How to Make Your iPhone and Mac Work Together Seamlessly

Apple has a definite tendency to get its devices working well with each other before considering such distractions as Android or Windows, and over the years the iPhone and the Mac have built up a strong understanding. You might not appreciate just how many different ways they can seamlessly work together—here’s what you need to know.

Not all of these features have always worked all that well, but as time has gone on, Apple has managed to get them up to a respectable level of intuitiveness and stability. What you need to begin are an iPhone running iOS 11 and a 2012 or later Mac running macOS High Sierra, both signed into the same iCloud account with the same credentials.

Universal Clipboard

The Universal Clipboard is exactly what it sounds like: Copy and paste that works across your iPhone and your Mac. You just use the copy command as you normally would, then pick up again on your other device with the paste command, though Apple warns users that “copied content is available to paste on your other devices only for a short time.”

So, say you’ve got an address up on your MacBook, in an email. Highlight the text, choose Edit and Copy (or hit Cmd+C), and then switch over to your iPhone, in an app like Notes. Tap and hold on the screen to bring up the pop-up menu, choose Paste, and your text should appear.

It works in the other direction too, of course, and with images as well—so you could, for example, paste something that you’ve got in Photos on your iPhone right into a document in Pages, no middle steps required.

iMovie projects

If you’ve started working on a movie masterpiece on your iPhone or your iPad, you can move it over to your Mac to finish it off, as long as you’re using iMovie on both devices—it’s a handy feature, considering you probably shot the footage on your phone or tablet in the first place.

In iMovie for iOS, tap the Projects tab, and choose the project you want to use. Hit the Share button, and you’ve got two options: You can select iCloud Drive (which passes the project via iCloud Drive and keeps a copy there) or wait for your Mac to show up in the AirDrop panel.

In both cases you have the chance to share either the iMovie project as a whole (timelines and elements and all), or the finished movie generated from your assembled clips, which will be exported if you choose this option.

Tether your iPhone

This one’s dependent on the data plan you have with your mobile operator, but if your Mac detects an iPhone with a data signal nearby, it’ll list it in the available wi-fi networks, should you want to connect to it. For those times when you don’t have regular wi-fi available, or it’s too flaky, or you don’t think it’s secure enough, this is simple to use.

From Settings in iOS, choose Personal Hotspot to see your options and the instructions. The wi-fi password for the hotspot is included here too, if you’ve got other devices to connect. Toggle the Personal Hotspot option on to make the connection available.

Click the wi-fi symbol on the menu bar on your Mac, choose the iPhone entry, and the rest happens automatically. If your iPhone was on wi-fi, it gets disabled, so your phone falls back to a cellular connection. Choose Disconnect from iPhone from the wi-fi drop-down to end the tethering. You can also connect via Bluetooth or via a cabled connection.

Make and receive calls from your Mac

Picking up your phone to answer a call is old fashioned nowadays—you can use your Mac instead, as long as both devices are on the same wi-fi network. From Settings on iOS, tap Phone, then Wi-Fi Calling, then turn the Wi-Fi Calling on This Phone toggle switch to on.

Head to your Mac, open FaceTime, and you might get automatically prompted to allow calls from your iPhone. If not, open the FaceTimemenu and choose Preferences. Check the box marked Calls From iPhone.

Making calls from FaceTime on macOS is easy—just enter a name, email address, or phone number into the search box at the top to find the person you want to call. Receiving calls isn’t much more difficult: Whenever someone calls your iPhone, you’ll see Accept and Decline buttons in the corner of your Mac display, so make your choice accordingly.

Send and receive text messages

You can also get busy text messaging on your Mac: That is, sending and receiving standards SMSes, as well as iMessages that sync automatically between Mac and iPhone nowadays. In Settings, tap Messages then Text Message Forwarding and activate your Mac (if the option doesn’t appear, check that you’re signed into iCloud on both devices, with the right phone number registered).

With that done, open up Messages on macOS, and you can compose new texts to any contact and continue threads. Your entire SMS history won’t get synced over, but any texts sent and received after you’ve enabled the feature appear automatically.

Share files easily

Finally, there is AirDrop, the super-simple way of moving files between devices made by Apple. You need to get it set up first: In macOS, open AirDrop in the Finder to set your visibility, and on iOS open up the Control Center and make sure AirDrop is enabled.

With that done, you just need to click or tap the Share button in any app on your macOS machine or your iOS device—your other device should appear, and once you select it, the file gets moved straight over.

You can share maps, websites, text, images, and more, so you might prefer using AirDrop to Handoff in certain situations.

Your Company’s Cybersecurity Begins with Employees

In this climate of record-setting data breaches, it’s far too easy to assume that hackers only go after the “big guys.” While nabbing millions of customers’ records from a major brand-name corporation might be a great payoff for cybercriminals, the reality is smaller businesses are just as likely, if not more likely, to be a target. 

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As a general rule, small companies don’t have the budget for building their own IT departments or investing in the latest cybersecurity protocols. Too often, employees in small companies already wear multiple hats, meaning the ability to hire an in-house cybersecurity professional might be out of reach financially. Finally, the limits on technology and shared access in many small businesses can mean that computers and mobile devices might be more vulnerable to attack, and hackers know it.

Fortunately, the government is at work on developing guidelines that can help protectsmall-to-medium-sized businesses, but in the meantime, there is more that companies can do to build up a frontline of defense. Things like investing in affordable antivirus software and establishing standard protocols that will prevent infections are key, but there’s another solution that can reduce your risk exponentially, and it’s practically free.

All too often, employees are the weakest link in the cybersecurity chain. Whether it’s responding to phishing attempts, turning over sensitive information in spearphishing attacks, downloading viruses or malware to the company network, or any other intentional or accidental behavior, getting your employees on board with prevention can do wonders for mitigating the risk of a breach.

Like many other business tools, employee training can run the spectrum of cost from free to Cadillac pricing, and it will be up to each company to decide what level of training they need. However, establishing some guidelines for computer use and employee tech behavior doesn’t cost you anything:

1. Make sure employees understand the risks associated with downloading content, opening attachments in emails, or clicking on links in messages or on the web.

Many forms of ransomware, for example, infiltrate the network by starting out as a link or attachment. Spread the word routinely about the latest threats and make sure the message reaches all employees, regardless of their role.

2. Robust antivirus software can help protect your network in real-time and prevent malicious software from installing, but it can only catch the threats it knew about when it was installed.

Keeping that software up-to-date and making sure your employees install updates as they appear is important.

3. Knowing how to respond in the face of a data breach or other attack is critical, and it should be automatic among all employees.

Moreover, your company’s policy needs to be specific, but not so dire that employees attempt to cover up a tech mistake out of fear of termination.

Sadly, preventing intentional internal data breaches is important, too. Companies should evaluate not just what information they gather and why they need it, but also make a determination about which employees can access sensitive information. If an employee doesn’t need access to certain data to fulfill their job, steps should be in place that prevents access.

Old School Identity Theft Is Still a Threat

Tactics like check washing, stealing mail, and snatching wallets or driver’s licenses can still lead a thief to your information and your finances.

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News headlines are filled with stories about recording-setting data breaches, hacking events, stolen personal information, and cybercrime on a daily basis, but that does not mean the “old school” methods of stealing your information and fraud are gone. One recent case involved a smashed car window and a stolen purse. A thief in Nashvillebroke into a car and stole the driver’s purse which had been hidden under the passenger seat. Approximately six months later, fraudulent charges began to appear on the victim’s accounts.

This is by far not the first or even the most lucrative incident of its kind. Data breaches have occurred through stolen laptops that didn’t have encrypted password security, lost or missing flash drives containing patient records, backpacks or briefcases that were placed at the owner’s feet for only a second, and more.

In each instance, whether the missing information was ever used for identity theft, the owner must treat the loss as though it could allow a thief to cause further harm. If your physical property like a purse, briefcase, wallet, or checkbook is ever lost or stolen, there are some steps you should take:

1. File a police report to alert law enforcement to the original theft

While reporting the loss of the physical objects, make sure you take into account the individual items that were in your bag. These might be debit or credit cards, your driver’s license, membership or rewards cards, or a checkbook.

2. Contact your financial institutions immediately

You may need to provide them with a copy of the police report or at least a case number, but it’s important to inform all of the issuing banks. Your cards will be canceled and new cards sent to you.

3. Monitor your account statements

In the case of the stolen purse, there was a lengthy gap before strange activity began to show up. Just because your accounts aren’t impacted the next day, that doesn’t mean you’re out of the woods. Look at your account statements very carefully—something you should be doing anyway since it alerts you to errors or inconsistencies—and order copies of your credit report after the fact.

4. NEVER carry your Social Security card

The only time you should need to supply the physical card will be for very limited purposes, like accepting a new job after applying. There’s no reason to carry your card on a regular basis, and a thief could use it against you.

Don’t make the mistake of thinking the original crime was a once and done event; just because there are highly sophisticated ways that cybercriminals can target you, that doesn’t mean someone can’t still take advantage of your information by stealing it.

Tempe Police Release Footage of Fatal Crash From Inside Self-Driving Uber

The Tempe Police Department has released the first footage of this week’s fatal crash involving a self-driving Uber. Two angles of the crash — one facing out at the road, and one facing in at the Uber safety driver — were compiled into a 22-second video that was released on the Tempe Police’s Twitter account Wednesday night. In both angles, the footage stops just before the car strikes and kills pedestrian 49-year-old Elaine Herzberg.

In the camera angle that faces inward, the Uber safety driver can be seen looking down for several seconds in the moments before the crash. The driver, 44-year-old Rafaela Vasquez, reportedly told Tempe Police chief Sylvia Moir that “it was like a flash, the person walked out in front of them,” and that “the first alert to the collision was the sound of the collision.” Vasquez can be seen looking back up at the road just before the car strikes Herzberg.

“The video is disturbing and heartbreaking to watch, and our thoughts continue to be with Elaine’s loved ones,” a spokesperson for Uber said in a statement to The Verge. “Our cars remain grounded, and we’re assisting local, state and federal authorities in any way we can.”

Police had previously said that the Uber did not slow down before it struck Herzberg, something the footage appears to confirm. We also now know that Herzberg was crossing the street from the median to the sidewalk on the right with her bicycle.

Otherwise, the video of the crash amplifies questions that were already being asked about the current state of self-driving tests being performed around the country, and the technology in general. And it sparks new questions as well. For instance, the car is equipped with sensors that should have been able to spot Herzberg in the middle of the street, but it appears that she either wasn’t recognized by the Uber’s autonomous system, or that she was, and something went wrong in the process of applying the brakes.

It’s also unclear why Vasquez’s eyes left the road, but we don’t know what Uber’s policies are for safety drivers in the first place, and whether or not that was some kind of violation of them. What’s more, it’s hard to say with any certainty from these two angles whether Vasquez could have intervened in time to stop the car to begin with.

Hackers Steal 880K Credit Cards From Expedia Orbitz Customers

Another day, another breach. Today, online travel agency Orbitz disclosed that hackers managed to get both credit card data and personal information from users who made their travel purchases on the site between January 1, 2016 and December 22, 2017. In total, the company says, that’s about 880,000 payment cards that were accessed from what the company calls a “legacy Orbitz  platform.”

The hackers also likely accessed other data, like names, physical or mailing addresses, birth dates, email addresses, phone numbers and the customer’s gender while they were in the systems between October and December 2017. It’s unclear whether the hackers also downloaded this data. In a statement, though, Orbitz told us that it has found no “direct evidence that this personal information was actually taken from the platform.”

Orbitz, which has been part of the Expedia  empire of travel sites since it was acquired in 2015, says that it has updated its security posture since discovering the breach on March 1. The company also notes that its current site is not affected by this breach and that it brought in third-party experts and a forensic investigation firm, as well as law enforcement, to “eliminate and prevent unauthorized access to the platform.”

While this breach isn’t at the level of the giant Equifax and Yahoo hacks, here is yet another company that couldn’t keep your data safe. Indeed, at this point, you can pretty much assume that all of your personal data and likely your passwords and credit cards, too, are up for sale in one of the darker parts of the internet.

Orbitz is notifying customers whose data has been affected and will offer them the standard complimentary year of credit monitoring and identity protection services that pretty much every company now offers customers who were affected by a breach (to the point where many a U.S. consumer probably has access to multiple of these services at the same time).