Tech Tip Tuesdays

Tech Tip Tuesday: Tips for a Secure Password

Today’s tips are courtesy of Public Services Technician Sue Gum:

Tips for a Secure Password

  • Use a password manager that will create strong passwords for you.
  • Use a long password–8 is a great way to start, but the longer the better.
  • Do not use the same password for multiple sites.
  • Use two-factor authentication (2FA) when possible.
  • Avoid common words and character combinations – thequickbrownfox or thisismypassword.  Also avoid using personal information like your name, nickname, the name of your pet, your birthday or anniversary, your street name or anything associated with you that someone could find out from social media.
  • Avoid passwords known to be stolen – Click this link and type in the password you want to use to see if it was stolen.
  • Try to include letters (both upper and lower case), numbers, and symbols.
  • Remember to update your Allegheny password once a year, as soon as you get the email reminder.
  • For other accounts, no need to periodically change your password unless you suspect it has been exposed. Microsoft now recommends that unless you suspect your passwords have been exposed, you don’t need to periodically change them. The reason? Many of us, by being forced to change our passwords every few months, would fall into bad habits of creating easy-to-remember passwords or writing them down where others can find them.
  • Go to password generator sites like this or this where you can choose the length of the password and if you want or all of the categories; upper or lower case letters, numbers, and symbols.

Find out if your passwords have been stolen

Mozilla’s Firefox Monitor and Google’s Password Checkup can show you which of your email addresses and passwords have been compromised in a data breach so you can take action. 

Have I Been Pwned can also show you if your emails and passwords have been exposed. If you do discover you’ve been hacked, see our guide for how to protect yourself.

Use two-factor authentication (2FA),  but try to avoid text message codes

If thieves do steal your password, you can still keep them from gaining access to your account with two-factor authentication (also called two-step verification or 2FA), a security safeguard that requires you enter a second piece of information that only you have  (usually a one-time code) before the app or service logs you in.

While it’s common and convenient to receive these codes in a text message to your mobile phone or in a call to your landline phone, it’s simple enough for a hacker to steal your phone number through SIM swap fraud and then intercept your verification code. 

A much safer way to receive verification codes is for you to generate and fetch them yourself using an authentication app like Google Authenticator or Microsoft Authenticator. And once you’re set up, you can choose to register your device or browser so you don’t need to keep verifying it each time you sign in.

The revised passphrase method

This is the multiple word phrase method with a twist — choose bizarre and uncommon words. Use proper nouns, the names of local businesses, historical figures, any words you know in another language, etc. A hacker might guess Weldons, but he or she would find it ridiculously challenging to try to guess a good password example like this: WeldonsLincolnSi

To crank it up another notch in complexity, you can add random characters in the middle of your words or between the words. Just avoid underscores between words.

The sentence method

This method is also described as the “Bruce Schneier Method.” The idea is to think of a random sentence and transform it into a password using a rule. For example using the sentence Roff School Tavern has the best pizza  I can take the first 2 letters in every word and it would give me: rosctahatebepi but then I can take it a step further and capitalize some of the letters like RoScTahathbepi and it makes it even more secure.

To anyone else, it’s gobbledygook, but to you it makes perfect sense. Make sure the sentence you choose is as personal and unguessable as possible.

 How to set up backup email & phone number in Self Service

  1. Log into Self-Service
  2. On the left click on the user options and then user profile
  3. Scroll down to add a personal email address and your cell phone number

These can be used to reset your password from https://accounts.allegheny.edu/

Customize Folder Colors and Shortcuts in Google Drive

Last fall we showed you how to color-code your folders in Google Drive.

This summer, Google has expanded this feature. Now you’re able to customize colors for folders in your shared drives and for your shortcuts to folders as well.

To customize colors of a folder in a shared drive:

    1. Open Google Drive.

    1. Choose Shared drives. (Note: You will see this link only if you have been added to a shared drive.)
      Screenshot of the navigation menu in the Google Drive web interface, with "Shared Drives" selected.
    2. Open the shared drive whose folders you want to customize.

  1. Right-click on a folder to change its color to one of your choosing:
    Screenshot of context menu in a Google Shared drive, showing the choices for color customization
Tip
The color customizations you choose will not be visible to other members of the shared drive. Each shared drive member can customize their view as they please without affecting other members.

To Customize Colors for Folder Shortcuts:

The steps are very similar for shortcuts to Google Drive folders that you have already set up, except that the shortcut lives elsewhere in your “My Drive”. To identify which folder icons are shortcuts, look for a small curved arrow on the icon, and then follow step 4 above.

Screenshot of Folder Shortcut Context Menu showing color selections

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Present Directly from Google Docs, Sheets, and Slides

From Google Support:

Present a doc, sheet, or slide directly in Google Meet

You can present directly to Google Meet from Google Docs, Sheets, or Slides. This can make it easier to present a document, sheet, or slides to a meeting you are attending.

Present your Docs, Sheets, or Slides content

  1. Go to Google Meet.
  2. Join a meeting.
  3. Open a file in DocsSheets, or Slides.
  4. In the top menu area, click Present to a meeting .
  5. Choose your meeting (or enter a meeting code).
  6. Select the preview of the tab to confirm and start sharing.
  7. Back in Meet, view your presented content directly in the meeting.

For more Meet tips and tricks, Techy Coach provides an intro to 5 fantastic features of Google Meet.

Important
You must be on a Chrome browser on your computer to present Google Docs, Sheets, or Slides in Google Meet using this method.

Tip
You can present slides in full screen.

After confirming your tab to present, click Present .

Back in Meet, you will see your slideshow in full screen mode.

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Tech Tip Tuesday: Using Filters in Google Sheets

Sometimes it can be helpful to view only a subset of a Google Sheet. This is especially helpful when your spreadsheet grows unusually large or complex. Filters are one way to separate items according to your specific criteria, and especially useful if you don’t want to change what other people sharing the spreadsheet can see.

Zapier Blog provides step-by-step instructions on how to filter in Google Sheets. Technology trainer Leila Gharani presents some examples on YouTube as well:

Learn more about how to sort and filter your data in Google Sheets.

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Tech Tip Tuesday: New Image Options in Google Docs

Google Docs now offers more options when you create and import documents with images. Images can now be positioned above or behind text in a Google Doc.

Users have always been able to insert and manipulate images in a Google Doc. These new options will enable you to superimpose text onto an image, or vice versa.

Screenshot of a Google Doc containing a photo of the night sky, with superimposed text reading "Capture the night sky this Milky Way season."

This video from GCF Learn Free gives more tips on using images in Google Docs:


Come join our July Tech Tuesday Workshops to learn more about collaboration tools.

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Tech Tip Tuesday: Using Comments in Google Sheets

While commenting tools have long been available in Google Sheets, Google is now offering  new ways to discover and navigate comments in Google Sheets that are more similar to the ways you may already be familiar with using comments in Google Docs. These changes make it easier to review, respond to, and resolve comments in Sheets.

You now have easy ways to see and navigate all comments in a spreadsheet by clicking:

  • The comment icon in the Appbar.
  • The “open all comments” item in the sheet tab.
  • The “open” from any comment anchored to a cell.
  • A new button in the comment overlay that allows you to page between comment threads in a document.

Just like in Google Docs, you can use comments to add supplemental information, recommend updates or revisions, or assign action items to collaborators on the Sheet.

Learn more about sharing and collaborating in Drive, Docs, Sheets, and Slides.

Come join our July Tech Tuesday Workshops to learn more about collaboration tools.

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Tech Tip Tuesday: Replace Your Background in Google Meet

In Google Meet, you can replace your background with one supplied by Google, or even upload your own.

This feature is now available in both Google Chrome and the Android app.

A brief moving image showing a user selecting from among several background images in Google Meet.

You can also upload your own images to use as a background.

Using Chrome on desktop, you can even use a video. Google offers three videos to choose from, with more on the way. Google also plans to make video backgrounds available for mobile in the future.

Learn more about using Google Meet.

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Tech Tip Tuesday: Remember to Clear Your Browser History

David Nield of Popular Science offers a great explanation of Why and How to Clear Your Web History in Any Browser. In short, routinely clearing your browser history (also often referred to as “clearing your cache”) can help protect your privacy, speed up your browser performance overall, and help you avoid mysterious glitches with web pages displaying incorrectly or behaving in odd ways.

LITS offers brief instructions on clearing your browser history on Microsoft Edge or Safari, or in Google Chrome or Firefox.

UPDATED: Please be aware that, depending on your choices in this process, you may be logged out of your accounts, and will have to log back in when you revisit them next. In some cases, you may lose custom settings for some sites as well.

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Tech Tip Tuesday: Show Editors of a Google Doc

From the Google Workspace Updates blog:
“You can now view richer information on the edit history of a particular range of content in Google Docs. Simply highlight and right-click on a range of text and select Show Editors from the dropdown menu. Here, you can view a list of editors and their latest edit along with time stamps. You’ll also have the option to open the Version History of the document.

Screenshot showing a segment of text selected in a Google Doc and a list of previous editors of that segment.
This makes it easier to track edits made by multiple collaborators, giving greater insight into who the recent editors were, what changes were made and when.”

Learn more about seeing changes in Drive files and folders.

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Tech Tip Tuesday: Google Alerts

Sign up to receive personalized alerts in your Gmail inbox for various topics of interest to you.

  1. Make sure you are logged into your Allegheny College Gmail account.
  2. Go to Google Alerts.
  3. Fill in the search terms for the topic you wish to monitor, and other details in the Create Alert box.
    Screenshot of the search dialog box in Google Alerts with the phrase "Allegheny College" typed in
  4. Click on Show options.
  5. Choose your preferred frequency, language, and other options.
    Screenshot of the "Choose options" dialog in Google Alerts
  6. Click on Create Alert.

Based on your choices, you will receive emails alerting you to new Google search results using the terms you entered in the search box.

You can run a number of alerts concurrently, and revisit your Google Alerts account to modify/add/remove alerts.

Learn more about Google Alerts.

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