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Sunday, March 23, 2014 at 04:09AM It’s one of the hottest industries online and one almost guaranteed to make you more money than you ever dreamed of… as long as you’re willing to risk the price. This is the lure that turns thousands of unscrupulous people into identity thieves each year. In 2012, more than 12 million people were victims of identity fraud, and many of them had no idea how to prevent this crime from happening to them. When it comes to crime prevention, it’s often the simple things that work the best: locking a door, hiding your valuables, and even creating a more secure password for the sites you frequent online.
If it’s too much work thinking up elaborate passwords for every site you frequent, you’ve probably got one or two go-to passwords that are easy to remember. Your daughter’s birthday, your childhood address, or your first pet’s name are common examples of simple passwords. The problem is that, although they may be easy to remember, they’re even easier for thieves to find out. One look through your online history, and identity thieves have dozens of possible password phrase ideas based on your interests and past, ready to try out.
The best way to make a secure password is to begin with words that seemingly have nothing to do with your life. Think of a sentence that applies to each site you visit. For your credit union, it may be “I go to First Branch Credit Union every Friday at 3pm.” Use the first initial of each word to create a password, like this: IgtFBCUeF@3pm. Simple to remember, but almost impossible to figure out. Check out this post for more on the importance passphrases.
If an identity thief somehow manages to figure out one of your passwords, make it harder for them to access all your information. Create a separate password for every site you frequent. Financial sites, business sites, email, and even social media accounts all hold personal information that can be used against you. Set up a new and unique password every time you join a new site. Google has a great Good To Know page on the best ways to secure your password.
If you feel unsure about making random lists of letters and numbers that a thief might somehow hack, find one of the online random password generators and rely on that to create a series of passwords for you. These free sites will create passwords of meaningless strings of numbers, letters, and punctuation specifically designed to be used as passwords. They’re free, the password is never saved, and you can find as many passwords as you need instantly.
Beyond passwords
Creating unique and secure passwords are a great start to online security, but they do no good unless you practice basic internet safety. Never give your password to anyone else. Write the passwords down in an address book or other offline spot away from your computer. Consider using an identity protection service as an added layer of protection above the passwords. Install a malware program on your computer to avoid people from remotely accessing your passwords. And finally, never click on a link in an email, even if it looks like it’s from a legitimate site. Type in the correct address in your browser to go to the site, instead.
With a little diligence and some design, you can make sure you’re a lot safe when you’re online.
Security Wednesday, January 29, 2014 at 06:24AM If you find yourself increasingly thinking of your smart phone as an indispensable traveling companion, you’re not alone. Many drivers now rely on their phones for navigation, music, or just old-fashioned Bluetooth calls while they’re behind the wheel. And with that kind of continuous use, dropping the phone into a cup holder when you start the car won’t cut it. You need a serious car mount that will safely hold the device where you can see and use it, with a minimum of distraction. A mount may also save you a ticket, because the use of hand-held devices is now illegal in many states.
Many options are available, from basic phone holders priced at less than $10 to specialized mounts that cost $40 or more. Some models from phone makers double as a charger and can optimize the screen for easier access to travel-related functions. These special mounts typically have an opening for the phone’s camera, enabling a quick photo of a reckless driver or recording video on a scenic drive.
For drivers focused on navigation, a couple of GPS companies offer mounts with a built-in GPS receiver to improve position accuracy and a boosted speaker to make instructions easier to hear. We’ve used some of the full-featured mounts and found they can be worth the investment for true road warriors. But if you’re just looking for an inexpensive way to safely mount the phone in the car, good holders are available for $20 or less.
GripGo
What we found
Consumer Reports sampled 11 budget-priced mounts. We looked at phone holders that attach to the dashboard or windshield with a suction cup, models that clamp onto an air vent, and some that ride in a cup holder or 12-volt power outlet.
Our evaluations included trying each mount in two test cars and an SUV to get an idea how they worked in different vehicles. We looked for ease of installation and use, plus stability on the road and at our track during aggressive maneuvers. We tried each with two of the most popular phones, an Apple iPhone and Samsung Galaxy S3.
Generally speaking, we found that models designed to attach to the dashboard or windshield with a suction cup were the best choices. These provide a secure fit, while keeping the phone where it’s easy to see and use without blocking the car’s controls.
Among the suction-cup mounts, the iOttie HCLRIO102 ($20) stood out. It was easy to use and provided a secure fit with both of our phones. The Kensington K39256US ($25) is another good choice, but its long arm caused some vibration while driving. The as-seen-on-TV infomercial star, and something of a bargain in the group, GripGo ($11) was stable and could securely hold any size phone. But we found that sticky surface makes it difficult to remove a phone when it’s new, and it loses its grip over time. Regular washing helps, as package instructions suggest, but ours was never as grippy as it was when new.
Bracketron PVH-202-BL
It’s no surprise that vent-mounted models like the Bracketron PVH-202-BL ($10) and Arkon SM429-SBH ($15) can restrict your car’s climate system airflow. We also found them to be more difficult to install than suction-cup mounts, and they may not even be an option depending on the design of your vents. The Bracketron was easier to install than the Arkon, but both models we tried gave the impression they could easily cause expensive damage to a vent if pumped or pulled too hard. If you’re committed to buying a vent-mount holder, shop carefully and try to do a test fit before you buy.
Cup holder designs, like our Bracketron UCH-101-BL ($10) and McAlly mCup ($14), may be a workable compromise for some cars, but most cup holders are mounted low and hold the phone too low to be seen without taking your eyes off the road. Plus, your favorite beverages will be left homeless.
McAlly mCup
That said, cup holder mounts are still a better choice than models designed to slide into a 12-volt power outlet. Both the Scosche IUH12V Powermount ($21) and the Arkon Socket Mount IPM521 ($15) failed in our experience to provide a secure fit. Plus, these units held the phone too low for easy visibility and use.
For our money, the iOttie HCLRIO102 stood out in this group, being stable, convenient, and attractively priced. Further, by being a universal mount, it may even fit your next phone.
—Jim Travers
Cellphones Monday, January 27, 2014 at 06:19AM 
Modern gadgets are power hungry. If you want to make it through a long commute or a cross-country flight without having to plug your tablet or gaming device in, you’re going to need an external battery pack to keep the electrons flowing. Read on as we show you how to shop for a pack that will meet your needs and keep your screens glowing.
Normally when you need more juice for your smartphone, tablet, or other mobile electronic device, you plug the USB charging cable in to your computer or to a wall-wart transformer. You top the device off (or keep using it while it charges in the background) and away you go.
That’s not always convenient (or even possible) if you’re traveling or otherwise away from home. This is where an external battery pack comes in handy. They range in size from as small as a lipstick tube (good for topping off a small smartphone battery) to as big as a thick paperback book (good for keeping your phone going for days or letting multiple friends juice up their tablets).
Instead of plugging your charging cable into the wall, you instead plug the charging cable into the battery pack and fill up the device’s batteries that way. Not all battery packs are created equal, however, and even if the build quality is good, you can easily end up with an external battery pack that doesn’t fit your application and power needs.
Let’s take a look at our field tests of two great battery packs and how their features relate to our shopping-for-a-battery checklist.
As part of the process for writing this guide, we used two higher-capacity battery packs the RAVPower Deluxe 14,000 mAh Power Bank ($39.99), seen above right, and the Jackery Giant 10,400 mAh Power Bank ($39.95), seen above left.
We’d highly recommend both of them as perfectly serviceable high-capacity external battery packs. Rather than delve into all the features before you have a frame of reference, let’s take a look at the general guidelines you want to keep in mind when pack shopping and how they relate to our model packs.
Before all else, you need to establish how much juice you need. Both device batteries and the external battery packs that top them off have capacities rated in mAh (milliampere hours). This is the principle measuring stick you’ll use to determine how much you need to invest in your pack.
First, gather up the devices you want to charge off the external battery pack. Let’s say, for the sake of example, you have Samsung’s popular SIII smartphone and a new iPad Air. The SIII has a stock battery with a capacity of 2100 mAh and the iPad Air has a stock battery with a capacity of 11, 560 mAh. Now it’s time for a little number crunching.
You can use the following equation to determine just how beefy of a battery pack you need:
(Total mAh) * (% battery life extension expressed in decimal format) = Pack Size
If you wanted a battery pack that could double the battery life of both your devices, you’d need a pack with a capacity of at least 13,660 mAh:
If you wanted to squeeze 50% more life out of them, you’d need a device with at least a capacity of 6,830 mAh. If you only cared about keeping your iPad going during your flight and you’d have your phone turned off, then you could stick with a battery pack that had around the 11,560 mAh capacity of the iPad to double its life. While both of our test models are well suited for this job, only the extra-big RAVPower with 14,000 mAh would be able to truly power both of our devices with a 100%+ boost.
Just like in every other battery application, there’s a trade off to be had between high and low capacity devices, and that takes the form of weight. Thelittle lipstick-sized battery packs we mentioned a moment ago might only have 2,000 or so mAh in them, but they only weigh a few ounces and easily slip into your pocket or purse. Our 14,000 mAh beefcake that can keep your iPad running over a trans-continental flight? It weighs 2 pounds or so and won’t be very comfortable in your pocket.
Conversely, if you’re looking to power just your phone, getting one of the monster 10,000+ mAh packs will be overkill. Just for fun we charged our SIII phone exclusively off the massive RAVPower pack to see how many days we could go before the pack ran dry. By the 8th day of the experiment we hadn’t depleted it completely; clearly the pack would be overkill for casual travel use if your only device was a smartphone.
In addition to calculating how much battery capacity you need, there’s also the matter of charging amperage. The bigger and more power-hungry your device, the more important having the proper amperage on the USB charging ports is.
Charging ports on battery packs, like charging ports on wall-warts and computers, can provide electricity at two amperage rates: 1A and 2.1A. All USB devices can use both ports, but if a device can only handle 1A of power then it will automatically limit itself to 1A on a 2.1A port and if a 2.1A device is on a 1A port it will also charge (but at a much slower rate). Both of our test devices feature a 1A and a 2.1A port.
For trickle charging, such as you might do over night or if you just had the device sitting in your briefcase hooked up to the battery pack, the amperage doesn’t matter as much. Yes the 2.1A will charge the device faster, but if you’re not using it and it’s just topping off the device, the speed of the charge isn’t such a big deal.
Where the amperage becomes critical is when you’re shopping for a battery pack that you intend to use on a battery-hungry device while the device is in use. For example, if you want a battery pack that can keep an iPad Air topped off while you’re playing a graphics-intensive video game or otherwise taxing the system, you’re going to need, no questions asked, a battery pack with a 2.1A charging port. Packs with 1A ports simply won’t be able to keep up; you’ll be burning battery life on the device faster than the battery pack can replace it.
If you’re shopping for just yourself, it’s OK to spend less and get a device with a single port or a 2.1A and 1A port. Need to provide a steady flow of juice to both your iPad and your traveling companion’s iPad, though? You’d better spend the extra money to get a battery pack with two high draw 2A ports. If you’re planning on setting up a multiplayer gaming huddle at 30,000 feet, you can even find battery packs with 4+ 2.1A ports.
Given that it doesn’t cost much more to get a better pack with an extra port or two, you’ll come off looking like a very prepared spouse or business partner if you have some juice to share with your travel mates.
Because the external battery pack market is pretty heavily saturated, many manufacturers have started including little extras to entice buyers. Our advice is to avoid being swayed by the extras unless the extras offer you high-utility or save you money. For example, if the pack you’re looking at costs an extra dollar and comes with an iPad charging cable, and you were planning on buying one anyway, that’s a good value. If it costs a lot more and comes with 12 adapters for crap you don’t even own, then it’s not such a hot buy.
One of our favorite extra features is the inclusion on many battery packs of an LED flashlight. At first glance it seems pretty gimmicky, but we think it’s quite clever. You use battery packs most often when you’re traveling, and since you’ll likely have the battery pack in hand when you’re rooting around in your bag or luggage looking for cables and whatnot in an unfamiliar setting, that burst of light is more than handy. When our RAVPower external pack has a full charge, for example, the LED flashlight is good for a massive 800+ hours of use.
Another useful feature,with a much more practical application than a flashlight, is indicator lights. Both of our test models included LED indicators that, when the main button on the pack was tapped, displayed the remaining charge in a simple incremental display (the RAVPower used 4 LEDs and the Jackery used 3). On all but the smallest battery packs, don’t settle for anything but an effective remaining power indicator of some sort.
Now that you’ve learned about the features you want in your battery pack, make sure you don’t forget them when you’re shopping. Use the following checklist to ensure you end up with a battery pack that meets your needs.
1. Write down your total mAh needs and multiply that value by the percentage you want to extend your battery life (0.5 for 50%, 1.0 for 100%, 1.5 for 150% and so on).
2. Write down how many devices you want to charge simultaneously; this is the minimum number of ports you need.
3. Note the number of high-draw devices you’ll be using (iPads, Kindle Fires, newer smartphones, all benefit from having a 2.1A charging port). When in doubt, error towards getting at least one 2.1A port.
4. What extras do you want? (Extra cables, on-board LED light, etc.)
With all that listed out, you won’t be lost in the sea of battery packs when you hit up the bursting-at-the-seams category on Amazon looking for the right mix of mAh, ports, and accessories.
Cellphones, Travel Friday, January 24, 2014 at 06:12AM 
External hard drives are almost a commodity these days. They’re cheap, come in multiple sizes, and they’re pretty easy to find. Still, some are better than others: They’re more reliable, more portable, have more connectivity options, and so on. This week we’re looking at five of the best, based on your nominations.
Earlier in the week,we asked you to tell us which external hard drives you thought were the best. That is, off-the-shelf, consumer-oriented drives. We’ve covered the best external drive enclosures before, and we’ve talked about the best NAS enclosures as well. This time we wanted to cover the best simple, out of the box external drives. You offered up your nominations, and now we’re back to highlight the top five.
Western Digital’s My Passport line of drives are small, portable, and come in capacities ranging from 500GB all the way up to 2TB. All of the drives sport WD’s “Smartware” automatic backup software, which allows you to back up your computer to your drive as soon as you connect it, or on regular intervals (although, we generally suggest you avoid any drive’s built-in software andback up with something much better.) The My Passport line is most noted for being affordable and remarkably small—about the size of a pocket notebook—and being available in multiple colors and cases to fit your needs to both storage and style. The MyPassport line is also available with USB 3.0 (or 2.0), packs Western Digital’s password-protection features (that keep the files on the drive from being accessed without authentication), and they’re all powered by USB, so you don’t need to drag an adapter along with you.
Those of you who nominated the My Passport line specifically praised its portability and its affordability, and one of you even mentioned liking WD’s included security software—something we don’t often hear when we’re talking about external hard drives. If you want one, you can pick them up in your choice of size and color at Amazon, ranging from $60 for 500GB to $128 for 2TB.
The GoFlex portable line of hard drives is still available, and tried and true, even if it’s technically been replaced by Seagate’s newer Slim Portable and Backup Plus line of portable drives. However, the GoFlex portable series earned your and reviewers’ praise for being reliable, relatively rugged, and flexible. The drive comes with features you would expect from an external drive, including built-in software that performs automatic backups when connected or at regular intervals, encryption software to keep your data secure and safe from prying eyes if it’s lost or stolen, and so on. When paired with their USB dock, the portable GoFlex becomes a powerful desktop drive with storage and health indicators on the exterior, and what was a portable USB 2.0 drive can suddenly become a USB 3.0, eSATA, or Firewire drive for faster data transfer.
Those of you who praised the GoFlex Ultra-Portable line hihglighted its flexibility and its port options, which let you connect it to virtually any computer you come across using the best possible connection method. Even though the Super Slim series is the new iteration of the line, the GoFlex Ultra-Portable is still available from third parties like Amazon in multiple sizes and colors ranging from around $100 for 500GB (USB 3.0) and $54 for 500GB (USB 2.0) and up for 750GB and 1TB versions, and even larger capacities in the form of the GoFlex Desk, which sports many of the same modular features. Upgrade cables for the interface are available director as add-on items from Amazon.
The My Book line of external hard drives by Western Digital have been around for ages, and they’re still going strong. They’ve changed look a few times, but they’re still popular, and firmly targeted at desktop users who need a little more storage space (and don’t necessarily need to take that storage with them on the go). Like the My Passport series, the My Book line comes with Western Digital’s “Smartwave” automatic backup software, that will back up your PC anytime you choose or on a regular, pre-defined schedule. The drive can also be password protected and encrypted, so you have to authenticate before you can access or open any of the files on it. The desktop version supports system backups using Acronis as well as WD’s own software, and can be configured to sync with cloud storage services like Dropbox.
The other nice thing about the My Book line is that you have plenty of connectivity options. It supports USB 2.0 and 3.0 out of the box (at least on the new models), and comes in capacities between 2TB and 4TB. Those of you who highlighted it praised its history of quality drives and customer support, not to mention reliability. If you want to pick one up, they’re available at Amazon from $90 for 2TB, $110 for 3TB, and $160 for 4TB.
The Seagate FreeAgent Desk is the desk-sized version of Seagate’s external drives, and while it’s technically been replaced by the Backup Plus line of desktop drives, but it’s still widely available, and comes in capacities ranging from 1TB to 4TB. The FreeAgent line are almost iconic, and as the name implies, they’re desktop drives, designed not to be moved terribly often. The FreeAgent line comes with USB 2.0 by default (although the newer Backup Plus supports 3.0), and Seagate’s built-in automatic backup and encryption software to keep your files and data safe.
On the up-side, even though the FreeAgent series is fading away, they’re still available, ranging from around $37 for 500GB up to $60 for 1TB to $150 for 1.5TB at Amazon. Alternatively, the Backup Plus line is a natural upgrade for more modern devices, sporting USB 3.0 connectivity that’s upgradable to Firewire or Thunderbolt if you need it, visual storage and health indicators on the front, support for cloud syncing and auto-downloading photos and media from social networks, and more. They’re available in capacities from 1TB up to 4TB, starting at $82 for 1TB, $92 for 2TB, $118 for 3TB, and $150 for 4TB at Amazon. If you’re interested in an older FreeAgent, there’s no reason not to look at the newer models instead.
Apple’s Airport Time Capsule is a wireless router and an external hard drive rolled into one. It’s not specifically designed to be connected to a particular computer (although you can), but instead connect wirelessly to all of the computers in your home (ideally, Apple computers, although it’s not difficult to get them sharing with Windows and Linux machines). You can manage it remotely with an iOS device, and even though a wireless external hard drive sounds overcomplicated, setting it up is surprisingly easy. If you need it to be a base station, you can set it up to be one, or if you want it to act as a bridge, extending Wi-Fi into another room, you can set it up that way as well. The Airport Time Capsule comes in capacities of 2TB and 3TB, and can be connected to a printer or even more USB storage to make it available to the other computers on your network. It even features a built-in firewall to keep the internet at bay, and supports Apple’s Time Machine automatic backup software natively.
Those of you who nominated the Time Capsule—both the current Wi-Fi enabled model and the older, flater models, praised Apple’s build quality and customer support. Obviously it’s ideal for those folks invested in the OS X/iOS ecosystem as well. All of those features will definitely cost you more than the average external drive however; the Airport Time Capsule is $300 for the 2TB version and $400 for the 3TB version, direct from Apple.
Backup, Networking 
