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The Samsung screw-up that was heard round the world part 2

Posted on June 20, 2015 by admin Posted in Customer Service Train Wrecks Leave a comment

So yesterday we warned our readers of a security flaw in Samsung’s Galaxy phones series 4-6. That same evening it was clarified that the flaw was in the way the Swype technology software was installed into the Samsung phones and that the danger of being hacked existed when, “the device reboots, and when the keyboard software automatically updates at any random time”. Samsung has stepped up and issued this statement on the situation:

Information Regarding the Keyboard Security Issue and Our Device Policy Update.

What does this mean for Samsung users? Nothing has really changed. I recommend you keep your wifi off until they issue the patch. The phone will not alert you when the language update is being performed on your phone, hence, because of the large amount of public wifi signals around us 24/7, it could happen at any moment.

And when will the patch be issued? Hopefully soon.

Yesterday we also promised to explain why the carriers – T-Mobile, Verizon, AT&T, etc, are at fault for this pathetic mess. We drew your attention to the fact that the carriers knew about this “at the start of 2015” when they were warned and patches were issued by Samsung, who had been informed by NowSecure in December 2014. NowSecure also informed the United States Computer Emergency Readiness Team (CERT) and Google’s Android security team about the problem. So everyone knew in a timely manner, issued the patches and said, “Okay carriers, the ball’s in your court. Issue the patch and fix this”.

They dropped the ball, kicked it into the neighbor’s yard and claimed it never even existed.

Doesn’t it make you feel good that this is what you pay upwards of $100s of dollars a month for?

The Samsung screw-up that was heard round the world

Posted on June 19, 2015 by admin Posted in Customer Service Train Wrecks, Nerd Girl Tech Toys Leave a comment

I usually ignore most announced Samsung security flaws. They rarely are enough of a threat to get my attention or that of my networkers. Today that drastically changed when a mobile security researcher with NowSecure blew the whistle on a flaw noticed by Samsung itself way back in December 2014 AND NOTHING HAS BEEN DONE ABOUT IT.

I’ll just quote ABC7.com’s opening line on their online article to get you all up to speed. “A security flaw discovered in Samsung smartphones has left as many as 600 MILLION Galaxy phones at risk of being hacked.”

Don’t have your attention yet? Don’t care because you don’t HAVE a Samsung Galaxy phone? Maybe you don’t have that model and you are breathing a sigh of relief.

One tiny word of advice. DON’T!

I have a Samsung Galaxy Note IV – which, by the way is NOT affected by the security flaw, BUT I am plenty worried for my networkers, my clients, my customers…my HUSBAND who just got his brand new Samsung 5 corporate work phone a month ago.

Six hundred million is a helluva big number, and to put it in even tighter perspective for you – in my smallest networking venue (at which about 15-20 people show up each week) FOUR OF THEM HAVE AN AFFECTED PHONE!

That’s 20-27% of the room in that tiny little group. ONE QUARTER of the room I had to pull aside and give copies of the article and direct how to patch this train-wreck of a customer service disaster the carriers have on their hands.

309 million is THE POPULATION OF THE UNITED STATES, by the way. So it is the equivalent to TWO UNITED STATES worth of people that are scrabbling ’round the globe to deal with this mess.

Or, well, it WOULD be if the word got out as fast as the carriers lack of attention to the problem THEY KNEW ABOUT LAST YEAR!

So, enough torch-handling and pitchfork wielding. Right now you need to know what to do if you have a Samsung Galaxy 4, 5 or 6 phone and how to stay safe until your service provider gets off its collective butt and decides to let the world know if they issued the patch yet.

What to do if you or anyone you know is affected:
1. Turn OFF your wi-fi in your settings. The hackers get in through open wifi ports. The carriers say to avoid wifi areas, but that’s like trying to avoid the entire planet. EVERY major chain restaurant, Starbucks, government building, school, company that has a network-run computer system has open wifi broadcasting round the clock – even when they are not open!

2. Disable language updates. This is harder to locate and the best thing to do is take your phone to your carrier and have them do it and/or walk you through it so you know they did it correctly.

3. Call your carrier and find out the status of the update. Don’t be meek. THIS IS YOUR FINANCES AND PERSONAL SECURITY THEY ARE ENDANGERING BY STALLING IMPLEMENTATION OF THIS UPDATE! I cannot emphasize this enough! If they give excuses, claim they never heard of this security breach, promise to get back to you – DON’T BELIEVE THEM AND DO NOT let them blow you off. Ask for their supervisor, email them DAILY – do what it takes to get them to get you off their back and give you an estimated patch implementation date.

These are simple steps that can save your contact list, your bank account access information, your credit card numbers from being taken without your knowledge and consent.

Tomorrow I will detail why this was NOT Swype Key’s or even Samsung’s fault, but the CARRIERS…ALL OF THEM. And I apologize in advance, but you are not going to like the answer. They need to take responsibility for this mess, and believe me, if they know what’s good for them, they will fix this flaw like, YESTERDAY.

Wait, didn’t we just have a Samsung Galaxy rollout?

Posted on March 3, 2015 by admin Posted in Nerd Girl Tech Toys Leave a comment

Phone review time again at Civic Site Design. Wow, well, this one was out fast. Why the rush, Samsung? I’m still getting used to my Galaxy Note IV. Losing the micro-sd card wasn’t a bright idea, imo and I was surprised to max out while at a convention, but to be fair, I do have 6 pages of apps and hadn’t downloaded my earlier pics yet. The average user probably doesn’t need that many apps. They may accumulate them, but I like to review and clean them out once in a while, along with my photos after I upload them to social media. And pushing 1K??? C’mon, Samsung, don’t be so greedy. Keep the reasons I love you more than iPhone or you’re going to have a mass exodus on your hands.

What do you think of their official introduction? Leave your comments here.

‘droid app review – Google Sky Map

Posted on March 2, 2012 by admin Posted in Nerd Girl Tech Toys Leave a comment

Okay, I’ve got something really nifty for all us ‘droid nerds out there this week. I was reviewing a rather nicely set up mobile phone & broadband website and seeing the next generation of Samsung Galaxy S class phone out there listed under “Best Selling Phones”, it reminded me I have been wanting to review my newest ‘droid app I stumbled upon a couple of weeks ago. (The next generation of Galaxy S phone is, btw, white. Weird, considering I am so used to mine which is black with a purple, shock-absorbing case surrounding it.)

Google Sky Map is the best app you could possibly hope for if you are a night sky watcher. A free, Open Source program donated by Google, over 175,000 users rate it a 5 out of 5 and with good reason. Point it anywhere, ANYWHERE, day or night, and it will show you exactly what is out there beyond planet Earth. It views stars, constellations, planets, Moon, Sun, Meteor Showers, the Horizon line, poles & Messier Objects (whatever that is). Any of these objects can be switched off with the flick of a finger for clearer viewing of your object(s) of study.

Perhaps one of the more fun perks of this app is called, “Time Travel”. Choose a date and a time somewhere between the years of 1900 – 2100 and view the sky as it would appear on that date. How cool is that? The Apollo 11 moon landing and solar eclipse of May 29, 1919 are pre-loaded under popular dates, but any date and time is programmable into the interface for your viewing study and pleasure. Once in Time Travel mode, one can tap the buttons to move forward or backwards in time at the ratio of anywhere from real time (1 second to 1 second) to 1 week per second. Teach kids how the movements of the planets appear from Earth in a real neat way.

Having trouble locating the object of your interest? There is a search mode. Just plug in the name of whatever it is you want to view and the app will find it for you on the map. Under the Gallery you can view beautiful shots of our sister planets, nebulas, galaxies, the Pleiades and star clusters as the Hubble telescope has caught them on its cameras.

This is by far the most fun app we have come across in our reviews AND if you pick it up NOW, you will be able to see many of the planets aligned in a straight line including Pluto, Neptune, the Sun, Mercury, Uranus, Venus and Jupiter. Quite a line up, especially when the Moon gets into the act during the evening hours.

As always, we welcome feedback, comments, etc. Pick up Google Sky Map for yourself, check it out and let us know what you think.

‘droid app review – Facebook version 1.7.1

Posted on November 1, 2011 by admin Posted in Nerd Girl Tech Toys Leave a comment

The “official” Facebook app is an improvement over the earlier version of the app and worth it for all us Facebooking fools out there to either pick up or upgrade from an earlier version.

It opens up to Top Stories. When tapped, the “All Stories” button at the top opens up a scroll-up at the bottom with options to view Status Updates, Photos, Links, Pages, Events or Videos – an improvement over the old version of the app. The Photo and Status buttons at the top are convenient since they are the most often function used by people checking in on Facebook (the photo button also gives the option to upload videos). Status Updates is not to be confused with the “Status” button. The Status Updates are everyone else’s statuses while the Status button in the middle of the bar below is the one used to update your own status.

For those that liked the convenience of the 9-icon opening panel, you can still access that dashboard by clicking on, weirdly enough, “Newsfeed” at the top left of the screen. (Guys, you could have just called it something plain yet familiar like…oh well, say, “Dashboard”? That way you wouldn’t have confused the heck out of us.)

I confess I have not yet tried the chat function, so if anyone has experience with it, please feel free to drop a comment on the end of this blog to let us know how it performs.

Note: version 1.7.2 is now available. I will be updating this review as soon as I install it and get some practical use out of it. Give it a day =D

‘droid app review – CurveFish’s Battery Life

Posted on September 19, 2011 by admin Posted in Nerd Girl Tech Toys 1 Comment

App Homepage

One of my favorite ‘droid apps, CurveFish’s “Battery Life” is everything you could want in a phone app. – colorful, functional, useful and most importantly, it’s ACCURATE and it WORKS. Set it to show how much of a charge your battery has left, or get real nerdy and also set it to show the battery’s temperature (in Fahrenheit or Celsius), voltage AND technology. Mine is on my home screen and is so much easier to see and read than that tiny little icon up in the corner of the screen. It can also be color customized. AWESOME!

Playing App Catch Up

Posted on April 7, 2011 by admin Posted in Nerd Girl Tech Toys Leave a comment

I’m behind in my app reviews, to the tune of five pages worth of them on my phone. So it’s time to review and get rid of the stinkers, definitely.

Do live wallpapers count as apps? Well, no, but some are worth a warning when you learn a lesson from having one on your phone. For instance, get rid of that “2011 countdown” New Years Eve exhibition of noisy fireworks that goes off every 5 minutes whether you like it or not, whether you want it to or not and especially before you’re the new kid in the office being shown around by your Supervisor. The Supervisor laughs and says it’s “cute”, but they are secretly filing the information away to put on your eventual pink slip, trust me.

Do I speak from experience on that one? No, of course not.

Who the hell put all these default apps on your and my phones anyway?!? Do I really have time for “The Sims 3”? Uh, NO. Let them riot and starve and die in their make-believe city because I neglected them…better yet, I’m just going to reject them outright and throw them in my virtual trash can, which, by the way, is not an app, but boy, does it come in handy!

Maybe they’ll find some virtual psychotherapist in there to help them get over the trauma of me rejecting them.

Nope, hate to break it to you, reader, but all this crud clogs up our phones because these developers stormed Samsung’s and Apple’s offices and bribed, begged and/or threatened these phone manufacturers to put their junk into your pocket. It’s certainly not there because we want it all or because they want to see our smiling faces as we play these mindless, senseless games as the nice traffic officer writes you a ticket on the side of the road. Oh and that reminds me, April is crack down on all those idiot driver, Lords of the Sims wannabes.

So if you’re in the San Fernando Valley, take my advice and bury that damn phone so deep in your pocket you can’t hear it while you’re driving. Again, do I speak from experience? YOU’RE DAMN RIGHT I DO!!! Don’t answer it – it’s only another twitter alert for the release of the 50th trailer for the new season of Doctor Who. It’s only another 16 days, 5 hours, 17 minutes and 2 seconds…CAN’T YOU WAIT THAT LONG, PEOPLE!?!

App Crap – Slurpee Nation

Posted on January 19, 2011 by admin Posted in Nerd Girl Tech Toys Leave a comment

I gave this one months of hope because I LOVE Slurpees. After installing it late last year, I tried it once a week or so to see if I could get the blasted thing to work. No such luck. I tried logging in after creating a new account through the app and then through their website. Neither ever got me past a consistent, “force close” warning, though sometimes I would be lucky enough to see the screen beyond that where a Slurpee mountain vomited fruit all over my screen…a mind-bogglingly useful screen to waste my battery life on, let me tell you.

To be fair, I did get in – once, but we were on our way to see Harry Potter and couldn’t stop for a Slurpee so I never got any real, practical use from it. After perusing the many and wildly varied experiences of users in the reviews (ranging from “It’s great!” to “It sucks!”), I am giving up – a painful decision as anyone who knows me will tell you since I have been drinking coca-cola Slurpees since back when they were called “Icees” and since I was little. Yes, I know, they’ll rot my stomach and kill me in the end…hopefully I’ll last longer than coffee’s planet-full of victims, but I will tell you this – I won’t waste my time any longer trying to get this brain-paralyzingly LAME application to work on my Android.

Update on Android/Vibrant App Review – iTriage

Posted on December 4, 2010 by admin Posted in Nerd Girl Tech Toys Leave a comment

Still sucks, even after last week’s update of the application.

I was finally able to find “average” emergency room wait times – not “current” – as advertised. And that was for only a specific hospital when a search was done for the nearest facilities to my location. It was under “comprehensive emergency services”. Sorry folks – WRONG ANSWER!!!

For those who think I am being too critical, let’s look at why you want to use this app. in the first place. You are violently sick, broke your leg or are dying. Your friend or relative is fumbling around on your phone to find the nearest and fastest help because you are too cheap to call an ambulance, or you are unconscious and your friend is too cheap (or too stupid) to call for an ambulance. You want an app that will, with only a couple of keystrokes, tell them where to take you and how fast they will get to you.

A better alternative to this stupid app. is to get the information directly from the hospital. For example, West Hills ER – the people who sent me the flyer on this android app. in the first place, included their text messaging info in the second flyer they sent me. Replying to the text gave me the instant gratification of knowing that their average wait time at that moment was 25 minutes. (For the locals, to do this you text “ER” to 23000 & reply with your zip code and then you’ll receive their average wait times) Awesome! Now we are getting somewhere! Now, assuming my HMO likes West Hills and will let me go there without asking them to amputate my arm and leg in payment, this could work out.

Bottom line? Use iTriage to find the nearest ER – look on their website or call them for a similar text info setup, then uninstall the app. to save hard drive space.

Android/Vibrant App Review – iTriage

Posted on October 18, 2010 by admin Posted in Nerd Girl Tech Toys Leave a comment

Hypochondriacs of the world united under one app…how awesome is that? For the rest of us who will use it for more practical purposes – like looking up great new diseases to call in sick to our boss/work with, we can keep busy with it, too. Me? I downloaded it because the flyer I got in the mail (you remember snail mail, don’t you) promised one could “view emergency room wait times”. While we all know these days to bring a really good book, your portable nintendo game or other time-waster to the ER, I would really like to be uber-prepared and oh, know what I am getting into with the wait times from hell before I get there. It’s the difference between packing “War and Peace” or your favorite bedtime story book for the kids in tow.

So, did this little app bring satisfaction? Uh, NO! At least not with the ER wait times. Crawled over all the options and missed it somewhere. If someone knows where to find it, please leave me a comment. If not, the next time I fall down an open manhole on the street while looking up the nearest place to get a flu shot, I’ll update this article on iTRiage’s other functions ;>

Hey, there’s a thought…an app to find the nearest funeral parlor when you break your neck falling down one of those manholes…no? Well, it was just a thought.

App specs and other commentaries by users can be found here at AppBrian.com.

iTriage.com’s website for you poor slobs still tied to a desktop PC.