Tag: travel tech tips

  • Traveling for the holidays? Take 8 tech tips from our experts with you

    Traveling for the holidays? Take 8 tech tips from our experts with you

    If you’re traveling the holidays this year, we have eight tech tips to help you stay safe while using your devices on the go.

    We’ve offered holiday themed tech advice before (here are a couple of our past articles on the top 10 Holiday Shopping Tips for Safer Online Shopping & 5 Holiday Tips for Your E-Commerce Business and 5 for Everyone Else). The holidays usually mean more time off which can lead to more time spent browsing the web or being able to work on things in your business you usually don’t have time for.

    It’s also a good idea to keep in mind that bad actors don’t typically take the holidays off, in fact ransomware attacks usually increase by 30% on the holidays. That’s because many people are keeping an eye out for sale emails or emails from relatives this time of year – giving more opportunities for scammers and bad actors to take advantage of folks just looking for a good deal or a message from their loved ones.

    Traveling especially can leave you more vulnerable, if you’re quickly scanning messages in-between flight connections, logging into public WiFi or any number of things that are a normal part of being on the go you can miss some obvious red flags.

    That’s why we’re going to divide up our advice into 4 tips that are related to being safer online while traveling, and 4 tips for improving your technology experience while traveling.

    First our safety themed tips:

    1. As we mentioned, be careful on public WiFi. Nowadays, even if you need to use your laptop the better option might be to use your phone as a hotspot. If you do need to connect to public Wi-Fi, consider doing it through a VPN. We can personally recommend Mullvad which is not subscription based, one payment will get you online through a secure connection without having to remember to cancel it later.
    2. Be careful about what you’re posting on social media. Posting travel photos for your friends and family to see can be really fun, but you should be wary about who else might be watching. It’s a good idea to make your social media profiles private but if you maintain a public presence, you can also think about posting those photos after your trip has concluded instead.
    3. Public charging stations can also pose a risk. Unfortunately, these stations can be tampered with and become an attack vector to everyone who uses them. Battery banks are pretty inexpensive these days and even more convenient when you’re on the go.
    4. Don’t leave your items unattended. Just as airport personnel will ask if your suitcases have been in your possession the whole time, it’s a good idea to keep track of your belongings from a tech standpoint as well. Someone with bad intent might not be after your device when your data is much more valuable.

    Now for our convenience themed tips:

    1. Keep track of your belongings on the go with an Apple Airtag, Tile Pro or other bluetooth based trackers. A misplaced bag can ruin your vacation, having one of these trackers inside it will prevent that from happening.
    2. Turn any audio jack into a Bluetooth wireless transmitter. Whether you rent a car without a Bluetooth adapter or you want to use your Bluetooth headphones on the plane, a wireless Bluetooth transmitter is a gamechanger. Best of all many options are on sale at the moment for Black Friday, we’ve personally used the Anker Soundsync. It’s small so it won’t take up much room in your bag and as 12 hours of run time per charge.
    3. We mentioned using your phone as a mobile hotspot up above, but if your data plan is not the best you can also purchase a standalone mobile hotspot (with a data package included). This can also be a gamechanger if your network Isn’t going to be stellar where you’re going, you can purchase a mobile data plan for a network that has coverage instead. T-Mobile, AT&T and more all have options for this.
    4. Having to work on the go but don’t want to drag your whole setup with you? Consider a portable monitor. If you’ve gone to two (or more) monitors at work you know there’s no going back, but sometimes travel includes doing some work out on the road and bringing your at home setup is not going to be an option. Portable monitors often come with a travel ready case and can be connected to your laptop via USB-C (both for power and display), bringing you the convenience or two displays without the headache of trying to travel with a full-size monitor.

    Technical advice like this is one of the advantages of being a Valley Techlogic customer, and for a limited time if you meet with us about our services, we will give you $100 cash just to hear us out.

    What do you have to lose? Schedule a consultation today.

    Looking for more to read? We suggest these other articles from our site.

    This article was powered by Valley Techlogic, an IT service provider in Atwater, CA. You can find more information at https://www.valleytechlogic.com/ or on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/valleytechlogic/ . Follow us on Twitter at https://x.com/valleytechlogic.

  • Summer is Here and with it Comes Vacations – Our Top 10 Travel Tech Tips

    Summer is Here and with it Comes Vacations – Our Top 10 Travel Tech Tips

    As we approach Fourth of July weekend, reduced COVID era restrictions have made travel feasible (and desirable) for many across the US for the first time since spring 2020. We all might be a little rusty when it comes to internet safety on the go or maybe you’re looking for tech tips that will make traveling easier? Well, we have you covered.

    Traveling and using your devices away from your home or office network carries some risks. Here are 5 things you should do before you travel to protect your devices.

    1. While traveling sometimes you can’t avoid using a public network, but one good way to protect your device is to make sure it’s been fully updated. That way it will be slightly safer when using less secure networks (although it’s still a good idea to avoid it if you can).
    2. Another good bit of advice is to make sure you have strong passwords, and to have a password manager setup and ready to go on the device you’ll be traveling with.
    3. One tool for traveling and using risky public networks is to enable a VPN, a VPN will help shield your data.
    4. You should also avoid logging into websites that contain important data, like your email or banking website on a public network.
    5. Finally, another good tip if you haven’t done so already is to set up “Find My Phone” on your mobile device. This will allow you to remotely wipe your mobile phone if you were to lose it while traveling (or possibly even find it if it’s still nearby).

    If you’re already on the road or away from home, we also have these 5 tips for making your travel easier with technology:

    1. Power banks are a must have while on the go, having a fully charged power bank on you will make sure you can charge your phone if the battery is low while you’re out and about.
    2. RFID blocking bags can help protect your personal information from intrusive scanning, especially for things like your credit card.
    3. Save pictures you take with your mobile phone automatically to the cloud with a service like Google Photos or Amazon Photos (the pricing for these products is very reasonable as well).
    4. A tip specifically for iPhone users, you can update friends and family on your airline travels just by texting them the airline and flight information. Texting “American Airlines 425” will allow them to tap and automatically see a flight tracker with the flight information. Handy!
    5. Looking for more legroom in your return flight home? Search SeatGuru to find the best seat on a particular flight.

    Company travel is a different can of worms, especially when it comes to securing your office devices while on the road. At a minimum, we recommend enabling 2-factor or multi-factor authentication for company devices – especially those that are used on the go. For Microsoft 365 users, it’s easy to setup multi-factor authentication. Here are the steps:

    Enabling MFA on Microsoft 365

    If your office needs help setting up multi-factor authentication for remote and traveling employees, Valley Techlogic would be happy to assist. Tell us more in a quick consultation.

    Looking for more to read? We suggest these other articles from our site.

    This article was powered by Valley TechLogic, an IT service provider in Atwater, CA. You can find more information at https://www.valleytechlogic.com/ or on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/valleytechlogic/ . Follow us on Twitter at https://x.com/valleytechlogic.