Happy New Year to all - I am sure not a single one of us will miss 2020! On a related note, with the new Covid surge and the more contagious strain, I will be limiting my home visits to clients who cannot be serviced via remote support or drop off services, until I am vaccinated. We all need to stay safe and well though the next few months!

The start of 2021 brings many tech changes, so this month's issue addresses three of them - the end of Adobe Flash, the elimination of free Norton for Comcast customers, and the impending end of free unlimited Google Photo storage.

Here's to a safe and healthy 2021!

Regards,

Julie Marto

508-359-8176
508-333-8176 (cell)

P.S. New computer? Drop your old and new systems off with me for a complete and customized system migration.
EOL for Adobe Flash
One of the many changes for 2021 is the end of the line for Adobe Flash Player. Back in the early days of the internet, Adobe Flash was the standard way to program animations in web browsers, and as such it was commonly used as a platform for online games, such as word puzzles and card games. However, because it automatically runs programs written by third parties in a web browser, it always had security issues. There have been alternatives to Adobe Flash for years, and Adobe has finally decided to completely end support for Flash as of January 1st, 2021.
Adobe makes many products people use frequently, including Adobe Acrobat Reader and the Creative Cloud suite of products, like Photoshop. The end of Flash Player won't affect the use of these other products in any way.

I've gotten a lot of calls about the end of Flash, primarily because Adobe is pushing a pop-up that advises you to uninstall Flash. This is safe to click on, and Flash should be uninstalled. If you are not getting a pop-up from Adobe, here are detailed instructions to remove Flash from your Mac or your PC.

Even if you are still currently enjoying a Flash enabled game, any games that run on Flash will cease working as of January 12th. There's nothing you can do about that - unfortunately if you still go to any gaming sites that use Flash it is their job to create a different way to access their games. As always, feel free to give me a call if you have any questions, or need assistance removing Flash from your system.
Xfinity, Norton, and xFi Advanced Security
I've had a lot of questions about the elimination of free Norton antivirus for Comcast customers, and the new xFi Advanced Security system they are suggesting replaces it. It's important to understand that the xFi Advanced Security system is not an antivirus, and it's a bit misleading that Comcast is billing this as a replacement for Norton.
xFi Advanced Security protection is actually a hardware based whole house firewall that you control with an app on your phone. It uses artificial intelligence to monitor Internet traffic coming in and out of your house, and look for, and block, any activity that it deems unsafe. While that is a good thing to have, it is not an antivirus. In order to use it, you must rent a compatible modem from Comcast, and even then it only provides protection while you are on your home network. It doesn't really provide the same type of protection that an antivirus provides.
My recommendation for most people is simply to uninstall Norton and use the built in antivirus on Windows 10. That's what I do for myself. However if you prefer to have a third party antivirus, and there are some good cases made for that, you will have to buy a subscription. Currently I recommend Norton or Bitdefender as good paid antivirus solutions. I don't like any of the free antivirus programs other than the built in Windows Defender.

As far as the xFi Advanced Security protection is concerned, if you are currently renting the correct equipment from Comcast, it's a good idea to activate it. If you are not (and I am not, as I purchased a router rather than rent from Comcast) you will be just fine.
Google Photos News
Toward the end of last year Google Photos announced some big changes. You have until next June to worry about it, but if you have been using Google Photos, the days of free unlimited storage are coming to a close. I am a big fan of Google photos, as it is very easy and convenient to automatically back up all of my pictures to Google Photos on all of my devices.
When Google Photos was introduced five years ago, they had two plans. If you wished to upload your photos at original quality, it went against the 15 gigabytes of Google storage Included with all free Gmail accounts. However, if you chose to upload at what they called high quality, basically standard cell phone quality, they offered unlimited storage at no cost. I currently have over 50 gigabytes of Google photos stored in high quality.

Google has announced that, starting in June 2021, all new photos uploaded to Google Photos, whether at original quality or high quality, will count against your Google storage quota. Existing high quality photos already stored at Google photos will not count, so you don’t need to worry about moving them at the moment - it's just going forward that you need to worry about. Google estimates that the average user will have three years or so of uploading new photos before filling up the 15 gigabytes. However, that doesn't seem likely to me. I see many people who have filled up that full 15 gigabytes with Gmail alone.

So, what to do? The easiest thing to do, and what Google would like you to do, is to pay for more storage. 100 gigabytes of Google storage costs $20 a year, and it includes access to Google support. It is probably worth it - in fact, that's what I plan to do. However, if you are already paying for Amazon Prime or Office 365 you can use their storage options - free unlimited photo storage with Amazon Prime, or 1TB of OneDrive storage with Office 365. You might already be paying for enough storage from iCloud to keep all your photos there, but iCloud is more of a syncing engine than a backup solution. You can even decide to just download all your pictures and keep them on your computer. In general, consider this a developing situation, one I am sure I will address again before June.