Christmas Tech Support

Helping you (and your relatives) have better computer security for the holidays.

The stockings have been stuffed
the morning is near
suddenly something washes over you
uncertainty, fear.
You’ve got these new smart devices, consoles, and more.
Pray setting up these new smart devices won’t be a chore.
Dangers of security, but you can relax,
I’ll make sure you make it through the morning, I’ve got your backs.

Alright, that’s enough rhyming. Anyways, Christmas morning has just rolled around, and there’s lot of new electronic goodies that are under that festive foliage. But there’s still a bit that needs to be done helping out your relatives with setting up those new goodies. You’ll be uninstalling programs, explaining apps, and speeding up PCs, and making sure that everything is safe and secure.

All of your family (and many of your friends) will be looking to you to answer all of their technology questions. But, in a world of data leaks and daily hacks, many of them won’t be asking the right questions. I wanted to build this guide to help you pinpoint some of the best ways to help make your relatives more digitally secure and how to help them understand all of it.

If you’re not technically inclined, that’s okay too! None of this is challenging and there’s explanations for why it’s important.

Steps To Take

FAQs

Who is this site meant for?

This site is meant for people who are going to be playing tech support for their relatives over the holidays. These are some of the things you could be doing to make their cyber lives more secure. Your relatives probably won't ask you to help set any of this up, so you should bring it up yourselves!


Why aren't you talking about speeding up computers?

You can Google that stuff. You might not know how to Google all of these security topics because you don't necessarily know the buzzwords.


There's a more secure way!

The most secure thing you could do is live in an underground bunker surrounded by a Faraday cage while living off the land. I personally think there's a trade-off between security and usability. My goal is to get people from 10% secure to 80% in ways that they'll actually follow. A secure system that everybody ignores is less secure than a mostly secure system that nobody uses.


Why didn't you mention doing this other thing?

Please make a PR and submit your idea.


What's with the Christmas?

Wait, I thought we were saying Merry Christmas again? Christmas is a stand-in for any time that you might be stuck with your relatives and forced to answer all their computer questions. That said, Hannukah was about defending the temple from invaders, so in a way by embracing cybersecurity you're celebrating Hannukah, sort of?