The 2024 Livestreamed FHC is Over, but Digital Recordings are Now Available!

Thanks to everyone who made our 2024 Family History Conference such a resounding success! We are so grateful to the many volunteers who worked behind the scenes to organize the program and to those who worked all day at the conference. Many thanks go also to the archivists and librarians from local repositories who came to share information with registrants, and, of course, to our members and friends who attended both in person and via Zoom. From the early hours of the morning to late afternoon when people with smiling faces headed to their cars, tired but happy, the day was filled with great conversations, an incredible amount of new information, arms full of items purchased from the StLGS sales tables, and many promises to get online and start practicing new skills! Did you miss it? Well, here is some good news . . .

Free Genealogy Webinars are Just a Click Away!

Twelve months of mostly being at home has given many of us the chance to explore new ways of learning using our computers or tablets. Have you discovered the benefits of free webinars yet? Did you know you can watch thousands of digital recordings without any fees at all? Yes, sometimes there are advertisements, but they are relatively unobtrusive and easily passed over. By now, many of us also know that there are instructions online for just about anything we want to do. In fact, just last week, like magic, a two-minute YouTube video saved this writer a trip to the store and the price of a new pneumatic door closer when just a few squeezes of a piece of metal with a strong pair of pliers was all it needed. OK, that was fixer-upper stuff—what about our favorite hobby? Are there free webinars available on genealogy? Indeed there are, and here are some places you can start to look for them.

Safety First: Protect Yourself Online

Along with those dozens of annoying robocalls, it seems to be open season for online scamming. If you have good filters on your email, you may never see most of the deluge of emails that are meant to be stealing your money and/or your identity because they will be sent directly to your spam or junk mail folders. However, even with the best attempts at filtering, inevitably, some of those messages get through and you may be tempted to open an attachment, click on a link, or, worse still, actually send someone a gift card or credit card number.

This attempt to steal from you online is called phishing. Pronounced "fishing," it is meant for you to take the bait so a criminal can reel you in! Just in the past few weeks, your blogger has received an email from a known contact asking for a gift card for her nephew, two emails purportedly from Apple asking to click on a link to reenter account information, and masses of emails from "Google" saying files were corrupt, photos unavailable, and mail was going to be deleted, none of which was true.

How can you protect yourself, especially if you aren't really tech savvy?

• First, be smart! Don't fall for emails asking for anything of value, even if you know the person asking. Call or text the person in question and verify whether he or she actually sent you the email before taking any action. 
• Learn to look at who really sent an email before you respond to it. Most emails have a "Reply-To" line with the name of the sender. If you click on the sender's name, you will see the actual email address from which the note came. Many fake emails don't have the Reply-To visible, but there is still a way to see who sent the email. In the example to the right, clicking on the "Google Notify" line yielded the hidden address, which you can see is clearly NOT from Google.
• Don't ever click on a link in a message that seems to be from a company but has grammatical or spelling mistakes. It is very rare that a message from a major company is sent out with those kinds of errors. If you aren't sure about something, go to the website yourself by typing in the address, or call the company.
• Make sure your passwords are safe. Don't use simple words like "password" or "onetwothree." Your passwords should have combinations of letters, numbers, and symbols and be unique for each website. Plan on changing passwords if and when you think they might have been compromised.
• Most important, be proactive. Stay alert and aware so you don't become a victim of scamming! You can also report phishing attempts to the company who supposedly sent them to you. Most have dedicated abuse email addresses to which you can forward suspicious emails. Don't, however, expect a response, as they seldom do answer, but that doesn't mean they aren't taking action.