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“I get the same message and I cannot get my emails. Why?”

What does the message say?  Did you change the password on those devices to that pass phrase given to you by AOL?  What happens when you attempt to login?

Can you access your mail using mail.aol.com?

Well I suppose you will soon find out.  Should your email stop working.: Access Aol via the web https://login.aol.com/account/security  and at the bottom of that page you will find a way to generate a password for nearly any mail application.  That passphrase appears to be four sets of four alpha characters.  Simply change the password in your application to that pass phrase.

There is a selection for Mac mail, etc.  It’s just changing the password to the one generated by AOL.

Wise to back up, not sure why you need to “remove the account”.  Did you try to update via https://help.aol.com/articles/update-to-latest-aol-mobile-app-version?

If you are not using the AOL application under IOS (Apple) then that application will need the passphrase generated by AOL via web access.

It’s hard to track threading by “anonymous” postings….

Yahoo adopted the ‘enhanced’ password assignment for outside (unsecure but still SSL) applications some time ago.  Some old school less popular email applications like Forte Agent, Pegasus, etc can use that password for continued POP/IMAP access.

I also have a legacy AOL account via their purchase of Compuserve and my email address from long ago, even the numeric name, lives on.  That account was also inherited from MicroNet which Compuseve adsorbed.  Hard to imagine an account that old, but except for the storage and minimal traffic all it means in the world is a MX assignment.  And yes I’ve gotten the notice that non-preferred applications like Outlook or Thunderbird will need a special new passkey for future access.  That can be done via an Aol.com website.  I suspect they think we ought to use their phone app, but I don’t want that on my phone – I really hate the need to enter info on a phone.

I actually use their web interface mainly but still get those emails telling me about new security issues.  Going direct via their web interface should always work with a normal, usual password.

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Paul T

Recently I got a tear sheet for a commercial hard drive crusher.

• NSA evaluated and listed with durability rating of 204 drives per hour
• 8-second crushing cycle
• 115V/60Hz standard power (international voltage available)
• Compact, portable, and quiet
• Destroys enterprise drives with rails still attached
• Made in the USA

See https://www.semshred.com/0101-free-anvil/

For somebody with a lot of drives seems like a solid machine.  Not sure how they integrate a hydraulic press with a drill but that what it look like.

I am the lucky owner of the latest, greatest LG clothes washer.  Like my smart switches, it sets up a mini WiFi hotspot (or bluetooth) to transfer it’s connectivity to the Internet.  I have allowed the washer access to the Internet but only on my restricted guest portion of my home network. I installed the LG app on my smart phone, so that the washer can tell me what it’s up to.  Of course, I already knew what it was doing from the sound but I don’t live in a huge house without a clock.  I had high hopes that this smart washer would allow some control via the app, but alas the cycles available were selected in a factory somewhere by engineers who, perhaps, never thought anybody might want to soak things like diapers.  In the perturbations available, my desired cycle selections seem missing.  Maybe it save water or energy, but the inability to self-program the device is sad.  And, yes, it seems to receive updates from the mothership from time to time.  Worse, I have no idea of any security provisions associated with the machine or my smart switches.  I do hope that I don’t discover the washer has gone berserk by over filling with water or some other nonsense.

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Susan Bradley

Might the single best tool to clean-up Win10 nonsense all-at-once.  Certainly looks easy to use.

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Fred

I’m surprise nobody mentioned User Agent which is that string from your browser detected by the security firm.  From Wiki

For this reason, most Web browsers use a User-Agent string value as follows:

<i>Mozilla/[version] ([system and browser information]) [platform] ([platform details]) [extensions]</i>. ”

The string b4M3S-LZLXy refers to an name assignment for your computer.

Checking User Agent String Reveal String.

The page has a cross reference to a parser for the string data.  Now my browser string doesn’t include the computer details which may be something associated with my IP, computer name and/or cookie.  Perhaps that detail comes from a request as you login to the site.  The really curious might take a look at a wireshark-like tool to reveal the transaction.

 

I have found that Chrome in an incognito window often works allowing the ads to appear.  The scripts used by some sites are incredibly complex.  Some actually query the browser to see if a given pixel exists.  Eventually someone will develop a browser that visits the site collects the data and sends that data to another clean window.  That way all the ads and pops and nonsense do their tricks but you don’t see any of the nonsense.  Cookies and trackers are collected and trashed for the next sites.

It’s remarkable how such a seeming easy task it ought to be to identify duplicates, but it’s not.  Various schemes are used and the tools rarely tell you how they work.  Each can use a different method, CRC, Hash Values, etc to compare but the actual calculation can be complex.  I’ve learned to rely on CloneMaster. It’s quite reliable at finding exact duplicates and after checking often to be sure, I allow the tool to be automatic.   But it’s somewhat slow on a large collection because it’s single threaded.  For a muti-threaded, faster tool I use DupDetectorPro which is multi-threaded and can even work across a network.  For the average user, CloneMaster would be fine.  If you have a bunch of de-duping work particularly across a network DupDetector is solid.

http://softbytelabs.com/wp/clonemaster/

https://www.dupscout.com/

Well I could finally get 1909 installed by installing directly over the previous install – semi-clean.  But the effort was mostly for show.  Seems Linux is about the only future for the machine.  After 1909 hardly any room left for user profiles, even the pointers to a SD card expansion that likes to periodically drop away and return in some checking cycle.

After many attempts to use the multiple USB drives to get from 1809 to 1909 on a 32G Acer, I gave up and wiped.  On the clean drive I could get Win1909 installed.  Since the machine license was Win Home, with 1809 running, it was bogged down trying to get to 1909 despite various tricks to avoid the auto-update.  Getting 1909 installed at least allows some functionality.

In the end, the update seems pointless.  Perhaps now the machine will be converted to a Linux device.  So a 7-year old machine won’t hit the recycle bin immediately.

 

[hhodges]

Understand.  I use a USB expander with a blank stick for the temp files (12G required) and the Win1909 setup files on a second stick.  Previous updates have been done OK.  The Acer minimal machine has 32G soldered memory for storage and 2G user memory.  Could be using a USB physical device might be a way at least to try.  I’ll dig into my drive box for one of those set aside drives.

I could run setupdiag which fetches more details from the setup operation, but it simply shows failure without any of the pre-canned Windows fail database info.  It does have some diagnostic data that perhaps Windows Microsoft folk might interpret, given my odd configuration.

In studying Windows Setup there are some switches that I might attempt to force a verbose dialog onto a separate drive to see what they are doing.  I was unaware that Windows has a compact mode where it can operate from compressed files on the target machine.

More to learn before I assign the bitty box to the recycle bin.  Spending this much effort on a $200 device seems to approach the ‘not worth the effort’ place except as a technical challenge for we would-be sleuths.

• This reply was modified 5 years, 5 months ago by hhodges.
• This reply was modified 5 years, 5 months ago by PKCano.

Indeed there is a log found tucked away.  It shows that various updates were successful but those were updates for 1803.  Apparently once I revert to running setup from the USB, the main log isn’t used, nor does the applications log reflect activity.  So the internal log appears to track what is downloaded and installed, but not what setup was doing.  The update window does report that 1903 update was unsuccessful, so main Windows indeed is aware, but doesn’t say why.

Time for me to learn about setupdiag <sigh>.