Wednesday 11th March 2020
In the current circumstances, I felt I had to cancelled today's meeting as I have a chesty cough, and I don't want to risk passing on any infections. However, here are a few of the things I had planned to discuss today.
Coronavirus
Statistics
To
see the current world-wide statistics on the Covid-19 Coronavirus, go to:-
Scroll
down the page to see the stats for the UK and other countries.
The
Worldometer site has stats on a whole range of things, including emails sent
today, newspapers circulated and mobile phones sold:-
Coronavirus
Medical Advice
You
can get medical advice regarding the coronavirus from the NHS 111 service. This
can be accessed online by going to:-
Click
Get information and advice on the banner at the top of the page.
iPad’s
10th Birthday!
We
will soon be at a notable landmark in the history of computing when the iPad
reaches its 10th birthday. The iPad was first released by Apple on 3rd
April 2010. Although tablet computers had existed before this, it was the
innovative, touch-friendly design of the iPad that launched this form-factor as
a mainstream product category. Apple’s success with the iPad helped to promote
other manufacturer’s tablet products based on Android or Amazon Fire, for
example. However, Apple remain the dominant force in the tablet market with
75.36% of the UK market in 2019 (source: www.statista.com).
The
British designer, Jony Ive – now Sir Jonathan Ive – was behind the design of
the iPad and many other Apple products. Apple have sold more than 360 million
iPads since its launch in 2010 (source: www.lifewire.com) and, even though it’s
only 10 years, it feels like tablet computers have always been with us!
Browser
Scam Protection
All
the major web browsers have some phishing protection built-in and turned on by
default. This checks the web sites you
visit against lists of known deceptive sites and warns you accordingly. Of course, you can ignore these warnings or
turn off this phishing protection, but that would be very risky.
For
more details on this relating to Chrome, see:-
Windows
10 has a built-in phishing protection system called SmartScreen. This provides protection when you are
browsing with Edge, but also checks apps and files when you download them. I would recommend leaving all these
protections turned on, but you can check or change them by going to:-
Start, Settings,
Update & Security, Windows Security, Apps & browser
control.
Scam
Check
There
are some web sites that provide a free service which will check a web address
(aka URL) to see if it is a known phishing web site. Here are some examples:-
www.scamfoo.com
(recommended by Which?)
https://global.sitesafety.trendmicro.com (Run by
security company Trend Micro)
www.phishtank.com (Run by
OpenDNS)
https://transparencyreport.google.com/safe-browsing/search (Run by
Google and using the same safe browsing technology used by Chrome)
https://www.virustotal.com/gui/home/url (Virus
Total can also check files for known viruses)
AVG,
the security company well-known for their anti-virus products, provides this
article on “How to Check if a Website is Safe”:-
Next Session
The next scheduled meeting is:-
Wed
8th April 2020 1:30 to 3:30pm.
Obviously this will depend on any coronavirus restrictions that come into force.
In the meantime. please email me any questions and queries and I will try to respond. If any issues might be of general interest, I may post a further blog on that topic. I will post notifications on Twitter when I create an additional blog which you can follow @computerclub100.
