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Money Savings Expert said : Tens of thousands of H*lif*x mortgage customers are to be given a redress payment of £20 after the bank uncovered an error in the way interest has been charged that dates back eight years. Those who chose to overpay their mortgage, pay weekly or make one-off payments at any point since 2010 may have been charged too much interest due to the error. H*lif*x won't say exactly how many customers have been overcharged, though it's understood to be 10,000s. It says the vast majority of those affected will have overpaid by under £10, in some cases by just a few pennies - but anyone who's lost out is being offered £20 redress as a cheque.

Browsers and Search Engines. Confusing, isn't it?  Google is a Browser and Chrome actually does the clever searching.  In the case of Microsoft, Internet Explorer was their main browser but lately it is called Edge.  But their search engine is called Bing. 

Microsoft's Windows 10 updates: We have all been mystified by Windows 10 updates being called (August 2016) "Anniversary Update", then (April 2017) "Creators Update", and (October 2017)  "Fall Creators Update"  Now (sensibly) they are going to  simply name the after the month and year of their release. Unfortunately, for some, the October 2018 update was problematic and it was quickly withdrawn. If you used Edge to find a download site for the much preferred Browser, Google, you were in danger of downloading a 'nasty' from a (paid for) advert they allowed Bing to prominently display. Guru, Bob, says that the bug that forced Microsoft to halt distribution of the Windows 10 October update has now been fixed, but other severe bugs still delay resumption of distribution. So, wait a little longer before trying to download the update. The October update should be available some time in November. Hopefully, this time, they will not hurry it out before the beta testers have had a chance to tear it apart. For now, Microsoft says don’t Click “Check for Updates”.
 
Haggling
The top 10 UK service companies to haggle with
PROVIDER                        NO SUCCESS    SMALL SUCCESS    BIG SUCCESS    TOTAL SUCCESS RATE
1. AA (510 votes)                        10%                        32%                            58%                                90%
2. RAC (264 votes)                     13%                        37%                            50%                                87%
3. Sky (1,704 votes)                    14%                        30%                            56%                                86%
4. Admiral (292 votes)                18%                         41%                            41%                                82%
5. EE (451 votes)                         20%                        36%                           44%                                 80%
6. Virgin Media (629 votes)        21%                        41%                            38%                                79%
7. AA Insurance (124 votes)       21%                        41%                             38%                                79%
8. Vodafone (271 votes)              23%                        32%                            45%                                77%
9. Plusnet (189 votes)                  23%                        41%                            36%                                77%
10. Three (234 votes)                   25%                        44%                            31%                               75%

And finally.... Falling foul of Planning Permission in Spain! :
Sagrada Familia is to pay £32m for building without a permit (for 136 years!). The construction of the cathedral, designed by artist Antoni Gaudi, began in 1882 and has continued ever since (and, so far, they have only managed the front).

Security:

I am sure you will have heard that many of the processors running computers, whether made by Intel, ARM or AMD have been found to contain code which might be vulnerable to attack.  As almost all main computer systems have these chips built in the manufacturers have raced to develop code to prevent such an attack. The vulnerabilities have been named Spectre (ARM and AMD) and Meltdown (Intel). ARM chips are the ones used in most mobile phones in the world. This affects some Apple equipment as well.

Microsoft has issued an update (Microsoft Security Advisory ADV180002) which it is hope will protect users of Windows software.  Apple has also been busy. Be sure to install these updates, including iCloud and iTunes if you use those.

The flaws would allow hackers to steal the entire memory contents of computers, mobile phones, and servers that run in cloud-computing networks. So far, despite these weaknesses being around for a long time, there have not been any known attacks using them.

Windows 10 Update 

On the subject of updates I found that my Windows 10 machine had not had any since before Christmas.  However, I finally did get a massive update.  It took a long time to download, despite my having a very fast, cable connection.  It was version 1709. When it was finally installed I found that my machine had been changed a great deal. My keyboard had been changed the the US one and half the carefully planned shortcuts on the desktop had been removed and the so-called Quick Menu had been resurrected.  We all hate change, so what was so good about the new version ? It talks about 'Mixed Reality', and you can download a Mixed Reality Viewer from the Microsoft store. The program is called ARmodeling, referring to Augmented Reality.
Given a reasonably fast machine this could enable you to animate and view 3D Models in PowerPoint.

It also says you can add an 'Emoji' from your keyboard. You can also set up dictation (wow!), switch from your smartphone to the PC, change a typed character to the correct one, turn script scribbled on a touch screen into text, highlight text in an e-book, pin sites or a contact to the taskbar and call someone on Skype from the taskbar.

To say I am 'underwhelmed' would be an understatement. For this they mess up my laptop !

Incidentally, Microsoft is to offer the opportunity to defer updates, perhaps because people have found them disruptive.

In fact Microsoft is blaming certain anti- virus products for causing its updates to crash PCs or repeatedly reboot. Microsoft hopes to be able to detect those computers and they will not be updated.  However, looking through the list I did not recognise any of the popular anti virus programs apart from Totalav, which has been blacked by many security writers.

Bob Rankin wrote a blistering article about Avira anti virus software.  Whether it was Free or $99 it was massive, difficult to install and impossible to uninstall, even using my favourite (thorough) uninstaller by Iobit.  In the end he had to do a restore to save his sanity !

 HTTPS  What is that about ?

As a site author I am being bullied into paying a fee to upgrade my HTTP site to an HTTPS (Secure, encrypted) one. We all realise that the internet needs to become more secure.  But if we bought every security measure on sale we would need a bank loan.  As it is, my Windows machines take far too long to become usable because they are searching for all the updates that are generated daily to keep us safe. Apple's iCloud and iTunes software seem to do this weekly. They are very large updates; and you have to click the PC four times to get them, then reboot the thing.  All when you just want to send an urgent message ! It is no wonder people are favouring tablets, where one can get on and use them and choose when to do the updates. It is such a shame that Apple prices all of their (fragile) products beyond the range of many people. They tend to be more secure than Android based tablets as Apple has more control over the software.

Fragility. I see so many people walking around with broken iPhone screens. I, too, have broken a screen on an iPad mini. It cracked when I was prising it out of its cover. I decided to get it repaired by a non-Apple repairer. It was out of warranty and the repair cost far less than Apple would charge. But I was aware that Apple would wash their hands of it because I had not used their expensive service.  I just cannot understand why something that can cost over £1000 (like and iPhone X ) cannot be made more durable. BTW Apple MAY take responsibility if it is a hairline crack .

I hear that one of the latest iPhones may have an OLED screen  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OLED.

Hopefully these screens will be less likely to break when dropped.

Savings.
Savings :  It is so difficult to get an inflation-beating rate as national banks everywhere, here and abroad, keep their rates as low as possible in the hope of stimulating their economies, which never really recovered from the 2008 debacle.  Whilst banks are not interested in your cash they are quite keen to have customers to sell them mortgages, credit cards and other financial products. So, some of the best deals are given to new customers, with up to £200 tempters and cashback and regular savings offers. Santander used to be the king of the cashback banks but they have reduced the percentage you get back for household bills and have a monthly fee for accounts.  Almost all ask for minimum amounts to be paid in monthly and most now expect banking to be on line. As far as I can deduce, one of the best accounts is the National Savings 3 year Guaranteed Growth Bond, paying 1.95%.  Apart from being absolutely safe the cost of early withdrawal is only 90 days interest on the amount withdrawn. With the maximum being £1million that should take care of most of us !

n.b. With the indebtedness of most European countries this makes it doubly important to find a safe harbour for savings. Apart from Greece, Italy, Portugal and Spain are all teetering on the brink.  One wonders how long the European Central Bank can prop up these countries,  We may be out of the Euro but, being a country that is dependent on the financial business we would not be immune from the draught caused by a default.

 N.B. As well as issuing these notes to a favoured few I intend to add them to this site at www.silverhairs.co.uk/blog.htm.



Ads in Gmail
The only way to really get rid of the ads is to turn off the feature entirely. You can do this by: Heading to the gear shaped icon in the top right corner under your Gmail photo. Select "configure inbox" and disable the "Promotions". You may find this is not easily done on a tablet

ONEDRIVE A useful explanation of Microsoft's on line storage is at  https://newsletter.askleo.com/ask-leo-706-half-a-dozen-uses-for-onedrive/

Other Google services will become available.  Google Calendar, for instance, is a natural fit with Gmail where people plan joint activities, appointments, vacations, etc. Google Keep, the ad hoc Post-It Note(™) style note-taking app, is not exactly a household word. Integrating such obscure services with the popular Gmail will bring them to more users’ attention.
A new feature is "Smart Reply." Using machine learning and the context of the message, Gmail provides suggested one-click replies such as "Sure, Monday works for me," "So sorry to hear that," or "Cool, I'll check it out!"
Snoozing and Expiring Email Messages. "Snooze” is the ability to schedule the sending of an email at a future time.
“Expiring” emails are the flip side of Snoozing emails. You can set a date and time at which the email you are about to send will no longer be accessible by the recipient. Expiration is a security feature; it ensures that no confidential messages are hanging around beyond a specified date. In addition, the recipient of an expiring email won’t be able to print, forward, download or use copy/paste on the message.

New browser protection plug in.
Whilst Chrome already provides effective protection against malicious sites: go to a site with a poor reputation and you'll get a big, scary red screen telling you that you're about to do something unwise. But Microsoft believes it can do a better job than Google, and it has released a Chrome plugin, Windows Defender Browser Protection, that brings its own anti-phishing protection to Google's browser. Microsoft justifies the new plugin with reference to a 2017 report that claims that the company's Edge browser blocked 99 percent of phishing attempts, compared to 87 percent by Chrome and 70 percent in Firefox. The plugin brings Edge's protection to Chrome, so if the theory holds, it should bump the browser up to 99 percent, too.

Free on-line storage. These days there is a lot of this on offer.  You have to decide whether your files and photos are safer there than on your local storage. In the case of tablets, many soon become full if you have a lot of music, videos and photographs.

Dropbox offers 2 GB; OneDrive, 5 GB; Box, 10 GB; Google Drive, 15 GB. If you're a photo buff, you can get a whopping 1 TB (1000 GB) of free space at Flickr to store your pics. (Flickr was recently acquired by SmugMug, so we'll see if the free space offer continues after the merger is completed).

The Internet of Things (I o T) has been getting quite an airing recently. Using a mobile phone one can control many items from anywhere, providing they have been set up correctly. Someone I know is able to remotely control the central heating in a holiday let flat. But there are many other things that lend themselves to this technology. 
See this article by security company Malwarebytes

Ccleaner.  There is a free version of this which has some useful features.  When you have finishing clearing the dross which collects just from using a computer on line, have a look at the Tools heading on the left.  In addition to a very useful Uninstaller it also has a duplicate file finder and deleter.  You may be amazed how many files and photographs are duplicated.  Always a good idea to make a Restore Point before deleting them, especially if they are a part of a program.  I was looking at one machine which had the Bullguard anti virus program. Most of the program files were duplicated and many were triplicated.  It could be that they are a residue of an earlier Windows 7 installation.

In this respect Did you know that, if you have upgraded from Winows 7 to Windows 10 the computer holds on to all the Windows 7 files just in case you want to go back to 7 ?  This usually amounts to 30 gb of unused files left in a folder called Windows Old.  If you are sure you don not want to return to Windows 7 (which will not be supported from 2020) then you might as well free up that space. One needs to search for Disk Cleanup to make sure the folder is completely cleared.

 


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