#ComputerFAQ #WorkFromHome #JustNotFromtheJohn #ZoomIt #LockIt

Hi Readers. As many of you are working from home and students are participating in online classes, this seemed to be a topic most could relate to.

The internet and our computers are working overtime in this new world of work, school, and play from home. Make sure you and your computer have the chance to reset occasionally. Step away from your computer every hour or so to rest your eyes and stretch your legs. If you have the option, alternate your online work with some tasks you can do with pen and paper to ease your eye strain. Your computer needs a rest as well. Make it a habit of rebooting your computer at least once a week. Rebooting fixes many issues that may come up from your computer running constantly. Many Windows updates also need a reboot in order to complete the update.

A few things that I learned from years of telecommuting in the past. Set your workday hours and stick to them. When you are “at work” be on task and don’t try to do laundry and clean the house while working, you’ll end up with forgotten clothes sitting in the washer all day and exhaustion at the end of the day. Never, never take a work call in the restroom! This sounds funny but it actually happened in one of very first telecommuting meetings I attended. Right in the middle of the boss passing on the latest news, we hear a flush! Funny for sure, but not a particularly good practice. After that we were instructed to mute our phones or microphones unless it was our turn to talk.

Some of you and your students may be using Zoom for communicating with work or school. You may have heard about Zoom Bombing - people breaking into Zoom meetings that aren’t invited that have bad intentions. We all want to keep our students safe from this type of invasion. Here are a few tips to secure your meetings.

• Make sure that your meetings are password protected and that only those invited have the passwords.
• Don’t post passwords in a publicly accessible location. You can email the passwords to individuals or post them in a secure location that is only accessible by the intended participants.
• Disable the “Join before host” feature so that the host of the meeting can see who is logging in.
• You can also create a waiting room so that those waiting to join must be approved by the host of the meeting before joining.
• Once everyone that is invited has arrived, lock your meeting.
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The Zoom support site has information on how to implement these security features and more. https://support.zoom.us/hc/en-us
Read my blog at www.computerfaq.tech for more information like this.
Have a healthy and cyber-safe week!

Kathie Pearce
ComputerFAQ 1
360.497.3130
computerfaq.tech