If you are traveling overseas, Carly has some useful links on her Foreign Language Technologies pages that we recommend travelers look at before leaving. If you are looking for the right kind of power adapter for your computer or other charging devices, try http://countrycode.org/this site , where you will find images of all the different types of plugs, where they are used, and more information than you ever wanted to know about power in foreign countries.
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- Set your computer to ask for a password to log in, do not have it login log in automatically.
- Change the sleep and screen saver settings to also require a password, or log out or shut down every time you leave your computer for any amount of time.
- Keep confidential files and files with personal information stored on a flash drive rather than on your laptop, if you must have them with you.
- Secure the files that are confidential, so you have a password to even view all those important numbers and passwords.
- If you are using a public computer in a business, keep in mind that these computers are monitored, but that it is still easy for people to get information from the computers about previous users.
- Consider getting a theft tracking program for your computer. Most of these aren't terribly expensive, and a lot of people swear by them.
- Consider also getting a physical lock of some sort. Most laptops have a slot for a locking mechanism, and a simple online search provides a number of possible locks. Though these are not guarantees against theft, they are deterrents and can cause a potential thief to pass your equipment over in favor of someone else's.
Many of these apply to mobile phones, external harddriveshard drives, mp3 players, and other electronics.
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- Most free wireless is not secure- be very careful where you loginlog in, and what files are on your computer. (Don’t know why this is important? See “Why Secure Matters” below)
- Commercial establishments (airports, hotels, coffee shops, etc) require you to check in and agree to their terms and conditions. Ask at the front desk or the employees for how to register if you are not redirected to the gateway page.
- You must open the browser first and register or agree to the terms and conditions before any other program will be able to connect to the internet (such as mail programs, chat programs, online help resources for Word and other programs, etc)
- You will probably have to register every day in hotels, etc, since they traditionally reset everything once a day (usually in the afternoon for hotels, since checkout is late morning).
- Unless you know the wireless is high-speed and has little traffic, try using the basic client of Zimbra, by clicking on the link that says basic on the login log in page, or go to https://mail.carleton.edu/h/ https://mail.carleton.edu/h/. This will load much faster than the advanced client
- Need to access your Home, Courses, or Collab folders? You still can, just not as conveniently as from on campus. Go to https://home.its.carleton.edu/ and you will be able to log into the web interface for the network folders.
- When free wireless is advertised, make sure that there is a named provider and that it isn’t always listed as free wi-fi. Recently, there have been a rash of businesses that are providing free wireless, and the provider is monitoring all that occurs on the network. Big name wireless providers are still the most trustworthy.
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