iPhone is Disabled

This can be a very disconcerting sight on your iPhone’s screen One minute the world looks all tickety-boo, and then you pull your iPhone out of your pocket or bag and are confronted with a black and white screen that says “iPhone is disabled, please try again in 5 minutes” (or a different number of …
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Saving a Copy of Gmail Data

If you get locked out of your Google account you could lose all your email history In recent years, Google have become much more insistent (to the point of irritation) that you provide “recovery information” so that you can get back into your account if you lose your password or if your account is hacked. …
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Should you leave backup drives connected?

In these days of ransomware, isn’t it dangerous to leave backup drives connected all the time? Very slowly, data backups are becoming easier to keep up to date. If you buy a Seagate external drive, for instance, it will probably include backup software that you can “set and forget”. Once you’ve made your initial decsions …
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CryptoLocker

The next time that an IT horror story breaks through into mainstream consciousness, it could well be caused by CryptoLocker What is CryptoLocker? It’s a horrible piece of malware that encrypts the most common types of data files on your computer (especially Microsoft data files such as Word documents and Excel spreadsheets). Once attacked, you …
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External Backup Drives

“Should I buy an external backup drive” is one of the most common questions I am asked by my computer support clients My answer is usually “yes”, because the question implies that the client is not backing up anything at the moment. The next question is, of course, “what should I buy?” The main considerations …
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Recovering Data Files in Dropbox

Dropbox stores previous versions of data files (for 30 days) that you thought had long since gone to data heaven I’ve mentioned this in a previous blog on Dropbox, but I’ve recently had a couple of queries from users who know it’s possible, but who can’t work out the mechanics. So, here’s how to do …
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Saving a Webmail Contacts List

Is your Contacts List at the mercy of your webmail service? “Webmail” is the method of accessing email that works via a browser (eg Internet Explorer, Firefox, Chrome, Safari, Opera). There is no “program” on your computer that is dedicated to dealing with your email. All of the necessary programming is provided via the web …
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Backups – 1

Notice the rather ominous “1” in the title. This is a subject that will take more than one blog post. So, today let’s just think about what “backups” mean and what they don’t mean. When I asked Google to define “backup” the first offering was an accumulation caused by clogging or a stoppage; “a traffic …
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