Is Your Wi-Fi Network a Security Risk?

With Wi-Fi security, it’s easy to fall into the “out of sight, out of mind” trap. Your Wi-Fi router probably lives in a corner or closet, and of course, Wi-Fi’s radio waves are invisible. But the ease of connecting your devices to your Wi-Fi network means it’s equally as easy for a hacker to connect to your network and eavesdrop on your traffic. Or rather, it’s easy unless you take advantage of the security options available in every Wi-Fi router. 

Before looking at those options, let’s discuss the importance of securing your wireless network. The fact is, we all send sensitive data over Wi-Fi and onto the Internet. That data includes passwords, financial information, and personal details, all of which could be used for identity or outright theft. For those who work at home, it may also include important corporate credentials and information. In addition, if your Wi-Fi network is open for everyone and has a bandwidth cap, you could be throttled or incur additional charges due to extra usage from someone using your network without your knowledge. Worse, someone could engage in illegal activity from your network, potentially putting you at legal risk.

Here are six ways you should secure your Wi-Fi network, plus another that’s usually not worth the effort. Exactly how you go about these tasks varies depending on your Wi-Fi router, but they should all be easy to accomplish.

1. Change Your Wi-Fi Router’s Default Password

Every Wi-Fi router has an app- or Web-based administrative interface where you can adjust settings, including security options. The first thing you should do when setting up a new Wi-Fi router is change the password for accessing that admin interface. (And if you didn’t do that when you set up your current Wi-Fi router, go do it now. Immediately. We’ll wait.) The default passwords are well known to hackers, who can use them to take over routers and turn off all the other security settings.

2. Change the Default Network Name (SSID)

Every Wi-Fi network has a name—technically an SSID, or Service Set Identifier. There’s no security benefit in changing it to anything in particular, but you should change it from the default name. That’s because default names often identify the router's manufacturer, such as “Netgear” or “Linksys,” and some routers have known vulnerabilities or password styles that make it easier to break in. Of course, the main advantage of changing the network name is that it makes it easier to pick out from any other nearby networks.

3. Update Your Wi-Fi Router’s Firmware

Wi-Fi router manufacturers frequently fix security vulnerabilities and release new firmware versions. Check to make sure your Wi-Fi router has the latest firmware available, and if there’s an option for it to update its firmware automatically, turn that on.

4. Disable WPS (Wi-Fi Protected Setup) If Possible

When you connect a new device to your Wi-Fi network, you need to enter your Wi-Fi password. That’s entirely reasonable, and Apple devices automatically offer to share that password with your other Apple devices and other people in your Contacts. More generally, a technology called Wi-Fi Protected Setup (WPS) was designed to enable connecting without typing the Wi-Fi password, either by entering an 8-digit PIN or pressing a button on the router. The button is fine—no one can connect without physical access to the router. But the PIN is horribly insecure and can be brute forced with readily available cracking software. If your router supports WPS—not all do, happily—turn it off entirely.

5. Create a Guest Network

You’ll probably want to give visitors access to your Wi-Fi network so they can get to the Internet. The best way to do that is to create a guest network—a feature in nearly all Wi-Fi routers—separate from your main Wi-Fi network. It has a different name and password, and its traffic is isolated from yours, ensuring that even if a hacker were to access it, they wouldn’t be able to eavesdrop on your communications. It can have a simpler password since all it’s protecting is your bandwidth. One additional tip—put “Internet of Things” devices like smart appliances, video game consoles, and the like on your guest network to ensure they don’t provide access to your main network’s traffic if they’re hacked. You probably won’t want to do that with HomeKit devices, which will work better on the same network as your Apple devices.

6. Use Strong WPA2 or WPA3 Encryption

After changing the default admin password, this is the second-most important piece of Wi-Fi security advice. All traffic on a Wi-Fi network can (and should) be encrypted so hackers can’t eavesdrop with impunity. The first wireless security protocol was WEP (Wired Equivalent Privacy), which was commonly used from the late 1990s through 2004. Unfortunately, WEP is so easily broken today that it’s no longer considered secure. If you still use WEP, immediately switch to WPA2 (Wi-Fi Protected Access). There’s also WPA3, which is even more secure but is available only in hardware sold in the last few years.

Don’t Bother Hiding Your SSID

Finally, you may see suggestions that you should hide your Wi-Fi SSID, which prevents nearby devices from displaying it when they list available networks. That might seem like it would improve security, but all it does is prevent the sort of people who aren’t a threat anyway from seeing it. Anyone with the necessary software and skills to break into an unprotected or weakly protected Wi-Fi network can still detect and access a hidden network. They might even be more interested in what’s there, given that the network owner took the trouble to hide it. As long as you follow all the other advice in this article, there’s no benefit in hiding the SSID as well.

Bonus Advice: Use a VPN When on Public Wi-Fi Networks

Ensuring the security of your Wi-Fi network is essential, but what about public Wi-Fi networks in coffee shops, hotels, and airports? Because they’re open to anyone within range, they’re insecure by definition, and anyone on the network could theoretically see any other user’s traffic. Don’t panic. Most Web connections now use HTTPS, which encrypts traffic between you and the destination site (look for https at the start of URLs or a lock icon in the address bar of your Web browser). To ensure that all traffic is protected from prying eyes, use a VPN (Virtual Private Network), which creates an encrypted pipe from your computer to a VPN server elsewhere. Many organizations provide or even require VPN use so that traveling or remote employees can’t inadvertently use unencrypted connections. If your organization doesn’t have a VPN now but would like to set one up, contact us.

(Featured image by iStock.com/CASEZY)

Protect Your iPhone Passcode by Using Face ID or Touch ID

This is troubling. Joanna Stern and Nicole Nguyen of the Wall Street Journal have published an article (paywalled) and accompanying video that describes attacks on hundreds of iPhone users in major cities throughout the United States. Some attacks involve drugging people in bars or even violence, but the most avoidable involve the thief or a confederate surreptitiously observing the iPhone user entering their passcode before snatching the iPhone and running. 

However it happens, once the thief has a user’s iPhone and passcode, they change the user’s Apple ID password—which is shockingly easy for them to do. With the new password, they disable Find My, making it impossible for the iPhone’s owner to erase it remotely. Then they use Apple Pay to buy things and access passwords stored in iCloud Keychain. They can even look in Photos for pictures of documents containing confidential information, such as credit cards and ID cards. After that, they may transfer money from bank accounts, apply for an Apple Card, and more, all while keeping the user locked out of their account. Of course, they’ll resell the iPhone too. (Apparently, Android users are susceptible to similar attacks, but Android phones have a lower resale value, so they aren’t being targeted as much.) Victims have reported thefts of tens of thousands of dollars, and many of them remain unable to access their Apple accounts.

We fervently hope Apple addresses this vulnerability in iOS 17, if not before. At a minimum, Apple should require users to enter their current Apple ID password before allowing it to be changed, much as the company requires at the Apple ID website. Plus, Apple would ideally do more to protect access to iCloud Keychain passwords from a passcode-wielding iPhone thief. (The closest we have now is a different Screen Time passcode, which can prevent account changes, but it blocks access to so many settings that most people will find it too annoying and turn it off.)

Although the chances of you falling prey to one of these attacks is vanishingly low, particularly if you don’t frequent urban bars or areas that suffer from snatch-and-run thefts, the consequences of a passcode theft are so severe that it’s worth taking steps to deter the malicious use of your passcode. With luck, you’re already doing many of these things, but if not, take some time to re-evaluate your broader security assumptions and behavior.

Pay More Attention to Your iPhone’s Physical Security While in Public

Most importantly, you don’t want to make it easy for a thief to grab your iPhone. Apart from a wrist strap, there’s no reliable way to prevent someone from snatching it from your hand. When you’re not actively using your iPhone, stash it in a secure pocket or purse instead of leaving it out on a bar or table. Many people are blasé about protecting their iPhones, so if you take more precautions, you’re less likely to have problems.

Always Use Face ID or Touch ID When Unlocking Your iPhone in Public

The easiest thing you can do to protect yourself from opportunistic attacks is to rely solely on Face ID or Touch ID when using your iPhone in public. If a thief sees you entering a passcode, you could become a target.

We know people who avoid Face ID or Touch ID based on some misguided belief that Apple controls their biometric information, but nothing could be further from the truth. Your fingerprint or facial information is stored solely on the device in the Secure Enclave, which is much more secure than passcode entry in nearly all circumstances.

We’ve also run across people for whom Face ID or Touch ID works poorly—if that’s you, conceal your passcode from anyone watching, just as you would when entering your PIN at an ATM.

Use a Strong Passcode

By default, iPhone passcodes are six digits. You can downgrade that security to four digits, but don’t—that’s asking for trouble. You can also upgrade the security to an alphanumeric passcode that can be as long as you like, but that’s overkill, in our opinion. Video would still capture you entering it, and if you’re focused on entering it accurately, you’re less likely to be aware of someone shoulder-surfing behind you.

That said, make sure your passcode isn’t trivially simple. Basic patterns like 333333 and 123456 are far more easily observed or even guessed. There’s no reason not to use a passcode that’s memorable but unguessable, such as your high school graduating class combined with your best friend’s birth month.

Don’t Share Your Passcode Beyond Trusted Family Members

Even those who don’t have motivated thieves targeting them need to be careful to protect their passcode. Our simple rule of thumb is that if you wouldn’t give someone complete access to your bank account, you shouldn’t give them your passcode. If extreme circumstances require you to trust a person outside that circle temporarily, reset the passcode to something they’ll remember—even 111111—and change it back as soon as they return your iPhone.

Switch from iCloud Keychain to a Third-Party Password Manager

Although Apple keeps improving iCloud Keychain’s interface and capabilities, having all your Internet passwords accessible to a thief who has your iPhone and passcode is unacceptable. Instead, we suggest you use a third-party password manager like 1Password or BitWarden (we no longer recommend LastPass). Even when a third-party password manager allows easier unlocking with Face ID or Touch ID (which both 1Password and BitWarden do), they fall back on their master password, not the device’s passcode. After you move your passwords from iCloud Keychain to another password manager, be sure to delete everything from iCloud Keychain. 

Delete Photos Containing Identification Numbers

Many people take photos of their important documents as a backup in case the original is lost. That’s a good idea, but storing photos of your driver’s license, passport, Social Security card, credit cards, insurance card, and more in Photos leaves them vulnerable to a thief who has your iPhone and your passcode. With the information in those cards, the thief has a much better chance of impersonating you when opening credit cards, accessing financial accounts, and more. Instead, store those card photos—or at least the information on them—in your password manager.

A Security Wakeup Call

Again, although it’s very unlikely that you would fall prey to one of these attacks, we appreciated the encouragement to re-evaluate our security assumptions and behaviors, and we suggest you do the same.

(Featured image by iStock.com/AntonioGuillem)

FAQs about Apple’s Messages App and What Can Go Wrong When Using It

Most of us rely on Messages every day to text with family, friends, and colleagues. Not surprisingly, we’ve fielded numerous questions surrounding common confusions with this popular app. We hope our answers here will help you use Messages more effectively and work around problems.

What’s the difference between blue and green bubble conversations?

A common question is why some conversations have blue bubbles and others have green bubbles. The answer is that the color indicates whether the conversation uses iMessage or SMS/MMS. Blue bubble conversations use iMessage and are solely between Apple users, whereas green bubble conversations are with friends using SMS/MMS on Android or other phones.

What are iMessage and SMS/MMS, and how do they differ?

Messages supports two protocols for text messaging: iMessage and SMS/MMS. Although the end result is the same, apart from the color of the conversation bubbles, the two are quite different.

SMS (Short Message Service) and MMS (Multimedia Messaging Service) are cellular technologies that require only a wireless plan from a cellular carrier. SMS is limited to 160 characters of text, though longer messages are usually broken into multiple segments and reassembled upon receipt. MMS enables sending of pictures, audio, video, and more, as long as the message size doesn’t exceed carrier limits, which range from 300 KB to 3 MB). Because SMS uses extremely small amounts of band-width, SMS text messages may get through even when cellular service is too weak to place a call, a useful fact to know in emergencies.

In contrast, iMessage is proprietary to Apple and works only in Messages on Apple devices, including the iPhone, iPad, Mac, and Apple Watch. Apple has said the size limit for a message is 100 MB, but people have transferred even larger files. That’s possible in part because iMessage relies on Internet access, which requires either Wi-Fi or a sufficiently strong cellular connection. If an Internet connection isn’t available for either party when you want to send a message using iMessage, Messages tries to fall back on SMS/MMS, which can result in blue and green bubbles in the same conversation.

How does Messages work on Apple devices that lack cellular connectivity?

It’s no problem for all Apple devices to use iMessage when they have Internet connectivity through Wi-Fi, but you can also send and receive SMS/MMS messages on a Mac or iPad that has no native cellular connectivity. Apple extends SMS/MMS support to Messages on such devices by routing through your iPhone. In the iPhone’s Settings > Messages > Text Message Forwarding, you can specify which of your devices can send and receive SMS/MMS messages through your iPhone.

Keep this setting in mind if you stop receiving SMS/MMS text messages on your Mac or iPad, for instance. It’s not unheard of for it to get turned off after a major operating system upgrade.

How are iMessages addressed, and can that cause problems?

As cellular technologies, SMS and MMS are tied to a phone number. iMessage, however, can send and receive messages from one or more phone numbers and email addresses. The first time someone sets up an iPhone, it registers that iPhone’s number with Apple’s iMessage servers. That’s why, when you type in a phone number to start a new Messages conversation, Messages knows whether to make the conversation blue or green.

Because iMessage also supports email addresses, you can start Messages conversations with a fellow iMessage user when all you know is their email address, as long as they’ve enabled that email address to send and receive messages.

In Settings > Messages > Send & Receive, you can specify which of your email ad-dresses can receive messages and reply to them. If you want to be easily findable, select all of them, in addition to your phone number. Otherwise, turn off the email addresses you don’t want used. You can add an email address or phone number to this list on appleid.apple.com in Personal Information > Reachable At.

You can also specify which of your phone numbers or email addresses is used to start new iMessage conversations. In general, we recommend sticking with your phone number unless you plan to change it soon.

As you can imagine, changing these settings can cause problems. If you disable receiving for an email address used by an existing conversation, people in that conversation won’t be able to send you messages anymore. Even worse would be changing your main Apple ID address, which would break a lot of conversations, all of which would have to be started afresh with the new Apple ID.

Changing phone numbers is also problematic for the same reasons, though that probably happens less often. If you’ve temporarily attached a second phone number to your iPhone using eSIM while traveling, for instance, be careful how you initiate conversations from it because they’ll break as soon as you disable the associated plan.

Finally, switching from an iPhone to a non-Apple phone can cause delivery problems for SMS/MMS messages. To prevent that, either turn off iMessage in Settings > Messages before you switch or deregister iMessage online.

What happens when a message fails to send, and how do I fix it?

Occasionally, when you try to send a message, you may see one or more red exclamation points and an alert that says “Not Delivered.”

Most of the time, the problem is just poor connectivity, either for you or your recipient. First, just click an exclamation point and try again in case it was a one-time problem. If a second try doesn’t succeed, check your Internet connection in Safari, and if it seems to be working, tap Try Again. If you’re using iMessage and it remains stuck, tap Send as Text Message, which switches from iMessage to SMS. If that’s not it, there are a few other possibilities:

• Make sure iMessage is enabled in Settings > Messages.

• See if you have another phone number or email address for the recipient. If they disabled message receiving for the one you were using, that could cause failures.

• If the problem occurs when sending to an SMS recipient while using a device without cellular connectivity, make sure the device is enabled in Settings> Messages > Text Forwarding.

• If the problem occurs with an image or other file sent via MMS, it might be too large. If so, you may have to resort to email.

• To ensure the iPhone isn’t temporarily confused, restart it (which is best done using Siri if you’re running iOS 16—just say, “Hey Siri, reboot.”) and try again.

Why do I see slightly different conversations on my iPhone and Mac?

With text message forwarding turned on for all your devices and each device logged into the same Apple ID, Messages should have the same conversations everywhere. In practice, that’s not always true, so Apple introduced Messages in iCloud, which uses iCloud as a centralized location for all messages. When it’s turned on, everything (other than failed SMS messages) should stay in sync.

Turn on Messages in iCloud in Messages > Settings/Preferences > iMessage on the Mac and in Settings > Your Name > iCloud > Apps Using iCloud > Show All > Messages on the iPhone or iPad. Make sure to enable it for every device.

Can someone eavesdrop on my Messages conversations?

SMS isn’t at all secure, so don’t use it for truly sensitive information (and whenever possible, use an authentication app instead of SMS for two-factor authentication codes). In contrast, Apple encrypts all iMessage conversations, so there’s no worry about someone listening in when you’re using a public Wi-Fi network at a hotel. However, iMessage conversations are not end-to-end encrypted by default, which means that law enforcement could compel Apple to turn over your data stored in its data centers. To provide full end-to-end encryption, Apple lets you turn on Advanced Data Protection for iCloud; the downside is that Apple can no longer help you recover your account if you forget your Apple ID password.

Other messaging apps also focus on security, most notably the free Signal, which is open source, provides end-to-end encryption, and lets you secure the app with an additional password. Messages can be set to self-destruct after a certain amount of time. The only downside is that you have to convince the people you want to message to use it. WhatsApp also provides end-to-end encryption, but you have to enable encryption for backups. It also shares a boatload of other information with Facebook to help it personalize ads, including your phone number, contacts, location information, device information, and more.

Don’t get the wrong impression—Messages usually works well. But on those rare occasions when you have problems, we hope this information explains more of what’s happening and helps you work around your issues.

(Featured image based on an original by iStock.com/fizkes)

A Practical Guide to Identifying Phishing Emails

Phishing is becoming an ever more common way for people to get in trouble when using the Internet. A phishing attack is some communication, usually an email, that tries to lure you into revealing login credentials, financial information, or other confidential details. 

A State of Phishing report from security firm SlashNext claims that there were more than 255 million phishing attacks in 2022, a 61% increase from the year before. Luckily, according to the Verizon Data Breach Investigations Report for 2022, only 2.9% of employees click through from phishing emails, but with hundreds of millions of email addresses targeted, the raw numbers are still high. We’ve been noticing—and hearing from clients—that phishing emails are also slipping through spam filters more than in the past.

To help you avoid falling prey to phishing tricks, check out our example screenshots below from real phishing emails, complete with annotations calling out the parts of a message that give it away. All phishing emails are trying to lure you into clicking a link or button to a website that will encourage you to enter your password or other confidential information. Once you realize that a message is a phishing attack, you won’t get suckered into clicking a link or revealing your personal information.

Fake Password Expiration Scam

Our first example is a password expiration scam—it’s trying to get you to click a button to keep your password from expiring. What’s ironic about this scam is that passwords should never expire—forcing users to change them regularly is terrible security practice. If a password is strong and unique, there is no reason to change it unless the site suffers a breach. Let’s look at what identifies this message as a phishing attack.

1. Note that the Reply-To address is generic and doesn’t match either the email domain used throughout the message or even a major email service provider, which would never send such a message.

2. Using your email address instead of your name is something scammers do to make the message seem personalized. If this email really came from your IT support staff, they’d be more likely to use your name or leave the email address out. And they’d never send such a message either.

3. The body of the message uses likely words, but they don’t quite sound like a native English speaker wrote them. The phrasing is slightly off, and quoting words like “send and receive” while not quoting the button name feels strange.

4. Be careful of things that look like buttons—we’re trained to click them without thinking. In many email apps, you can hover the pointer over a button or link to see where it will go. If you look at the URL at the bottom of the window, you can see that it’s completely different from any other domain listed—a clear sign that this is a phishing message.

5. “See full terms and conditions” is a strange thing to say in a password-expiration message. What terms and conditions could possibly apply? This is an example of someone who’s not a native English speaker throwing in random phrases they’ve seen elsewhere.

6. The copyright line is a similar tell. No organization would go to the effort of claiming copyright on a simple support message, and even if it did, it would use its name, not “Email server.”

Spurious Account Access Scam

Our second example pretends to be alerting you to a sign-in to your email account, with the goal of trying to scare you into resetting your password. Frankly, this phishing email stands a good chance of fooling people. You have no way of knowing if your account has been compromised, and if it were compromised, resetting your password is the right thing to do. However, never click through from an email to change a password! You can’t tell if you’re on the right site. Instead, navigate to the site manually, log in, and then change the password. Persuasive though this message is, it does make some mistakes.

1. The capitalization of “Mail” in the Subject and this line should give you pause. Most people wouldn’t capitalize the word, or they’d refer to something more specific, like your “Gmail” or “Outlook” account.

2. Another slight strike against this message is the specificity in the timestamp. There’s no reason to include the seconds or the time zone, and most normal people wouldn’t.

3. There are three mistakes in this line that could tip off a savvy Internet user. It claims to provide the IP address from which the sign-in occurred, but real IP addresses are four sets of numbers from 0 to 255. This one has five sets of numbers, the first of which is way too high at 719. The missing space before the parenthetical makes it look wrong, and finally, the parenthetical claim that the IP address is located in Moscow is overdoing it by invoking scary Russian hackers.

4. Note that the “reset your password” link doesn’t have an underline, unlike the other two links. Again, that could happen in a legitimate message, but it’s an-other slight tell. Hovering over the link reveals the fleek.ipfs.io URL at the bottom—clearly nothing associated with your email account and a dead giveaway.

5. A line saying “Please do not reply to this message” is commonplace in transactional messages, so it makes the message seem more real, but a real warning from an IT department would want to make sure you could contact the support staff.

Fraudulent DocuSign Confirmation

Our final example pretends to be confirmation of a document that you’ve already signed in DocuSign. That’s more clever than trying to get you to sign a document (which we’ve seen in other phishing messages) because most people won’t sign something without looking at it carefully. But you might want to see what document this message is talking about and be suckered into clicking through. What’s trickiest about this message is that it has merely changed some of the text in a real DocuSign message, so someone familiar with DocuSign might think it was real. But there are always giveaways.

1. The Subject line of this message is a tell because its grammar is atrocious.

2. The Reply-To address should also ring warning bells because it’s so generic that it couldn’t possibly go with an organization with which you were signing documents.

3. The yellow line claiming that the email has been scanned for viruses will likely seem unusual to you—even if an email app presented such a message, it likely wouldn’t do so in the body of the message.

4. There’s nothing wrong with the View Completed Documents button, which looks exactly as it would in a real DocuSign message. However, hovering over it reveals the URL at the bottom, which has nothing to do with docusign.net.

5. Someone familiar with DocuSign messages might notice that there’s no email address under “Administrator,” as there should be. But that’s a long shot, we know.

6. As with an earlier example, personalizing with an email address is a definite tell. A real person would have entered your name there, if anything.

7. Once again, the phrasing isn’t what a native English speaker would say, but even more problematic is how it asks you to sign the enclosed file, whereas the text and button in the blue box say that the document is completed. The mismatch is a complete giveaway.

We didn’t have room to show the rest of this message, which adds to the verisimilitude by continuing to copy text from a real DocuSign message. The two remaining tells further down are links that are empty when you hover over them and an unknown name in the fine print at the bottom, which reads (bold added for emphasis):

This message was sent to you by sefanya maitimoe who is using the DocuSign Electronic Signature Service. If you would rather not receive email from this sender you may contact the sender with your request.

Overall Advice

Let’s distill what we’ve seen in the examples above into advice you can apply to any message:

• Pay close attention to emails that are very simple, like our second example above, because there’s less they might get wrong.

• With legitimate-looking messages copied from large firms like DocuSign or PayPal, pay special attention to unfamiliar names and email addresses.

• Don’t click anything in an email unless you’ve given it a close-enough look that you’re sure it’s legitimate. It’s too easy to skim and click without thinking, which the scammers count on.

• Read the text of messages with an eye for capitalization, spelling, and grammatical mistakes. Scammers could write correct English, but if they don’t speak the language natively, they’re likely to make mistakes.

• Evaluate any claim about something happening within your organization against what you know to be true. It’s always better to ask someone if passwords need to be reset or accounts are being deactivated instead of assuming a random email message is true.

• Fight the urge to click big, legitimate-looking buttons. They’re easy to make and hard to resist, but if you can preview the URL under one before clicking, it will often reveal the scam.

• None of our examples fell into this category, but if an email message is just an image that’s being displayed in the body, it’s certainly fake.

Stay safe out there!

(Featured image by iStock.com/Philip Steury)

The Amazingly Convenient Way to Scan Documents Using Your iPhone or iPad

On occasion, we all need to scan a document—an invoice, a recipe, instructions from a book—but far more people have an iPhone or iPad than a hardware scanner. Luckily, Apple has built a scanning capability into iOS, iPadOS, and macOS for some years now. The next time you’re faced with a piece of paper that you need in digital form, follow the instructions below. 

Scan Directly with an iPhone or iPad

The little-known key to scanning with an iPhone or iPad is the Files app, which lets you scan one or more pages and save a PDF anywhere you like. Since it’s particularly easy to use iCloud Drive with Files, it’s a good way to create a file you can work with on your Mac later. (You can also scan into a note using the Notes app, but that’s mostly useful for storing information rather than creating files you can upload to the Web, send via email, or share in other ways.)

1. Open the Files app, tap Browse in the toolbar, and navigate to the folder where you want the scanned document to end up.

2. Tap the icon at the upper right and select Scan Documents.

3. The camera viewfinder appears. At the top of the screen, note the controls for the flash (the lightning bolt), the color filter, and the Auto/Manual toggle (below left). Immediately tap Auto to switch to Manual—we recommend using Manual until you’ve become fluid enough with the controls to let your device scan for you. You seldom need to change the flash setting, but you can force the flash on or off if you like. Similarly, the color filter option defaults to a color scan, but you can set it to grayscale or black-and-white if you want. It’s easier to make that change afterward.

4. Hold the iPhone steady so it can detect the edges of the paper. When it has, tap the round white shutter button to take a photo (above left). In Auto mode, it will just keep taking images for you, which is efficient with multiple pages but stressful if you aren’t ready.

5. Examine the scan to see if it looks good. You can drag the corners to adjust the selection to capture just paper, or if the image isn’t right, tap Retake for a do-over (above right). When you have it as you want it, tap Keep Scan.

6. If you want to scan additional pages, put them in the viewfinder and repeat Steps 4 and 5 (below left). Or, if you’re done, tap Save and jump directly to naming your file (below right).

7. If a page isn’t exactly the way you want it, tap the image well to the left of the shutter button to make changes. On the edit page, the crop icon at the bottom returns you to the previous screen to adjust the corners again. The color filter icon lets you choose from Color, Grayscale, Black & White, and Pho-to—stick with color or grayscale for most documents. If the document came in at the wrong orientation, tap the rotate icon. If the image still isn’t to your liking, you can retake it or tap the trash icon to delete it. If you’ve scanned multiple documents, you can swipe between them. Tap Done when you’re finished, and return to Step 6 to save.

Scan to Your Mac with Your iPhone or iPad

It’s easy enough to save a scanned document to iCloud Drive or another file sharing service so you can access it on the Mac or move it from the Files app to the Mac. But if your goal is to scan directly to the Mac, you can do that too.

In Preview, choose File > Import from iPhone > Scan Documents. (Preview will know about all your devices, so it will have sections for each device.) A dialog will appear on the Mac, and your device will immediately switch to the scanning interface.

Everything works just as it does if you initiated scanning from the device, including the Auto/Manual switch and the need to tap Save when you’re done. However, instead of saving the document to Files, it will appear as a new document in Preview, where you can work with it like any other PDF and save it to your drive.

Final Thoughts

There are two caveats to scanning documents using your iPhone or iPad:

• This approach to scanning does not do optical character recognition (OCR) to make the scanned text selectable—the resulting PDF pages are just images. Online tools can perform OCR on a PDF; we’ve seen good results from AvePDF’s OCR PDF tool. This might not be a good idea with sensitive documents.

• Scanned documents tend to be large. If your scan ends up too big to share via email, for instance, other online PDF compression tools can shrink files. If you use AvePDF to OCR your document, another click on its Hyper-Compress PDFs tool can compress the same document by as much as 90%.

Overall, you’ll probably get better quality from a hardware scanner—particularly a flatbed—because it’s easier to position the pages perfectly, the light is stronger and more even, and there’s no need to deskew (straighten) the scanned page images, as Apple’s software attempts to do when you’re not directly over the page. But it’s hard to beat the convenience of a quick scan with your iPhone when quality isn’t paramount.

(Featured image by Adam Engst)

You Can Now Upgrade to macOS 13 Ventura When You’re Ready

When upgrading to a new version of macOS, we err on the side of caution, at least in our recommendations. (We’ve been using macOS 13 Ventura for some time now and often install beta releases on secondary machines for testing purposes.) Upgrading is easy, but if you upgrade too soon, the new macOS version could make key apps in-operable, create workflow interruptions, or cause other negative consequences. On the other hand, waiting too long can cause problems—it’s important to stay in sight of the cutting edge for security reasons and to take advantage of Apple’s advances. Upgrading is not an if question; it’s a when question. 

That when could be now. There’s no reason you must upgrade to macOS 13 Ventura right away, but if you want to, you should now be able to do so without undue interruptions. Ventura has been quite stable and has received only three updates since its initial release in October 2022:

• macOS 13.0.1 provided just unspecified bug fixes and two security fixes.

• macOS 13.1 introduced the Freeform digital whiteboard app, Advanced Data Protection for iCloud, improved searching for photos in Messages, participant cursors for shared notes in Notes, and the option to play sounds in the Find My app. There were also a couple of bug fixes and important security fixes.

• macOS 13.2 added support for Security Keys for Apple ID for those who need the utmost security, fixed a few bugs, and blocked more security vulnerabilities.

Apple may have another feature or two up its sleeve for Ventura, and we’ll undoubtedly see more updates to address bugs and newfound security vulnerabilities, but there’s no significant reason to wait any longer.

That said, you can continue to delay as long as you’re running macOS 11 Big Sur or macOS 12 Monterey and are staying up to date with Apple’s security releases. (Both have received important updates recently.) Earlier versions of macOS no longer receive security fixes, rendering them more vulnerable to attack. Reasons to delay include:

• You’re too busy. The upgrade process will take a few hours, and it may take additional time to configure everything properly afterward. When you are ready to upgrade, aim for when a little downtime will be convenient.

• You’re still using incompatible software. The jump from Big Sur or Monterey to Ventura isn’t a big one, so most modern apps should have been updated to ensure compatibility with Monterey by now. But if you’re still running macOS 10.14 Mojave or earlier with 32-bit apps, you’ll lose access to them if you upgrade. (That first happened with macOS 10.15 Catalina in 2019.) With Mojave no longer receiving security updates, you need to find replacements for those apps and upgrade soon.

• You need consistent versions for workflow reasons. We’re unaware of any examples here, but it’s not inconceivable that a coworker could be stuck on an older version of macOS and thus older versions of shared productivity apps. If your upgrade would force you to update those apps and introduce compatibility issues when collaborating with that coworker, you may have to wait until your coworker can upgrade as well.

Ventura won’t upend your experience of using a Mac, but it has numerous useful features, large and small. Along with the features mentioned above that shipped in updates, the new iCloud Shared Photo Library enables you to share photos and videos with up to five family members in a separate shared library. Stage Manager provides a new paradigm for window management. Messages lets you edit messages, undo sending, and mark conversations as unread. Similarly, Mail lets you undo sending, schedule messages to send later, and get follow-up reminders for replying. For better videoconferencing quality, Continuity Camera enables you to use your iPhone as a webcam, complete with Desk View for showing what’s on your desk during a call. The Mac finally gets its own Weather app. Perhaps even more important, Ventura shares some of these features with Apple’s other operating systems: iOS 16, iPadOS 16, watchOS 9, and tvOS 16. To take full advantage of those features across all your Apple devices, your Mac must be running Ventura.

However, we want to be upfront about one downside to upgrading to Ventura. Apple replaced System Preferences with System Settings. While we wouldn’t have described System Preferences as having a stellar user interface, it was at least familiar after decades of use. The new System Settings, which tries to mimic the Settings app in iOS and iPadOS, moves numerous settings around and makes some odd and unfor-tunate design decisions. You may find yourself relying heavily on its search field to find commonly used options.

Before You Upgrade

Once you’ve decided to upgrade to Ventura, you have three main tasks:

• Update apps: Make sure all your apps are as up-to-date as possible. If you regularly put off updates, now’s the time to let them complete so you have Ventura-compatible versions.

• Clear space: Ventura needs about 25 GB of free space to upgrade, and the Ventura installer itself is about 12 GB, so we recommend making sure you have at least 37 GB free. Don’t cut this close—you should always have at least 10–20% free space for virtual memory, cache files, and breathing room. Check by choosing About This Mac from the Apple menu and then clicking Storage.

• Make a backup: Never, ever install an update to macOS without ensuring that you have at least one current backup first. In an ideal world, you’d have an updated Time Machine backup, a bootable duplicate, and an Internet backup. That way, if something goes wrong, you can easily restore.

Upgrading

After completing the above-listed tasks, ensure you don’t need your Mac for a few hours. There’s no telling exactly how long the upgrade will take, so never start an upgrade if you need the Mac soon.

Initiating the upgrade is just a matter of opening System Preferences > Software Update, clicking the Upgrade Now button, and following the instructions. If you’d like more handholding, check out Joe Kissell’s ebook Take Control of Ventura.

After You Upgrade

Part of the reason to set aside plenty of time for your Ventura upgrade is that there are usually cleanup tasks afterward. We can’t predict precisely what you’ll run into, depending on what version of macOS you’re running now and what apps you use, but here are a few situations we’ve noticed in the past:

• macOS may need to update its authentication situation by asking for your Apple ID password, your Mac’s password, and if you have another Mac, its password too. Don’t worry that your Mac has been compromised by malware—it’s fine.

• Some apps may have to ask for various permissions even though you previously granted them. Again, that’s fine and won’t happen again.

• If you use your Apple Watch to unlock your Mac and apps (and you should, it’s great!), you may need to re-enable that in System Settings > Touch ID & Password (it’s an example of something that moved; previously, it was in Sys-tem Preferences > Security & Privacy > General).

• If you use Gmail, Google Calendar, or other Google services, you may need to log in to your Google account again.

• Websites that usually remember your login state may require that you log in again. If you’re using a password manager like 1Password, that’s easy.

• You may have to re-enable text message forwarding to your Mac. You do this on your iPhone in Settings > Messages > Text Message Forwarding.

With all that housekeeping done, it’s time to check out all the new features in Ventura!

(Featured image by Apple)

What Is Google Web & App Activity, and Should You Leave It Enabled?

Earlier this year, some of our clients received an email from Google reminding them that they have Web & App Activity turned on. Those with a healthy dose of caution were concerned that it might be a phishing attack, but no, it’s legitimate. Their next questions were often, “Wait, what is Web & App Activity, and do I want it enabled?” Here are some answers. 

What Is Web & App Activity at Google?

Simply put, Web & App Activity is a record of almost everything you do on Google sites, apps, and services. It includes your searches and activity in Google Search, Google Maps, Google Assistant, Google News, Google Photos, YouTube, and more. If you use Google Chrome as your browser, it includes your browsing history. It also stores usage and diagnostic information from Android smartphones. What’s less obvious is that Web & App Activity can even include information from sites and apps that partner with Google to show ads or that use Google services. Activity can be saved even when you’re offline or signed out.

That sounds like a lot, and it is! One reason there’s so much is because Google is such a dominant provider of services on the Internet today. Google Search is by far the most popular search engine, only recently has Apple Maps competed head-to-head with Google Maps, YouTube is the main source of video on the Internet, and so on. It’s hard to avoid Google, even if you wanted to, which most people don’t.

In addition to offering a lot of services, there are two more reasons why Google collects so much information about its users: personalization and advertising:

• Personalization: When a service knows what you’ve searched for and how you’ve used it in the past, it can adjust its behavior to improve future usage. For instance, Google Search can suggest search results that are nearby you if it knows where you are, and YouTube can recommend videos based on what you’ve watched previously.

• Advertising: The bulk of Google’s revenue comes from companies that pay Google to display their ads. We’re talking hundreds of billions of dollars per year, which is why it’s important to Google to learn as much about you as pos-sible in order to give advertisers the best chance of enticing you to click their ads.

For many (most?) people, there’s a tension between personalization and advertising. You want Google to know more about you so its services work better, but you may not want the company to know so much about you that it can charge advertisers a higher price for access to you. Ad-driven companies like Google claim people prefer personalized ads, but most people we talk with dislike having ads—particularly for already purchased items or past vacations—follow them around the Internet. That’s what Apple is channeling with its Tracked video.

How Should You Configure Web & App Activity?

What you should do depends on how much benefit you feel you derive from the personalization of Google apps and services, and what you think about personalized ads. On your Activity Controls page, Google provides a single master switch that lets you pause Web & App Activity, though you’ll have to acknowledge that it may impact your experience of Google sites, apps, and services signed in to your account. Make sure to scroll down on this page to access the settings for Location History, YouTube History, and Personalized Ads.

By clicking the icons for each service under “See and delete activity,” you can get a sense of just what Google has recorded about you, and you can delete data manually if it perturbs you. Google can also automatically delete activity older than 3 months, 18 months, or 36 months. The utility of keeping data longer is if you want to review what you did in the past. Google says that auto-deleting data sooner will reduce personalization, but that feels like a stretch.

There are two important subsettings:

• Chrome: In the Web & App Activity card, under Subsettings, there’s a check-box for including Google Chrome history and activity from sites, apps, and devices that use Google services. We suggest disabling this—it seems unlikely that it would improve your Internet experience sufficiently to warrant the privacy intrusion.

• Audio: You’ll also find another checkbox for voice and audio activity, which Google uses to improve its audio capabilities. The reason to turn this setting off is that human reviewers may listen to your audio samples. Google anonymizes and deletes the data after 7 days, but it may still feel icky to have people listening to your audio clips.

Scrolling down, you hit cards for the three major privacy settings that Google separates from Web & App Activity. (You can also access these on Google’s Data & Privacy page, where you can also start a privacy checkup.)

• Location History: With this setting on, Google knows where you go with your devices, even when you aren’t using a specific Google service, to give you personalized maps, location-based recommendations, and more. If you look through this data and are creeped out by the fact that it shows your every movement, turn it off.

• YouTube History: This setting saves the videos you search for and watch to provide better recommendations, remember where you left off, and more. This option may feel innocuous as long as you don’t mind your video watching being associated with your account—if you’re viewing content that would embarrass you if it got out, perhaps disable this setting.

• Ads: You can disable personalized ads from Google, which prevents Google from using your information to help advertisers entice you to buy more stuff. You’ll still see the same number of ads, but they should be less aimed at you personally.

Finally, there’s a grab-bag collection of lesser-known Google services that track your activity. To find these and delete the data they stored about you, go back to the Web & App Activity card, click Manage All Web & App Activity at the bottom, and then click Other Activity in the sidebar. It includes controls for Google Pay, Google Wallet, Google Workspace search history, YouTube channel subscriptions, YouTube “Not interested” feedback, and many other Google-related services. Most of this stuff seems unobjectionable, but delete it if it bothers you.

It’s hard to say if leaving any of these settings on or turning them off make a real difference in your life. If Google collecting all this data bothers you, try disabling everything and see if the lack of personalization makes for a worse experience. Or pick and choose based on things that perturb you more (like location tracking and ads) or less (like YouTube history). There’s no harm in testing!

(Featured image by iStock.com/ValeryBrozhinsky)

Six Ways of Making It Easier to Browse Your Favorite Websites

Everyone—or at least everyone reading this article—knows how to use a Web browser. But just because you can click links, search for websites, and type URLs doesn’t mean that you’re surfing the Web as smoothly and effectively as you could. We all have sites that we visit regularly—a local newspaper, perhaps, or a social media service that’s the only place to connect with far-flung family members. Plus, the rise of Web apps like Google Docs means that we may spend hours every day in a Web browser at a particular site. 

Here then are six ways that you can make it easier to use the same sites every day. This list is far from comprehensive, but we hope it gets you thinking about how you can spend less time typing URLs and searching for sites. We’ll focus on Safari here, but similar features are available in most Web browsers.

Bookmarks

Many of you probably know about bookmarks, so let this serve as a nudge to remember how useful they can be. Dating from the earliest days of the Web browser, bookmarks are the original way to simplify revisiting a site.

In Safari on the Mac, save a bookmark by navigating to a page and then choosing Bookmarks > Add Bookmark. See your full list in the sidebar by choosing Book-marks > Show Bookmarks. Click one in the list to load it. On an iPhone or iPad, tap the share icon and tap Add Bookmark; on the iPad, you can also drag a tab to the sidebar when it’s displaying bookmarks. You can see and visit your bookmarks by tapping the Bookmark icon in the toolbar (iPhone) or the sidebar (iPad).

Favorites

To make a particular bookmark even easier to access, add it to your Favorites. On the Mac, you can display the Favorites bar underneath the Location bar (View > Show Favorites Bar) and then click bookmarks for quick loading. Create a new favorite by putting a bookmark in the Favorites folder when you create it or by dragging it in later.

On the iPhone and iPad, favorites appear when you tap the Location bar, and adding a favorite is as simple as choosing Add Favorite instead of Add Bookmark in the share sheet.

As long as you have Safari enabled in your iCloud settings, your bookmarks and fa-vorites sync among all your Apple devices.

Home Screen Icons

Want to go one step further? You can turn a Web page into a Home Screen icon on the iPhone or iPad. To set this up, just as with a bookmark, you navigate to the page and tap the share icon. Then select Add to Home Screen.

The Mac doesn’t have the same concept of Home Screen icons, but if you drag the URL for a Web page from the Location bar to your Mac’s Desktop, it will turn into a Web Internet Location file with a .webloc extension. It’s a normal file that you could put in the Dock, a Finder window’s toolbar, or anywhere else you want. Open it to load its page.

Bookmark Folders

Bookmarks and favorites are great for a site or two, but what if you want to open the same handful of sites every morning to get your daily dose of news and comics? Put all those sites in the same folder in the Favorites folder, either by adding them to the folder when you create them or by dragging them in afterward.

Once you have collected the desired bookmarks, you can open them all in new tabs by clicking the folder on the Favorites bar and choosing Open in New Tabs (or just Command-click it). If you don’t want it on your Favorites bar, the folder can live anywhere in your bookmarks—just Control-click it and choose Open in New Tabs.

This feature is available on the iPhone and iPad as well. Once the folder is in your Favorites, tap the Location bar and then touch and hold the folder. Choose Open in New Tabs from the menu that appears.

Tab Groups

Web browser makers were apparently unsatisfied with letting users open all the bookmarks in a folder in new tabs because they have come up with a similar feature called tab groups. Let’s say you’re researching new speakers to buy, and you want to compare options from different companies. Once you have open tabs for all the sites, you can open the sidebar in Safari on the Mac or iPad and use the Add Tab Group icon at the top to create and name a new tab group.

From then on, it appears in the sidebar, and when you select it, those tabs load automatically, replacing the ones that were there before (which are stored as another group). The feature is also available on the iPhone, where you must tap the tab icon in the toolbar first. Unlike a folder of bookmarks, when you close a tab in a tab group, it disappears, and if you want it back, you have to open it again manually.

Pinned Tabs

Perhaps you have several sites that are so important to you that you want them open at all times. For such situations, you can pin tabs to those sites. The utility of pinned tabs is that they stay in place even when you open a new window or quit and reopen Safari. Plus, if you click a link to a different website in a pinned tab, it opens in a new tab—pinned tabs always show the website you pinned. On the iPhone, where there’s no tab bar, pinned tabs live at the top of the tab screen. Each tab group can have its own pinned tabs.

To pin a tab in Safari on the Mac or iPad, drag an open tab all the way to the left in the tab bar until it shrinks into a tiny box showing only the site’s favicon. Or, on the Mac, Control-click the tab and choose Pin Tab (shown below). On the iPad, touch and hold the tab and select Pin Tab. To pin a tab on the iPhone, tap the tab icon first and then touch and hold a tab and select Pin Tab.

So there you have it! None of these features are particularly new, but they’re easily overlooked, and from what we’ve seen while watching people browse the Web, lots of people could benefit from them.

(Featured image by Adam Engst)