This past Saturday afternoon and early evening, I missed 3 calls from an unfamiliar phone number, with each call leaving 3 voice mails. However I was at a private project and did not check them until nearly midnight.
It turned out the calls were from a home user client of mine who was using his neighbor’s phone. His voice mails were frantic too…he had been burglarized that afternoon when he ran to Walmart to buy groceries. His cell phone, iMac and many other things had been stolen and he was at a complete loss as to what to do about the iMac, how to recover from this, and needed my help ASAP. I could not call at that late an hour especially given that the only number I could reach him at was his kind neighbor.
It ended up being a short night and we were lucky to get up in time for Sunday activities. When we came out of church, he had called two more times! I finally am able to give him a call shortly after 12. Come to find out, he had not even called the police…due mostly to a very bad experience with the police 20 years ago after a similar burglary. His insurance agent told him he needs to, at a minimum, go down to a police station on Monday and file a report, or a claim can’t be processed.
Just last month, he finally agreed to spend the money to have me update his iMac from 1GB to 4GB of RAM and put in a SSD to help extend the life of his mid-2007, 20” iMac. We talked through things and he admited that he never setup a secure password after I told him that “password” simply doesn’t cut it these days and that no password at all is simply not acceptable either. He is concerned that in a folder on his desktop sits a Word document with all his account numbers, security PINs, passwords, etc. for EVERYTHING of value.
I explained that he needs to reset his email password and his Apple ID password. He asked me, “What is an Apple ID?” <sigh>
He is still panicked, so I told him to give me his DOB and the screenshots of the answers to his security questions that we just setup last month. <whew!>
With the password reset, I double-checked things at iCloud.com to confirm my vague
recollection and YES, I did set things up with iCloud on his iMac, despite the fact he would never understand. I was able to check off the Notify option for when the iMac next connects to the Internet, as well as the command to erase his files, lock the screen, and present a message. The message states that the iMac was stolen on 8/8/2016 and that the user should call the police department. iCloud also had me set a 6-digit unlock PIN in case the iMac is recovered. He was very relieved to hear that I was able to do this. I explained that I am only able to do this because we got him updated to Yosemite (from 10.5). The whole process of getting him to update took months and months, and included comments from him like “I don’t know…my computer needs are very modest…”.
I then stopped by his house to help further calm him down, and I couldn’t believe my eyes…the burglar(s) only stole the iMac, keyboard, and mouse —his back-up hard drive is still sitting on the table! He is ecstatic…nearly in tears. I told him that he should have also gone with an online back-up solution in addition to his onsite back-up, but we got very lucky in this regard.
So this is a real-live example of why clients should heed warnings and keep their systems updated, setup iCloud even if they don’t see the immediate value, use SECURE passwords, use encryption, and have more than one backup with one of those being offsite in some fashion.
Best regards,
Bob • http://www.yotek.com
It turned out the calls were from a home user client of mine who was using his neighbor’s phone. His voice mails were frantic too…he had been burglarized that afternoon when he ran to Walmart to buy groceries. His cell phone, iMac and many other things had been stolen and he was at a complete loss as to what to do about the iMac, how to recover from this, and needed my help ASAP. I could not call at that late an hour especially given that the only number I could reach him at was his kind neighbor.
It ended up being a short night and we were lucky to get up in time for Sunday activities. When we came out of church, he had called two more times! I finally am able to give him a call shortly after 12. Come to find out, he had not even called the police…due mostly to a very bad experience with the police 20 years ago after a similar burglary. His insurance agent told him he needs to, at a minimum, go down to a police station on Monday and file a report, or a claim can’t be processed.
Just last month, he finally agreed to spend the money to have me update his iMac from 1GB to 4GB of RAM and put in a SSD to help extend the life of his mid-2007, 20” iMac. We talked through things and he admited that he never setup a secure password after I told him that “password” simply doesn’t cut it these days and that no password at all is simply not acceptable either. He is concerned that in a folder on his desktop sits a Word document with all his account numbers, security PINs, passwords, etc. for EVERYTHING of value.
I explained that he needs to reset his email password and his Apple ID password. He asked me, “What is an Apple ID?” <sigh>
He is still panicked, so I told him to give me his DOB and the screenshots of the answers to his security questions that we just setup last month. <whew!>
With the password reset, I double-checked things at iCloud.com to confirm my vague
recollection and YES, I did set things up with iCloud on his iMac, despite the fact he would never understand. I was able to check off the Notify option for when the iMac next connects to the Internet, as well as the command to erase his files, lock the screen, and present a message. The message states that the iMac was stolen on 8/8/2016 and that the user should call the police department. iCloud also had me set a 6-digit unlock PIN in case the iMac is recovered. He was very relieved to hear that I was able to do this. I explained that I am only able to do this because we got him updated to Yosemite (from 10.5). The whole process of getting him to update took months and months, and included comments from him like “I don’t know…my computer needs are very modest…”.
I then stopped by his house to help further calm him down, and I couldn’t believe my eyes…the burglar(s) only stole the iMac, keyboard, and mouse —his back-up hard drive is still sitting on the table! He is ecstatic…nearly in tears. I told him that he should have also gone with an online back-up solution in addition to his onsite back-up, but we got very lucky in this regard.
So this is a real-live example of why clients should heed warnings and keep their systems updated, setup iCloud even if they don’t see the immediate value, use SECURE passwords, use encryption, and have more than one backup with one of those being offsite in some fashion.
Best regards,
Bob • http://www.yotek.com
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