Tag: Macintosh

SMUG Meeting, October 19, 2021

Meeting notes by Kathleen Charters

Q&A

Which new computer to purchase? Apple released new MacBook Air, low end MacBook Pro – very similar; Mac mini, iMac all use M1 chip fast low power; Lawrence bought Mac mini and uses it for SMUG demonstrations; M1 chip MacBook Air replaced older version and solved problems, iMacs set up at Costco, colored, fast, screen bright and crisp; a step up from what came before, screen is 24 inch all the way to the edge and brighter and machine has a lot of power; yesterday 14 inch MacBook 2 screen sizes; M1 Pro (twice as fast as MacBook Air, most users do not need to compile programs), and M1 Max; if OK with size of MacBook Air lighter and fast; Mac mini customizable screen and keyboard; see iMac at Costco; new laptops – SD card port for photos, HDMI port, 4 USB-C ports; MacBook Pro Max demo of multiple screens running off of a laptop but not a common need;

Laptop vs desktop – iMac and Mac mini do not take up much space and cheaper than a laptop; if do not need portability get more power from desktop; Mac mini needs added items; iMac comes with everything built in; laptop is more expensive since has to shrink everything; if need amazing amounts of power the new MacBooks will do rendering movies and compiling massive databases (numerically intensive); Chrome is memory and CPU hog and is the most demanding thing most people do; not necessary to have a fast machine for word processing; consider expense and what capability you need

Lawrence bought a new MacBook for Kathleen with 16 GB; the video of his granddaughter is crisper

Low end MacBook Pro with M1, loves it after 11-year-old white MacBook taking minutes to boot up; new machine boots up in 10 seconds, very happy with it but would like new machine for working with iMovie; waiting for iMac with bigger screen that does not take up much desktop space; get more RAM because cannot change mind later

What makes it fast and energy conserving is all on one chip, so you cannot add to it; if you want more memory, you must buy a new machine

New machines can go up to 64 GB, but very expensive: rare to need this

Go play with the iMac at Costco

What is the oldest MacBook Pro running on Monterey released next Monday? There are different kinds of machines; anything from 2015 is supported, and so things from 2013 are supported. It depends on the T1 or T2 security chip and the video card as to what is supported

Search for “macOS Monterey” to see what is supported

The size is 8-10 GB and may time out if you try to download it on Monday; see what is patched to see what hackers will take advantage of for those who do not upgrade to the current OS. Use this to break into other machines; take security seriously

Safari message on compromised password – is this legitimate? Quit out of the browser. It comes from JavaScript injection; not legitimate since not built into Safari. Go into Safari and clear the cache to get rid of it, so do not answer the prompt and download something malicious; Safari has the capability to show compromised passwords, but it does not give a notification message

Exception iPads will give a list of what is compromised

Bought iPad Pro 12.9 inch

Sign-in sheet sent in the meeting message and in the chat window

Zoom option to blur background; called “Blur”

Zoom – please get up to date to version 5.8.1 since major changes are coming soon; can have breakout rooms; may create discussion groups

Zoom has a history of poor security, so it has been making updates to improve security

Think about what you want to have for next month’s meeting topic

Topic: E-mail part 2 on M1 Mac mini

Notes from Apple’s presentation

Monterey release October 25

HomePod Mini’s now come in colors – can play music in every room and acts as an intercom; anything you ask Siri, you can ask HomePod

AirPods new version – not quite Air Pod Pros, have spatial audio

MacBook Pro 14 and 16-inch announced

Image of Apple M1 chip with memory (RAM) on either side; M1 Pro; uses Apple ProRes – movie standard for compression

Image of Apple M1 Max chip 4 chips 64 GB RAM

Comparison of the federal government’s total computing power in 1971 is equal to a single iPhone’s computing power today

CPU performance vs. power, M1 15 watts = less than half of 8-core; 70% less power used by new machines; pay for the extra power

14-inch and 16-inch look the same, small bezel, small part taken up by camera, menu bar design does not encroach on screen space; example of 5 screens and a camera connected by the multiple ports

Brought back MagSafe power connectors. If the power cord is pulled out does not pull the machine off the desk

Touch Bar replaced by mechanical scissor keys, more traditional, and a solid feel

New ports: SD card slots, USB-C, HDMI

More about email

Is this real or fake?

What looks real is the email address, but spear phishing for confirmation of the email address

Gmail tells you things are dangerous and puts them in Spam Folder; attempt to con you out of money – put in money to be made rich

Classic – your mailbox password will expire in 2 days; personal email does not have an expiration – corporations and government agencies have a password change policy

Google connecting to a new device sign-in from Moscow, St. Petersburg (cannot be both places); mistake in punctuation; some things are correct, and other things are not real

NewsBreak application for iPhone for personalized news

Headline misleading – people may be inept, not malicious

Text message from Wells Fargo saying the account is locked, but the address is suspicious

Fraudulent e-mail with a bill for a web VPN protection plan to get to open .PDF to insert malware when opening the .PDF

Be suspicious of the content of e-mail; spammers go through the address book and try to leverage the name of someone you know to get people to do things

What is legitimate?

Hold the mouse over the link in Apple Mail, and Apple Mail will list the URL – look at where it goes if you click on it

May be confusing – Apple Mail -> View Menu -> Message Menu -> All Headers

How the message got to you, reply to, various machines it went to, at the bottom tells you where it came from via …; may be a bulk mail service for the business; can unsubscribe from the mailing list

View Menu -> Message -> raw source = all text (even a picture); good to use if suspicious about an e-mail

New message => forward it and will see the headers at the top, some things can be faked, but spammers are lazy and most do not bother to fake the header information

Have at least 2 email accounts, use one for subscriptions and vendors; use another for family and friends; if something appears in the wrong account, be suspicious; if you have 2 accounts and something in one is suspicious, send it to the other account and see what the header looks like

Can sort Spam by from and see foreign language at the beginning and end of the header; emoji in the subject line is often used by spammers; can set up a filter to put these messages in Spam folder; if says composed in far past or future it is most likely from a spammer passing through a machine with a dead battery

Chrome Gmail – designed to work with a browser rather than an email client

Apple Mail – accounts, new account, add a Google Mail account so you can see both in one mailbox

Gmail does not sort by date, shows up in sequence; can see by having Google do it; from Apple.com, use Google search engine to search through messages

Google does not use folders, and can show all messages

Google is great about killing off Spam

Inbox

Other categories, e.g., catalogs, forums subscribed to, ads, promotions; see if go through a vendor name and will see everything sent and can remove from InBox into a folder; can flag with a specific color

Settings -> filters

Adorama subscription can be unsubscribed

Several options are available in Google at the top; if you call it spam, Google will move it; if it threatens, it is a crime; three dots show choices to report spam, report blatantly illegal phishing will go to Google security team; Apple Mail does not have this

All Google mail is a page on a web server – select Show Heading; copy to clipboard, send to someone who will investigate (Security officer, police if a crime); Google creates a new tab to show the original as a security measure, so the sender never knows you did something with it

Q&A

Received 100 newsletters from different people, unsubscribe lists all newsletters, then 3 weeks later same thing happened: EU will prosecute for this due to privacy laws; there are no privacy laws in Britain and the U.S.; used by scammers to subscribe you to things since they know this is a valid email address; several former presidential staff sent out messages to raise money and kept it = fraud, FBI can investigate

If from a vendor you know and unsubscribe they should unsubscribe; if you do not know the vendor mark as spam and over time will increase spam score based on collective knowledge; if spam score high enough will put in spam folder; spammers send mass messages as blind cc; suspicious: $, emoji, etc. increase the spam score; do not open them. Periodically delete the contents of the junk mail folder

If consistent, can set up an Apple Mail rule to send to the junk folder

Be careful with unsubscribe, so do not receive more spam from people who do not follow the rules

iMessage spam – Apple takes effort to keep spam out of instant messaging; no hard and fast rule

Must educate others about how this works

AT&T messages – how to know if fake?

Apple iMessages are sanitized; green = SMS and may be suspect, blue is iPhone to iPhone and goes through Apple data system with good security controls; can send to trash without opening it by swiping to the left

Never open a .PDF on an iMac or iPad since this can compromise a device; Adobe is lax on security; Apple is good about security

SMS (green) comes through the phone system with no vetting; be suspicious of green messages

Use e-mail for international messages to avoid phone charges

If you leave the machine open or the phone on and hooked up to power will get the latest version as a silent update; do this 1-2 times a week; Safari will not let you go to a blacklist site; it has a blanket Apple blacklist of any North Korea site due to problems

It is your machine/device, and you have to protect it

Security measures and a better experience to have mail sorted into folders

Do not print out every message – there are better ways of managing email

Next month topic

macOS Monterey

Discussion: iOS 15.1 coming out – integration between Monterey and iPad as extension of Mac screen; new uses of e-mail; custom e-mail address for specific vendor, and can delete Alia to get rid of subscription/traffic based on alias for a special purpose; this is available in Apple Mail now, but hard to figure out

new FaceTime feature for invitation via email, but may have to be on a specific version of iOS; and may go to a Webpage for FaceTime expansion; bandwidth requirements unknown

Google Hangouts is less bandwidth-intensive

The new version of Zoom works better, and security is improving

Clarification:

Mark something as spam rather than Unsubscribe if not familiar with the company, since the risk of telling spammers your email address is real, and then you get more spam

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