Ask Leo! #738 – Crank Your Password Strength Up to 11!

As someone pointed out to me this week, passwords are an "archaic" form of authentication. I couldn't agree more, to be honest. And yet, they're here and they're going to be here for a long, long time. The result? You need to do a better job with your passwords.

One of my more controversial positions: no, you probably don't need that out of office reply. Stop it.

Files compressed by Windows? One guess as to who can decompress them. (Smile) (Hint: it's software you already have.)

Assuming the stars all aligned, the Tech Enthusiast Hour Podcast should be back by the time you see this.

And while I'm mentioning it: HeroicStories is still publishing twice a week, and Not All News Is Bad continues to publish a daily antidote to all the other stuff on your newsfeed. Have a peek. Subscribe to one, or both, and enjoy.

Thanks for being here!

Leo

Crank Your Password Strength Up to 11!

In a world where we measure things (like speaker volume) from 0 to 10, it's time crank your password strength up to 11. Take whatever you think a strong password might be — and make it stronger.

Unfortunately, too many people still have their password strength firmly planted at zero.

Continue Reading: Crank Your Password Strength Up to 11!
https://askleo.com/68646

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Out-of-Office Replies are Evil

We've survived another holiday season. With the season comes vacation, and with vacations come the “vacation auto-responder”, also known as the “out of office” reply.

The evil “out of office reply”.

Evil? Yep. I'll explain why.

Continue Reading: Out-of-Office Replies are Evil
https://askleo.com/2368

How Do I Decompress All the Files that Windows Compressed for Me?

A long time ago when I used the Windows Disk Cleanup tool, it compressed old files. Is there a program to decompress all files on my PC that have been compressed?

There is indeed a program that will do that.

It's called Microsoft Windows. (Smile)

You don't need to get any additional programs to decompress the files on your system; you can do it right from within Windows.

Continue Reading: How Do I Decompress All the Files that Windows Compressed for Me?
https://askleo.com/5290

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Posted: January 8, 2019 in: 2019
Shortlink: https://newsletter.askleo.com/8012
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I'm Leo Notenboom and I've been playing with computers since I took a required programming class in 1976. I spent over 18 years as a software engineer at Microsoft, and after "retiring" in 2001 I started Ask Leo! in 2003 as a place to help you find answers and become more confident using this amazing technology at our fingertips. More about Leo.