LETTERS
6 OCTOBER 2019|COMPUTERSHOPPER|ISSUE 380
Letters
Stumpedbyhow tokeep yourpasswordssafe,evenafteryou’vepowereddown
forthe finaltime?Neverfear–Shopperreadersareheretohelp
[email protected]
Home help
With impeccable timing,
the August issue of
ComputerShopperdropped on
to my mat the dayafterIdecided
to bitethe bullet and get myself
adigital assistant set up.Sadly
forme, Ijust bought the rival
Google Home system.
Is there any chance you could
repeat your Alexa feature,but this
time using Google Home?
MarkPainter
We’ll definitely offer asimilar usage guide
forGoogle Home in afuture issue.Wepicked
Amazon Alexa forour first feature as it’s
currently more widely deployed in the UK,
but with the rapid growth in voice assistants
and smart speakers, we’re sure there are
manyShopperreaders who would also be
interested in using or have already invested
in the Google version.
Don’t splashthecash
Referring to Chris Adams’
comments on cloud-based
password managers (Letters,
Shopper379), I’ve been using
Splash ID formany years and find
it brilliant. It was afree download
inComputerBuyerback in the day.
Inow have alifetime licence,
which was very reasonable.
While you can have acloud
version, Ichoose to have all my data
stored locally.Ican’t saythat it’s hack-proof,
but it seems pretty secure to me and I
couldn’t live without it. It allows you to
store all sorts of data, not just passwords,
but anything you choose.
Chris is also alittle inaccurateabout what
banks offer.IhaveaSantander 123 account,
which lets you set text and email alerts for
anytransaction value you choose.I’m sure
other banks offer similar alert functions.
Dave
Update woes,part 94
I’m writing with regard to my,todate,
futile attempts to install the latest
Windows 10 upgrade.Mycurrent installation
is version 1803 (OS Build 17134.829), which is
bang up to datewith all the latest updates,
with no real issues in downloading these
through Windows Update. My Windows
installation being the 64-bit edition Pro.
The blurb accompanying the updatesays
support formycurrent version will be
endingsoonandthatMicrosoftrecommends
everyone upgrade to version 1903. Well,
Microsoft, I’ve tried and the count is now
well intodouble figures forfailed attempts.
Initially Itried downloading and installing
through Windows Update(with and without
Windows Upgrade Assistant), as I’ve done
successfully on countless occasions in the
past, but always with the same result:
error code 0x8000ffff.
Itried workingthrough allthe
recommendedfixes forthis error code,but
Star letter
Youneed friends
The letter about making passwords
available to the people who would
manage your affairs if suddenly incapable
(or dead) struck achord (Letters,Shopper
379). But access to all your passwords is a
trickybusiness. So,empower two trusted
friends to access your passwords, to be
used when both feel it’s appropriate.
Put your passwords in atext document,
and save it in an encrypted form. The
password on that file is what Icall the
master password in what follows.
Give each trustee only half of your
master password; carelessness with a
shared part becomes less damaging.
What if one of the trusted friends isn’t
available when the master password is
needed? The following minor tweak solves
that problem: give three people away to
access all of your passwords, even if any
two of them feel it is time.
How? Obviously,you’d use alonger,
more complex password, but forthe sake
of explaining the idea,
suppose your master
password were ‘abcdefghi’.
You’d give the following to
the three friends:
abc---ghi
---defghi
abcdef---
In real world use,you’d want at least 12
characters, using both upper-and lower-case
letters, digits and
punctuation marks. You
also mightwanttoavoid
easilyconfusedcharacters,
such as zero and the letter O. And you’d
need to be clear about which is the ‘you
don’t have this one’character.
Tom
Thanks forthat advice,Tom. It sounds
like asensible strategy forensuring access
can be granted as appropriate.
❱❱Write in and win
Do you wish your computer was faster when booting and loading
applications? Thanks to Crucial, you can achieve your dream of a
faster PC or laptop with a500GB MX500 SSD.The writer of our
Star Letterwill be awarded one of these solid-statedevices, which
can be installed in adesktop PC or alaptop.
This SSD is 45 times more energy efficient than atypical hard
drive and has sequential reads/writes up to 560/510MB/s and random
reads/writes up to 95K/90K IOPS, making it the perfect replacement forthe
ageing hard drive in your sluggish PC.
STAR
PRIZE
500GB
SSD
Do
pas
Sho
Spl
whi
ver
