No, Facebook wasn't hacked, but it's still bad

Over the weekend there were a lot of news reports that Facebook had been hacked by Cambridge Analytica. Then the phrase moved from hack to data breach. I was surprised. I know Facebook takes security seriously and the fact that someone was able to steal such a significant amount of data from Facebook was alarming. 
I started to look into what happened, and the actuality was still alarming. The data wasn't stolen; it was given away. 
In the not so distant past, you used to pay for software. You would go to a store and pick up a box and pay a cashier, and you would now own the software. Everyone understood that and how that worked. I give you money; you give me an item. 
Now along comes Google. Google provides a very needed service. You can find out about almost anything through a single place, and it’s easy. Do you want to know about your friend from high school? Put their name into Google. Are you looking for concert tickets? Google it, to find out about your concert tickets, and it costs you nothing.
As a business model for Google that wouldn’t work. They need to make money. So what does Google do? Google accepts payment in exchange for putting your companies product at the top of the search results. It’s a fair trade. You still get what you want, and Google gets a little money. Well, a lot of money and if you doubt that go and visit Google's Mountain View Campus. It’s a beautiful campus. You can even take your picture in front of the Android droid.
So that was the new business model. If Google could make this business model work, other companies will follow. 
Here comes Facebook. You don’t search for things on Facebook. What you do is put in all this information about yourself and your friends and update that information almost daily. 
Places you go, things you like to do and who you do it with. Look at me I’m at the zoo and look who’s with me. 
Your friends then see what you are doing, and they don’t want to be left out, so they do things and post about what they are doing on Facebook as well. 
Again, Facebook is a business, and they need to make money. So what are they to do? Easy, they have all this information about you, and they can sell it.
If you are an advertiser and you want to advertise to people that enoy camping? Facebook can focus their advertising directly to people who camp. For companies trying to sell products, it’s just what they need. They don’t have to guess about who watches what TV shows. Now they know who it is they are advertising to.
Facebook can even give you data on if people are clicking on your ads and who they are as a group. That way you can make your advertising even better. 
Now that Facebook can sell ads to one person wouldn’t it be even better if they could sell your group of friends as well?
Facebook then makes it very easy for you to share your friend's information along with yours. In your security settings, they make it so that you can let your friend's friends look at more detail in your profile. It’s a small change with big rewards for Facebook.
Here lies the problem. Facebook is out to make money. They are a public company, and they need to keep the shareholders happy so that the stock goes up and the shareholders will make more money. 
So they start to do as much as possible with your information as they can. Facebook wants to get every last dollar possible out of your data. Your data is a money tree, and they need to water it. So they make it very easy to get your data.
Then other companies start to figure this out. They create products or software that you like to use, and they integrate that software with Facebook. When you install the product, they now have the same access to your profile and your friends as your friends do. They may even let you know that they will have this access when you install the software, but you click yes on the warning because you want to use the software. 
These companies use this information to achieve their goals, and you might not like what they are doing with this information. 
In the end, this was not a data breach or a hack. Cambridge Analytica was a company that took advantage of the way Facebook had set up their software. I don’t think Facebook did this with any malice. They did this to make money. 
There is a problem though. In Europe, they take privacy seriously. Europe controls what kind of information you are allowed to collect and keep, and it’s about to get even more limited with new rules that have recently passed in Europe. That’s where Cambridge Analytica may run into problems.
In the US we have no such rules. You give your data away, and that’s that. The company that you gave it to can do what they want with it. 
Our data is the price we pay for free software. 
I know in a few weeks this will blow over. Facebook’s stock will most likely recover in time. People will move on and continue to post on Facebook or Instagram. 
Maybe Facebook will make some changes as to how much information they share, but I would be surprised if that happened.
In the end, things will stay mostly the same. You will continue to see ads on Facebook directed towards you and Facebook will continue to make money. 
If you want to know how much Facebook is making,  I’d suggest you go and have a look at Facebook’s campus while you are visiting Google’s. You can take a photo in front of the big thumb that sits in front of Facebook and post the picture on Facebook.
If you think I'm wrong about what will happen to Facebook let's look what happened to Equifax. That was a hack and a bad one. They had people's Social Security Numbers stolen from them and their share price sunk, and everyone was angry at them. Now we have moved on,  and their stock is slowly returning to the amount it was worth before the hack, and it’s only been seven months. Equifax will be fine and so will Facebook.

Google In The House

In my work life I run an IT department for a startup company in San Francisco. I am a hands on manager, so I spend a lot of time dealing with technical issues. When I get home I do not want to work on technical problems. I want my home wireless network to work without issues.

Like most people I have purchased home wireless equipment from companies such as ASUS, Linksys and Apple.

The idea has always been that you have a combined single device that handles your routing, Firewall and wireless. If you have a small house or apartment without a lot of interference from neighbors, this works out fine. I don’t like the default settings on a lot of these devices nor do I like that updating them takes a fair amount of your time.

New devices are better, but I still don’t like the single device meant to cover your entire home. I want what I have at work, but I want something basic and easy to setup.

When you set up wireless in an office there are requirements you just don’t have at home. To be clear though, if you are setting up a wireless network in your business I would not use what I am willing to use at home.

You need much more information on your wireless network in an office setup.

For home you just need something that works, offers security, and is easy to troubleshoot.

There is a new model of wireless devices on the market from Google, Eero, Orbi (Netgear), and Luma that create a mesh network of devices. I think this is the future of home wireless and by far the most effective method of making sure you have reliable wireless throughout your house.

When I started looking in to this I figured I would go with Eero. They seemed to have the best product and have a good feature set.

Then I found out that Google had a Wi-Fi kit similar to what the others were offering. The price seemed better, and since I am already in the Google eco system I thought I should take a look.

I have a very interesting personal IT setup. I use products from all the major vendors. I have Apple products, Microsoft products and Google products. This includes both hardware and software.

In order for me to keep things as simple as possible I break this up into a couple of different slices.

For purely personal items I use Google. Gmail for email, Nest for video monitoring and temperature control.

I do some IT consulting on the side and for that I use Microsoft. I use Office365 for business including OneDrive for filing sharing.

I use Apple for our families mobile devices and all of my writing is done on an iPad.

For me this keeps things simple. Every time you put yourself into a new eco system you need a new user ID and password. The more items I can put under one account the happier I am.

So if I could put my wireless management and setup under my Google account that made sense to me.

The only questions remaining after pricing was how was the configuration, setup and finally performance.

I found the system to be very easy to setup. You download the app and add your devices to the system. You then create a wireless network and you are up and running.

The whole process took me less than thirty minutes.

You have to place the devices around your home and then run some tests to make sure the locations work, but once you have that done you are set.

Please don't judge the name :-)

I took this time to redo my SSID and so I renamed my wireless network.

I then connected my devices and ran some tests.

The download speeds were where I expected them to be regardless of which access point in the mesh I connected to.

There are some basic setting you can configure through Google’s wireless app. You can add priority devices, create a guest network and configure some basic family controls such as creating bed times for kids devices.

If there are any issues there is a good troubleshooting wizard that walks you through testing your devices and internet connection. This works well and gives you an upload and download speed.

The interface is straight forward and simple to use.

If you aren’t on the main wireless device there is a little slow down from the other two devices in the mesh, but the slowdown isn’t enough to be an issue.

The only real problem I have so far is that you can only create one main network and one guest network. One guest network is fine, but I’d really like to create a separate home network for my IoT devices.

I don’t trust companies to update their IoT things reliably. I do trust Google. I think they take security seriously, but other companies I am a little more cautious of.

It would be nice to be able to break the IoT devices out so if they are hacked it would not compromise my main network.

The part of replacing my home wireless network from a single wireless router to the mesh network created by Google is that all the complaints about slow wireless went away.

In the IT world when something doesn’t work we very quickly hear about it. This is overall a good thing. If you don’t tell me there is something wrong with performance it is impossible for me to fix it. At work I don’t mind complaints.

At home where I don’t want to fix IT issues, I just want things to work. Since replacing my single router with the Google mesh Wi-Fi I stopped the complaints.

Of course you will never hear that the network is performing great, but I was hoping for some quiet and I got it.

I no longer hear from the family “aren’t you an IT person?”

When I hear that I die just a tiny bit inside.

The other thing to keep in mind is that getting the mesh network is a little more expensive then just buying a single device.

I don’t think you could go wrong with any of the major wireless mesh networks out there, but I can recommend the Google wifi.

The only caution I would give you is to make sure whatever you have has the important features to you. I would have liked an additional home network, but this was not a deal breaker for me. Before you buy just take a moment to think about the features you need and make sure what you buy meets them.

Other than that I highly recommend Google Wifi.

If you are like me you will enjoy the peace it brings.

My Trouble with Apple

The power supply on the left and power supply on the right both cost 79-dollars. The one on the right is for the new Macbook Pro. It is two watts more, maybe that's why they had to remove all the extra cables.

I think Apple makes some of the best products you can buy. I use an Apple MacBook pro, an iPad and an iPhone. I think these are great products and for the iPhone and iPad they are both simple enough to use that anyone can figure them out, regardless of their technical expertise.

So, you may be asking yourself why is this blog titled “My Trouble with Apple?” That is a good question. I hate the large number of cords you need to buy in order to use an Apple device, and if you buy the extra power supply you will need to buy three separate items.

For the last version of the MacBook Pro when you purchased a power supply it came with the power adapter with a built-in cable to plug into the laptop, and an extra power cable if you needed to plug the power in with a longer cord.

This worked out well. You got everything you needed in one box. Good job Apple. Feel free to pat yourself on the back.  

Since I have used MacBook Pro laptops this has always been the case. For the latest version of the MacBook this was no longer the case. For the same price, you didn’t get the extension cable. That would not be so bad except now you also don’t get the cable that plugs into the MacBook. That’s right if you bought the 79-dollar power adapter you still have to buy a USB C cable, and if you want a longer cord for plugging in the power, you must buy that separately as well.

Of course, if the charger cost less and compensated for the loss of the needed cables this would not be an issue. Too bad that’s not how Apple is selling these items. Both items are the same price, one just comes with all the items needed to power your MacBook and the other just comes with a power brick. No USB C cable and no extension cable. If you plug the power brick directly into a wall socket there is a good chance it will fall to the floor. Well done Apple.

I’m not sure why Apple went this route with the power supply, but it is a big pain in the butt. The least they could have done was included the USB C cable with the power brick.

Apple is a business and I know they want to make as much money as possible, but this seems like a bad place to try to wring a few extra dollars out of us.