General
Val answers your technology questions – Part 2
Transcript
[Val] Hello and welcome to the Be Connected Podcast. I'm Val Quinn and I'm a technology commentator, a broadcaster and publisher, and of course your host of the Be Connected podcast. So whether it's keeping in touch with others, staying informed, or helping us have fun and get stuff done, technology answers many of our everyday needs, but it also creates lots of questions. So in this episode we're answering some tech questions from you, the Be Connected audience. We're tackling a lot of everyday head-scratchers covering phones, internet speeds, scams, passwords, digital ID, and much more. Putting those questions to me will be Zoe Warne. You can hear Zoe on radio talking all things digital with the ABC and Radio National. She's also a founding partner of Digital Consultancy August, with a working knowledge of the challenges and rewards that online technologies bring to everyday life. Welcome Zoe. Thanks for joining us.
[Zoe] So glad we're chatting today Val. I know you talked about rewards, but I must admit I had my first real challenge with a scam. The "Hi Mom" scam. I'm not sure if you've heard of that one.
[Val] Yeah, I have. And this is a really tricky one. That's where someone impersonates like a son or daughter and they say, help, you know, send some money to me and that type of thing.
[Zoe] Yeah, and the only way that I think it clicked straight away for me was that my son is five and he doesn't have an electricity bill that needs to be paid. So it was easy for me to catch that one, but I definitely felt a sense of what it might be like for other people who are getting that happening to them quite often by the sounds of it.
[Val] Well, I'm glad it was so obvious that this was a scam. Listen, before we get started, don't forget that you can find out more information about some of the topics that we cover today on the Be Connected website. So be sure to check out the show notes for links to free courses, videos and more.
[Zoe] So let's get started. We'll kick off with a question from Brian in Anna Bay, New South Wales. He wants to know how he gets set up for the internet while travelling. He's going around Australia, lucky thing, and wants to access the net on his Apple iPhone 12 and MacBook Air while he's away from home. He also has a Telstra internet account.
[Val] Well, I guess there's a few different ways to consider the answer to this. I guess first off, he can access the internet through his phone and then potentially share the internet connection with other devices like his MacBook Air laptop. So that's something called tethering. And what it means is that as long as your phone has a signal, you can then connect to your phone's Wi-Fi hotspot from your laptop or even other devices. And even if other people, maybe other family members have their own laptops, they can all even access the internet via Brian's phone. And the way to do that is to look for hotspot settings in your phone's settings. Okay, so now if we're talking about actually being able to access the internet when you're in very remote areas where the internet connection itself is weak, there are a few options there too. One is for Brian to hop on the internet via public Wi-Fi, if he's in a town or even staying at a hotel or that type of thing. But there's something that he would really need to consider there is that public Wi-Fis aren't always the most secure. So to protect yourself when you're on public Wi-Fis, you should always be using internet security software on your devices, like your laptops and even on your phones. Or you can subscribe to something called a virtual private network. And that helps protect your connection even on public Wi-Fi. You can Google "VPN" or "internet security software" to find out more about how to get them on your devices. But these are things that I would always have in place if I'm gonna be accessing public Wi-Fi. And lastly, I guess the other option is that you can buy specialised antennas that will give you better reception for your smartphone, but these are usually expensive and you may not wanna do that. The other one is that you can even use satellite internet services and there's been a lot of advances in this area. So for companies which give you basically a small satellite dish that you carry with you and then you can access the internet right from a satellite overhead, that's an option for some people, especially people who are going away for quite a long time. And they might have an RV or a caravan and they can actually use this while they're travelling all around Australia. Zoe, have you heard about these new low earth orbit satellites that we can now use to get internet connectivity?
[Zoe] I have, and actually, the other night I was gazing up into the night sky and I saw them tracking across the sky. They're in a line, they move very slowly.
[Val] Wow, well I've heard that there's actually thousands of them up there to create these new constellations so we can access inter the internet from pretty much anywhere in the world.
[Zoe] Yeah, I thought it was really amazing to see it. We have satellite on a country property and I mean the connection is great, but to actually see where it was coming from that was another thing altogether. We have a question from Sandra from Hamilton in Victoria. She wants to know if it's really necessary to pay for virus protection on a computer.
[Val] Ooh, you see this one really catches people out and I don't know how you feel about this one, but there is supposed to be sort of built-in protection in your Mac and Windows computers to kind of keep, you know, viruses at bay and that type of thing. But it's better to pay for a service to make sure that you're 100% covered. So some people might just not want to spend the money, but I would very much recommend that you do. In the old days they were called antivirus software tools and that type of thing. But really nowadays it's called internet security software because it's a whole suite of things to protect you, whether it be from the websites that you're browsing online through your browser or through the emails that you receive to I guess viruses that you might download from the internet. So internet security software is, in my opinion, an essential thing to put on your computer to give you another layer of protection. And these things are also updated very often to make sure that as the threats out there change, they keep up to date with them, and they're usually more advanced than what you would normally find on your Windows or Mac computer built into the software there itself. So yeah, I would recommend it, worth money.
[Zoe] And can then that also help you secure your passwords, because Melanie from Booval in Queensland wants to know, how do I secure my passwords for free though?
[Val] Look again, you have built-in password managers in Windows and in Mac software as well as Android for your phone and then MacOS for your iPhones. The idea is a password manager basically allows you to have very hard-to-guess individual passwords for all kinds of different things, but you don't have to worry about remembering them anymore. You just have to remember one password for your password manager. So an example is, say your internet banking, the password manager would assign a very complicated password and then it would remember that for you and every time, say you went online to log into your bank, it would suggest putting the password in for you so you don't have to remember it. It can also be passwords for apps and other software tools as well. There's a few different brands out there that do it. There's products like OnePass and DashLane and LastPass and if you Google "password manager", you'll find a lot of these online. You'll normally have to pay a subscription fee but they tend to offer a little more than the built-in ones that you'd get for your iPhones and your Android phones and that type of thing. They help you organise your passwords and help you share them even, even temporarily share them with people if you want to.
[Zoe] Really handy too for if you are having to change your password regularly, which is a good thing to do to increase your security, isn't it? So if you've got somewhere that you can easily change them but that remembers them for you, it saves you having to remember those changed passwords.
[Val] That's right, it is just so hard to remember, you know, password after password after password. I mean there are some tricks about, you know, use a couple of words out of a poem or do this or that and you're supposed to change them on your birthday and then maybe now it's every six months. So it's really hard. So password managers are really the tool to help us.
[Zoe] So Leona from Victoria asks, how do I use a QR code? And which is the best to use though? I think maybe which is the best app to use for a Samsung phone?
[Val] Yeah, well that's a very good question. I mean since COVID, I think we've really seen the rise of the QR code. But the good thing about a QR code is it can contain the same information like you know, a web address or even a mobile phone number or something like that. But you don't have to type it in, you just use your phone's camera and then that information will get entered into a website. So the way you use QR codes or scan QR codes, number one is you have to use your phone's camera, and it might be through an app or you might just have to open up the camera itself, and then you point the camera at the QR code. And now most phones have built-in automatic software that recognises that you have a QR code in your sort of picture or your camera's view. Even Samsung phones now will have that built-in automatically, so it will recognise that you have a QR code and it will usually put a little bit of text beneath the QR code in yellow showing that it's identified it as a special link and then you tap on that and then it will open up the link that the QR code represents. However, in some older devices, older Samsung phones, you might have to go and swipe from the top of your phone down to show your settings menu. And then normally in there there will be a QR code camera option. But these days it should be automatic, it should just be you open up your camera, point it at the QR code, and then it will actually work with it. But bear in mind that QR codes do potentially get involved in scams. I would avoid using any other third-party apps on your phone or downloading QR code scanners because a lot of times these are malicious and they can potentially take you to a site that you don't wanna go with. So most smartphones today have native QR code scanning built right into the camera app itself.
[Zoe] To that point too, it's good to see and be checking the site that you do end up landing on and making sure it is secure. So if you are, say, ordering food at a restaurant and you've scanned a QR code menu to make sure that if you are needing to input your credit card details to pay, just to ensure that it has the little lock icon and it's a secure site.
[Val] You're absolutely right. Yeah, you wanna make sure that that site looks legitimate, professional and always look for that little lock icon right up by the web address. The data that's being sent back and forth between you and the webpage is scrambled up and encrypted, so it's protected.
[Zoe] Stella from Winthrop in Western Australia asks, how do you block a spam email? She says she's blocked it and she's reported it but she's still getting them.
[Val] Well I can certainly feel Stella's pain and I'm sure Zoe, you know what I mean about this, we all get too much spam email but thankfully there are ways of managing it and seeing less of them. But it also, I guess, depends on what way you look at emails. And it might be Gmail that you view your emails online or it might be Microsoft which has email software that you use on your computer. If you're using Gmail, when you get a spam email, what you can do is you can go to the "More" menu item on the top right and then you can mark it as junk or block it and then you should certainly see less of them that way. Otherwise in, say, your Microsoft's mail client, you can mark mail items as junk and then they'll move into your junk folder and you'll see less of them in the future hopefully, because Microsoft and Google do learn about what is junk email. And even your telco can filter emails based on what they know is junk email, so you see less of it overall.
[Zoe] So the spam emails can often be scam emails and I mean I'm always hearing about new scams in the media and I'm just wondering like, should I be worried or scared of the amount of scams that are being reported? And is there also even somewhere I can go to find out about like what the latest scams might be?
[Val] Well, yeah, I mean I think it's a very good thing to be aware that scams are happening all the time. And the fear is definitely real. A lot of people don't feel comfortable when they're looking at emails in their inbox. Especially ones that ask you to open an attachment or if they're sent from somebody who you don't know who they are, or they're asking for you to go somewhere online to click on a link. And now with AI and things like ChatGPT, we're seeing even more scams that are making use of AI to sound more legitimate, because in the past a lot of scams came from other countries and you could tell that the language wasn't quite right or the fake sites didn't look as legitimate as they might have otherwise. My favourite place to go to keep track of what scams are out there is Scamwatch, now they have a website called scamwatch.gov.au so it's supported by the Australian Government and they report on all of the latest. It could be text scams or website scams or getting called. So it's all kinds of different scams to be aware of. And I think that just checking in there, you know, once a week or even giving them your mailing list details so they can send you information is always a great way of doing things.
[Zoe] And it's also, I think, a bit on us as well in terms of limiting, you know, who we share our personal information with. I know that that's one way to help avoid it. Is there also like a one-stop shop for information about how we could protect our privacy better online?
[Val] Absolutely. I mean privacy is an extremely important thing. It's becoming bigger and bigger every day with companies wanting to learn more about you and sharing that with other companies and that type of thing, as well as scammers. So I would head to the office of the Australian Information Commissioner website and you can learn all kinds of things about your privacy rights as well as how to lodge a privacy complaint because we don't wanna just, you know, be victims, we wanna actually take action about this and it gives you great information about what to do if you've been caught in something like a data breach or if you are a victim of identity fraud. So definitely make sure that you visit the office of the Australian Information Commissioner website and I'll put a link to where you need to go in the show notes.
[Zoe] That sounds like worth checking out that site. So Ross from Marcoola in Queensland wants to know about internet speed. He says our internet provider guarantees 20 megabits per second download and 2 megabits per second upload from the modem. In our latest speed test, which is a great thing you can do, which kind of looks like a rev-o-metre, I'm not sure what they're called, but it showed that they got 22 downloading but zero uploading. Is the zero upload a concern? They wanna notice like any device or feature that's running slow?
[Val] Ooh, okay. Wow. Internet speeds can be a really confusing thing, so I really appreciate Ross's question here. Okay, so let me set the groundwork by saying that the internet speeds, they're measured by something called megabits per second. So you know, computers communicate in bits and bytes and this megabits per second really just as a measure of the amount of data that is transferred in a second. So when you are have an internet connection, you usually offer different plans that have different speeds and there are speeds for uploading information to the internet and downloading information from the internet to your computer.
[Zoe] And that's the acronym that you would see actually, so Mbps if you're wondering what that is, what Val said, it's the megabits per second.
[Val] Yep, that's right, so in this case, he's meant to be getting 20 megabits per second download speed and two megabits per second upload. And he's doing that speed test on that little rev-o-meter, like you mentioned. And you can conduct a speed test by going to speedtest.net and you'll see what your upload and download speeds are. And the fact that Ross is seeing a zero upload speed is an issue because it's saying that his computer isn't able to send information to the internet. So there's likely a problem there. And I would certainly say that that's even worse than running slow because there's not sending any information at all. So the kinds of things he can do are maybe switch his modem on and off again to re-establish the connection or potentially call up his service provider and get some support there to fix it. And the other thing to keep in mind too is that, that even though Ross subscribed to a 20 megabit download and 2 megabit upload speed from a service provider, you never really will get that exact amount. And that's because of different things. Basically the internet connection type that you have to your home, the quality of the signals that run through cables within your home, and all kinds of other things. So you're never really gonna hit that perfectly. But the fact that he is getting zero, he should be at least getting one or one and a half megabits per second upload not zero.
[Zoe] Mm, well speaking of zero, that might happen when a network gets switched off. Margo from Lorne in Victoria received a text from her phone provider which said she needs to upgrade her phone because they're switching off the 3G network. I've heard a lot about this. She has a 4G phone, so she just wants to know why this might affect her.
[Val] Yes, well there's a lot going on about this right now because yep, the big telcos are switching off the older 3G network, but some of us may still have devices that use the 3G network, and some medical devices use that as well. So we've been given a heads up about this for a while, but the problem is that some early-model 4G phones still use the 3G network for emergency services. And this is a problem. So even though you have a 4G phone, if for some reason you have to dial 000 it would use a 3G network and, with that switched off, then it's not able to do that. So what you have to do is you have to test your 4G phone to see whether it can communicate via this new technology called VoLTE and that stands for Voice Over LTE. Without being too confusing, it just means that it can communicate with 000 without the 3G network. So one way of determining if your phone does support 000 services over the 4G network or VoLTE is by looking at your phone specifications. And you can Google that online, the model of your phone and Voice Over LTE, or you can contact your telco and ask them that question too. But it definitely is worth making sure that your device can contact 000 services before the 3G service is shut off, which is happening pretty much imminently. Or if you're listening to this at a later date, it may be shut off already.
[Zoe] So it's best be worth checking out your telco's website may be for what their rollout of that shutdown would be.
[Val] Yeah, that's another great source of information. So with a little bit of research you'll know for sure, but it does take a bit of looking up. Well I think we've tackled some real head-scratchers here today, so thank you for helping me Zoe.
[Zoe] Oh, it's great to be with you. Yeah, there were some really good questions. Hopefully we've been helpful.
[Val] Yeah, absolutely, and of course, thank you, our audience for joining us today too. It's been great to have you with us. And if you like what you've heard, please subscribe to receive all of the latest episodes and even leave a review to help others find us. And remember too, to visit the show notes for lots of information on everything we've covered here today. And we have covered quite a bit and that includes links and all kinds of other useful materials. And for more about today's subject and to discover other really great topics, go to www.beconnected.esafety.gov.au. So that's www.beconnected.esafety.gov.au. I'm Val Quinn and I really look forward to your company next time. Any views expressed in this episode are strictly personal views only, and do not in any way reflect the opinion of the Australian government, the eSafety Commissioner or the Be Connected program. [Announcer] Be Connected, is an Australian Government initiative developed by the Department of Social Services, the eSafety Commissioner, and Good Things Foundation Australia. Be Connected, builds the digital skills, confidence, and online safety of all Australians with engaging online learning resources and a network of over 3,500 community organisations to support them to thrive in a digital world.
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Show notes
Guest: Zoe Warne
Whether it’s keeping in touch with others, staying informed, or helping us to have fun and get stuff done, technology answers many of our everyday needs. But it also creates questions. Lots of them. In this episode, broadcaster Zoe Warne puts tricky questions from the Be Connected audience to host Valens Quinn.
Discover more:
- Sign-up and build your digital skills for free at BeConnected
- Learn about antivirus software, protecting your privacy online and more in our advanced online security topic
- Learn about password managers
- Learn how to block spam email in Gmail, Outlook and Yahoo.
- Learn how to identify and avoid scams and find out about the latest scams at Scamwatch
- Learn about your privacy rights at the Office of the Australian Information Commissioner
- Test your home internet speed at Speedtest.net
- Listen to more podcast episodes: https://beconnected.esafety.gov.au/podcast
- Join us on Facebook
- Valens Quinn on Instagram
- Valens Quinn on LinkedIn
- Find Zoe Warne on LinkedIn
Be Connected is an Australian Government Initiative developed by the Department of Social Services, the eSafety Commissioner and Good Things Foundation Australia. Be Connected builds the digital skills, confidence, and online safety of all Australians with engaging online learning resources, and a network of over 3,500 community organisations to support them to thrive in a digital world.
Be Connected acknowledges the Traditional Owners of the land on which we live and work, and pays respect to their Elders, past, present and emerging.