Happy Friday! Here’s what’s on deck this week: Episode 2 of our video series, Tales from the Hacked, plus a quick tip you can use today, the latest cybersecurity news worth knowing, a reminder on how to make the most of your P3C support, and more.
Thank you for reading. Stay safe out there.
– Brad Otto
Featured: Tales from the Hacked
Episode 2: The Counterfeit Oracle
Remember the story from Issue #2 about the business owner who searched for ChatGPT on a quiet Sunday and landed on a fake “backup server”? One phony “prove you’re human” check later, he had let a stranger’s software into his own computer. It’s now Episode 2 of Tales from the Hacked, and this time the real AI plays the hero.
Tales from the Hacked is a video series started by P3C Technologies to educate users on real cybersecurity stories seen in the wild, at our clients and elsewhere. The stories are real, but the names have been changed or omitted to protect the innocent.
AI was used in the production of this video, and we had fun making it. It’s not meant to be perfect, just a fun way to present scary topics. People pay attention when it’s fun, and these are lessons worth paying attention to.
Stay vigilant, stay safe, and most importantly, sit back and don’t move your mouse.
Tip of the Week
Your personal email is a business risk too. Lock it down this week.
We don’t manage personal Gmail accounts, but we see what happens when they get hacked. Many of the attacks we see on people, business owners included, start in a personal inbox. That’s where password resets, bank alerts, and everything else in your life land.
This week a woman called us because she was locked out of her personal Gmail. Either two-step verification wasn’t turned on, or she’d fallen for a phishing message. This one was sad: all we could do was point her to Google’s recovery form. That’s it. There’s no one to call.
Here’s the hard truth. A free email account is like squatting in a home: you live there, but you don’t own it. Google is a reputable company, but free accounts get no support beyond a form, and pretty much every free email provider works the same way.
Take ten minutes this week:
- Confirm 2-Step Verification is turned on.
- Set up your recovery phone and email so you don’t get locked out.
- Bookmark Google's account recovery page, just in case.
And one rule to live by: never enter a 2FA code from a link you got in an email or text.
IT Vocab of the Week
CRM (Customer Relationship Management)
A CRM is software that keeps all your customers and contacts in one place: who they are, what they’ve bought, and every email or text you’ve sent them. It’s also how most businesses send marketing email such as newsletters, promotions, and “please vote for us” requests.
Here’s the part most people miss. Send that marketing email through a sending service connected to your CRM, on a separate domain that is not your main business domain.
Why? Every email you send builds or burns your domain’s reputation with Gmail, Outlook, and everyone else. If a marketing blast gets marked as spam a few too many times, the damage lands on the domain your invoices, quotes, and everyday client replies come from. Keep marketing on its own domain, and your business email stays clean.
A client asked us exactly this recently. They’d been nominated in a contest and wanted to email and text select clients asking for votes, and they wondered whether to use a separate address. Great instinct. It’s how we do it too (see this week’s AI Minute).
Need help setting up a CRM to send your branded emails the right way, and securely? Contact us at support@p3ctech.com.
Cybersecurity News
You’re Invited… to Hand Over Your Password
Fake party invitations are making the rounds. The email looks like it’s from Evite, often from someone you actually know, because their account was already hacked. You click “View Invitation,” and before you can see the details, you’re asked to sign in with your email password or enter a code sent to your phone.
There is no party. Hand over that password, and the scammers take over your email, then send the same fake invite to everyone in your contacts.
The rule: no invitation needs your email password or a security code. If it asks, close it. Not sure? Text or call the person who supposedly sent it.
Working With P3C
Passwords in an Excel file emailed to the whole company? D’oh!
True story from a recent ticket. While we were helping a user, they mentioned two things. They use the same password for most of their apps, and the company keeps everyone’s passwords in an Excel spreadsheet that gets emailed around the office. Security 101 fail.
Think about it. If one reused password gets stolen, every account falls with it. And that spreadsheet now lives in every inbox, every Sent folder, and every backup. One hacked mailbox is all it takes to hand over the keys to everything.
The fix was easy. We set them up with MyGlue, a company password manager, at no cost to them, and helped get everyone on it. Each person gets unique passwords, shared logins are shared securely, and access can be removed the day someone leaves.
Still passing passwords around in spreadsheets, sticky notes, or emails? Email support@p3ctech.com and we’ll get you set up.
The AI and Automation Minute
How new clients get the right emails automatically
Remember this week’s IT Vocab? Here’s how we practice what we preach.
Our main system of record is where we track clients, plans, and tickets, and it’s the source of truth. When a new client or contact is added there, automation software picks it up and pushes it into our CRM through its APIs.
From there, the CRM takes over. Each contact automatically gets the notifications that fit their client type and P3C plan level, and they’re added to The Friday Firewall (hi! 👋). Nobody retypes a contact list, nobody forgets to add the new office manager, and our marketing email goes out through its own sending service, so it can’t drag down our main domain.
That’s the kind of quiet, behind-the-scenes automation that saves hours and prevents mistakes. If you’re copying the same data between two systems every week, it can probably be automated. Explore what we’re doing at ai.p3ctech.com.
Product of the Week
ScanSnap iX1600 Receipt Edition
A tax firm asked us this past week for help. They’re ripping through so many pages that the document feeder on their shared scanner is wearing out. Our answer was to buy a ScanSnap and test it. Many of our other CPA clients use this type of scanner, and they love it as a standard tool, especially during the busy tax season.
The iX1600 Receipt Edition is a color duplex scanner, so it scans both sides in one pass. It has a 50-sheet feeder, a 4.3″ touch screen, and up to 30 one-touch profiles, so each person can scan straight to their own destination. It connects by Wi-Fi or USB and works on Mac and PC. The Receipt Edition adds QuickBooks Online integration.
It’s one of the best scanners for CPAs, financial advisors, or anyone scanning high page counts.
As an Amazon Associate, P3C Technologies may earn from qualifying purchases.
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