Tips on How to Block Cellphone Spam

OK, here's the answer to a problem that you may not have had yet, but you will. Trust me.

New York Times Tech Columnist David Pogue's column today is How to Block Cellphone Spam. You may not have experienced mobile phone spam yet, but it is coming and, as he notes, it is much worse than e-mail spam. Unlike e-mail spam, you may have to pay for this depending on your plan, you have to open it to delete it and it makes your phone beep (surely every lawyer has turned off the incoming mail sound notification of their e-mail program by now--if not, do it now.) Read David Pogue's article. If you don't want to make these changes now, do whatever you usually do to be able to locate it again. Print it. Save it. Bookmark it. AT&T and Verizon customers have great solutions. T-Mobile is a little less so, but good. Sprint's needs upgrading. I'm not tell you how here. Click on the link to read the article.

Security Issues of Carrying Digital Documents

UPDATE: Since my original post, David Bilinsky has "responded" and alerted us to that fact that more secure laptops are now in the pipeline and we should expect to be seeing them soon.

How secure is your laptop? David Bilinsky made a blog post that alerted me to his article "Electronic devices – encryption and client confidentiality issues" that was recently published in the Law Society of British Columbia Bencher's Bulletin. The article is worth your time to read. With more and more information being carried on laptops and other portable electronic devices, we are hearing increasing reports of devices being lost or stolen containing confidential client information. Of course, USB flash drives, PDA's and mobile phones are even easier than laptops to lose.

David believes that it is time to consider encrypting the entire hard drive of a portable computer rather than just a number of confidential folders or files. The reasoning is that selective encryption does not protect swap files, deleted files, temp files, cookies and other sources of information. In fact no less an authority than the Executive Office of the President has instructed agencies to do this. See long boring gov't memo here. I just wonder how many lawyer aren't encrypting any files on their laptops.

One thing that surprises me is that we haven't seen more "secure" computers advertised for sale. While there are many ways to secure your data, it seems like purchasing your computer with the encryption package or packages already preloaded would be popular.

Recently I was making a purchase at Office Depot and noticed a container full of USB Flash Drives for under $10 each. But I have been telling lawyers that it is probably a better value to spend eight or ten times that amount to buy a secure flash drive like the Ironkey. A device that is marketed based on strong encryption gives me a feeling of security (as did seeing an expert like John Simek pull one out of his pocket a few weeks ago.) There are certainly several options in password protected or encrypted USB drives.

I won't disagree with David's analysis. But I will note that if you haven't made any moves in this area, you can order a secure USB flash drive today and and start using it instead of your laptop to carry around client documents within the next few days.

The Most Important Button on Your Mobile Phone

Well, maybe I should say instead "the most important button that you may not be able to find."

I refer to the mute button on your mobile phone. It is often not well marked. If you don't know where yours is located, take a few minutes today to examine your phone or the book that came with it to figure out which button is the mute button. As I assume everyone understands, the mute button turns the phone mouthpiece off temporarily so that you cannot be heard. That lets you have a private conversation with someone seated next to you, for example. That may be useful.

But that's not the real reason I want you to know where your mobile phone mute button is. I'm  being selfish. I want you to know where the button because some day I may be involved in a conference call or three way call with you. Lawyers are busy people and our schedule may force us to participate in a conference call while using a mobile phone. But do not do this again without knowing where your mute button is and using it. It's really easy. After being connected and introducing yourself, you push the mute button so that the background noise from your phone does not disturb everyone else. If you are asked a question or want to make a comment, you push the mute button to activate the mouthpiece and talk. When finished, you mute again.

Mobile phone speakers are very sensitive and unless you are in a totally quiet room with no heat or air running, you will send annoying noise into the conference. You may think your car is very quiet, but it is not. We hear the wind and the road and the motor. And it is very frustrating to those using landlines to have to deal with all that racket! We had a conference call with a fairly large group recently and a very critical participant called in from a Starbucks. She could not get back to her office and needed to use the Internet, so she stopped by Starbucks. It was a crowded Starbucks and the background noise was deafening. None of the rest of us could understand the others and I rapidly got a headache trying to participate. Finally one of the participants became so frustrated he asked her for the model number of her phone and searched on the Internet until he was able to find a diagram and describe the unmarked mute button to her.

Don't let that happen to you. Determine where your mute button is on your own and practice using it. Some day soon you will be really glad that you did, as will others.

Preventing Mobile Security Disasters

Think of all of the information contained on all of the mobile phones, flash drives, MP3 players, portable hard drives, backup tapes and other information storage devices that can be carried in a pocket or hand bag. Then think of the number of news items you have read in the last year or so about lost or stolen laptop computers. Last year I hatched a plan to write the ultimate mobile security article. But honestly, that's not really possible to do in a short article and, as technology advances, parts of the work become dated. Still, it was an area where lawyers could use more information and I asked some talented people to pitch in for the project.

The ultimate result was "A Lawyer’s Guide to Mobile Computer Security" by Ellen Freedman, Reid Trautz and Jim Calloway. It was published in the Oklahoma Bar Journal, the Pennsylvania Lawyer and Immigration Law Today, the official publications of the bar associations that have the authors on staff for practice management advisors. But interestingly, that wasn't the end of the story. Some reprint requests starting trickling in and then the trickle became a flood. We've asked bloggers and e-newsletter publishers just to link to the online version of the article noted above from the OBA.

But Technolawyer asked to reprint it as a Technofeature and it will be available in the July/August issue of Legal Management, published by the Association of Legal Administrators, with a circulation of around 20,000. Certainly that is gratifying for the three of us. But the main point is that there is a need for this information. So, if you missed this article the first time around, you can read it on the OBA site as noted above or check out the nifty PDF version that Technolawyer makes available to its authors linked below.  After all, there is no doubt that we will be carrying more and more information on our mobile devices in the future.

Download Calloway-Trautz-Freedman-MobileSecurity-TF05-29-07.pdf (182.4K)

How to Secure Your Wireless Network

PC World has a nice article titled "How to Secure Your Wireless Network." The article also discusses security for users who may log into wi-fi networks as they travel around. If you have ever logged into a wi-fi hotspot or think you might some day, this is good reading.

Treo Holster

I have not liked most of the Treo holsters I have seen and I've examined several belonging to others. I want to be absolutely sure it won't accidentally fall off my belt and I want it to be easy to grab and answer. One of the posts by Grant  Griffith I referenced earlier this week had a glowing review of this Treo Rubberized Holster. Since it was on "holiday sale" for $9.95, I purchased it immediately, figuring even if I only used it part time it was worth it. (S/H was $3.95 for a total of $13.90.) I ordered it Thursday or Friday and it arrived Monday.

I'm quite pleased. It comes out of the holster easily and faces inward to avoid accidental damage to the Treo. The J shape on the bottom of the spring loaded clip makes it virtually impossible that it will accidentally fall off. In fact some may not like the fact that it doesn't easy come off of a wide belt when you want to remove it, but that's just what I wanted for security. Two thumbs up.

Treo Talk

I think almost every lawyer should carry a smart phone. There is a huge benefit in synchronizing  this device with your office calendar and contacts and having them with you at all times. The smart phone you wish to use is up to you, as is to what extent you want to send and receive e-mail and surf the Web from your phone. But I've been quite happy to be able to check my calendar and schedule appointments and to-do tasks on weekends and evenings. I've not used Blackberries, but many lawyers swear by them. I have a Treo 650, as do quite a few of my fellow OBA staff and OBA officers.

A recent post about the benefits of a Treo 650 was published on The Practice blog by guest Grant Griffiths. Virginia attorney Ben Glass replied with a comment that his firm had experienced a lot of performance issues and rebooting. Some others on Solosez have made the same observations. I have to reboot my Treo about once a month and have never lost any data. 

My first Treo flunked an unintentional stress test, but the failure didn't really offend or surprise me. I thought about trying to tell the story that it saved my life.

Grant has started the PDA Lawyer blog and I direct your attention to his post about the utility programs he uses on his Treo 650. I'd guess I am an average Treo user. I just never seem to find the time to learn the more advanced Treo features. But even at that level, it is a great tool for me and I do learn new things to do with it all the time. If you are a novice level Treo user, I'd say a great "beginner" customization is to add several Favorites on the phone interface view. I find that having many of those is a real time saver.

Solos and Their Mobile Phones

This week brings an all-mobile phone theme issue of the Solo Newsletter (from ABA GP/Solo Division.) This newsletter has four very brief treatments of several phone issues.

All of these are worth reading, but if you only have time to read one, it has got to be David Leffler's great essay on how his smart phone makes him feel like a superhero. Great job, David. This is must reading for all those lawyers who say they have no use for a camera or other advanced functions in a phone.

Solo Newsletter Volume 12, no. 3
Table of Contents

My Cell Phone—My Superhero
By David Leffler

Making a Choice—Cell Phone or Converged Device?
By Jeffrey Allen

You’re Just Not That Important!
By jennifer j. rose

Buying a Cell Phone
By Daniel J. Siegel

VolumeCare for the Treo

I like a lot of things about my Treo mobile phone. There are also things I do not like. As I was discussing with OBA Executive Director John Morris Williams recently, one of the real annoyances of our Treo 650's was the insufficient volume. It is really annoying that a phone manufacturer would release a product with this problem. It seems like a core phone function to me. Well, help is at hand in the form of a shareware utility called VolumeCare. You just have to put aside the fact that you shouldn't have to buy this and be happy that you can. VolumeCare Pro is $19.95. VolumeCare Basic is $14.95. You can find positive reviews here and here. Don't take my word for it. You can download a 15 day free trial here or here. It is time for most lawyers to have a smart phone, like a Treo or Blackberry. It is just too valuable to have your calendar and all of your contacts with you at all times and an old-style PDA means you have to carry that and the phone with you. (Of course that assumes you have your calendar and contacts on your computer so they can be synchronized with the smart  phone.)