the party)
​  - i lOve tO wAt(h ^o3d of t4e ring5 (last but not least the special signs are here)
try and check if this password is already compromised - stay save
yours always helpfully - fraulein tech

the internet is a scary place and the 'virus' i am most scarred of is the cryptolocker. 
what does is do?
- it holds all your files ransom and only releases them when you pay a ransom fee.

•    until now no solution has been found to get your files back without paying

- how do you protect your files?

• use your sense for danger by for example: not clicking unknown links, download from untrusted websites. these are the same rules you use in your day to day life by not open the door to everybody or go for a night walk in the bad district of your city
• make sure your computer is always up-to-date
• activate in Windows 10 the ransom protection per folder and protect all your important folders, the main document folders are chosen (see here a very good explanation how-to-do
  www.cnet.com/how-to/protect-your-pc-with-windows-10s-antiransomware-tool/
• make sure you have a virus protection running (but this is NOT a complete protection as virus architects are very smart)
• have a back up of your data that is NOT - I repeat  is not -  connected to any computer in your network. if the backup is permanently connected (e.g. your online back-up in the cloud) to any computer or other devise in your network, the cryptolocker can easily reach the back-up data and make it unusable as well
• have the file extensions visible switched on, so you might see when your files getting infected to do this go to your file explorer and tick file name extensions in view. If you are lucky you might be able to disconnect your devise quickly

​stay safe
​yours always helpfully - fraulein tech