Hardware

Lou is from the Bahamas and he's looking for a way to stay connected after a natural disaster. Leo says Satellite Phones are a good option. They aren't cheap, but if he can rent them, he can stay connected when he needs it. But a more affordable thing to do is to become a ham radio operator. He can get a handheld device and become a part of the emergency action network. Then when he needs to make a call, have a ham route the radio through to a phone. That's both affordable and valuable when there's an emergency.

Allan recently bought a hard drive docking station from a manufacturer in China. Is it secure? Leo says the reality is that everything is made in China, or South Korea. China has become the factory to the world, and many are worried since spyware has been found in the past. The government has even warned that companies like Huawei aren't secure and could be owned by the Chinese Government. But even if they aren't, they have to follow the rules in China. So it comes down to whether you're someone spies can benefit from. It's called the "Threat model." Odds are, you aren't a target.

Karen wants to know if she should flash her firmware on her router to get it to work better. Leo says that in a way, you flash that firmware almost every time you update. But if you're talking about using third-party firmware, they can be very good, but they are limited in the routers they support. Check out DD-WRT.com and look in the router database to see if it's compatible. Most routers don't support it, sadly. What Leo recommends is ASUS routers, because they use their own flavor of DD-WRT.