Easy to be wise after the event… almost laughable

It is easy to criticise and to harp on about what might be called ‘human frailties’. But when do persistent errors become something else, laziness, lack of attention to detail, indiscipline or simply invocation of the  ‘it won’t happen to me’ syndrome?

And when we hear too frequently about certain things happening or not happening do we not close our ears to them? Even major disasters such as floods or famines, if they occur regularly, tend not to get the same response by the third or fourth one.

So hardly surprising when yet again we hear of a public body – this time the Devon & Cornwall police  – involved in mishandling data with potentially serious consequences for somebody. It concerned one of their cars at an auction. I bet that anybody directly involved would be furious however – but the rest of us?

In this instance the ‘error’ is almost laughable. Read about it here:  http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-devon-14834881    I guarantee most of you will say ‘what? again?’

When the motor car came in about 120 years ago replacing horses and carts it involved change which many did not like. So much so that a man had to go in front with a red flag warning of a car at about 4 mph -  2 mph in towns and cities. Yet horses can trot (let alone gallop)  at 8-10 mph which was deemed acceptable!  Why? I suppose because we were familiar with them and knew how to manage them.

So in today’s world where information is arguably as important as food and water for our survival, people need to embrace new ways of doing things. If not you’ll be left behind and your information could end up with somebody else! Don’t be the ‘horse’ to everybody else’s ‘motor car’!

It’s the cloud you need – so long as its coupled with good security in all aspects not just physical, not just electronic or digital but also procedural.  More about that later!

Is the Rugby World Cup about uncertainty?

Uncertainty…

Somebody said to me recently ‘life is full of uncertainties…’

What is uncertainty?  It is debated over by many and used in subtly different ways in physics, philosophy, statistics, economics, finance, insurance, psychology, sociology, engineering, and information science.  (Yawn)

Let’s keep it simple and just look at risk:  a state of uncertainty where some possible outcomes have an undesired effect or significant loss.

I’m sure you don’t like those sorts of outcomes!

But how many of us have been hit by just that sort of uncertainty?  And what can we reasonably do about it, to reduce or possibly even completely remove it?

Who would have thought that the White House and the Pentagon would have to be evacuated because of an earthquake? Followed by Hurricane Irene, the first to hit the state of New Jersey in USA since 1903, truly a once in a lifetime event unless you happen to be 108 years old!

How would you have felt if you had needed to exit Libya in a hurry, with no time to pack and forced to leave everything behind as happened to many?

Or if you had been caught up in riots in London which hit almost everybody totally unaware; especially ghastly for people living in flats which were torched and everything was lost?

What if you had been on holiday and on the last day you had your laptop stolen with your university dissertation on it?  As one person wrote about his daughter who luckily had her laptop with her whilst her friends lost theirs:   “Can you imagine how she would have felt IF HER LAPTOP HAD BEEN STOLEN?   No chance of completing her re-sit and a year of her university course and career down the drain!”   Career down the drain – stark words!

And just this weekend Richard Branson told us in the Sunday Times how he thought everything was backed up but ‘it turned up the backup was also in the house’ which burnt down to nothing. ‘I’d got a long way into writing my autobiography and it’s lost. Fifteeen years of notebooks went and photographs and so on.’

Sorry to be a ‘doom monger’ but uncertainty is all around us.

Not so much we can do about hurricanes or riots or thieves or fires …

But looking after information so you don’t lose it, is something you can do. It’s what myTsafe is all about.  Making the outcome of uncertainty totally different.

Which brings me to the Rugby World Cup in New Zealand. Are you going?  Just think what a hassle, and probably worse, if your tickets, or your passport or other vital information like names and addresses ‘disappeared’ for some reason?  It’s not too late to take action. And unlike so many others myTsafe is mighty safe. Go on take a look, have a try!

How myTsafe came to the rescue!

Most great ideas are really simple. And often, simple ideas take some time to understand in the real world. myTsafe is just one of those simple yet great ideas. I knew that instinctively when I first came across it, but hadn’t yet figured out ‘what it can do for me’. Well, now I know, and it has saved me a lot of aggravation already!

I have a 12 (nearly 13) year old son who, whilst visiting family ‘up north’, had some homework to do. As usual these days, it needed to be done on a computer so off he went to use Grandpa’s laptop. After a considerable time he emerged having created a really good piece of work which he was delighted with. So, ‘what are you going to do now’, I asked. ‘Put it on my stick’ he replied. Now my lad is actually very good with technology but the next time he accidentally loses files when transferring them around won’t be the first! So my usual instinct at times like this would be to also take a copy onto my ‘stick’; but I wasn’t carrying one. At this point I could have left it to chance but, wait a minute, what about my ‘myTsafe’ account? Quick log in and transfer later and I can relax, knowing that was the end of the matter, or so I thought.

On returning home, I was in the car early one day when my ‘phone rang (hands free of course). The conversation went something like:

‘Dad, I need your help (sniffle sniffle)’

‘What’s up son?’

‘I’ve deleted my homework off my stick (blubber blubber)’

‘Which homework?’

‘The IT project I did at Grandpa’s’

Can you imagine how many Brownie points I earned in the next 30 seconds?

‘Well, you need to be more careful but don’t worry, I have a safe copy which I can download for you tonight’

And that’s just the start of my myTsafe experience – who knows where it will end?

Richard Hinds

Email disclaimers meaning what?

How often have you seen those email disclaimers something like

CONFIDENTIALITY NOTICE:
This message is intended for the use of the individual or entity to which it is addressed and may contain information that is confidential, privileged and exempt from disclosure under applicable law. If the reader of this message is not the intended recipient, you are hereby notified that any printing, copying, dissemination, distribution, disclosure or forwarding of this communication is strictly prohibited. If you have received this communication in error, please contact the sender immediately and delete it from your system. Thank You.

What value do they have?  What’s their purpose?

If it were confidential then you shouldn’t be sending it by email at all!!    No amount of disclaimers will prevent it from being in the wrong hands.

And if it isn’t confidential, then why have all this long spiel anyway?

Email is not confidential; there are at least a dozen good reasons why not.  See our earlier blog – ‘Is email secure?’.

But if you use myTsafe e-post or sharing, you will have ultra security.

E-post is rather like ‘Registered Post’ – guaranteed delivery but with added extras: it’s instant, can only be opened by the person to whose account the item has been sent and it’s held ultra securely in a myTsafe account.

Sharing between two accounts is equally ultra secure.

So why have those meaningless disclaimers and when you have something confidential to send or receive let myTsafe do it for you!

What’s a receipt worth? £235m??

You buy something and get a receipt.

For some  items you probably discard the receipt very quickly – smaller items where you consume it quickly restaurant bills, train tickets, petrol purchases.

But for any larger items keeping the receipt becomes more important – car, washing machine, holiday, camera, clothes, in fact anything where you might one day need to prove you bought it because you need to make a claim for poor service or quality.

Now just where do you keep those receipts?  It might be years until you need them during which time you might have moved house so where’s a good place to keep them?

Pity the poor guy who lost his receipt through a house fire. It was possibly worth £235million for a diamond he bought. Read about him here.  http://tiny.cc/pedob

And how many things do we all have where having the receipt has made all the difference? Perhaps not as big as £235m but signficant all the same!

Politicians are no different…

If only Liam Fox had myTsafe
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/london/8636779.stm

How to protect your life not just your PC

“How to protect your PC.”    Just how often do we read an article telling you to get virus protection, firewalls, anti-spyware and so on? All very good stuff.

But what about the gaping hole equally often left by those giving advice about PCs & laptops?

I mean the headline:  “How to protect your information.”
If you keep your info on your PC then you could lose it through theft, virus etc when you are on line emailing, surfing etc.

That’s where myTsafe comes into play.

Keep your really important information securely on myTsafe and no copy on your PC.

Then whoever has access to it – unauthorised or authorised, even that person who needs to borrow it for a moment and just might take a further look around – cannot possibly see anything!

That’s really what they mean with the few words on keeping your information secure.

See for example The Times Saturday 13th Feb page 87 Technology part of Money section.

It’s your information that really needs protecting!!    Protect against losing it by keeping it ‘in the cloud’ at myTsafe.

Even astronauts do it…

Astonaut forgets vital information … if only he had used myTsafe!

Check out this link

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/photo_galleries/article7019378.ece?slideshowPopup=true&articleId=7019378&nSlide=7&sectionName=WorldUSAmericas

Ode to the World Cup

Wonderful artistry for all to see,
Outstanding skills from so many
Remarkable football is what you’ll get,
Look forward to England in the Final and
Drive them to win, we expect!

Come to the football full of grace
Upon South Africa’s hallowed soil
Plan to enjoy it – and keep myTsafe!

To shred or not to shred?

From every corner we are told to shred information so that ne’er-do-wells cannot go through our dustbins and find out all about us. Understandably more and more shredders are being sold.

Identity theft is on the rise. Recently a friend told me  his identity had been used twice in a short space of time – once to buy airline tickets and secondly to buy a new mobile phone – in fact three! And with the latter came a note saying we see you are moving house! All of which was quite untrue.

How was his identity stolen? Nobody could find out. But it did involve him in a considerable amount of time and effort to clear his record with credit card companies and credit rating agencies.

Moral: Keep on shredding. But also… any information that you do need to keep securely put it away in myTsafe. If necessary scan paper documents into your computer and load them into myTsafe. Then obliterate all traces of it – paper or on your computer. That way pieces of paper cannot by mistake end up being found by somebody else nor will it inadvertently be read on your computer. Yet you will always have a copy.

And if you do need to let somebody else have sight of a copy then get them to take up myTsafe and you can share totally securely between each other – avoiding the major insecurity surrounding documents sent by email. See previous blog.