How to avoid unwanted in-app purchases on an iPad

Mark Smith / / Advice

There’s a lot of articles in the press at the moment about people, usually children, running up huge bills buying virtual goods in iPad games.

If you want to avoid your loved one; sibling, child, parent buying stuff there are some settings you can use.

Go into the settings screen and select the ‘general’ option, then the ‘restrictions’ setting.

You need to enable restrictions which needs a new passcode – this should be different from the normal passcode – otherwise the person can turn off the restrictions.

Once restrictions are enabled you can see than in app purchases are enabled by default. You need to set the require password to ‘immediate’. Otherwise your loved on has 15 minutes to buy as much as possible.

That’s it!

It can be slightly annoying if you want to make an in-app purchase yourself – you have to enter your password every time . That’s a consequence of Apple assuming one user per device.

 

Message in a bottle.

Mark Smith / / Advice, Phishing

I got a message in my email recently that I thought I’d share…

Hello my name is Julia I am from small city in the center of Russia.
I am 24 years old.I am very friendly and romantic person.
I saw your structure and have decided to do record in you as I search for the friend on the Internet!
I want to have serious relationship and it true.My dream is search for the man which will appreciate me and to respect.
I like to get acquainted with unknown people. I am a optimistic girl with sense of humor, who is looking for her soulmate…
Sometimes I go to the disco with my friends. I like to spend my free time on the nature.
There are a real beautiful places near my town! Al my life I like sport.
When I was young I was engaged in gymnastics and now I am engaged in aerobics.
Al my friend say that i cherful and sociable.
I hope soon to see your message in my box.

My email: ……@yandex.ru

Bye..

Aside from the humorous aspects of this there is a point: my advice is don’t respond to this type of message. It’s very likely a scam so just ignore it

More phishing…slow down for email links

Mark Smith / / Advice, Phishing

There seems to be another round of phishing hitting University email addresses at the moment.

I’ve seen them with subjects like ‘Last Warning’ and ‘Mail Quota Exceeded’ in the last few days.

What gives these messages away as phish is two things:

1. The links to click on have no ‘lincoln.ac.uk’ in them.

2. They both ask you to do something that looks urgent

If you think you need to click on a link in an email quickly it’s time to pause for thought…

A little thought could save you (or someone else) some wasted time and effort or worse.

How not to tweet yourself into legal trouble

Mark Smith / / Advice

There’s an article today on the bbc website about the legal pitfalls of posting ill-advised messages on Twitter.

To summarise:

1. Don’t post libellous messages – particularly if about someone who can afford expensive legal bills.

2. Don’t post the names of victims of sexual assault

3. Don’t break the terms of a court order or injunction

4. Don’t post things about the court case when you are a member of its jury (better have a break from posting on social media then!)

5. Don’t post threatening or offensive comments

If you abide by the University AUP you won’t go far wrong!

Link

The zombies are out there…

Mark Smith / / Security News

There’s a story today about the US Emergency Alert System, a system that automatically alerts authorities about emergencies, being hacked in the States.

Apparently viewers of four local TV stations in Montana and Michigan had their programs interrupted to warn about dead bodies being re-animated and attacking the living. (Where’s my shotgun???)

The serious side to this is that important infrastructure needs to be securely maintained – otherwise is could be subject to pranks or much more serious abuse.

More zombies: http://www.scmagazine.com/known-bugs-could-be-to-blame-for-zombie-alert-prank/article/280295/