Category: Other IT Stuff

Categories
Blog Other IT Stuff

Stock Photos

I assume many of you already used stock photos in a PowerPoint presentation. If not, start with it! Never underestimate the power of a symbolic picture and over time you develop a sense for the preferences of your audience (your manager, customer, or team colleagues).

The funnel

The most memorable picture I ever used, was the picture of a funnel. Not because it was super smart to use it but rather it was requested by a friend from Business. He couldn’t define why we needed it for our presentation but after I added some buzzwords, it almost made sense. And to my surprise, we received very positive feedback. I still think it was a useless slide, but hey, give the audience what they want.

Free Stock Photos

The reason why I wrote this article is, that I always have to look up my two main sources for free stock photos. So for you and myself, here the two links:

pixabay.com

pexels.com

Personally I recommend sticking to your own graphics and free stock photos to prevent copyright violation.

P.S.: If some of them look familiar. A friend of a Swiss magazine confessed to me that these are common sources in the media industry.

Categories
Blog Other IT Stuff Software Packaging

Kill the shortcuts

I’m a big fan of the RuckZuck tool  http://ruckzuck.tools/default.aspx which makes it very easy to download, install or update software.

How does it work

RuckZuck knows the links to the latest versions of Software and the parameters how the software can be installed silently. So if you update or install a software, the tool does download the file(s) from the vendor’s web-site, verifies that the file is valid (based on Hash values) and just triggers a silent install.

ruckzuck.tools (08.09.2018)

My problem

Because the installation is only silent a shortcut will be created. What is something I don’t need for sure. Especially when I set up a computer or I update a long list of applications.

How I fix that

The following code can remove these shortcuts. Just add in the array the name of the shortcut (You don’t have to write the full name but write enough to prevent deleting the wrong shortcut).

$programs =  @("360 Total Sec", "Lenovo", "SHAREit", "PDF24","VLC","Google C","CCleaner") 

foreach($shortcut in $programs){

    $shortcut = "$env:public\Desktop\$shortcut*.lnk" 

     if(Test-Path $shortcut){ 
        rm $shortcut
    } 
}

I run the code after I update my computer. This saves me time because I don’t have to check which links I still need and which I want to delete. I know it sounds super lazy but because of this laziness I learned programing very quickly ;-).

Categories
Blog IT Sec Other IT Stuff

EMail safety check

Are my account data safe?

The most people don’t worry about IT Security. They hear in the news about stolen account data but assume this will never affect them.

I was young and stupid

During Christmas 20… whatever I got a free license for a security suite. Everything was great. The German developer had a good reputation and the download and everything was safe. One year later I got an email that my account data probably got stolen. Whaaaat? Yes the IT Sec. developer got hacked. I never expected that and yep I used the same password for my email account as for the registration of the security suite. I blindly trusted them and thought there is no point to create a new password in my password safe. After my email address was used for spam, luckily the email provider blocked it, I finally got a safe password for the account and… deleted the account.

Again?

Almost 12 years after this incident, a classmate told me about the homepage https://haveibeenpwned.com/ to do a security check of my email address(es). I checked them and… damn. Luckily this time I was prepared and nothing happen, but it is still kind of annoying that somebody could steal my registration data.

What saved my ass the last time?

This is just a short list of things I did and I do now:

  • Use a different password for every page and registration
  • Enable 2-factor authentication
  • Check the internet for breaches
  • Use temporary email addresses if possible https://10minutemail.com/10MinuteMail
  • Use several email accounts and have one you can delete
  • Use fake data e.g. fake name, address,…
  • Check the url and addresses of the emails you reply to
  • Be suspicious, don’t blindly trust

You really have to be aware that the internet isn’t a save place. Protect yourself and always be prepared for the worst case.