Like a lot of people, I wasn’t exactly sure how these Web3 domains fit into the bigger picture of how the Internet works today. I’ve worked with traditional domains (.com, .org, etc.) for years through my business, MacTech Solutions, but this seemed like a whole different world.

So I decided to dig in deeper.

To help organize my thoughts (and honestly, to save some time), I worked with ChatGPT — prompting it with my questions, guiding the conversation based on what I already knew, and asking it to help me put together a clearer picture.

This article is the result of that collaboration.

Traditional vs Web3 Domains: Businesses today encounter a choice between established web domains like .com and emerging blockchain-based domains like .eth.

How Domain Names Work Today

Today’s domain system — the websites you type into your browser — is managed by a group called ICANN. They make sure that when you go to example.com, everyone in the world gets sent to the same place. It’s a centralized system, but one that’s kept the Internet stable for decades.

Domain registrars like GoDaddy and Namecheap operate under ICANN’s rules.

There are legal protections, standardized dispute processes, and most importantly — global trust that makes the internet work smoothly.

How Web3 Domains Work: Unlike traditional domains, Web3 domains typically point to blockchain wallet addresses, with optional connections to websites or apps.

What Web3 Domains Are Trying to Do

Web3 domains are a newer concept — domains you mint onto a blockchain like Ethereum or Polygon. The big promises are:

• You own your domain yourself (just like you own crypto).
• Your domain is censorship-resistant.
• It becomes a single identity you can use across apps, games, and financial platforms.

It’s a powerful idea:

“Take real ownership of your digital identity.”

What I Learned (Both Good and Cautionary)

The deeper I went, the more I realized there’s a lot business owners should understand before getting involved:

• Web3 domains live outside the traditional Internet system.
  • Without special browsers or extensions, .eth or .crypto domains won’t even load.
• They’re not protected by ICANN’s processes.
  • If someone grabs your brand name in Web3, there’s no easy legal process to get it back.
• There’s no global coordination yet.
  • Two different systems could sell the same domain name — leading to real confusion.
• Minting your domain isn’t a silver bullet either.
  • Even after you mint your Web3 domain, you’re locking it into a specific blockchain.
  • If that blockchain falls out of favor later, your domain could become stuck or obsolete.
• Security and stability are still maturing.
  • Unlike ICANN’s long-established framework, Web3 governance is still evolving — and sometimes chaotic.

Why I Took the Time to Understand This

Honestly?

I kept seeing the ads.

As someone who runs a business that’s heavily tied into technology, I felt I owed it to myself — and to the customers I serve — to understand whether Web3 domains were just hype, or something truly transformative.

I didn’t want to blindly dismiss it, but I also didn’t want to assume it’s “the future” just because it’s new.

My Takeaway

• Web3 domains have enormous potential — but they are still experimental and risky.

• The traditional ICANN-based domain system isn’t going away anytime soon.

• The future of the Internet probably needs some mix of decentralization and coordination — not just a free-for-all.

If you’re a business owner, whether you’re in tech or not, my advice is:

Stay aware. Stay informed. But move cautiously.

Final Thought

Thanks again to ChatGPT for helping me organize and shape these thoughts into something readable. And thanks to all of you who read it — I’m always happy to swap ideas if you want to chat about where tech is heading.

Web3 Domain Checklist: Key questions businesses should consider before deciding whether to purchase a blockchain-based domain.

About the Author

Terry McAdams is the owner of MacTech Solutions, an Apple Authorized Reseller and Service Provider based in Wichita Falls, Texas. Terry and his team help businesses and individuals navigate technology confidently in a fast-changing digital world.

The post Web3 Domains: Opportunity or Risk for Business Owners? first appeared on MacTech Solutions.

(Featured image based on an original by iStock.com/CreativaImages)

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You can protect your organization’s email accounts from being compromised and used in phishing attacks by training your users to identify forged emails and use password managers, which won’t autofill a password on a malicious site. But how do you prevent bad guys from forging email that looks like it comes from inside your organization? You can’t, but you can reduce the chances that other email servers will accept it. In the process, you’ll enhance the deliverability of legitimate email from your domain.

The rest of this article is aimed at two types of readers. The first is the IT professional who needs an overview of email authentication technologies and pointers to helpful tools. For other readers, this article will give you an idea of what’s involved so you can talk more knowledgeably with your IT staff or better appreciate what they manage for you.

Whether your email is hosted at Microsoft 365 or Google Workspace, or managed by your Internet service provider or IT department, if your organization has its own domain for email addresses—yourname@yourcompany.com—you need to know about and set up three authentication technologies: SPF, DKIM, and DMARC:

• SPF, which stands for Sender Policy Framework, lets you specify which servers and domains are allowed to send email for your organization. It allows receiving mail servers to verify that incoming messages from your organization are actually from you.
• DKIM, or DomainKeys Internet Mail, adds a digital signature to every message sent from your organization. Receiving mail servers can use your public key to verify that messages actually came from you and were not changed in transit.
• DMARC, which expands to Domain-based Message Authentication, Reporting, and Conformance, leverages SPF and DKIM to publish policies that tell receiving mail servers what to do with messages that fail authentication: deliver, quarantine, or reject them. A message fails DMARC authentication only if it fails both SPF and DKIM—only one is necessary for the message to pass DMARC’s checks.

These three authentication technologies exist inside DNS (Domain Name System) records. The primary use of DNS is to link your human-usable domain name with the underlying IP addresses of the servers that manage your Internet presence; for example, matching www.yourcompany.com with an IP address like 192.168.1.23. However, DNS can also contain TXT records with additional information about your domain—you configure SPF, DKIM, and DMARC using TXT records.

These TXT records must be carefully constructed to work correctly—an incorrect configuration could cause email failures. You could build them manually, but it’s safer to use a tool that asks you questions and spits out a correctly formatted TXT record for you to add to your DNS configuration. If all that sounds intimidating, work with your ISP or email service provider, or ask us for help. But here are the basics.

Tools abound for creating SPF, DKIM, and DMARC records, but we recommend those from DMARCLY and EasyDMARC. We’ll use DMARCLY for the examples here, and it provides a comprehensive explanation that’s worth reading if you want more depth.

SPF

SPF is the oldest of these technologies. To get started, all you need to do in DMARCLY’s SPF Generator tool is specify the names or IP addresses of servers that are allowed to send email from your domain. The mx (mail exchanger) and a radio buttons automatically add the servers listed in your DNS records, and anything you put in the Includes field will allow email sent from anything allowed by a third party that sends email on your behalf. It’s common to put Google, Amazon SES, SendGrid, or other systems there. The IPv4, IPv6, and Hostnames fields let you specify other allowed servers, but aren’t necessary.

The Policy menu is important—you can choose from Fail, SoftFail, and Neutral. Start with Neutral, which should allow messages to be accepted (it prefixes all in the TXT record with a ?). Then bump up to SoftFail (a tilde ~ prefix) to have messages accepted but marked. When you’re confident everything is working correctly, move to Fail, which uses a - prefix.

DKIM

Because it relies on public key cryptography, DKIM is significantly more complicated. Although DMARCLY’s DKIM Generator tool will generate the necessary public and private keys, that’s not helpful unless you have full control over your email server and know how to install the private key to sign all your outgoing email. It’s much more likely that you’ll use a tool managed by the company that hosts your email to create your keys. That tool will automatically install the private key and give you the necessary details to add to a TXT record in your DNS settings.

DMARC

Where SPF and DKIM are all about authenticating email messages, DMARC lets you say what happens when authentication fails. DMARCLY’s DMARC Generator tool makes it easy to generate your DMARC record. For Policy and Subdomain Policy, you can choose None, Quarantine, or Reject—those specify what will happen to messages that fail both SPF and DKIM authentication. Start with None to see what happens in your reporting, move to Quarantine, and if everything seems OK, end up at Reject.

To set up reporting, enter an email address in the Aggregate Email field, but don’t put a personal address there. DMARC reports are daily XML digests that aren’t human-readable, so they should be sent to a service that will parse them and provide you with a dashboard for exploring the problems. DMARCLY and EasyDMARC both offer dashboards, as does the Cloudflare service if you use it for DNS or other tasks. To start, you can leave DMARC’s Strict Alignment and Forensic Options blank.

Configuring DNS

Once you’ve generated your SPF, DKIM, and DMARC records, you have to configure them in your DNS settings. How you do that depends on your DNS host; we’ll show what it looks like Cloudflare. Other DNS hosts should be similar.

For each case, you’re creating a TXT record, but what goes in the Name and Content fields varies:

• SPF: The name for an SPF record should be the @ character, signifying the root level of your domain. Paste the text that the SPF Generator tool created in the Content field. You can have only one SPF record for each domain, although you can set up separate SPF records for subdomains.
  
• DKIM: You can have as many DKIM records as services that send email on your behalf, so the first part of the name can vary—we show example below. However, the ._domainkey part is required for each DKIM record. For the content, paste the text given to you by the email-sending service. Note that some email services may require you to create one or more CNAME records instead of a TXT record—just follow their instructions.
  
• DMARC: For DMARC, the name must be _dmarc. Once again, you’ll paste the text given to you by the DMARC Generator tool in the Content field.
  

Reporting and Evaluation

After you set up SPF, DKIM, and DMARC, it’s essential to keep an eye on your email. If you’ve started with SPF in Neutral mode and DMARC in None, nothing should go wrong. You can look through the headers of test messages you send to verify. This DMARCLY article explains what to look for. If you’ve signed up for an aggregate reporting service, you’ll be able to see reports like this one from Cloudflare that show the percentage of email that passes each of the authentication technologies.

If everything looks good and most email passes, change SPF to SoftFail and DMARC to Quarantine. Make sure you can send email to some known personal addresses on Gmail, Yahoo, or iCloud. Also, tell people who send email from your domain to be on the alert if they don’t hear back from someone who typically replies quickly—if a misconfiguration is causing your email to be marked as spam, you want to know about that quickly. If you’re using a DMARC reporting service, look at those reports to see if any email services are sending a lot of messages that fail DMARC.

After you’ve run with those settings for a month or two, bump SPF up to Fail and DMARC to Reject. Continue to monitor your DMARC reporting and pay attention to any complaints from users about the messages they send not arriving.

That’s a lot, we know. Feel free to contact us if you need help with any step of the process. Mac Tech Solutions is located at 4020 Rhea Rd, Suite 3B in Finishing Touch Plaza in Wichita Falls. Contact us by clicking here!

(Featured image based on an original by iStock.com/Ole_CNX)

The post SPF, DKIM, and DMARC: What They Are and Why You Need Them first appeared on MacTech Solutions.

• People you trust report receiving email that you didn’t send.
• Social media friend requests are made to people you don’t know, or messages you don’t recognize are sent from your account.
• Although you’re certain you have the correct password, you can’t log in to an account.
• You become aware of your personal data appearing in places it shouldn’t.
• Unknown charges or transfers appear in a bank or credit card account.

However, attackers will also try to fool you into thinking an account has been compromised to get you to enter passwords or financial information on a website designed to steal data. Don’t assume you’ve been hacked just because you received a phishing email saying so or because you see unexpected notifications claiming your computer is infected. No legitimate entity will ever send such email, and the only notification about malware you should ever see would come from anti-malware software you installed.

(Speaking of malware, dealing with that is a topic for another day—we’re focusing on online accounts in this article. Nonetheless, if one of your accounts has been compromised, it’s also worth scanning your Mac with the free version of Malwarebytes or VirusBarrier Scanner, just in case.)

First off, don’t panic. It’s important to take a deep breath, document everything you see with screenshots (press Command-Shift-5), and move quickly to regain control over whatever accounts were hacked and prevent others from falling prey to the attacker.

When you suspect an account has been compromised, try to verify the problem. Do the following:

• Alert techs: If the account in question is for work, immediately alert your IT department and follow their instructions. If it’s a personal account, contact us. Tell whoever is helping you that you have screenshots you can send and be ready to forward any suspicious messages you have as well.
• Gather evidence: Ask the person who told you about the problem to forward the message they received to another of your email addresses, or to a close friend or family member so you can see what’s being said in your name. Scrutiny of the fake message may reveal information about what has happened, though you may need help from someone with more technical experience.
• Examine email: Since email account breaches are the most concerning (because they can be used to reset passwords elsewhere), scan your email for messages you didn’t send or replies to such messages. Along with the Inbox, look in the Sent mailbox and the Trash. Also, check your settings and filters to ensure incoming messages aren’t being forwarded elsewhere and then deleted.
• Check social media: Connect to all your social media accounts—even those you don’t use regularly—and look for posts, friend requests, messages, or anything else that suggests an attacker has been impersonating you.
• Audit accounts: Log in to important accounts and look for suspicious activity, such as login attempts from unfamiliar locations or IP addresses or changes to account settings.

If you find evidence to suggest that one or more of your accounts have been compromised, follow these steps:

• Immediately change the passwords for any affected accounts. We always recommend using a password manager like 1Password to generate strong, random passwords.
• Whenever possible, turn on two-factor authentication.
• If available for the account in question, follow advice from the service. Apple, Facebook, Google, Instagram, Microsoft, and Twitter all have advice on how to respond, as will many other companies.
• Review account settings for unauthorized changes, especially recovery options like backup phone numbers and email addresses.
• Look through your accounts in your password manager and change the passwords for the most important ones and any that might be related.
• If you can’t get into an account because the password has been changed, make sure you have sole control of your email account and then trigger a password reset.
• For affected financial accounts, along with changing the password, immediately call the institution and ask for their help locking the account to prevent any transfers.
• If your email account was used to send phishing messages to contacts, you should alert any friends, family, and colleagues who might have received the messages that your account was hacked and that the previous message wasn’t from you.

Security breaches are stressful, we know, but it’s imperative that you deal with them right away. The longer you wait, the more damage the attacker can cause, including stealing your money, impersonating you, scamming your friends and family, and compromising your employer’s systems. We’re here to help.

(Featured image by iStock.com/PUGUN SJ)

The post Help! My Account Has Been Hacked—What Should I Do? first appeared on MacTech Solutions.

Understanding Blocklists

Blocklist services are conceptually simple. They maintain lists of IP addresses that have been identified as sending spam. Receiving email servers subscribe to those blocklists, and for every connection that’s made, the server checks the blocklist in real-time to see if the incoming message originates from a blocked IP address. If it does, the receiving server rejects the connection, preventing the message from being delivered.

How do sending email servers end up on blocklists? There are several basic ways:

• Traps: If you’ve purchased or scraped lists of email addresses (don’t do that!), you may have ended up with dormant addresses or addresses that the blocklists surreptitiously seeded to spammers. If those addresses receive email from you, the blocklist knows you’re not sending just to people who have opted into your mailings. Similarly, if there are many typos in the email addresses on your list, that can raise a flag.
• Triggers: Certain words and links in your message can increase the likelihood that a spam filter will catch your message, and some spam filters report back to blocklists. If a draft message sounds spammy or overly promotional when you read it to yourself, that’s a hint that it might trigger a spam filter.
• Reports: If too many people mark your messages as spam, that can put you on a blocklist. Sadly, some people use the Junk button instead of unsubscribing from mailings they’ve subscribed to.
• Takeover: Although this problem is less common now than it was when more organizations ran their own mail servers, if a hacker compromises your server or account and uses it to send actual spam, that’s almost guaranteed to land you on one or more blocklists.

To avoid ending up on a blocklist, make sure you’re being fastidious about your mailing list. Only add people to it if they have legitimately signed up, make it easy for them to remove themselves with an Unsubscribe link at the end of every message, delete bouncing addresses right away, and avoid spammy language in your messages. It’s not hard—just be a good Internet citizen. And, of course, if you control your own mail server, pay special attention to its security to keep hackers out.

Is Your Organization Already on a Blocklist?

Let’s say your IP address has ended up on a blocklist even though you’ve been good. How would you know? You might hear that people who should have received your mailings didn’t or that your messages were marked as spam. Or you might see your deliverability numbers falling in your sending tool. Neither of those is reliable, though, so we recommend you use MXToolbox’s Blacklist Check, where you can type in your hostname or IP address to see if it’s on any of over 100 blocklists.

You can use MXToolbox for quick checks against 100+ blocklists whenever you want, but if you sign up for a free account, you can set up a monitor that checks your email server’s hostname or IP address against 30 common blocklists every week and emails you the results. (MXToolbox offers lots of other email and Internet-related tests that can help you monitor and troubleshoot your Internet presence.)

Getting off a Blocklist

Once your IP address is on a blocklist, your goal is to remove it as quickly as possible. Many blocklists automatically remove entries after a certain amount of time, but clicking the Detail button in the MXToolbox blocklist listing will tell you more about the blocklist and potentially how to request a manual delisting.

The precise steps will vary by blocklist, but the most important thing is that you resolve whatever issue caused your server to be added in the first place. Once that’s done, you’ll probably need to provide the IP address of the server and an explanation of what happened, either in a Web form or in an email to the blocklist admins.

We won’t lie—ending up on a blocklist can be stressful, particularly if your organization relies on sending customer-focused email. But if you keep your list clean and avoid sending spam-like messages, the occasional blocklist listing should be only a temporary blip in your operations.

(Featured image by iStock.com/ipuwadol)

The post What Your Organization Needs to Know About Email Blocklists first appeared on MacTech Solutions.

(Featured image by Adam Engst)

The post Are You Paying Too Much for Internet or Cellular Connectivity? first appeared on MacTech Solutions.

If only that were true! In some ways, the situation has become even cloudier, thanks to additional limitations from file-sharing services like Dropbox, OneDrive, and Box. (Google Drive’s native Web interface reportedly has no naming limitations, but files whose names contain Windows or macOS forbidden characters may not sync via Google Drive’s desktop software.) Plus, people tend to move files between operating systems more than ever before—if you’re sending a file from your Mac to a Windows user through Dropbox, you need to make sure that all three can deal with the filename.

At least length isn’t something that you generally have to think about these days, since both macOS and Windows—and the cloud services—accept filenames up to 255 characters in length. Technically speaking, Windows limits directory paths (the enclosing folder names along with the filename) to 255 characters, but even still, that shouldn’t be difficult to avoid.

What could go wrong if you run afoul of a naming restriction? macOS and Windows may simply not let you type the character—for example, you can’t put a colon in a Mac filename. Putting a period at the start of a Mac or Unix filename will hide the file. Cloud sharing services might rename the file, or you might encounter syncing issues where files don’t appear where they should. Certain characters can also cause trouble when files are used at the command line.

Here are the characters to avoid and the operating systems and services that prohibit them:

• : (colon): macOS, Windows, Dropbox, OneDrive, Box
• . (period): macOS (at the start of a name), Dropbox
• / (forward slash): macOS, Windows, Dropbox, OneDrive, Box
• (backslash): Windows, Dropbox, OneDrive, Box
• < (less than): Windows, Dropbox, OneDrive, Box
• > (greater than): Windows, Dropbox, OneDrive, Box
• ” (double quote): Windows, Dropbox, OneDrive, Box
• | (vertical bar or pipe): Windows, Dropbox, OneDrive, Box
• ? (question mark): Windows, Dropbox, OneDrive, Box
• * (asterisk): Windows, Dropbox, OneDrive, Box
• ^ (caret): Windows (using FAT-formatted drives)

In addition, avoid using special characters like the © (copyright) symbol or emoji 🤷🏽‍♂️  in filenames. They might work locally, but all bets are off if you share the files in any way.

A few other recommendations:

• Avoid unusual punctuation; in particular, note that OneDrive renames filenames containing:
  • , (comma) to ^J
  • # (number sign) to ^N
  • & (ampersand) to ^O
  • ~ (tilde) to ^F
• Never start or end file or folder names with a space, and avoid spaces in filenames that will be uploaded to a Web or SFTP server.
• Avoid putting more than one period in a filename, and don’t put a period after a filename extension.
• Never assume that names are case sensitive—always make sure that similarly named items differ by more than just case.

If all that seems like a lot to keep in mind, here’s the simple rule that will ensure your filenames will work everywhere:

Name files only with uppercase (A-Z) and lowercase (a-z) letters, digits (0-9), and the hyphen (-) and underscore (_), plus a single period (.) and extension.

(Featured image by iStock.com/cosmin4000 and smartstock)

The post The Best Characters to Use When Naming Files and Folders first appeared on MacTech Solutions.

How do you know if something in your Internet connection needs fixing? If the entire connection goes offline periodically, even if it comes back on its own, that’s a hint. Videoconferencing apps and streaming video services can also provide useful warnings—if the picture often pixelates or pauses, or if the audio falls out of sync with the video, that’s another indication that something may be wrong. Finally, if you use a VPN, Internet connectivity issues can cause all sorts of weird problems.

When you notice such problems, you can perform a simple test that may shed some light on the situation. First, make sure to stop any audio or video streaming or large downloads. Then go to speedtest.net and click the Go button. Speedtest will run some tests to come up with three numbers:

• Download: Your download performance, generally measured in megabits per second (Mbps), is the most important and determines how quickly your computer can receive data from the Internet for downloads and streaming video.
• Upload: Conversely, your upload performance, also measured in megabits per second, determines how fast you can send data to the Internet. It’s almost always much lower than download performance, but sufficient upload bandwidth is essential for your audio and video to be clear and smooth in a videoconference.
• Latency: This number, which Speedtest calls “ping,” measures the amount of time in milliseconds to send a single packet to the destination server and receive it back again. The lower the latency, the more responsive communications will be, which is all-important for online gaming. Very long latencies can also cause problems for VPNs.

(You can also use other similar services, such as Netflix’s fast.com or Google’s built-in tester. Apple even built a networkQuality tool into macOS 12 Monterey—run it at the command line in Terminal—though it has an unusual Apple Network Responsiveness test that replaces the latency test.)

What should these numbers be? When you signed up for a plan with your Internet service provider (ISP), you should have been quoted download and upload numbers, such as 200 Mbps down and 10 Mbps up. If you don’t know what those numbers should be, ask your ISP. It’s not uncommon for download and upload speeds to vary somewhat from what you were promised, but they should generally be close.

Latency is trickier, and ISPs won’t promise anything specific. The lower the latency number, the better. Speedtest suggests that times under 59 milliseconds are good for gaming, times between 60 and 129 milliseconds are acceptable, a range of 130–199 milliseconds is problematic, and 200-plus milliseconds won’t be usable. There’s no way to know what latency numbers might cause other problems, but we’d pay attention to anything over 100 milliseconds.

Let’s assume your numbers aren’t what they should be—or at least what you’d like them to be. Don’t complain to your ISP right away. Instead, try these steps:

• Run the test a few more times, preferably at different times of the day. (If you create an account with Speedtest, it will track your tests so you can see how they change.) You may discover that performance is slow only during peak usage hours.
• Run more tests using different Speedtest servers or even different testing services. You’re testing the performance between you and a particular server, and it’s possible that server is having problems that others won’t share.
• If you have other devices, run tests from those as well. Don’t assume you’ll get identical results because different devices may have varying capabilities. If you notice differences between devices that use Wi-Fi and those connected via Ethernet, that might point to your Wi-Fi router as a bottleneck. That’s not common with modern Wi-Fi routers, but if you’re still relying on an old AirPort Express, it could be slowing you down.
• Restart your devices, and if that doesn’t make a difference, restart or power cycle your router and modem as well.

If your performance problems persist through all those troubleshooting tests, the problem is likely in the physical connection, and only your ISP can address that. When you call, be sure to share the testing numbers and any commonalities—times of day, for instance—that you observed. With luck, they’ll be able to confirm your issues and dispatch a technician to evaluate the physical connection for problems.

(Featured image by iStock.com/gorodenkoff)

The post If Your Internet Connection Is Slow, Research These Three Numbers first appeared on MacTech Solutions.

Before we go any further, let’s make sure we’re all on the same page. Domain names are necessary because computers on the Internet are all identified by inscrutable numeric IP addresses. You can remember and type apple.com easily; 184.31.17.21 not so much. Domain names have two or more parts: the top-level domain (read from the end, such as com) and the second-level domain (like apple), plus optional third-level domains (which could give you support.apple.com).

Since the days of speculating in .com domains, however, hundreds of additional top-level domains have been opened up, including domains from .aaa to .zone. There are now top-level domains for .doctor, .florist, .lawyer, and many more, including the general .xyz. It might be tempting to switch from the awkward dewey-cheatham-howe.com to the shorter and more memorable dch.lawyer. And even if there isn’t a profession-specific top-level domain that works for you, you may think that if abc.xyz is good enough for Google’s parent company Alphabet, surely it’s good enough for you.

Alas, much as we appreciate the creativity and flexibility offered by these alternative top-level domains, we’d like to dissuade you from using one, if possible. Problems include:

• Email deliverability: If you’re sending email using an alternative top-level domain or including links to that domain, it’s much more likely that your email will be considered spam by receiving systems.
• SMS deliverability: Some SMS text message providers will automatically delete messages containing URLs with alternative top-level domains in an effort to protect their customers from phishing attacks.
• Social media spam filtering: As with SMS text messages, social media posts that include URLs with alternative top-level domains may be categorized as spam or as linking to a malicious site.
• Firewall blocking: Abuse of alternative top-level domains has become so commonplace by scammers that some companies prevent their employees from accessing websites using certain alternative top-level domains at the firewall level.
• User perception: Although there’s no telling how anyone will react to a particular top-level domain, people won’t think twice about .com but might think .ooo seems sketchy. (We would.)

Obviously, it may not be possible to get the domain name you want in .com. What to do? There are a few strategies:

• Expand or abbreviate: At this time, people mostly don’t see, remember, or type domains apart from those that go with businesses that do a lot of real-world advertising. So if you need to add or subtract words (or letters) in your domain to find a unique one, that can work.
• Use a country domain: Two-letter top-level domains are restricted for use by countries, so .us is for the United States, .ca for Canada, and .au for Australia. Every country has different rules for who can register them. For instance, it’s possible to get a domain ending in .it (Italy) as long as you work through a registrar that acts as your representative there. .io (British Indian Ocean Territory) and .ai (Anguilla) are popular top-level domains among tech companies.
• Stick with better, pricier alternatives: Not all alternative top-level domains are equally problematic. The classic .net and .org are fine, and .biz isn’t bad. But how to determine that? When you’re checking to see if a domain name is available, compare prices. For instance, at one domain name registrar, iphonewhisperer.xyz costs only $1 per year, whereas the iphonewhisperer.biz version is $4.98 per year, iphonewhisperer.net is $9.18 per year, and iphonewhisperer.studio is $11.98 per year. The more you pay, the less likely that domain has been abused by spammers and marked for filtering.

In the end, when it comes to domain names, it’s best to be conservative and stick with a top-level domain that won’t cause people or filters to think twice. That’s probably .com, if you can make the rest of the name work for you.

(Featured image by iStock.com/BeeBright)

The post Avoid Unusual Top-Level Domains in Custom Domain Names first appeared on MacTech Solutions.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, all these issues revolve around connectivity, which can make them difficult to troubleshoot. For the average user, the problem might seem to be video calls dropping out or email not working reliably, when the real culprit is an overloaded AirPort Express Wi-Fi gateway or a too-slow Internet connection.

Weak Wi-Fi

When we set up an office Wi-Fi network, we use commercial-quality gear, map out necessary coverage to avoid dead zones, and spec out the number of access points to support the number of expected devices that will be connecting. Needless to say, home Wi-Fi networks generally lack that attention to detail, and many people rely on the substandard Wi-Fi capabilities built into ISP-provided cable modems.

In the short term, you may be able to fix the problems by restarting your Wi-Fi router, updating its firmware, eliminating interference from a baby monitor or cordless phone, switching to an open Wi-Fi channel, using the 5 GHz frequency instead of 2.4 GHz, or relocating the access point to a more central location.

A more comprehensive fix often involves buying new Wi-Fi networking gear that supports the latest and fastest standards and provides broader coverage to more devices. A new Wi-Fi router such as the highly rated TP-Link Archer 7 or Archer 20 might cost $100–$200, or if you need coverage of a larger space, a mesh system like Eero or Netgear’s Orbi lets you add additional “beacons” or “satellites” to extend range without adding Ethernet cable or fussing with complex networking setups.

Slow Internet

Generally speaking, Wi-Fi networks have a lot more bandwidth than Internet connections—think of them as bigger pipes that can carry a lot more water. So if you’re frustrated by fuzzy video calls or large downloads taking forever, the problem may be with your Internet connection. Whenever you experience such problems, go to speedtest.net and compare your current download and upload speeds against what your ISP has promised.

Some solutions to poor Internet performance are simple. Most important is to make sure nothing else on your network is consuming a lot of bandwidth. For instance, get your kid to stop watching a 4K movie via Netflix when you need to have a Zoom call. The traffic from that movie will fill your pipe, leaving little room for the Zoom call’s data. It can also be worth restarting your cable modem, which may require power cycling it.

Other solutions might involve working with your ISP to check the wiring to your house—a slightly damaged cable can cause sporadic performance problems that are tricky to track down. The ISP can also tell you if your cable or DSL modem is current and working properly, and if not, a replacement might restore full speed. Or you may just have an old modem—ISPs usually wait for you to ask before swapping for a newer, better one.

Of course, all this assumes your Internet plan provides sufficient downstream and upstream bandwidth (the latter of which is necessary for high-quality audio and video calls). You may simply need to spend more money on faster speeds, which in turn may require a new modem or even new cabling.

VPN Connectivity

Generally speaking, we’re fans of virtual private networks (VPNs) because they provide traveling and homebound users secure access to servers and other network resources located behind a properly protected office network. However, with the pandemic forcing so many people to work remotely, some have found VPN access to their office servers to be slow and unreliable.

When the VPN works fine for most people, those who are having trouble can often fix the problems by reinstalling and reconfiguring their VPN software. Never underestimate the utility of a clean start.

For organizations where one person needs much more access to the server than everyone else, sending the server home with that person has helped. For a more general file access solution, others have had good luck trading the server for a cloud-based file sharing service like Box, Dropbox, Google Drive, or Microsoft OneDrive. These services allow multiple members of a workgroup to access the same set of files.

People work on local copies of the files, and changes are synced back to the original (and down to all other copies) on every save. Because you’re working on a local copy of the file, there are no performance issues. On the downside, it’s possible for two people to modify the same file at the same time, causing a conflict.

To reduce the likelihood of conflicts, try establishing a policy whereby people work on a file only after moving it into a Checked Out folder and appending their initials to the filename. That way, everyone else knows they shouldn’t open the file and who has it. When that person is done, they move the file back out of the Checked Out folder and remove their initials—in essence, checking it back in.

At the end of the day, many of us are feeling our way into the best ways to stay productive while working from home. Although these issues are the most common we’ve seen, the solutions tend to be highly specific to each user’s situation. Good luck navigating these new waters, and feel free to get in touch if you need help.

(Featured image by Lorenzo Cafaro from Pixabay)

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(Featured image by Adam Engst)

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Make a Dedicated Work Space, If Possible

Particularly if you’re not home alone, you’ll want to create a space that’s dedicated to working. Otherwise, it’s difficult to focus on work instead of what’s happening in your home. A spare bedroom with a door is ideal, of course, because it lets you avoid the fridge, the TV, and your family, who may also be trying to work or do schoolwork at home.

But if you don’t have an extra room, or if you need to share it with your spouse and kids, think about ways you can create individual spaces, perhaps with bookcases or makeshift curtains.

Either way, your goal is to avoid seeing and hearing others. Your partner’s activities can be distracting, and listening to your kids discussing a school project will make focusing on your work all the harder. Sound isolation can be difficult to achieve in an open room, but that’s what earbuds are for. Those with noise-canceling capabilities, like the AirPods Pro, would be best.

Pay attention to lighting as well. Putting your monitor against a window probably won’t work well during the day, and overhead lighting can cause glare.

Set Up an Ergonomic Working Environment

It’s unlikely that your home office furniture is equivalent to what you have at work, but if you’re going to be putting in full workdays at home, you need to pay attention to ergonomics.

Many tables are slightly too high to sit at comfortably with your feet flat, your hips at a 90-degree angle, and your hands floating comfortably above the keyboard, with your elbows at a 90-degree angle. Do what you can to achieve that position; if necessary, raise the chair and add a footstool.

Good, inexpensive chairs with height adjustments can be hard to find, though the IKEA Flintan is well-reviewed and only about $80. A small pillow can provide lumbar support if necessary. Try to make sure the arms, if present, are low—you should use them only when not typing.

It’s difficult to achieve good ergonomics while working on a laptop, or, even worse, an iPad because you’re almost always looking down too far. With a MacBook, you can achieve the ideal sightline either by attaching a large monitor that you can position at the right height or by raising the MacBook and using a separate keyboard and mouse or trackpad at the proper typing height.

Potentially Upgrade Your Internet Connection

Even beyond whatever apps you need to do your work, it’s likely that you’ll end up doing a fair amount of videoconferencing. You may need to increase the throughput of your Internet connection, and it’s important to remember that upload and download speeds are separate. You usually have much higher download speeds, so focus on the upload speed when evaluating your plan.

Apps vary in their bandwidth requirements, but you can consider a 1 megabit per second (Mbps) upload speed a safe minimum, with 3 Mbps being sufficient for nearly any video calls you’ll need to make. The download speed should be at least equivalent to the upload speed, but that will almost always be true.

If your current connection isn’t fast enough, we can help you.  MacTech Solutions in a certified Eero Pro Installer. Eero is a whole-home wifi system that delivers hyper fast, super secure wifi to every room in your home.  Call us at 940-767-6227 and schedule a free consultation to improve your home WiFi.

You might also contact your Internet service provider. More throughput will usually cost more, but ideally, your ISP can just change some settings to upgrade you. In some cases, a new cable modem or similar network hardware may be necessary, and in the worst case, you may need a new cable from the street. Whatever you do, try to avoid any plan that comes with a bandwidth cap!

Don’t be afraid to compare prices if you have multiple providers, and even if you have sufficient bandwidth now, it may be worth calling to see if plan prices have dropped since you subscribed.

Upgrade Wi-Fi Hardware

Finally, if the only place in your home that you can work isn’t well served by your current Wi-Fi router, it might be time to upgrade. That’s particularly true if you’re working on old AirPort base stations from Apple.

For creating a Wi-Fi network that has the most coverage, look into mesh networking gear like Eero and AmpliFi. The beauty of mesh networking is that you can add another router or beacon to extend the network without complicated setup.

That said, contact us before ripping your network apart, because on-site visits to fix problems may be difficult or impossible for a while.

(Featured image by Gabriel Beaudry on Unsplash)

The post Tips for Setting Up a Comfortable and Effective Home Work Space first appeared on MacTech Solutions.

If you’re like most Apple users, the solution is in your pocket or purse: your iPhone. For a number of years, turning on iOS’s Personal Hotspot feature involved additional fees from your cellular carrier, which dissuaded many people from using it. Nowadays, however, most mobile phone plans don’t charge extra for tethering, as it’s often called. If you have an “unlimited” plan, your carrier may throttle your bandwidth if you exceed some usage level because the carrier doesn’t want customers to use tethering for their primary Internet connections. Double-check your plan, but if you won’t have to pay more to use tethering, here’s how to use it to solve Wi-Fi problems while on the road.

On your iPhone (or cellular-enabled iPad), go to Settings > Personal Hotspot and enable the switch for Personal Hotspot. Then tap Wi-Fi Password, and in the next screen, enter a password. It must be at least 8 characters and can use only ASCII characters (English letters, numbers, and standard punctuation marks). It shouldn’t be trivial (like “password”), but don’t worry about making it super strong, since your iPhone isn’t likely to be in any single location long enough for someone to try to crack it. (You can also share a Personal Hotspot connection via Bluetooth or a USB cable, but both are fussier and may not work as well.)

Then, from your MacBook, click the Wi-Fi  menu in the menu bar and choose the network named for your iPhone—it may appear under a Personal Hotspot heading and will have a Personal Hotspot   icon. From an iPad or another iOS device, go to Settings > Wi-Fi and select the iPhone’s network. 

In either case, if both devices are signed in to the same iCloud account and have Bluetooth turned on, Apple’s Instant Hotspot feature should make it so you don’t have to enter the password. It’s no great hardship if you do have to type the password; the Mac or iPad should remember it for future use.

Once you’re connected, everything should work just as though you were using a normal Wi-Fi network. Performance might be a little slow, but since random public Wi-Fi networks are often pokey, it may be better than you’d get otherwise.

If you worry about using too much data and generating overage charges or getting throttled, pay attention to what apps and services use bandwidth on your Mac. Things like Dropbox, Backblaze, and iCloud Photo Library can slurp a lot of data in the background, so you may want to turn them off. Or install TripMode ($7.99), a clever Mac utility that notices when you’re using a new Wi-Fi network and asks which services you want to allow through.

When you finish tethering, turn off the Personal Hotspot switch on your iPhone to make sure it doesn’t use any extra battery life or allow another of your devices to consume cellular data inadvertently.

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