Another Day, Another Data Breach Plus a Settlement

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At the end of July 2019, most of you probably heard about a data breach at Capital One. More than 100 million people in the United States and Canada were affected by this event. Thankfully, as of this writing (mid-August), very little of the information was made available to the normal group of bad actors who dwell in the Dark Web. This breach was simply the work of a zealous former Amazon Web Services employee who knew that there was a way to access the data. Pretty freakin’ scary!

To make matters worse, the woman who performed this hack had also obtained information from other organizations. Somehow she made the monumental mistake of publicizing those details. I’m not sure what — or even if — she was thinking. But the fact that someone has the wherewithal to accomplish these feats of what most of us consider the “dark arts” of computing is supremely unsettling.

Why anyone would want to subject themselves to the notoriety of having accomplished this act, when there was no useful purpose, confounds me.

Around the same time, the Federal Trade Commission concluded its work with Equifax and fined them close to $700 million. Almost immediately afterwards, so-called “consumer advocates” started a loud chorus of “Sign up and get your $125 from Equifax!” on news stations and social media.

They did this without telling people the “fine print” of the FTC agreement said there is only $31 million in that particular reward pot. So if just half of the more than 146 million affected individuals filed a claim, each one would end up with about 42 cents. That is sheer stupidity!

The best approach for dealing with this debacle is to sign up for the free credit monitoring that is being offered. It is supposed to last for 10 years. Do that here: https://www.equifaxbreachsettlement.com/file-a-claim.

Even though other forms of free monitoring are available, you usually only get one year. It is in your best interest — given the extent of the potential damage caused by the Equifax breach — to take the longest possible term of protection available.

Task View and Multiple Desktops

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There is a feature of Windows 10 that some people might find useful. It is called Task View, and it has the ability to create multiple desktops.

To activate Task View, click its icon — a large rectangle with two smaller rectangles flanking it — in the Windows Taskbar just to the right of the Search box. When you do, Task View (and its associated feature Timeline) opens.

At the very top of the screen you’ll see a “New desktop” button, and beneath that, thumbnails of all of your currently running applications arrayed against the desktop so you can quickly see what you’ve got running. You can click any thumbnail to switch to that application or press the Esc key to leave Task View and return to where you were.

Beneath that you’ll see Timeline, with thumbnails of documents you’ve worked on over the last thirty days. For all businesses and most home users, I have disabled this feature to afford you more privacy. Microsoft tracks this information, and I do not feel comfortable providing them with more telemetry than necessary. However, if you think this could be useful, let me know and I can tell you how to reactivate it.

Now, if you were used to using the Alt-Tab key combination to cycle through open applications in Windows 7, you can still do that as well, but Task View adds a couple of extra twists. If you hover your mouse over any thumbnail, a small X appears in its upper-right corner. You can click the X to close that application.

Task View also lets you create multiple virtual desktops, each with different Windows applications running on them. To create a new desktop, open Task View and click “New desktop” at the upper left of the screen. You can run a different set of Windows applications inside the new desktop. For instance, you could dedicate one desktop to your Microsoft Office applications, like Word, Outlook, and Excel, and another desktop to handle your various browser applications, and another for your accounting software.

To switch among these virtual desktops, click the Task View icon and click the desktop to which you want to switch. You can keep creating new desktops this way and switch among them.

Let me know your reactions to using this new Windows 10 feature by posting a Comment.

Microsoft’s Windows 10 Update System is a Hot Mess

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I used to consult for Fortune 100 companies, and it never ceased to amaze me how management could make some of the moves it did. Sometimes plans that were identified as “not well thought out” (i.e., half-baked) saw the light of day — and projects failed. So when Microsoft announced it was changing the way in which Windows 10 semi-annual updates were going to be released, it got my attention.

When Windows 10 was released in July 2015, Microsoft said that it was working towards the concept of “Software as a Service.” It established a strategy of twice-a-year Feature Updates; one in the spring and one in the fall, which were tagged “yymm” (e.g., 1809 or 1903). Each Feature Update had an 18-month lifespan before support would no longer be available, and the computer would be forced to jump to the then current version. For the first couple of iterations, that worked (sort of).

Apparently, it took some time before Microsoft realized that it couldn’t maintain the drumbeat of an update feature every six months. Instead, they are going to implement one Feature Update a year, and another form of update — what used to be called a “service pack.” This is still two major updates a year, but they have not indicated if they plan to change the 18-month support restriction.

I realize that this will be revealed in time, but right now, before the end of July’s Microsoft worldwide partner conference, things are still very much up in the air. Every IT support organization that has tuned the Windows Update settings to protect computers from unexpected updates is going to have to find out what the new settings are and reconfigure them. Every IT support organization is also going to have to figure out how to go from one Feature Update to another without adversely affecting the computer. And everyone is going to have to decide if they want to remain on a merry-go-round where the conductor keeps changing the speed of the carousel.