Internet monitoring and blocking

Over the next couple of months, we will be installing new firewalls in most of the firm's offices.  In addition to standard security from outside attacks, the new devices will give us the ability to monitor and restrict Internet access to certain sites.

Before we start the new monitoring process, I thought this would be a good time to remind everyone about the firms Computer and Internet Use Policy.  If you are not familiar with it, you should be.  Violations of the policy can result in adverse employment actions, including termination.

A few of the key highlights to remember regarding Internet access:

• The firm reserves the right to monitor all of your activity.  This includes any access to personal web based email sites or other web sites you may think are private.
• The firm can view your activity if you are using the firm's Internet connection, even if you are on a personal device such as a phone, tablet, or laptop.  
• If you are connected via VPN from home, the firm monitors your activity just as if you were in the office.
• If you use a firm owned device, such as a phone or laptop, even off site and on another Internet connection, the firm may still be able to monitor your activity and reserves the right to do so.
• Firm policy prohibits using even a personal device with a personal internet connection for personal reasons when you are at work.  Talking, texting, or Internet access from your cell phone is not permitted.  Using any firm resources for personal use is also generally not permitted.
• If the firm logs you accessing inappropriate sites, including sites containing pornography or gambling, or even sites that have no obvious business reason, such as Facebook or a sports site, you may be called in to explain to Mr. McKenna the business purposes for you are accessing such sites.
• If you find a site blocked and you have a valid business reason to access that site, you may call the help desk to inquire about getting an exception.
• In short, don't do anything on the computer or through the firm's internet that you would not do if your boss was looking over your shoulder.  You should have no expectation of privacy when using firm resources.

Is someone ducking your calls?

As shocking as it may be to some, there are occasions when people try to avoid calls from a law firm.  Sometimes, this can require persistence to get through.

Our Vonage phones have a feature called Automatic Callback.  This can be set if a party you are calling is busy.  It will establish a call as soon at the other person hangs up.  Keep in mind that this only works if you are getting a busy signal.  If you are directed to voicemail, it won't work.  Because most phones now have call waiting and voicemail, this may not come up very often.  But if you find it useful, you can enable this option in the portal.  Once enabled, when you get a busy signal, you should see an option on your phone to enable a callback on this call.  As the other party hangs up, your phone and the other party's phone will both ring.

Suppose you have someone who is simply not answering the phone when you call.  They see your caller ID and let it go to voicemail.  Line ID Blocking hides your caller ID from people.  If you dial *67, your call will go out with an anonymous ID.  Unfortunately, this option is also of limited use.  Most phones today do not rely on the sender's caller ID to identify the call.  They  have their own database of numbers.  Similarly, if you call a cell phone of someone who has your number in their address book, it will identify you that way.

If you really want to be anonymous, I recommend making a call through your computer, using Google Hangouts, or using the Hangouts Dialer app on your smart phone.  Unless you have gone through the trouble of assigning a number and ID to your Google account, making a call this way will appear to come from a random phone number with no identification.

More on Faxes: Additional Ways to Send

In an earlier post, I explained how you can send a fax by logging into the fax2mail.com web site and uploading a file to be faxed.

For those who are interested, there are also several other ways to send a fax.

Virtual Fax Machine:

On the Fax2mail.com web site, there is a tab called "VFM".  This is a virtual fax machine that may be a little more user friendly.  You may browse for a file, and send through this device.

Alternatively, you may download the Virtual Fax Machine software to your computer.  Once  you have entered the login information, you can use this at any time to send a document.  You can even drag and drop a file right onto the application.  If you send many faxes, this may be a bit of a time saver.

Below is the link for the virtual fax machine application.

https://fax2mail.easylink.com/desktopfax/downloads/EasyLinkVFM.3.3.B6.exe

Print to Fax:

Also available on the fax to mail website are "print-to-fax" drivers that you can download and install on your computer.  Using this option will allow you to "print" to a fax from virtually any application (including WordPerfect).  Once installed, simply create a document and start to print as you normally would.  However, select the print to print-to-fax option from among the printers listed on your computer.  You will be prompted for the fax number and then hit send.  The one downside of this option is that there is no option for a cover page.  So you will want to make a cover page as the first page of the document you are sending if a cover page is needed.

Below is the link for the print to fax installer.

https://fax2mail.easylink.com/desktopfax/downloads/EasyLink_FL_GUI_Print2Fax.exe

If you send faxes regularly, or find the fax2mail.com web site confusing, you may want to give one of these options a try.

Faster Calling Fewer Buttons

Many of us call the same numbers over and over again.  We don't want to be bothered having to redial the same ten digit numbers repeatedly.  Vonage offers a range of shortcuts to make this easier.

In an earlier post I explained how you can add users to your phone's LCD screen so that you can call them with a push of a single button.  In a different earlier post I explained how to look up a number quickly on the phone, either from the firm directory or from a list of previous callers.

Today, I'm going to describe yet another shortcut.  We have the ability to set up eight shortcut that can be dialed by pressing a single number.  Essentially, we assign a phone number to the numbers 2-9 on your keypad.  To dial any of those pre-programmed numbers, you simply need to press the button and then hit "dial".

If you have more than eight numbers, there is also an option called "speed dial 100".  This allows you to add up to 100 numbers by dialing # and then a pre-assigned two digit code, then press dial.

Adding users to the LCD screen seems preferable to either of these two options.  Adding to the LCD screen means you can see the user name, meaning you don't have to remember who is assigned to what button.  It is also literally a single button press.  Therefore, the only reason to use these additional shortcuts would be if you have already filled up all the spaces on your screen.

The speed dial 8 can be set up by dialing *74 then the shortcut number, then the number to be called.  For example, if I wanted to assign 215-922-1100 to number 2 on my phone, I would dial, *7422159221100 This can also be set up in the portal.  If you are not comfortable programming it yourself or going into the portal, the help desk will be happy to set up the numbers for you.  Just send us a list via email.  Once set up you simply press the number assigned (e.g. "2") then press "dial" and you are connected.

Speed dial 100 works in a similar way but allows you to store up to 100 numbers using a two digit code (00-99).  You can configure a speed dial 100 number by dialing *75, then the shortcut numbers, then the number to be called.  For example, to set 10 as the shortcut for 215-922-1100, I would dial *75102159221100.  Like speed dial 8, speed dial 100 numbers can also be set up in the portal.

Once configured, simply dial # plus the two digit code, then dial, to call a number.  For me it seems more complicated to memorize 100 different two digit calling codes then to simply look up the number and dial it.  But if you think this may be useful to you, it is an option we can program.

Internet Browsers

This week, Microsoft is ending support for all versions of its Internet Explorer Browser except the most recent version (11).  Until now, Microsoft had been providing security updates and other support for IE 7, 8, 9, and 10.

Last year, I posted an article discussing different Internet browsers generally.  Everyone should have Google Chrome, which updates itself regularly.  Many of you may also choose to use third party browsers such as Mozilla Firefox.  These are good browsers, usually superior to Internet Explorer.  They often will load pages faster than IE.  I recommend using Chrome for all Internet since you already using it for email and other Google Apps.

Why use IE at all?

The main reason we continue to use IE is that Elite Webview is designed to run only on Internet Explorer.  This was not always the case.  When we first purchased Webview, it ran on a variety of browsers.  Several years later, however, Elite became a Microsoft partner and restricted Webview so that it would only run on Internet Explorer.  If not for this limitation, I would have recommending dumping Internet Explorer years ago. As it is, I recommend using Internet Explorer for Webview.  It will work with the rest of the Internet as well, but may be slower than you would like.

Another great annoyance of Webview is that it does not always work with newer version of Internet Explorer.  It was designed to work with IE 6.  There are sometimes problems running later version of IE.  To get around such problems, we typically set up "Compatibility View" on your copy of IE, so that it will behave on that site like the older version of IE.  For many users, we stopped updating Internet Explorer on the computer to prevent future incompatibility issues.

So what does the end of support mean for older version of Internet Explorer?  

If you are using an older version of Internet Explorer to surf the Internet, you are at greater risk of attack.  Most security updates are designed to protect people from infected web sites that attempt to download and install malware on your computer.  If you do not have these protections, your computer can be at greater risk to attack.

How can I protect myself?

If you are on Windows 7 or higher, you can update Internet Explorer to version 11 which remains supported by Microsoft.  Keep in mind that doing so may mean we will need to reset the compatibility view settings in IE so that it continues to work with Webview.

The other option is simply to use your current IE only for Webview and other internal sites.  Since we control internal sites, we can keep them free from malware infections.  It is only when you go to sites outside the firm that you put yourself at risk.  For most internet browsing, I recommend using Google Chrome, which remains up to date and protected.

The Future of Internet Explorer

Microsoft seems to be phasing out IE altogether.  Windows 10 came with a new Microsoft browser called Edge.  However, Edge only works with Windows 10.  Those of us using older versions of Windows will have to wait.  Edge is not terribly useful anyway since, despite being a Microsoft product, is still not supported by Webview.

Because so many enterprises have applications like Webview that continue to require Internet Explorer, Microsoft continues to support IE 11 on Windows 10 as well as older versions of Windows, including 7 and 8 (there is no 9).  Should the firm move to Windows 10, we still have the option to use IE for Webview.

At some point in the next few years, I suspect Microsoft will end support for IE altogether.  Presumably by that time Elite will come up with an alternative browser option for Webview.

Scan Documents With Your Cell Phone

There are times when you are out of the office.  You come across a document and need a copy of it. You can use your smartphone as a document scanner.

There are numerous apps that allow you to capture a document through a phone's camera.  One of the most useful for me is the Google Drive App.  If you don't already have this app, it is a free download from Google's Play Store or Apple's App Store.

Open the Google Drive App on your phone.  Click on the red circle with a plus sign to add a new document.  Select the camera and take a picture of the document.  You have the option to add additional pages or complete the document.  Once complete, the document saves as a PDF file to your Google Drive.

When you get back to the office, simply download the PDF to your computer. You can use PDF Xchange Editor to OCR the document if you need that, or simply use as is.

The scan directly to PDF only seems to work on the Android version of the App.  The iPhone Drive App scans to JPG format.  Still, once the document is saved to your Drive, you can use the Drive's "download as PDF" option to convert it to PDF when you download it to your computer.

This can be a convenient way to snap receipts to be uploaded into Chrome River for reimbursement.  It is also a convenient way to store a paper document that you need for further review later.

Google Photos

We all use our phones as cameras, but many of us find it difficult to transfer pictures from the phone to a computer or some other device.  We end up letting the pictures fill up on our phone and then have to figure out what to do when it is time for a new phone.  Worse, we break our phone and lose all those pictures forever.

There are numerous ways, of course, to get photos off of the phone. One of the most convenient is Google Photos.  This can be installed as an App on your Android or iPhone.  You can configure the app, so that all photos are immediately uploaded to Google's cloud storage.

There are several things I find particularly attractive about Google Photos.  First, there is no storage limit.  You may upload and store as many photos as you like without ever having to pay extra storage fees.  There is no need to worry about limits.  Second, once it is configured, it works without you having to do anything.  Just take a picture and you are done.  It will upload automatically.  Third, access to the photos is easy.  Just go to http://photos.google.com and see all of your photos (assuming you are already logged into your Google account).

You can leave the photos on the site, share them with others, or download them for use elsewhere.  No need to worry about transferring between devices or losing them when a computer dies.  If you have photos stored on your PC, you can also upload them manually to the Photos site for permanent free cloud storage.

Photo size is limited to 16 megapixels for the unlimited storage.  This is not a problem for pictures taken with your Galaxy or iPhone as neither phone can take pictures above that level.  It may be an issue if you are uploading high quality pictures from another device.  If you want the unlimited storage, Google will automatically reduce the photos to the required levels for storage.

Video can also be uploaded and stored.  Again, there is a limit that the video of 1080p HD.  But again, that will suffice for most people.  Your phones are not capable of higher video quality.

If you delete a photo from the web site, it will also delete from any synced devices, such as your phone.  So do not delete from there if you want to keep the photo.  You may, however, delete a photo from your phone and keep it stored in the cloud.

Also, if you plan to store pictures there forever, remember that if you leave the firm and we shut down your Google account, those photos will go with them.  If you are taking personal photos, you may want to sync them to a personal Gmail account that you control.