Survey Results & More – Ask Leo! Live

Hello, everyone, and welcome to another edition of Ask Leo live.

What the survey was all about was an open-ended question of what kinds of things were basically causing you pain. The questions that I asked were, in a sense, are actually short but short versions of those questions where, where does it hurt? What would you like to learn? And what am I missing? When I look at those questions and how they were asked in the original survey, it really all does boil down to variations on how can I help? What can I do to make technology, Windows, computers, whatever more useful to you and give you more confidence moving forward using that technology. The results as always they all every time I do this, there are surprises in the results of the, the, the biggest surprise. I’ll get to that in a minute. But, the, I wanted to let you know that there were of sending it out to my newsletter audience, I had approximately 1500 responses.

The, 1197 of those are from men, the balance 266 of them were women. Actually 18 preferred not to say or I had at least one person who was apparently quite offended that I included non-binary as one of the options for gender Whatever. So it is definitely weighted towards men. The other interesting piece of the demographic puzzle though, let me go back to my screen so I can show this to you was that if we take a look at the age ranges that were involved that responded to my survey 95% of them were over the age of 55. This is actually not a surprise to me anymore.

When I originally did a survey like this and asked for people’s age ranges when I looked at some of the demographics for people that were responding to my survey about 10 years ago, I think was the first time I did this, then it absolutely surprised me. I had no idea how many of my folks were above 55 actually was the same number at that point. For the record, I’m 62. So I’m at the high end of that first bucket, the 55 to 64 bucket that has 16% of, of the respondents 65 to 74 was the largest bucket of respond”ese”.

And I’m just absolutely thrilled that there were almost 100 respond”ese” in the over 85 bucket. In fact, next time I do this survey, it’s very likely that I will include an over 95 bucket, because I know, I know that I have several nonagenarians on the list, who are active, who are using technology, who have questions, of course, but who are exemplifying the kind of 90 year old that I want to be when I get that far. So I’d like to, we’ll end up finding out just how many of those are next time I run the, run the survey? Like I said, will probably be next year or thereabouts.

So the questions that I asked, there were three of them. What I ended up doing, they were all like I said, freeform questions, people were allowed to type in whatever they wanted to type in. I will be completely honest and say that, no, I have not read all 1500 of them. There’s just, I mean, that’s a lot of information. I really, really appreciate the feedback. But what I’ve been doing is reading select responses, a lot of them several hundred of them by now and trying to look for themes. Themes are what mattered to me when I look at these kind of open-ended responses. And in in doing so, the, the themes that have come up I’m going to talk about the top four themes that identified across these 1500 responses across the responses that I read. The first one you’ll see doesn’t respond me, but it didn’t surprise me.

But there’s one at least that did and not for the reason that you might expect. So the number one theme for questions or for concerns, typically in the, “Where does it hurt” bucket was Windows Update. I’ve got a couple of responses here that I want to read to you some quotes that I cherry picked from the responses that I did read through, “Things have gotten better over the years but it still seems pretty poor that Microsoft updates still cause major problems. An XP update years ago, killed my trusty old desktop and I have never forgiven Microsoft for that. So I would not touch 10 with a bargepole.” A different quote, “The complete unreliability of the Windows OS like installing the December Patch Tuesday, updates on Windows seven crashed the OS completely.

The most pain is caused by Microsoft and their policy of forcing you to upgrade to a newer version of their OS even if you aren’t completely content with the current version.” Those are pretty typical of the kinds of feelings that I have been hearing from people, certainly consistently throughout the survey. It, like I said, it’s the number one theme I’ve been able to identify in the responses that I’ve gotten

Um, the, what my takeaway from that as a couple of different things. I see my role at Ask Leo! is two-fold: I want to help you prepare for this and I want to add a little bit of, I’ll call it “perspective”. Unfortunately, fixing Windows Update is not something I can do. What I can do is at least hold the banner for folks who have suffered from Windows Update problems. It’s one of the reasons that I have an article titled, “Microsoft, We Deserve Better”, that goes into this in some detail, the kinds of things that you and I and everybody really want to be able to trust Microsoft to do when it comes to Windows Update. We want you know, more control over the updates.

We want the updates to be more stable when they arrive. All that kind of thing. We want to feel like we’re not the beta testers of the software, and many people feel that way. Absolutely. I do want to also though, talk a little bit about this concept of perspective. Because one of the problems that I fight against a lot, is what I’ll call my battle against headline news. The fact is update problems regularly show up in the tech news. Depending on which news sources you pay attention to, you may see these headlines fairly regularly. I know that I do. I pay attention to a lot of different technology news sources, both consumer and professional.

And it’s very common to see some incredibly concerning headlines regarding the latest Microsoft update the latest version of Windows, the latest whatever. And the perspective that I bring is simply this: Headlines are written to get you to click so they’re going to be written in the most salacious, most provocative way that they possibly can be. The other part of it is that in order for something to be news worthy, it has to be unusual, right? It has to be something that is controversial or something that is out of the norm. So when we see headlines that imply that Windows Update is broken, what that really should be telling us is that oh my goodness, this is news.

That means for most people, Windows Update is actually working just fine. There’s a numbers exercise that I went through recently, and I honestly don’t remember if I did it for a post or an update to a book that I’m working on or what, but it goes like this: Recently, Microsoft announced that they were approaching 1 billion, that’s 1 billion with a “B”, installed copies of Windows 10. That’s a lot of machines Right, that’s if our population on the planet is, you know, 7.5 billion I think it is, or we’re getting close to eight by now. You know, that’s one out of what there’s a Windows 10 installation for one out of every eight people on the planet. That’s pretty darn amazing. So, let’s say that, let’s just work with a billion installed Windows 10s. Now, Windows Update comes along, and a million people have a problem. A million people, which is also a very large number, right?

A million people that sounds absolutely horrific. And in fact, when you take a look at the headlines that would accompany that kind of a result. Indeed, the headlines would, would play that to the hilt. You know, they say hundreds of thousands machine, of machines crippled by Windows Update or a million machines tanked or bricked or whatever you know, whatever terms that they might want to use with respect to Windows Update, and with respect to their headline. Think about it though, a million machines out of a billion installed copies of Windows 10 is actually one 10th of 1%. If you flip that around, what that means is 99.9% of all machines are working just fine.

They took that update without a problem. What that means to you as a Windows 10 user, when you’re deciding just how scared you need to be about a Windows Update, be it the one that’s coming today, the one that’s coming six months from now, is simply this: Recognize that those headlines are written in a way to be as inflammatory as possible to get you to click. There is if and again, I’m pulling, I’m not saying that, you know, a million machines have a problem. But typically those are the orders of magnitudes. In fact, the order of magnitude is usually less than a million, right? It’s usually less than that many of these headlines get many of these stories come out on.

But let’s just say it’s a million. So you see these headlines, the thing to think about is that oh my gosh, a million machines are having problems, I’m gonna have a problem. No. If a million machines are having a problem, you have a one in 1000 chance of having a problem. Or put another way, you have a 999 out of 1000, or you have a 99.9% of having no problem at all. So I really want to emphasize the, the perceived risk of things like Windows Update, as compared with the reality. Now, I don’t want to, I don’t want to say nobody’s having problems. A million people in my in my made up example had a problem. And if you’re one of them, then what I just said doesn’t help you in the least. Right? You had a problem with Windows Update. And that will, of course, naturally color your view of all future Windows updates. It’s only natural, it’s only right, actually.

But like I said, if you’re one out of 1000 people that experienced a problem, that means that 999 people didn’t, and if you haven’t experienced a problem, please don’t be so concerned about problems, that you start doing things that actually would end up compromising your safety in other ways, like avoiding Windows updates. So anyway, enough about that. That’s just my little rant on the fact that the news media makes us scared of Windows updates when perhaps we shouldn’t necessarily be as scared as we are. If you’ve experienced problems with them, yes, you have experienced problems with them.

One of the ways that I look to help in situations like this, one of the one of the roles that I’ve tried to bring besides this whole perspective thing, is that I want to and will be since this is such a topic, looking for more workarounds for people that are experiencing problems, suggested coping mechanisms is another note that I made to myself, how do we cope with these things? How do we prepare for the possibility? I mean, you know, one in 1000 is still one in 1000. What if you’re that 1001 in 1000, there are ways to prepare and sometimes honestly, my role is just to commiserate to say, Yep, it’s happened to another thousand, you know, a another one in 1000 person. And it’s unfortunate that you’re that person. And you know, you’re not alone. It’s not you. It is Microsoft, they should be doing better. But those are the kinds of things that I do want to try to do a better job of bringing to the table on Ask Leo, when it comes to Windows updates.

The, yeah, so I do want to actually point to my, “Microsoft, We Deserve Better”, article. I don’t have the, the article number in front of me that I missed preparing for that one. The issue there, of course, is that we can’t assume that we can make Microsoft to do anything. So ultimately, we have to make the decisions we make based on the world as it is today, and Windows Update, for better or for worse, is part of that world. So as the news media and so is our approach to, to understanding and interpreting what we see in the news, and then also what you know how, what decisions and what actions we take as a result.

The number two theme that I encounter on the survey results., also, we’ll be no surprise whatsoever, and that is simply the topic of change. Again, I want to read you some quotes that I’ve culled from some of the responses. I think they encapsulate a lot of the issues better than my interpretation might. “I have only recently transitioned to Windows 10 and think, why is it necessary to change so much?”

“I love my Windows 7 because I can have Word 2002 on it. Most flexible and functional word processor I’ve ever had, and I know this is dumb, but I want to keep the old Start menu with Windows 10. I lose all this. I’m old and I just want Microsoft to leave me alone.”

“At 70 years of age coming to grips with new technology has been a challenge. But by staying on my stay in the workforce until three months ago, I have grown and embraced the many changes. However, I find the continuing changing on how to access files, for example, one of the biggest difficulties to keep on top of. I found XP and Windows 7 easy to use, both straightforward and reasonably uncomplicated. I’ve only recently transitioned to Windows 10 and think why is it necessary to change so much?”

“Software developers (this was in response to what’s causing you the most pain) “Software developers who think I spend a lot of time with their apps and understand their nuances so well, they don’t catch on when they change things that have been in place for decades.”

So um, I feel your pain I do what you what you’re saying with respect to change is not at all unheard of. And like I said, it’s the number two theme that that comes across in the survey results that I have. I’ve read so far. And it’s something that I hear from people all the time. The there are a number of I want to say misconceptions, and that is that many of the things that people are concerned about having to cope with are things that they actually don’t have to cope with. They, for example, my reaction to the accessing files complaint is that, well, it really hasn’t changed in Windows 10.

Clearly, this individual who felt that it does is looking at the world or looking at their software a little differently than I am. And that’s important for me to hear. Because what that means is I need to do a better job of understanding exactly what it is people are experiencing, so that I can help them cope. And I do mean, help them cope because there are ways to deal with so many of the issues that people are concerned about when it comes to change. Change is inevitable. I’m not going to shy away from that. If you dislike change, you were primed, to be honest, you were born in the wrong century. So many things have changed in the last 50-60 years.

And it’s not going to stop the pace is certainly accelerating. It’s one of those things that I honestly and truly believe that the better you can accept and even embrace change, the better experience you’re going to have not just with technology, but with the world around you. It’s something that I, get it. It’s not easy. It is it for and it’s certainly easier for some people than others, right? I eat this stuff up, right, I eat, I eat change for breakfast, but and not everybody does. I totally get that. But that doesn’t mean that there’s a way to make it stop. It’s going to persist. So you end up having to understand or to choose how to cope with it. There are several ways to cope with it.

For example, there’s this, this, this feeling that Microsoft and other vendors are forcing you to change, they’re forcing you to move to a new operating system, they’re forcing you to take the newest version of their software. To use an overused statistic already 99.9% of the time, that is simply not the case. Nobody is forcing you to run Windows 10 you’re, you’re certainly capable of running Windows 7 on your old computer with your old copy of Word that you are comfortable with. There is of course a cost I mean that the, the cost is simply that you need to be more on guard when it comes to your security because you’re not getting security updates, but you’re not being forced to install Windows 10.

You can certainly safely continue to use Windows 7, even today, heck, I know people that are still running Windows XP, again, safely – takes a little bit more awareness, but it is something that can be done. So there’s a lot of pressure to update. Um, the, the, the, the analogy that I make is that there is nothing preventing you from continuing to drive your 1957 Chevy assuming it’s in good working order, and assuming that you can get gasoline for it because of course, that’s a leaded vehicle, so you’ll need to get an additive now if you’re getting unleaded gas. If it breaks, you’re going to have a harder time getting parts you’re going to have a harder time finding someone to fix it.

But outside of those pragmatic realities, there’s nothing stopping you from continuing to drive your 57 Chevy every day. If that’s what you’re comfortable in, it’s probably what you’re safest in because you’re so comfortable in that car. Same is true for Windows 7, you are probably safer and more confident running Windows 7, then you might be upgrading to Windows 10. You will have over time, more difficulty maybe finding it in the newer version of applications that run on Windows 7. But the whole point here is that you actually don’t want newer versions of applications. So the idea is that, and to go back to the car analogy real quick, you bet there’s going to be lots of advertising and lots of salesmen trying to get you to buy a new car.

Of course there is there’s nothing new about that. Same is true for Windows, right? There’s lots of advertisements, there’s lots of, of salesmen trying to get you to upgrade to Windows 10, you don’t have to, you can stay with Windows 7 and keep running just fine. As long as you are aware of some of the trade offs that are involved, that’s where people like me come in, right? I mean, the trade offs, the people trying to sell you, Windows 10, aren’t going to say, nah you can stay with Windows 7, as long as you do this, this and this, because they’re motivated to get you to go to Windows 10. I, on the other hand, am motivated to help you be confident in what you do with your technology. And if that means sticking with Windows 7, yeah, I’ve got a couple of articles about exactly what you need to do to stick with Windows 7 and stick with it safely. So those are the kinds of things I think that a lot of people don’t realize what kind of choices they really have.

And they envision or they view a lot of the information that they’re fed by the tech industry by the by companies like Microsoft and Google and Facebook and whatever, as being things that they have no choice over. Now, so you I think the bottom line here is I think you honestly have more choice over change than you might think. Obviously, that’s not always true. It’s true for the software you’ve got installed on your machine. But for example, as I record this today, today’s what June the sixth 2020 No, yesterday, I got the new Facebook interface. It’s on my desktop web browser. So when I log into Facebook, it looks a little different than it did the day before.

There’s nothing I can do about that. Facebook is going to have the interface that Facebook has and if they want to change it, they can change it. The choices I have, though, well, I have several, to be honest. I know of at least one person who used this as the last straw to finally say, you know what, Facebook, enough problems, I’m out of here. She let her friends know, she lets her audience know where to find her on Instagram and Twitter and her own website and those kinds of things. So her choice with this in reaction to this change is to leave. Facebook will not change their interface unless everybody left which of course is unlikely to have happen.

Another choice is not always available. But another choice when it comes to Facebook, of course, is that there are browser add-ins that will change the interface for you both. I think it’s Fluff-busting Purity and Social Fixer are the two that I have used in the past. I’m currently using. I’m using FBP, Fluff-busting Purity, just to filter my feed and get rid of a few things and get rid of some of the ads and so forth. I find it very, it does make Facebook experience a better one for me. And they’re in the process of figuring out how to deal with the new interface. And I’m certainly confident that they will update their software to accommodate the change. And then they will do whatever they do. Make whatever features available that will allow people to customize the Facebook user interface the way they want to, to the extent that they can.

That’s another option. That’s another choice you have as a Facebook user. You can live with it, which I suspect most people will do, you can leave which I suspect a few people will do or you can look for third party alternatives or third party fixes to maybe make things happen differently. Not always available. And I think I suspect that those, those tools have enough value in general that I suspect that this might be another case of, of a feature change, causing more people to adopt some of those tools. But again, you have choices. Same thing was true when a years ago, Hotmail changed their user interface. They kept the old one for a while, then they made the old one go away. Everybody got upset? Why did you have to make a change? Well, they did.

Regardless of the reasons they did, and people had to move forward with the new interface or choose to leave, which I know some people did. Again, there was a choice. So again, I think you’ve got more choices in general than you, than you then you believe. Then again, this is something I don’t want to say you know, it’s all your fault. That’s not what I’m trying to say here at all the companies that are, are implementing these changes, honestly, they need to do a better job of answering the question that you heard me quote several times. Why? Why are you making this change? What’s in it for me the user? Why should I care? Why should I accept? Why should I give you the time of day and with respect to the change that you are now implementing, regardless of whether or not I like it? Companies need to do a much better job of doing that. They’re going to change. I think that’s one of the things that we all need to understand and accept. But in fact, it’s my position that a company that fails to change will die. Absolutely any kind of a product that doesn’t change in some way. Year-to-year, decade-to-decade is a product that’s going to die. And that’s something that I think we all have to at least come to terms with when it comes to change.

Personally, again, this is me, like I said, I eat change for breakfast, but I also look forward to it. And one of the reasons that, one of the reasons I love this industry is all the change, not because it’s something that I find specifically interesting about this change or that change. The fact that Facebook is changing doesn’t interest me in the least it’s something I have to cope with. It’s not something that gets me excited. But what gets me excited is the fact that like I said earlier, I’m 62, right? I want something to keep me engaged, to force me to think, to make me be something less than complacent when it comes to the world in front of me.

And technology does that for me. I know that 10 years from now, over the course of the next 10 years, I will have been forced to adapt, to learn, to change, and that’s good, that’s good for my brain, it’s good for my mental abilities, it’s good for my longevity. And it’s one of the ways that I approach change in general is that regardless of whether I like this specific change, or that specific change, or even the changes that I do like, the fact that there is change is something that I think is important for me to understand and accept and embrace, because it’s better for me in the long run, as well as being necessary for those companies very survival. Number, also number two, I’m going to call this number 2A or 2B, actually just because it was a tie in terms of the number of times I found this one.

I’ll read you the quote, “The ridiculous complexity of trying to do a backup, I shouldn’t have to wade through miles of tech jargon that I don’t understand, to try and set up a backup plan. Neither should I have to go through the same in order to reinstall a backup. A backup should be as simple to accomplish as selecting how you want to do a backup, image or incremental, and clicking your choice, the program should do the rest without further action from the user.”

So the surprise to me was that for as much as I talk about backing up, and I talk about it a lot, in fact, I, I honestly worry that I still talk about it too much to the point of annoying people with the topic. I was surprised at how frequently the topic still came up in the survey results. Clearly, backing up remains an issue for many, many people. And to be clear, I absolutely agree with this comment. It’s spot on. Backing up should be a hell of a lot easier than it is; it just should be. And I think that even just saying that is one of the ways that I try to add value in the sense that it’s not you. It’s not you. Backing up on Windows is a pain in the butt. It really is.

And it shouldn’t require me writing two books and having two choices and having tons of videos and lots of articles and revisiting the topic over and over and over again, in order to explain it so that more people can actually make it happen. And yet, here we are. What I wish for Windows and I honestly have no idea why this doesn’t exist. If any of you out there have used Macs, Apple Macintosh, you’ll know exactly what I’m talking about: Time Machine. Time Machine is very close to what the quote I just read is looking for. When I had a Mac myself, when I set up a Mac for my wife, it was a case of okay, let’s grab an external hard drive. In fact, I, I still have them here in my desk drawer. This is probably the one that I used at some point for one of the Macs that, that I’ve been running. I plug in the external hard drive, I fire up Time Machine, I say use that drive. I click OK.

And magic happens. It just backs up. And restoring as it turns out, is actually just about as simple depending on what it is you’re wanting to do. There’s an interface. It’s a lot like File History, and I’ll talk about File History in a moment. There’s an interface very similar to File History that allows you to sort of go back in time to page back in time to see what files you want to restore from when. Time Machine manages its own. disk space. It can also be used to do a complete restore of the entire image of your machine. I mean, it’s pretty nifty; it is pretty cool. It’s not perfect. Don’t get me wrong and I’m sure that the, the folks who are significantly more Mac literate than I am will point to various flaws. But in comparison to what we have available to us on Windows, it actually seems like a pretty good deal. I don’t like, I don’t know why something like that doesn’t exist for Windows.

Folks were, I think it was something called One Click for a long time did something very close. They actually sold you a hard drive and you plug it in and magic would happen. They’re no longer supported. I guess I got a question from someone with a one with a One Click problem that my suggestion was to go back to the to the vendor to One Click and get some help and he couldn’t because they’re just apparently not around anymore. So I’m not sure why that failed. I have my theories. But I’m not sure why that failed. And I’m not sure why somebody else hasn’t stepped up, because it’s a huge, huge opportunity. It’s not very sexy, it just isn’t very sexy. And that might be the reason.

But I would love to see a Time Machine like equivalent on Windows. What we have instead, and Microsoft has slowly kind of been moving towards this and then backing off from a couple of the aspects of it, if you take OneDrive, and add to that File History, and add to that the Reset Your PC ability within Windows already, which has greatly improved, I really appreciate that. And then maybe adding the image backups, you’ve basically got a combination that achieves more or less the same results. There’s two problems with that. One is Microsoft is deprecating the image backup functionality in Windows at some point it’s going to go away and in fact, their official documentation says Yeah, no, if you want to image backup utility, you really want a third party solution and they actually don’t point to a third party solution.

They just say you need one. Of course, my recommendation then is to go to something like Marcum Reflect or Eases To-do, either of who have free versions that will give you the image backup that honestly is better than the one that’s built into Windows anyway. But, so they backed off of that, but that little spaghetti tech soup of technology, OneDrive, File History, Reset Your PC and image backups. Yeah, it gets you kind of close and it actually does give you the complete coverage you really need for backing up your PC except it is anything but plug in a drive click a button and have it work right. You have to go here set this up. You have to go there to set that up. You have to you know it’s a multi-step process. So the opportunity for me is once again to really try and understand where people’s current pain points are when it comes to backing up and see if I can’t do a better job of making people feel significantly more comfortable.

I can’t just magically come up with a one-click solution. Not my business, not, it’s not something I can do. But I can at least try to paste together these pieces to get you comfortable backing up, and to do that with as little jargon and complexity and tech soup as I can. And on one hand, like I said, I’m a little surprised and somewhat disappointed that this is still an issue because I’ve been talking about it so much. But on the other hand, I really appreciate hearing that it is still an issue for so many people because it really does restore a little bit of my faith that Yeah, I’m talking about the right thing. So again, that’s number 2B if you will, it’s, it’s it was tied for second spot in terms of the topics that I were talking about.

Number three, this is going on for a bit, good. Number three is networking. And honestly, this one is no surprise whatsoever. In fact, I have an article on Ask Leo entitled, The entire title is two words, “Networking Sucks”. It’s uh, let’s see, askleo.com/2441. And it’s, it’s titled that, that article is actually somewhat depressing, because I wrote it first in the year 2005. So we’re talking an article that originated 15 years ago, we’re talking a sentiment that originated 15 years ago, and I updated it just two years ago.

And one of the comments I made when I updated that article was how depressing it was to realize how little had changed in the intervening, intervening time. The issues that we talked about when we in my this new sort of networking topic, are things like just internet connectivity and speed, sites not working, strange error messages, how to share files between two machines, boy, that should be so much easier than it is, accessing a local printer that causes so many people grief, it really does, and so on.

It’s funny because Microsoft had and what I’m going to call an aborted attempt to solve this problem. I really want to give them credit for trying, and that’s one group. Home group actually did solve a few of the pieces of this puzzle, in that if you got two machines on the same home group, then all of a sudden a bunch of the, the networking plumbing that we typically have to deal with to make them see and talk to one another just sort of got magically handled, which was kind of nice.

And they took it away, right? It’s not around anymore. It was a mess. To be fair, it was a confusing mess. But removing it left a vacuum, especially, or at least for multiple machines on local networks. And I think we’re still feeling a bit of the pain of that removal today. I generally, I hate to say it, but I will admit that I generally avoid talking about networking because it is such a pain. Solutions for one person typically aren’t solutions for more than one person. Solutions are often long and complex and filled with jargon. It’s really frustrating. Both at your end to have a problem with networking, but it’s also frustrating. My end to, to think about what’s it going to take to, to describe this answer in in words that a normal person can understand?

And sometimes the answer is, I’m not sure that I can. I mean, it’s something that I tried to do. And I actually get a lot of positive feedback for doing it at a lot of other areas. But networking is hard. It really is. And while I don’t want to use that as an excuse, it is the reality of the situation. And it is something that, again, being this high on the results of the survey, something that I am going to try and focus on a little bit more again in the future. I’d like to turn it all into English. I really would.

The other piece that surprised me, the next topic is security. And to be honest, I’m surprised that this wasn’t higher. That’s the surprise for me. Let me read you the, the quote that I chose for this one: “I always feel lacking myself in this area. But the number of people of all ages who do not even bother with the most basic of security is staggering. I’ve dealt with almost 200,000 people over my many years of my work and so very often would be told, I only use computers for emails to my family or I don’t do online banking or similar things, and therefore felt they did not need any sort of protection. I know, I am known in my family as the password and backup Queen, as I have very strong passwords, different ones for all sites. Perhaps I overdo it with security and backups, but I sleep better at night. I absolutely love that position.”

No, you are not overdoing it. If anybody’s overdoing it I’m overdoing it. And usually when it comes to backups, the but security I just loved this quote which is why I wanted to share it with you. It is absolutely true that the number of people who don’t take even the most basic of security steps is absolutely staggering. And what I try and help them when I try and interact with them and try and get them to move just a little bit forward. I understand. It’s, it’s hard, it’s complicated, it’s annoying, and it is frustrating, but it is also necessary. And it is a real challenge that something that sites like Ask Leo and other tech support sites and individuals deal with on a fairly regular basis. I do want to share the one of the interesting things about Ask Leo over the years.

My number one article on the site today, in other words, the article that has the most people visiting it every single day is, let’s see, “How do I recover my Facebook password?” Right? It’s askleo.com/4388. And for me it’s funny because when I started Ask Leo very quickly, it became Hotmail password related, right? It was all about lost Hotmail passwords, and I caught a lot of grief and a lot of flack from friends and colleagues, who would basically jokingly ask me to help them reset their Hotmail password. It’s transitioned right? Facebook is the online service that has the most users, way more than Hotmail. Now. It’s, it’s huge for a variety of reasons. And of course, as a result, security is an issue, passwords get lost accounts get compromised and so forth.

It’s I kind of the fact that this is so much a thread in my survey responses i think is interesting. Mostly because I’ve actually I, I’m choosing to take some heart in it, because what it means is that people are aware of security issues, those people that are concerned about security and wondering what to do, are at least aware that security is important, and I love that; I find that encouraging. What that means for me is that I will keep on doing what I’m doing when it comes to security, be it advising people how to, how to recover their Facebook password if they can, but perhaps more importantly, how to prepare for, how not to lose your Facebook password or,or how to prepare for a hacked account in a way that, in a way that would allow you to never have to get to the point of needing to recover a Facebook password.

So that is, like I said, the number, number four, number five topic that I came through with security. And like I said, it is something that I do touch on regularly. And I had no plans on changing. And this is one of those things where, yes, it’s good to get the reinforcement that, yep, security is important. And I need to continue to help people stay more secure and above all feel confident that they are secure when, when they’re using their online accounts. So that was number four.

So when I take a look at all of the questions and all of the feedback that I got on the survey, if I had to have like an overarching theme for all the feedback, the most common theme, obviously it doesn’t cover everything, is I’ll just say, stability. If I had to put a theme on it so far, it’s a stability and maybe predictability. People just want things to work. And when things don’t work, they need clearer answers to Is it me? Is it the system? Have I been hacked? And how do I move forward? How do I fix it?

And I think that those are my big takeaways from the survey. And I I think that just trying to cover any of that will keep me, keep me in questions and articles and videos for a long time to come. Certainly, I’m trying to do more here on YouTube, as I hope you may have noticed, on the Ask Leo YouTube channel is now getting some regular uploads pretty much every day almost every day, almost every day, pretty much several each week, where I’m trying to make it easier for people not only to find the answers to the questions that they have, but to understand the answers that I’m trying to provide.

So, so basically, that’s the survey. I really, really if you were one of the people who filled out that survey last year, last December, I really, really appreciate your feedback. I cannot tell you just how immensely valuable that kind of information is to folks like me to understand how best I can help serve you. I thank you for being here.

Thank you for following Ask Leo. If and I, I fail at this every time I really need to do a better job of this. If you’re on YouTube, if you could please subscribe to my channel, hit the thumbs up button for this video. It actually helps Ask Leo get discovered it helps more people find their answers. And lets YouTube know that you appreciate what what’s going on here. So if you could do that, I and everybody who comes after you will appreciate it.

As always, take care everybody stay safe, be healthy, be kind to one another. And I will see you again here real soon. Take care.