Wednesday 14th October 2015
Laptop Key Fault
A faulty keyboard which had been removed from a client's laptop was exhibited. The fault was interesting in that it caused Search boxes to pop up randomly on the laptop, giving the impression that maybe some malware was at work. However, the F3 key brings up Search and the keyboard was randomly generating the code for the F3 key, although the physical key was not stuck in any way. I have heard of a similar faults were a keyboard generates the F1 key code randomly causing Help screens to appear.
This particular keyboard from a Toshiba Equium L40 laptop was secured with a couple of screws from the underside and a few clips. Mechanically fairly straight-forward to replace, although care must be taken with the ribbon cable connector, especially the locking mechanism.
Android - Stagefright Exploit
Stagefright refers to the multi-media manager within the Android OS found on many smartphones and tablets. A possible exploit was discovered by security company Zimperium which could allow a malicious MMS message to access the device without the users knowledge. The only way this can be fixed is with a firmware update, and these are now being pushed out by the device manufacturers. In the meantime you can mitigate the risk by disabling 'auto retrieve' for MMS messages. You can do this by launching the Messenger app and going to Menu, Settings and look for Multimedia Message and disabling auto retrieve. Do a similar thing in Google Hangouts or other apps that use MMS.
You can download the free Stragefright Detector app produced by Zimperium from the Google Play Store to check if your device is vulnerable.
Cheshire Police Alerts
A useful free service gives you alerts from Cheshire Police and Fire and Rescue about incidents and crimes in your area. You can sign up for free at www.cheshirepolicealert.co.uk
Alerts can be received by email or SMS text.
Ad Blockers
A discussion about the pros and cons of ad blockers in web browsers. While adverts are necessary to finance many of the 'free' web pages we all enjoy, they have, in some cases, become intrusive and time-consuming. Not only do ads cause annoyance, but loading all the third-party ads from a variety of agencies slows down the page-loading speed and adds unnecessary Internet traffic. It might be worth trying an ad-blocking extension to see if it improves your browsing experience. For Firefox and Chrome, you could try Ublock Origin. Note that you cannot use ad blockers with Edge as it does not yet support extensions.
Even Apple now allow ad blocking in Safari in iOS9. A couple of apps you can try with iOS9 are Purify and Crystal.
You can Google for more details on these products or ad blockers in general.
Compatibly Mode
With the release of Windows 10 on PCs, it seemed opportune to mention the Compatibility Mode feature which has been built in to Windows for many years. This can enable programs which were designed for earlier versions of Windows to run on more recent ones. An updated copy of the handout on Compatibility Mode can be found here https://drive.google.com/folderview?id=0B2mOJkfHZEiLbVV1NU5CaHF5ODQ&usp=sharing
Next Meeting
The next meeting will be on Wednesday November 11th at the earlier time of 1:30pm, finishing at 3:30pm.
