Tag Archives: security

A VPN service can help you avoid having your data stolen or your internet traffic blocked. Here’s how I use VyprVPN while traveling to reduce the risk of both!

A VPN service can help you avoid having your data stolen or your internet traffic blocked. Here’s how I use VyprVPN while traveling to reduce the risk of both!

No Internet For You!

The recent proliferation of internet snooping tools like Firesheep — which allows a semi-knowledgable hacker to hijack any number of your personal accounts — highlights an under-examined need for many travelers: A secure connection to the internet.

After all, most people are just worried about how they are going to connect to the internet as they travel — not even considering how safe that connection is. A person on the same network as you can actually see the information you’re sending and receiving — or sometimes even read the files on your hard drive.

Sound alarmist? Take a moment to look your computer’s network file browser the next time you hop online in a hotel, on a plane, or at a free WiFi hotspot and you’ll probably see a number of other computers visible. Some of them even probably have their file sharing turned on, exposing all sorts of personal data, photos, etc. to theft or vandalism.

Not good.

[Read more…]

TimeWarner / RoadRunner Internet Users in NYC (Manhattan, Brooklyn) Suffer Slow, Intermittent Connections. Twitter Gets The Word Out — But Does It Have Any Real Effect?

Is This Thing On?

Some New Yorkers are pushing through a fifth day of slow, almost unusable speeds on their TimeWarner / Roadrunner Internet connections. And when they can get though to Twitter or community-focused sites like Yelp! and the Brooklynian forum, they’re complaining.

So while their customers are dealing with pages that start to load but never finish (or that never load at all), TimeWarner — like many companies — is using a Social Media Outreach Team to monitor the internet for customer complaints and issues. Gripe about bad service or a bad product online these days and, more often than not, you’ll get a message on Twitter or an email from a company rep saying “I’m sorry that you’re unhappy…can I help?”.

While looking around on Twitter for anyone else mentioning internet trouble in New York City, I found TimeWarner’s Main Customer Service Twitter account. Social Media Team Manager Philip Blum and representative Brien H responded immediately to my report. They sent me messages on Twitter and by email right away and expedited a technician’s visit to my apartment. They also facilitated two different calls with a Tier 3 Tech to run tests that seemed to confirm what I already suspected: It is a problem with their network. [Read more…]

Some Items of interest for Mac Users

Some Items of interest for Mac Users: