Tag Archives: Branding

Posted on Author Atlantic Computer Services Categories Blog

Amazon Echobud Consumers Should Update Due To Overheating Issue

Do you own a pair of Amazon’s Echo Buds? If so, and in case you didn’t get an email from the company, be advised that Amazon recently discovered a potential safety risk.

To address it, the company is asking all Echo Bud owners to perform a software update on their gear.

In a nutshell, the email the company sent out explained that occasionally, in very rare instances, it’s possible for the Echo Buds to overheat while resting in their charging case.

In response, the company has released a software update that addresses the issue, prevents the Echo Buds from overheating, and helps to improve the long-term performance of the batteries.

If your Echo Buds are connected to your smartphone and the Alexa app via Bluetooth, your Echo Buds should receive this update automatically. Of course, it pays to double check to make sure you have it.

Here’s how you do that:

  1. Open your Echo Buds case
  2. Confirm that the Echo Buds are connected to your smartphone via Bluetooth
  3. Open your Alexa app and select “Devices” in the bottom right portion of the window
  4. Choose the “Echo & Alexa” option, and then select “Echo Buds”
  5. Scroll down to the “About” section which will be near the bottom of the page that opens.

Once there, the version number you’re looking for is 318119151` or higher. If, for any reason, you have a version number lower than this, then it’s a sure sign that your Echo Buds did not upgrade automatically.

Not to worry, if it didn’t update, you can install the update manually by following these steps:

  1. Open your Echo Buds case and confirm that they are connected via Bluetooth to your phone and the Alexa app.
  2. Make sure your Echo Buds are charged to at least 30 percent.
  3. Close the case lid, keeping the Echo Buds inside and remain within Bluetooth range of your phone for at least thirty minutes.
  4. Check the software version number using the steps outlined above.

That’s all there is to it! Take the time to do this. Don’t lose your Echo Buds to overheating.

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Posted on Author Atlantic Computer Services Categories Blog

Apple Announced A New Low-Priced iPhone

Rumors have been swirling for months about Apple and the possibility that they’ll release a successor to their iPhone SE.

Recently, the company put a pin in all the speculation and unveiled their second-generation iPhone SE.

It looks like an iPhone 8, but lacks the upgraded internals.

The best part? When the company starts taking pre-orders on April 17th, you’ll be able to reserve yours for just $399, which is $50 less than the now discontinued iPhone 8.

The new phone will be available in black, white or red and have a 4.7 inch display. It is to be powered by Apple’s A13 Bionic processor and there will be three storage options available: 64GB, 128GB, or 256GB. The upgraded storage will add to the price, of course, with the 128GB variant running $449, and the 256GB variant setting you back $549.

Even if you decide to pay extra for the additional storage, those are amazingly good prices, especially given that the iPhone 11 Pro starts at $999.

Even better, the new iPhone SE won’t skimp on extras. Each one will come with an impressive 12-megapixel rear camera and a 7-megapixel front-facing camera, along with an IP67 rating and wireless charging capabilities.

The new phones are not only great starter phones for teens and other young people, they’re a fantastic, low-cost option for business owners who tend to buy in bulk. If you’re interested in tying your company to Apple’s ecosystem and you don’t want to spend a fortune, the new iPhone SE may be the solution you’ve been looking for.

Best of all, by the time you read this, Apple will likely be accepting pre-orders. So this isn’t a product you’ll have to wait months or years to get your hands on, you and your employees will be able to start enjoying them in the very near future.

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Posted on Author Atlantic Computer Services Categories Blog

Some HP Devices May Fail After 30,000 Hours Of Use

Late last year, Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE) issued a warning about some of the Solid State Drives they manufacture.

The warning was that unless users downloaded a patch to the drive’s firmware, their drive could fail after more than 33,000 hours of running.

Now, the company is back with a similar warning.

A new flaw in the firmware of some of the company’s Serial-Attached SCSI solid-state drives will cause them to stop working after 40,000 hours of run time.

The impacted drives include:

  • HPE ProLiant
  • StoreEasy 1000 Storage
  • Synergy, Apollo 4200
  • D3000 Storage Enclosure
  • Synergy Storage Modules

It’s important to note that HPE did not discover this issue, but rather, was informed of it by an SSD manufacturer they contract with. As such, HPE drives almost certainly aren’t the only ones that will be affected by the bug. Although to this point, they are the only vendor to have posted any information about it.

If you’re using any of the HPE drives mentioned above, and your firmware is older than HPD7, then your drive is at risk. 40,000 hours translates into 4 years, 206 days and sixteen hours. So if there’s a silver lining to the recent announcement, it is the fact that you know. You can likely work backwards and arrive at a definitive date when the drive entered service and can plan to upgrade long before it becomes a problem.

Unfortunately, if you fail to act and the drive fails, neither the data nor the drive will be able to be recovered. While this isn’t an apocalyptic problem, inaction will inevitably have dire consequences.

If you use any of the drives listed above, check your firmware to make sure you’re not at risk. If you use an SSD from some other manufacturer, it pays to be proactive and contact them, just to be sure you’re not at risk.

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Posted on Author Atlantic Computer Services Categories Blog

Recent Data Breach Affects Some Walgreens Mobile App Users

Are you a Walgreens customer? Do you make use of the company’s mobile app, available for both Android and iOS devices? If so, be advised that the company recently disclosed a serious flaw in the app that inadvertently leaked both Personally Identifiable Information (PII) and Personal Health Information (PHI).

The information was in the form of supposedly secure messages within the app, to parties not authorized to see it. Both of these instances are serious HIPAA violations.

Walgreens promptly sent a notification to its impacted customers. That notification reads, in part, as follows:

“On January 15, 2020, Walgreens discovered an error with the Walgreens mobile app personal secure messaging feature. Our investigation determined that an internal application error allowed certain personal messages from Walgreens that are stored in a database to be viewable by other customers using the Walgreens mobile app.

Once we learned of the incident, Walgreens promptly took steps to temporarily disable message viewing to prevent further disclosure and then implemented a technical correction that resolved the issue. Walgreens will conduct additional testing as appropriate for future changes to verify the change will not impact the privacy of customer data.”

The notification did not specify how many users were impacted, but the company stressed that it was a very small percentage. Even so, the Walgreens app has more than 10,000,000 installations on the Android side, and more than 2.5 million on the Apple side, so even a few percentage points would be a significant number of users.

Regardless, if you use the app, there’s nothing for you to do. The issue has been resolved, and unless you received a notification from the company, it’s safe to assume that your information was not inappropriately accessed. Even so, it pays to be aware of the incident.

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Posted on Author Atlantic Computer Services Categories Blog

JCrew Retailer Customers May Have Had Information Accessed

Another week, another data breach. This time, the target being US clothing retailer J. Crew.

The company announced that sometime in April of 2019, an unknown group of hackers utilized a credential stuffing attack to breach one of the company’s databases and accessed some of its customer account data.

Credential stuffing, as you may know, is an attack type that sees hackers utilizing large sets of stolen user names and passwords, which can be found in vast numbers on the Dark Web. Granted, many of the username and password combinations are old and defunct, but the data is cheap and hackers can buy hundreds of thousands of sets of credentials.

With so many in play, they’re bound to get a few hits and all they really need is one. One thing that vastly increases the chances of this kind of attack succeeding is the shocking percentage of users who still utilize the same username and password on multiple different websites.

When J. Crew discovered evidence of the breach via a routine scan, they immediately sent a notification to the potentially impacted customers. That notification read, in part, as follows:

“…the information that would have been accessible in your jcrew.com account includes the last four digits of credit card numbers you have stored in your account, the expiration dates, card types and billing addresses connected to those cards, and order numbers, shipping confirmation numbers, and shipment status of those orders…

We do not have reason to believe that the unauthorized party gained access to any additional information within your account, but you should change your password on any other account where your use the same password discovered in this incident.”

Along with the sending of this notification, J. Crew disabled the accounts of all impacted users.

It’s a decent response but the ‘routine sweep’ conducted by the company didn’t discover evidence of the breach for almost a year, so things aren’t quite adding up yet. Our hope is that the company will clarify things as their forensic investigation into the hack is concluded. In any case, if you’re a JCrew customer, take heed.

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