By Gina Smith, ANewDomain.net – Tech Page One 01/04/2013

aNewDomain.net – Forget the security issues surrounding the ecosystem surrounding the nascent epayment economy for a minute. There’s a bigger problem – and it’s as obvious as your Personal Identification Number, or PIN.

Odds are you’ve used a four-digit PIN a lot. And that means a field day for criminals. Plain and simple, as the infographic below demonstrates, most folks don’t care or don’t bother to set up a four-digit PIN that’s difficult to guess after about 20 tries.

Try this on for size. According to a study of 3.4 million PINs by Data Genetics, nearly 27 percent of PINs could be guessed at correctly after just 20 tries. That isn’t just because popular pins like 1234 and 8888 reign – the most popular 1234 PIN accounted for 10 percent of the exposed PINs it studied. It’s also because, with four digits, there are only 10,000 possible combinations. Couple the two and you’ve got a situation that stands to expose an awful amount of people to a whole lot of felony theft — all over a PIN.

What to do? Check out the infographic below and make sure your PIN isn’t among the most popular. Never write yours down. Change it frequently. And don’t be lazy about it. PIN theft is booming, for sure. But it takes two – you and the PIN thief working in concert – to tango.

More…http://www.techpageone.com/technology/with-holiday-shopping-well-upon-us-criminals-celebrate-too-are-they-using-your-pin-to-do-it-heres-a-great-infographic-with-facts-and-analysis-around-the-question-of-how-safe-your-pin-is-reall/#.UXVOwUqAY11

Throughout the years email has become one of our most readily used forms of communication. You cannot buy something online, register a product, or even leave a store without someone asking you for your email address. In fact, we use it so often we can become desensitized to its true purpose and desired intention.

The objective for your email account should differ widely depending on whether it is your University account or your personal account. As a best practice, your University account should be regarded as work-related and reserved for what it has been truly designed for: University business. Use your personal account for everything else such as personal communications, coupons, purchase confirmations, product registries and updates, and so forth.

Here are few reasons why it is essential to compartmentalize your private and professional electronic communications:
It enhances your security consciousness. If you do not offer your University email address to financial organizations (such as your bank or PayPal) you can be certain that the emails you receive through your University inbox claiming to be from one of these entities is truly a phishing attempt. The best approach with phishing is to simply delete the message. If you would like to report it, you may send it to abuse@missouri.edu. When reporting phishing, please send the original email as an attachment by dragging and dropping it into a new message box.

Your University email account maybe more secure if you are using it for professional use only. You should not use your University account for non-work related website registrations. Registering your information with various sites can be risky as some sites are less secure than others. If your personal account becomes compromised due to insecurities, the integrity of your University account will remain intact. Note: you should have different passwords for each of your accounts and each site you access!

It improves your productivity and helps you stay organized. Personal emails or spam can interfere with your work and increase the likelihood of important work-related emails getting over looked or lost within the mix. Separate email accounts grants you the opportunity to direct non-work items to your other email account making it easier for you to stay on task while at work.

There are legal obligations regarding the accessibility of your sent/received email. There may be a legal need to review University communications in which case your email communications may be made available. Most people would prefer their personal communications not be scrutinized or reviewed as part of this process, thus even more incentive to have separate professional and personal email accounts.

The University’s spam filtering tools may block certain inbound emails. The University employs spam filtering tools in an effort to reduce unwanted inbound email. The University will accept requests for email address exceptions (this is known as whitelisting); however, the requestor must be able to provide legitimate cause for this exception. Whitelisting requests that do not pertain to University business may be declined.

Your mother calls you to ask why you keep emailing her about “enhancements,” and your coworkers complain that you won’t stop sending them ads. Does this sound like you?
A friend of mine recently found himself in this situation, as he began to receive a deluge of “bounced” spam email–spam messages that seemed to have been sent from his email account to invalid email addresses and then returned to the supposed sender. But the email address in question is for an account that my friend rarely uses, and he did not knowingly use it to send any spammy email to anyone. More…

Phishing scams use email or pop-up messages to trick readers into disclosing user names and account passwords, credit card information, bank account information, Social Security numbers, or other confidential information. There has been an exponential increase in the number of phishing attempts against the University in recent weeks. Unfortunately, more University employees have been responding to these attacks resulting in adverse impacts to themselves and increasing the burden on University resources to remediate the mistake.

Phishing scams are becoming more sophisticated and thus seemingly legitimate to users. In order to gain trust, most cyber attackers will send spoof emails—claiming to be from a bank, university department, or IT professional—using company logos and company contact information which direct users to counterfeit URLs. While designed to appear authentic, these websites are actually controlled by the attacker. Please follow the tips below to make sure that you don’t take the bait and get “phished”!

How to Prevent Getting Phished …
• Before you act, carefully consider the type of information requested.
• If you are not sure of the sender, DO NOT click on web links or respond to the message in any way.
• Become familiar with our best practices regarding phishing at http://makeitsafe.missouri.edu/phishing.html.

If You Know That You Received a Phishing Message…
• DO NOT reply. The best approach is to simply delete the message. If you want to report it, you may send it to abuse@missouri.edu. When reporting phishing, please send the original email as an attachment by dragging and dropping it into a new message box.
• DO NOT click on links within the message or open any attachments.
• If you need further assistance, consult your IT support team or the IT Help Desk at 882-5000.

If You Think You Have Already Been Phished …
• If you are a victim of a phishing scam, reset your password immediately. For information about resetting passwords visit http://doit.missouri.edu/accounts/passwords.html.
• If this vulnerability relates to your University account, you are required to report the incident. Please review the mandatory reporting requirement at http://doit.missouri.edu/security/response/.

For more great tips, security news and all the latest alerts, visit http://makeitsafe.missouri.edu/.

Snipping Tool – easy screen shots
On Windows 7 the Snipping Tool is available on the Start Menu, or by typing “snipping tool” into the search box. When you open the Snipping Tool a box will appear and the cursor will be ready to capture the image of whatever you select (the box will go away once you start to drag the cursor to capture the image). If you close the box it closes the program, so if you don’t want to see it as you decide what you want an image of, you can minimize it.

If you click on New you have the ability to change the shape you want to capture. Free-form will capture whatever shape you make with the mouse. Rectangular Snip will allow you to capture whatever size image you would like. This is an easy way to capture images if you only want part of the screen or the window you have open. Window Snip will capture the image of whatever window you click on, and Full Screen Snip will take the image of everything you have on the screen. The default is the Rectangular Snip (or whichever “snip type” was used most recently).
Once you have captured your image a new window will open with the image so from there you can save, edit (with pen or highlighter tools) email, or copy the image.

How to set up public folders in Outlook

• Click on Calendar at the bottom left of your Outlook Window.
• Click on the folder icon below  the Tasks option appears (the bottom left corner of Outlook).
• Scroll to “Public Folders”. Click on the arrow next to Favorites to show the Folders you already have as favorites.
• Click on the arrow next to “All Public Folders”. Click the arrow next to Columbia, then Departments, then scroll to MU Libraries and click the arrow next to it. That will open all of the calendars under MU Libraries. Right click on whichever calendar you would like to easily view and select “Add to Favorites”.
• If you scroll back to “Public Folders”, you should see the new calendar added to your Favorites.

https://help.missouri.edu

This is an incredibly useful website for any IT questions or issues. The home page has links to useful information about everything from password problems to connecting to the wireless internet. There is also an option to search the website for specific questions or problems, as well as an announcements section to let everyone know if there are any system issues. If you go to the Find Answers tab you can browse through different categories to find answers for IT problems, you can find links to the websites of all of the Support Centers on campus.  You can also log in to the page using your User ID (or Username) and Password to see more search results, as well as records of any questions you’ve had for Help Desk, or DoIT in the past. This is a great first step in trying to solve any IT problems you might encounter!

• Did you know that you can move the taskbar to the top, right, or left sides of your screen? Right click on the taskbar. Click on “Lock the Taskbar” (if it IS locked it will have a check mark next to it, if not skip to the next step). Left click on the taskbar and drag it to its new location. Then right click on the taskbar and click “Lock the Taskbar” select the new location. Also you can watch a quick demo video on Microsoft’s website: http://windows.microsoft.com/en-US/windows7/Unlock-and-move-the-taskbar

• There is a faster way to access your recently or frequently used documents and files. Windows 7 comes with a way to quickly access those files from different programs. If you click on the Start Menu a list of programs will come up. These are the most frequently and/or recently used programs for your computer. Any programs (such as Word or Excel) that have documents saved to them will have a right facing arrow on the right of the program name. If you hover the mouse on that arrow a list of frequently or recently used documents will appear. You can select the document you need and open it from there. You can also select and drag the document from the “Jump List” to your desktop, folders, and even into emails.

You might already be aware that we have a new server share for Outlook so now there is more room for your old emails. Here is how you can move your existing email folders to the new server share:
Right click on the folder you want to move. A menu will pop up, select “Move Folder.” Under “Move Folder” select either your email address, or your inbox (depending on where you want the new folder to show up). Click OK after you make your selection. Now the old folders will be saved on the new server share.

With Windows 7, you can design, save and quickly change your computer’s themes (desktop background, window border color, sounds and screen saver). Right click on the desktop. Click “Personalize” and there you will find a selection of different backgrounds for you to choose from. For more information visit Microsoft’s website and see how to create a theme.