EXTRA, EXTRA: IN THE NEWS: Amazon's $15 Minimum Wage

Amazon's CEO Jeff Bezos announced the company is raising its minimum wage to $15 beginning NOVEMBER 1, 2018.



This impacts 250,000 + of the company’s employees, including workers at Whole Foods Market, which Amazon acquired for $13.7 billion last year. Amazon said the new minimum wage also will apply to seasonal workers, which can be more than 100,000 for this holiday season.



Amazon has 575,000+ employees worldwide, including more than 40,000 at its Seattle headquarters.  Amazon is preparing to announce plans the location of its $5 billion second headquarters, where it will ultimately employ up to 50,000 people.




Not all Amazon employees are happy with their wages increasing to $15 an hour because Amazon is phasing out stock options and monthly bonuses for its warehouse workers at the same time.  The company is phasing out the RSU (restricted stock units)  program which was granted not purchased that would vest in 2020 and 2021 and they are replacing it with a direct stock purchase plan before the end of 2019.




Amazon is also getting rid of monthly incentive bonuses for warehouse workers.  These changes will give higher cash compensation with expected amounts in their paychecks.




“We make less than we did before if you subtract our bonus pay and stock,” said one Twitter user, claiming to work for an Amazon warehouse in Indianapolis.




Another Amazon warehouse worker, Vicki Shannon Allen, called the changes “a joke” in an interview with NBC News.




“Rather than receiving the raise they deserve, many Amazon warehouse workers will now see lower pay,” said Marc Perrone, president of the United Food and Commercial Workers International Union, in a statement. “That’s not just disappointing, it’s wrong.”




An Amazon spokesperson said that the wage increase for a warehouse worker “more than compensates for the phase out of incentive pay and RSUs.” Amazon says that all workers in its fulfillment centers will see an increase in their total compensation. Workers who already receive more than $15 per hour will receive raises of $1 per hour.




Despite the criticism, the response to Amazon’s minimum wage hike has largely been positive. Before the announcement, U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders introduced legislation that would tax Amazon to cover the cost of government assistance Amazon workers receive. After publicly criticizing Amazon and its CEO Jeff Bezos for weeks, Sanders applauded the decision to raise wages.



“Today I want to give credit where credit is due and I want to congratulate Mr. Bezos on doing exactly the right thing,” Sanders said in a statement Tuesday.


Sources: CNN, GeekWire, Yahoo News

EXTRA EXTRA! IN THE NEWS: FACEBOOK HACKED SEPTEMBER 25, 2018

Millions of Facebook users were abruptly logged out of their accounts during the late afternoon hours of Friday, September 28, 2018.  

No explanation, no warning.   

When they logged back in, they saw the following screen at the top of their newsfeed. 

Many Facebook users were greeted by this screen after being abruptly
 logged out of their accounts on Friday September 28, 2018

It seems that THREE DAYS ago, on September 25, 2018, Facebook was made aware of an attack on their system where attackers stole Facebook digital keys which would allow the same bad actors to take over other people's Facebook accounts.  

Facebook says they "don't know" if anyone's Facebook information was accessed BUT they wanted to let users know what they were doing to protect your accounts.

That amounts to -- ABSOLUTELY NOTHING. 

If continuing to monitor is all they are doing, every single affected Facebook user is in serious trouble.

Facebook feels that by logging people out more than 3 days later, that they prevented the attackers from using the tokens to access these accounts. 

Geez, They've had them for three whole days already!

Two of our Webmasters, Cally Russell and John George, were two Facebook accounts that were logged out on Friday afternoon.  

Now: Think about this....... 

Facebook knew about this attack on SEPTEMBER 25th and didn't log anyone out until SEPTEMBER 28th - THREE FULL DAYS LATER.  


How the hell is waiting that long considered protecting anyone? 

The advice they gave on this warning was that they do not feel anyone needs to change their passwords.

W - H - A - T????

The one thing Webmasters Cally Russell and John George and Maggie King tell ALL users to do whenever there is ANY suspicious activity is.... 

CHANGE YOUR PASSWORD.

For a social media site equipped with the knowledge and security that is attributed to Facebook's intelligence, for them to give that advice is beyond comprehension.  


They are giving this no more importance than swatting an annoying fly on your computer monitor.

Your Passwords are your first line of defense in your online security.

While we are not experts by any great shakes, any advice we give you should be considered "armchair" advice meant to help you to be safe to exist in today's online world.  As we learn, we teach.


We are sorry to say this but we feel that Facebook's expert advice doesn't measure up.  

SO WE ARE GIVING YOU THIS ADVICE: 


If you were logged out of your Facebook account on Friday September 28, 2018, we are telling you NOT to pay attention to that advice from Facebook.

IMMEDIATELY CHANGE YOUR PASSWORD 

Use the String Along method.

Navigate to your screen to change your password.

If you have one in your head, get rid of it.  Put your hands on the keyboard and randomly pick out letters, numbers, UPPER case, lower case, and symbols.


The best advice to make the best passwords is to make it long and make it strong. 10 to 16 characters is great!


If you can read a word in your password, you need to mix it up better. 

Add in some symbols like $$$ and ###  in between UPPER and lower case letters. It makes the password harder to guess and trips the password guesser apps.  


Unfortunately it also makes it harder to remember. As much as good advice says NOT to write down passwords, when you use String Alongs, you need to write them down. They are too hard to remember and too easy to confuse.


If you use a sentence and take the first letter of each word, there are new password guessers that will crack it in a minute.


Do not use real words but rather random letters that make no real words and ... make no sense.

DO IT NOW.

Referring to the text on the above screenshot, Facebook says 

"If we find more people have been affected, we will immediately log them out and then let them know what happened."

Sorry Facebook. That's not good enough.  

By the time the bigwigs at Facebook find out, many more Facebook accounts could be compromised while they are waiting to see if the "Access tokens" (Digital keys) that were stolen are put to use to access people's Facebook accounts.

In our opinion, the handling of this incident goes beyond the pale. For a social media giant to be so lasse' faire about the security of its users and to go so far as to tell them there is no need to change their passwords is unconscionable.  

Your Password is one of the few security measures any user has to be safe online.

 CHANGE IT NOW.

 **********************

To show you what the other two screens said:

The first screen (shown above) was followed by this
second screen featuring "I can't log in" advice.

 **********************

The second screen was quickly followed by this third screen 

We have told you before and we will tell you again.

Facebook is not going to keep you safe and secure.  You have to keep on top of your own security.

IN THE NEWS: MAN GETS PRISON SENTENCE FOR HELPING HACKERS EVADE DETECTION

 Ruslan Bondars is a 37 year old Latvia man (formerly from USSR) who created and owned a malware testing service called Scan4U that he operated for seven years from 2009 thru 2016. He was extradited to the United States and put on trial in March 2018.



While he faced up to 35 years in prison,  on September 21, 2018, he was sentenced to 14 years in a US prison for one count each of running an illegal anti-virus operation, conspiracy to violate Computer Fraud laws, committing wire fraud, and computer intrusion with intent to cause damage (hacking).  

Ruslans Bondars

To understand the gravity of this crime, readers need to understand that Bondars' service gave malware hackers complete anonymity as they tested their malware programs to avoid detection of the anti-virus programs used by major US retailers, financial institutions and government agencies. 



AND, IT WAS CHEAP!
Malware actors paid as little as 15 cents per use or a monthly charge of $25 to upload their latest malware. (See screen below)

Example of Malware Check Screen

A report was generated on whether or not their program was detectable by a wide range of anti-virus software.  Once perfected, the hackers used their refined malware programs to inflict hundreds of millions of dollars of irreparable damage on American companies and consumers and steal approximately 40million credit and debit card numbers.



Malware was used to steal 70 million addresses, phone numbers and other pieces of personal identifying information, from several retail store locations throughout the United States, causing one retailer approximately $292 million in expenses resulting from the intrusion.



One of the most infamous pieces of malware that took advantage of Scan4U's service was the "Citadel" malware which infected over 11 million computers worldwide, including over $500 million in the United States at retail giant Target Stores, including customer credit card details.


Despite the Bondars defense team arguing that there were legal uses for his Scan4You service, and that Bondars could not be held responsible when customers used it for illegal purposes, US Judge Liam O’Grady was unsympathetic:

Bondars, who has also been linked to pharmaceutical spam campaigns peddling illegal prescription drugs, and in the distribution of banking trojans, told the court that he felt “ashamed that some of the website users used it for such terrible things.”



There was no pity party. He began a 14 year prison sentence this week.

Sources: 
timestudios.co.uk
securityboulevard.com

WINDOWS 10 UPDATE- SCHEDULED DURING OCTOBER 2018

Windows 10 is doing another update which is scheduled for sometime in October 2018. It's a big one, so big, they are doing some advance notifications of users whose hard drives might not have enough room to download and install it.



There is a Windows Update screen which is pre-warning a small percentage of users to make enough space on their device to handle this 10GB update or they will put their existing Windows 10 operating system at risk.  



While this applies mostly to super-active users who store everything on their device, those who have smaller hard drives (less than 250GB) and those with older copies of Windows 10 that haven't been updated regularly, it is never a bad idea to check your own device to make sure you have enough free space. No matter what size hard drive you have.

If you see the above picture on your screen when the update becomes 
available, then you need to make some room so the update can download and install.

The Microsoft warning says: 
"Windows Update does not check systems for adequate space requirements before it initializes."  



In other words, it is up to you to make sure there is enough space on your device.  Microsoft is also saying they can't be responsible for lost work if the update doesn't install because of not enough space.

In this picture, there's a total of 74.4GB, but 66.9 is used up and there is only 7.5 GB of space left. There is no way this device can accept a file bigger than 5GB and still operate without glitching.
  .

If your hard drive screen looks like the above picture or if your USED side is more than 50% of your hard drive, then you seriously need to clean up your device to get rid of anything you don't need or use anymore. It will make your device run much more smoothly and will free up some badly needed space.

Storage Space

If you must KEEP a file, then buy some flash drives to keep the files on. Your hard drive needs to keep a certain amount of free space available in order to operate efficiently and to accept downloads for Windows Updates and other crucial operating files.

Make A Schedule

Each user is advised to have a regular schedule for doing their system maintenance - monthly is what most users do.  But if you are a user who stores everything on your hard drive, you might want to schedule a weekly date to check the amount of your "available" storage space, and remove (delete) files that came with downloads and other unnecessary files.  

What Is System Maintenance

System maintenance includes clearing temporary files, emptying browsing history on each browser, deleting duplicate copies of folders,  emptying your download folder, emptying your recycling bin and deleting any old APPS that you no longer use. This is also a good time to get rid of Bloatware that came loading on your device when you first bought it.  



Bloatware consists of Apps and programs that are pre-loaded on your device. Often they are sample size Apps that require you to purchase the full program after trial period expires.  Go to SETTINGS, PROGRAMS and FEATURES.  Go to NAME and click that column to put them in alphabetical order OR you can go to INSTALLED ON column and it will put them in date order.  Uninstall anything that is not needed or are Apps you no longer use. 

Bloatware slows down your device and takes up
valuable space that you can be using for other programs

 



You can remove Bloatware right from your START button. Click START at bottom left of your device and it will bring up all the files and Apps that are on your device.  Right click next to any title and select UNINSTALL as seen in this picture. Also if a file says FREE, get rid of it. It is taking up valuable space.

Uninstall Apps right from your START MENU. Also get rid of
anything that says it is free. It is a space hogger.

Personal note:  I back up important operating files from my PC on flash drives so that if I ever get the blue screen of death, I am able to restore my PC very quickly. When it comes to Windows updates, size Does matter so you really need to do system maintenance monthly to make sure your system has enough "free" space and is running smoothly.  

What flash drives look like

Even though my 500GB PC hard drive has about 300GB available space, photos take up more space than text documents.  I save nearly all my work on flash drives.  I also find it is more convenient for me to take flash drives with me when I go on vacation or to the office. Everyone should invest in at least 3 flash (thumb) drives of 32GB or more.  

This gives you an idea of how much they cost.
32GB is what most people purchase but
128GB is huge. At $34.99, the 128GB is a bargain.