Christmas Cookies and Voicing Your Searches

Published on: December 07th, 2017

‘TIS the season for hosting parties, baking cookies and having all sorts of holiday fun. Our take on the season’s activities may be little more technological than culinary, but we think you’ll enjoy today’s offerings.

How often do you think about the cookies being stored on your computer and what they mean? We have included 2 well-written articles to explain the types of cookies and how you can control them through your web browser settings.

What would the holidays be without surfing the Web for the best deals on gifts, food and decorations? Are you still typing in your searches, or are you talking to a “conversational agent” like Echo? Web navigation is becoming more interactive and intuitive, and we invite you to read about the upcoming changes in how we use the Web and how the Web uses us. Lastly, we have an important security note for our MAC users.

Grab a cup of Eggnog and read on!

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It’s Christmas – the perfect time to talk cookies!

In our world here at Computer Troubleshooters, cookies are tracking devices, not little round yummy confections. If you recall from a recent Tech Talk, Artificial Intelligence (AI) is moving towards predicting your wants and needs before you even start that Google search, but until that becomes a reality, companies and web sites continue to depend on “cookies,” small bits of “data stored on your computer by a website that’s related to your activity on the site.” There are several different types of cookies, and some are easier to control than others, but if you are concerned about your browsing privacy, read on for some helpful information to both understand the various cookies’ purposes, and how to use your browser settings to adjust your computer’s cookie settings to be most appropriate for your use.

Sources:
Allen St. John, Consumer Reports, December 2017
Federal Trade Commission

Peeking into the future of searching and shopping

I think it’s fair to say that “conversational agents” like Amazon’s Echo and Alexa, and Apple’s Siri, have had a significant impact on the way people are searching the web – thenextweb.com reports that 20% of Google’s mobile searches are done by voice. Considering this year’s holiday sales of these and similar devices, that percentage can only go up. For a closer peek into the future of Web navigation, click into the article below to read about “8 ways that technology will change the way you search online” (and shop!).

Source: Scott Gerber, Contributor to the thenextweb.com

Attention MAC Users!

If your Mac is running the latest version of High Sierra (10.13.1 [17B48]), do not leave your Mac unattended until you have installed the security update issued by Apple to fix this huge security flaw.

There is a bug in the latest version of MacOS that lets anyone log in to change settings or access your data with the username “root” and no password.

If you have not yet installed the security update, follow the instructions in the article below to set a root password in order to protect your computer until you are able to install the security update. If you have any questions or need our assistance, please call us at 203.702.2103 and we would be happy to help.