Secure by Design is pleased to announce the availability of high speed Internet on parts of the 226 telephone exchange, covering the Appledale area. The service connects over your phone line at speeds up to 6mbps, many times faster than standard dial-up. Since it uses a land line, our service is not affected by radio interference or weather related problems. You can also use the phone and the Internet at the same time!

The cost for high speead is $40/month + HST. There is an activation fee of $76.50 + tax.

You’ll also need an ADSL modem or gateway. We have modems available for $50 + tax, and wireless gateways for $99 + tax. This is a special introductory rate for customers that upgrade from our dial-up plans.

To see if your phone number qualifies, click here.

Pass this on to your friends!

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Since last August, we’ve been receiving junk emails that appear to be a Facebook friend and contain a single link (see sample below). The actual email address used is usually a yahoo address. It’s not terribly frequent but it is annoying. We had a customer call in about it, so it seems to be more widespread.

The usual advice applies: Delete the message on sight, and don’t trust strange links even if it seems to be from a friend.

Example Facebook Scam Email

I found a couple articles about this problem:

1. http://www.forbes.com/sites/davidewalt/2012/08/29/facebook-spam-email-spear-phishing/
2. http://news.cnet.com/8301-1009_3-57507648-83/spam-from-friends-is-actually-result-of-facebook-hole/

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It’s that time of year and consumer electronics remain one of the more popular gifts. So we decided to provide you with these 5 tips to help make for a frustration free Christmas morning. If you’ve bought a new computer, smart phone, tablet, or game console for a Christmas gift before you wrap it:

Step 1 – Check it out

• Open it carefully and make sure it works.
• Make sure its charged up or has fresh batteries.
• Wireless game controllers may have a rechargeable battery or require standard AA or AAA batteries.

Step 2 – Get it Working

• Read over the Quick Start guide or other instructions, or find a YouTube video on how to run it.
• Set it up on your WiFi or home network.
• Ensure it can get on the internet.

Step 3 – Lock it Down

• Install any system updates (the new Wii and other game consoles need this too!).
• For Windows PC’s, install an anti-virus product.

Step 4 – Make it Yours

• Install any “must have” software or games, for example, you might need to reinstall games or software from your old computer using the original CD or DVD.
• Use the “Windows Easy Transfer” or Macintosh “Migration Assitant” tool to copy over data from your old computer.
• Set up custom desktop wallpaper (window, maybe you have a photo with Santa that could work?

Step 5 – Wrap It Up

Carefully repackage it and wrap it up!

Bonus

Here’s a play list of helpful YouTube videos for each of the above tips. There are videos for both Windows and Mac users, if a video doesn’t apply to you, just skip it.

Have a Merry Christmas!

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We would like to wish all of our customers, partners, and suppliers a very Merry Christmas and wonderful New Year!

Our office hours during the holidays are:

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Two different email scams were launched over the weekend by criminals looking to trick unsuspecting people into providing their email usernames and passwords. One email appeared to come from Microsoft, and the other from “Netidea.com Customer Service”. Both emails used convincing fake webmail login forms that look quite real, but are not and are designed to provide your username and password to them. Once they have access to a stolen email account, it is used to sent out spam through our servers to avoid blacklists and spam filters.

If you have filled in either of these two forms, you will need to change your password right away. You can change your password yourself on our web site by clicking on the Account icon on the top right corner of our screen. The proper internet addresss (URL) for our online account page always starts with: https://www.secure-by-design.com/

Valid email login pages for our webmail service are:

1. https://mail.secure-by-design.com/
2. https://mail.netidea.com/
3. https://zimbra.sbdemail.com/

The domain (mail.secure-by-design.com) should always be followed by a slash, and come immediately after the https:// or http://. For example, https://mail.secure-by-design.com.someothersite.com//wp-content/images/login.htm looks almost right, but has a period instead of a slash, and would point to a fake page.

As always, be careful when visiting any site that you have to provide a username and password for. Be sure to watch for changes in the address bar, as often that is the only thing that gives away a forgery!

Here are some screen grabs of the fake emails and the fake login pages:

Fake Microsoft Email

Fake Outlook Web Access

Fraudulent email from netidea.com “customer service”

False Webmail Login Page

Sincerely,
Kirk Ismay

Secure by Design Technology

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The Secure by Design office will be closed on Monday, November 12th to observe Remembrance Day.

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Our office will be closed on Monday, October 8th.
We will reopen Tuesday, October 9th.
We hope you have a safe and happy long weekend!

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Our office is closed on Monday, September 3rd for labour day.

Have a safe and happy long weekend!

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Our office will be closed for Monday, August 6th for the BC Day holiday. We are also closed Saturday and Sunday as usual.

As always, our technicians will be close at hand to tend to any system alerts, should they arise.

Have a safe and happy long weekend!

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Our office will be closed for the Victoria Day long weekend, including Monday, May 21st.

Our technical staff are available to respond to all system-wide emergencies.

Have a great long weekend!

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