SMUG meeting, September 21, 2021
Meeting notes by Kathleen Charters
Q&A
Calendar in the dock has a 1 on it, why? If I go there, I may see 4 calendar events: OS update last week; set to do automatic updates, but not always successful due to a variety of reasons, including slow connection timing out; open system preferences and open software update, see what version, and if I need to do an update
Homework – “Social Dilemma,” https://thesocialdilemma.com, an enlightening movie; the number 1 way to compromise computers is to put out malware in e-mail; Facebook and Twitter have your e-mail, so contact makes you vulnerable because social media proves you exist
Lawrence briefly discussed his experience at NOAA, under the Department of Commerce Task Force to look at social media as an outreach platform for science education
Apple e-mail, send URLs with BCC and if one address does not work will not sent message; e-mail protocol and anti-spam efforts, example of Yahoo e-mail addresses spam efforts; if have bad e-mail protocol is to not send any out; Lawrence had to test e-mails in groups of 100 and eliminate addresses that are not valid, SUMG has over 100 valid e-mail addresses; similar problem with Wave Cable mail handling and OlyPen mail handling rejection because thinks SMUG mailing is spam; may have to send one at a time; get bounce message without indication of what is being objected to, Apple has anti-spam mechanism, before sends checks validity of mail providers; check for typos in mail provider domain, look at what is after the @ sign, if take invalid address out then rest of addresses will go out; check for spaces as well; example of mistyped semicolon and compressed 4TB to 0 bytes after 3 hours; we are all human
Annoying – e-mail capitalizes each line after select Return, Mac knows start of the line should be capitalized; if sent a long line that did not wrap, and the window for reply is smaller than the document when sent, you will see that the line goes off the screen
Example of use of Terminal Window, and the entire message is in the subject line, a challenge to read
Apple – have storage in iCloud, so do you need external storage? Depends on how much storage for iCloud account, free default may not be adequate; e.g., 5GB on free account is not adequate; may need external drive or pay for more; example of Apple family 4TB iCloud, our Raid of 32 TB will not fit; upload speed on Peninsula is 10 MBS and too slow to backup; iCloud good for phone; may need more space; local backup hard drive is more cost-effective; iCloud Plus for Monterey or new iPhone does things iCloud does not do like hide IP address; iCloud Plus only available if have paid account even if only 99 cents a month; upload 1.5 MB movie to YouTube takes 45 minutes
Terminal icon on dock – terminal is a program to talk to UNIX OS (1968) under Mac OS (since X released); free BSD (Berkeley Systems Distribution by University of California Berkeley); does not need to be on dock; useful to reboot machine from a command line
Business Meeting
President – welcome to anyone new and welcome back to returnees
IOS 15 changes – chimes a way to defeat this
When opening an email to view, Safari can see how long and has been viewed
Sign-up sheet available – link in Chat, will use e-mail to stay in contact
Send dues to Treasurer for the year January – December
Treasurer – no change in accounts, balance $1,478.46
Questions can be entered in chat
Email overview
Email is one of those subjects you can talk about all day, every day, and not cover everything. Starting with how to write it: is it e-mail, email, E-mail (patterned after V-mail of World War II fame), or electronic mail? The Associated Press Style Manual says “email,” which is lazy, but lazy often wins over formal.
Most of what we will discuss is: safety. How do you handle email in a safe, private fashion, with high confidence that the person or entity you are engaged with is the person or entity you think they are? Much of this comes down to a few simple elements:
- Limit your email volume. Don’t sign up for mailing lists, donation lists, sales lists, etc., unless you have a definite need. Most of us get way, way more email than we take the trouble to read.
- Verify your correspondents. Take the trouble to find out if Harold’s Rocket Parts is sent by your favorite supplier of rocket engines and fuselages, and not someone pretending to be Harold. This is easier to do if you limit your total email volume.
- Mark junk mail as junk. Don’t just delete it, mark it. The process of marking it as junk mail “teaches” your mail client and host to look for certain characteristics and filter them out of your inbox.
- Delete old mail. Once you no longer need it, delete it. If you want to keep something as a reference, don’t do it by leaving it in an email.
- Delete your trash. If you are throwing it away, periodically empty the trash.
- Similarly, delete junk mail. If it is junk mail, don’t let it consume your hard disk space and mail server space.
- Keep your address book up to date. Your mail client assumes that messages from entities in your address book are not sources of spam. Delete old email addresses and contacts that are no longer relevant.
- Don’t open suspect messages. If you have doubts, don’t even open the message. Among other things, opening a message can verify that you are a valid target for spamming.
- Don’t open any attachment unless you are sure it is legitimate.
Security and privacy – reduce the amount of e-mail to scan
Apple Mail and Google Mail; they work anywhere
Cannot use OlyPen off the Peninsula if there is a power outage
10, 811 unread messages – privacy and security issue, Obama list of nominees in non-government positions contacted by postal system or telephone and asked to e-mail contacts and address information to Gmail address; person stopped using Gmail account private company administrative assistant manipulated to give password to hacker for all on national security council members – social engineering used to break in; all email was old and now discovered by hacker
Rule: delete what you are not using
How to handle large volumes: change sort to view by size and kill off the largest messages, e.g., many images vs all text, which makes more space available
To get rid of sort by From; can sort for spam since non-Roman alphabets at top or bottom and delete them; emoji’s at top or bottom; quick way to get rid of them; sender has @ sign can use to decide who sends and if mailing list check mail preferences and create a rule for AppleScript if From contains AppleScript users list, Set color to red, Apply, will see as red in the list
Adorama rule – Add new rule, if From contains adorama.com, set color to blue, apply, then can target these messages (Adorama is a photography store)
Use to have messages from family with a color, so do not miss them
If you do not want to pay attention to B&H Photo messages, Mail Preferences if From B&H, set color to yellow, apply; can create a new mailbox from + or from Menus New Mailbox, on iCloud, label mailbox B&H. Edit rule: move message to mail box: B&H, apply; takes time if there are a lot of messages to move
Can sort into bins automatically; reduces inbox mail; needs to check the folders
Do not use it for things you need to see right away
To delete Adorama, find the first and the last in the list, select them, and it will ask if you want to get rid of 246 messages. If you say Yes, then the computer will place them in the trash
Mailbox in sidebar – Mail, export Mailbox, asks where to export to, select desktop, Choose, will export from Mail folder to Desktop MBox folder; if you want to restore, double click and Mail will open; no longer online, so cannot be hacked from mail; after save, delete on Mail system
Limit to what can be visually scanned in 3 screens, which is approximately 30-40 messages; people do not look any further. This means you should try to limit the messages in your inbox to no more than 30-40 messages.
Delete or Store all else
Tax returns – take off computer, store externally
People can break into email from anywhere
How to find out things about who sent a message: go to the top of the message; View Menu, Message, Raw Source – will see the text, e.g., code for a picture in BinHex; View all headers, instructions for how the e-mail gets to you; read raw headers to show where it came from
View, Messages, raw headers show how the messages get to you (but can be hard to follow)
Button on desktop, mouse hovers over to show code, if from India or Romania will see this; use caution when asked to spend money, terms may be true, but the part where you enter personal information sends it to a hacker; cannot do on iPhone or iPad because cannot hover over anything; check on your desktop
The message shows where the URL takes you if you hover over the link on your desktop; many browsers do this
iPhones and iPads will not send you to an unencrypted site or a site on Apple’s list of bad sites; you cannot hover over them since they do not have a mouse
A laptop or desktop is fine to hover over, have a mouse
If you have an iPhone and a Mac and read mail on the phone first, then will not sort on desktop or laptop
New Mailbox with a rule to move does not duplicate the message; there is only one copy
iOS 15 feature to hide IP if you have an iCloud Plus account, turn this on, which prevents tracking of messages by sender based on IP address, which gives away location
IOS iPhone, and IOS iPad, and Mac with iCloud Plus using Apple Mail can hide IP
Programming code – when open message will request graphic from spammer’s machine, Apple will not honor a request for a 0-size file to help with privacy
Spammers send 1 billion messages daily, and if 1% respond, they sell you as a product
Facebook feels threatened by Apple with this feature; Facebook wants to sue Apple over blocking this
iMessage only sends text, so see the entire URL unless a Facebook page
A PDF file builds a page using a programming language. This can be used to compromise a computer, used to open with Preview, and could infect a machine. Apple now stops this from happening; for example, of invoice with a broken icon that would download malware; Apple blacklists sites, puts in malware definitions automatically if select automatic updates
iMessage – receiving bad things – someone you know is compromised, spam sent to all addresses on their machine; message coming in – either responded to something, or has an Apple iCloud address or messages linked to an address or phone number
Messages Preferences, list who is allowed as From, delete sources you do not want from this list; messages can be seen on Mac, iPad, or iPhone; send a screenshot to the Strait Mac VP account so Lawrence can look at it
Questions
Gmail account downloaded into Mail, Apple delete may not remove from Google server; empty Google trash can and Apple Mail trash can; Empty Trash in All Accounts; Google holds trash for 30 days before really deleting it
Mail can be anywhere; the Inbox is easiest to reduce vulnerability; if not used anymore, delete; keep 3 years of replies and delete originals; export sent messages and then delete out of mail; keep a limited number so readily see what is suspicious; old e-mail can cause grief in unexpected ways
Wave Cable is slow, pay for 100 Mbps, YouTube videos stall when 8-12 Mbps, pay more for 200 Mbps, and same thing; new modem and router, and still the same problem, how to complain about this? Paying for a service that is not delivered
Same complaints by Lawrence
911 went down in WA OR MT under Wave Cable contract; wrong security on server – messages not encrypted since no valid certificate; legislation to improve infrastructure pending; there is no real choice here yet; Elon Musk low earth satellite trying to address this but solar flare a risk of disruption; program to monitor this not practical, a ping gives latency not download speed; Wave Cable government approval for franchise so complain to Clallam County Commissioners and state will not overrule; paper letter is hard to make disappear; FCC net neutrality favorable response were fake letters by telecom companies
Search Gmail by subject? Any Google search trick works for Gmail; the same search engine, same techniques work in Gmail; it does not work like Apple Mail. For example, you can tell it to search by date range
AOL Mail will allow you to auto-forward to another address, forward to Gmail, and reply from Gmail; AOL has had over 20 owners, now owned by Verizon, so it can sell your information to someone else; webmail only since stopped support for Macs 4 years ago
Cookies – should have choices, companies may not allow in unless accept cookies; impression of control, European law violation; Los Angeles Times example – cannot survive without ads
Next Month
Apple’s September announcement of new products Apple Watch, iPads, iPhones, next month Monterey OS – 5 most important things in iOS; new Safari features for limiting tracking
More e-mail questions – Gmail
Documentary: “The Social Dilemma” on YouTube and Netflix – how to limit tracking; SMUG members are the prime demographic to be compromised; older, more money, more ways to hook emotionally