Xoomler Inc

03/03/2022

Passwords.

We hear about how important it is to have a good password all the time. The password to your email account is arguably the most important password as it is the skeleton key for all your other online accounts. If someone has access to your email then they can hop on your Facebook, click on forgot password and change it to whatever they like.

Here is a brief chart showing how important a properly complex password is in 2022 and how long various password complexities take to hack. This comes into play when an online provider's password database is stolen and they are trying to break each account's password. I think many people will be surprised how quickly their password would be hacked.

While we are at it pop your email address into this website to see where you might have already had your logon data stolen.

https://haveibeenpwned.com/

02/08/2021

We are nearly working from home these days. Many folks from dining tables and kitchen tables and frankly terrible chairs all adding up to ergonomics that can cause short and long term pain. Here is a great refresher on how to setup your office desk. Except for the chair these changes all require little effort and no real expense.

Our desks weren't made for us. They were made for everyone. So ergonomics expert Jon Cinkay from the Hospital for Special Surgery is here to show you how to ...

12/18/2020

As the team here at Xoomler starts to wind down for the holidays we look back on quite a year. Remember when people were upset last year because they didn't like how Game of Thrones ended? The start of this year was actually very quiet for us as a company as most of our clients were properly setup for a disaster and staff went home and kept working. We never thought all of our clients would be in a situation where they couldn't go into the office at the same time! However, we used the time to train internally on new systems and feature sets and gain some new certifications. We rolled out new networks in Texas, LA, New York, Vancouver as well as a number here in Toronto such as a current project at the Design Exchange. We brought a number of great new clients on board who we look forward to actually meeting in person next year. The whole team though misses the face to face interactions with our clients. We are looking forward to next year when thing will go back to normal. We wish you all a quieter but healthy and safe set of Holidays and look forward to working with you in the New Year!

Xoomler Team

03/19/2020

COVID 19 has been a good test for our clients IT setups. The vast majority we have previously migrated to a cloud-managed infrastructure and staff were able to easily transition to working from home. We have been doing lots of remote setups and laptop orders to help other clients continue business continuity with staff working from home. There are a number of ways we can help keep your business running in these challenging times.

Our team is all working from home as well but also fully cloud based so all of our support lines are open and remote access to desktops and systems to provide support are the same as always. You just might hear a little one in the background that is in training for a future position on the Xoomler team in the next decade or so though.

Finally a bit of fun. As we are all cooped up at home and not able to see family and friends here is a little browser add on that will let you watch Netflix with someone who is remote. It will sync the start of the movie and let you chat with one another:

https://www.netflixparty.com/

Stay healthy and the team at Xoomler is here if we can be of assistance.

Jason deCourcy
CEO
Xoomler Inc

03/06/2017

No Space left on your phone? Google has the answer!

Like most people, I have a few hundred if not thousand photos on my phone plus videos. I often hear people say "I have to delete some of the old photos on my phone so I can take new ones" or "I have to figure out how to take photos off my phone.. somehow" There is an easy way to do this.

Google Photos which is available on both iPhones and Android phones. You need a Gmail account but that is pretty much the default these days (still on yahoo or hotmail or 365... Google security issues). A quick install will allow you to sync all your photos to your Gmail account as you take them going forward. In the settings, you can choose the option "Free Up Space" and choose what quality level you want. It will then upload all of your photos leaving just the thumbnail on your phone. This will shrink down the amount of space used by your photos and videos by a factor of 10 easily. In the future, if you click on a thumbnail it will download that photo or video and store it locally. If you are afraid of using up to much space on your Gmail account you can purchase extra space easily for extremely low cost.

Here are the links:

Google Play Store
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.google.android.apps.photos&hl=en

Apple's Apps Store
https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/google-photos-free-photo-and-video-storage/id962194608?mt=8

09/08/2016

Even Easier Google Account Security!

I have made many posts and emails this past year on email account security and setting up two factor authentication on your account. If your email account security is breached you are in trouble. Google has just made things even easier this week. You can now have a simple Yes or No pop up on your phone when you logon. Alternatively a quick tap No and you have stopped someone else from gaining access to your account with the added benefit you know someone has your password and was trying to gain access, time to change that password!

Now this process to set up 2 Factor authentication will take at the very least 20 seconds and upwards of nearly a minute to go through the grueling steps.

Step 1: Go to this link: https://www.google.ca/landing/2step/ and logon to your account.

Step 2: Click TURN ON 2 Factor Authentication follow a quick setup where you enter your phone number and confirm it works. Skip this step if you are already using it.

Step 3: Scroll down to the bottom and under GOOGLE PROMPT click "ADD PHONE" and simply choose your phone.

Done!

You have now made your email and over all digital life much safer. Now make sure to do this for not just your work Gmail but also your personal Gmail accounts.

08/31/2016

Every time a client tells us they are using Dropbox I shudder a little inside. Dropbox has had so many security breaches, that we know about, it isn't funny. Now it has come to light their massive security breach in 2012 of 60 million accounts wasn't just of user names as they reported but also contained the passwords for those accounts. This was not released to the public. This is troubling in two ways. First of all Dropbox has numerous security breaches leading one to question how they setup their security infrastructure and why you should trust it to work now. Two and possibly even more troubling is when they do drop the ball you won't necessarily find out the whole truth. If you are using Dropbox for your corporate data I highly suggest you rethink it and look at other more secure platforms. There are many other options on the market including Google Apps that we use here at Xoomler in house. In the case of Google Apps the feature set and cost is also much better than Dropbox and security is fantastic. We do not recommend Microsoft's Cloud offering due to numerous security breaches and other issues as well.

As always if you have questions about this post or any others feel free to reach out. Would love to hear how these posts have helped you make more informed decisions or what topics you would like to see discussed.

http://motherboard.vice.com/read/hackers-stole-over-60-million-dropbox-accounts

Although the accounts were stolen during a previously disclosed breach, only now is the extent coming to light.

02/10/2016

Google Checkup

Gmail and Google related accounts these days are nearly a given for most people in their personal lives and often business lives as well. I am often surprised when someone tells me they are on an old platform like Yahoo.com or Outlook.com (formerly Hotmail). However with so much of our online presence and lives tied to our account you need to ensure it is 1. Secure and 2. you are sharing only what you want to share.

Below is a link to a quick wizard that lets you check the security on your account such as what systems are able to logon to your gmail and whether you have Two Factor authentication. I highly recommend turning on Two Factor authentication this feature. In this era where nearly everyone of your online accounts can have it's password reset and sent to your email account, you are in trouble if your gmail account is compromised as it can be a domino effect of account break ins. Do yourself a favour and turn it on. I spoke more about this in one of my first posts below. Secondly the site walks you through what information such as photos and youtube history and well as your own actual location history is stored and shared and two whom. You might be surprised how much of your online history or photos is being shared with google, advertisers or anyone that comes across your profile.

It takes about 3-5 mins to quickly go through and make sure all is well and change items that are require some updating.

09/11/2015

Today's article is a quick animated GIF that shows just how important your main business tool is. However your computer is really a huge collection of tools and we often don't realize just how important it is in our lives both business and personal. This is why the quality of the hardware you run your business with is important both in terms of speed and reliability. The ROI on a well running system is significant.
http://img.ibxk.com.br/2014/09/23/23120354214264.gif