Two webinars have been scheduled for the month of May, 2012. Here is the information:

Wednesday, May 16, 2012 – 10:00 a.m.
An Overview of Tablets: iPad and Android

Whether you already own a tablet or you’re considering the purchase of one, this webinar is for you! In this free, 30-minute webinar, we’ll look at tablet features, security and ways to use one. Please join us and invite your friends and family!  Pre-registration is required.  Please click HERE. 

Thursday, May 24, 2012 – 2:00 p.m.
Webcams: A Look From Both Sides of The Lens

In this free, 30-minute webinar, we’ll take a close look at webcams – how you can use one to communicate, watch your home, and take snapshots; – places and events you can watch online by viewing someone else’s webcam! You won’t want to miss this webinar! Please join us and invite your friends and family!  To register, please click HERE.

If you are a Facebook viewer, beware of a fake application making the rounds right now.  The app claims that by installing it, you will be able to see who is viewing your Facebook profile.  (Facebook currently has no applications which will record/report who is viewing your Facebook profile.)  If you allow the application to install, it may be possible for the application to reveal your personal information.  Read all about this rogue application here:

http://nakedsecurity.sophos.com/2012/03/27/facebook-profile-viewer-rogue-application/?utm_source=Naked+Security+-+Sophos+List&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=b946855946-naked%252Bsecurity

There are always fake emails around and here’s another one of them.  Watch our video to learn how to avoid spending money unnecessarily.

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Our first webinar in March will be on Tuesday, March 13th at 10:00 a.m.  The topic is:  PayPal, Google Checkout: Why Should You Use Them?    You can sign up now by clicking HERE.

Webinar #2 for March will be held Wednesday, March 28th at 1:00 p.m.                                                                             

The topic will be:  Lists and Groups: What Are They? Should I get involved?  Don’t lose your spot for this webinar!  Register HERE. 

We’ve changed the date of our March Seminar.  Instead of the 17^th, we will conduct the seminar on Saturday, March 10, 2012.  We’ll still meet at the usual time: 10:00 a.m.-12 Noon but on the 10^th, instead.  As usual, come early for coffee and donuts.  If you’re going to watch on the Internet because you can’t be there in person, sign up now by registering HERE.

Working on approximately 150 computers a week, we know how frustrated computer users can get when things go wrong.  We all want our computers to be reliable and working well and, in a perfect world, they would be just that.  Unfortunately, as we all know, this isn’t a perfect world and computers don’t always do what we want them to do.

One of the things we hear from customers is that they appreciate how understanding and patient we are with them when they log into Remote Technical Support or when we are in their homes.  The reason we can be so empathetic with our customers is that we live in that same, imperfect, computer problem-filled world!

Take yesterday, for instance.  It was President’s Day and started out like most Monday mornings.  Joyce went for a walk with Zeke, our crazy Cairn Terrier, and I made the coffee for when the walk was over.  That was the last of anything normal!

After coffee-making, things quickly went downhill.  I turned Joyce’s computer on and no picture appeared – no BIOS screen, no Windows splash screen, nothing!  After some investigation, I discovered that her computer’s monitor had crashed.  I swapped it out for a different monitor and she was back in business. 

I had barely exhaled a sigh of relief when I looked at my shop laptop and saw the BSOD.  Blue Screen Of Death errors, once common in Windows XP, are rare in Windows 7.  So, I did exactly what we tell our customers to do when this type of thing happens: I held in the power button until the laptop shut down, I disconnected the power cord, and then I dropped the battery out.  I waited a couple of minutes before I put everything back together.  The laptop started up slowly (since it was recovering from a sudden shutdown).  Once everything was booted up, the laptop worked well and there were no more issues for the rest of the day.

Well, no more issues with the laptop, that is.  After an extremely busy morning in Remote Technical Support, my primary email (john@4kcc.com) went down.  At 2:33 p.m., I received an email from Chili’s Restaurant, then nothing.  I waited two hours and when no more email arrived, I called our hosting service.  My email account is in something called Microsoft Exchange and it is hosted on the servers we’ve used since 2001.  The company we use is dependable and we rarely have issues.  After three years of using this account, this was the first time I ever had to call regarding Exchange.  The server company wrote up a ticket and work began.  During the next twelve hours, the company sent me updates as to the progress on repairing the problem.  Finally, at 2:39 a.m. today, email began working again.  Only one small problem: all the emails that would have come in during the 12 hours our email was down are gone – lost in the virtual space between computers – and never to be recovered.  For some, twelve hours of missing mail wouldn’t be a big deal.  However, when you’re in the computer business, that twelve hours probably means there were 250 to 300 emails lost forever.

Oh, so if you emailed us between 2:30 p.m. yesterday and 2:30 a.m. this morning, please resend!

Computer-wise, yesterday was the kind of day that keeps us grounded and reminds us how frustrating it is when things go wrong.  So, if you hear understanding in our voices when you have a bad computer day, you’ll understand that we definitely do feel your pain.

There are a number of  “hacker plots” going on right now including taking over an account, setting up a dummy account and having all email forwarded to the bogus email address.  We have a page where we discuss this very situation –  you should definitely check it out.  You’ll find it HERE.

Unfortunately, in all of the email hacking cases we’ve seen lately, the email accounts were taken over because the account owner had used a simple, easily-hacked password.  We have been preaching about this since 2001 and we know some of our customers are probably tired of hearing us on our soapbox.  Yet, not using a secure, safe password is the number one reason email accounts are taken over by unscrupulous people.  We have a free tutorial on creating secure passwords; you’ll find it HERE. 

If you think you are already using a secure password, you should test it and see if you’re correct.  You can test your current password’s strength (or that of a new password you’re going to start using) by going HERE.

Finally, when it comes to passwords, besides having a strong password, remember this rule: don’t use the same password for everything!  If a hacker breaks your password one place, he or she would then have access to all your log-ins.

If you have pcAnywhere on your computer and don’t know how to disable it or remove it, please contact us.  Our Remote Technical Support customers can simply log into Remote.  Others may email or call us for assistance.

Do you have or do you know someone who has a Bellsouth email address?  If so, be sure to read and share this post about a scam that we’ve seen too frequently in the last 10 days.  The picture above is a partial screen capture of the email which is causing a lot of problems.  (If you want to see the full email, just click on the image.)  There are several variations of the scam and we’ll give you the details of the ones we’ve seen.

If you have a Bellsouth email address, you may receive an email similar to the one we’re showing here.  The email does NOT come from AT&T but is made to appear that way.  In the email, you are asked for your User name and your password.  Other information may be requested, however, the user name and password is all that is really needed by the hacker sending the email.  The email may appear to come or may actually come from an email address with which you are familiar.

(As soon as you see a request for your password, a major warning sign should appear!  Keeping in mind that regular email is totally unencrypted and can be read by anyone who intercepts it, no ISP (Internet Service Provider) and no financial institution will ever ask for your password in an email.  Nor, will they ever ask for your P.I.N.  (Personal Identification Number)  Anytime you receive an email asking for your password or P.I.N., forget anything and everything else it says – it is a scam.  You need to delete it!)

If you mistakenly reply to the email and give your real user name and password, here’s what may happen:

Armed with your user name and password, the hacker will most likely log into your Bellsouth email account and do one or more of the following (if not all):

1)  Change the settings of your email so that all your email will be forwarded to a dummy account which the hacker has set up.  This dummy account may look very similar to your legitimate Bellsouth account.  Since the email is being forwarded, you will stop receiving emails because they are bypassing you and going to the hacker’s account.

2)  If the hacker does step #1, he or she will then use your account to send out emails to everyone in your address book in an attempt to scam them.  The hacker may send an email claiming to be you and saying that you’re in a foreign country without money.  If one of your friends replies to the email to verify if it’s legitimate, the hacker gets the email and replies with how to send money.  You never see this email exchange because you are being bypassed in the entire procedure.

3)  Change your account name to “Bellsouth Technical Support” or something similar.  (For example: if I sent you an email, the email would show it was from “John Grubb” but in this scenario, my name would be removed and replaced with “Bellsouth Technical Support.”)

4)  Add a signature so that every email the hacker sends out will be a duplicate of the email we’re showing you here.

5)  Change your password and your security questions, thus locking you out.

6)  Steal your contacts and all your email.

 You might be wondering how the hacker breaches a Bellsouth account in the first place.  Well, primarily, two ways.  Someone fills out the information on the email we’ve shown here or the hacker simply breaks into the account – usually because the password on the account wasn’t strong enough – by using software to guess the password.  (For the top twenty-five hacked passwords, click HERE.)  Want to know how to create strong passwords?  See our tutorial by clicking HERE.

Conclusion:  1)  Use secure passwords; 2) NEVER send your password or P.I.N. in an unsecured email; 3) If you receive one of these emails, do not reply.  If you know the person whose email address is being used, call them on the phone or contact them some other way (Facebook, Twitter, IM, Skype, etc.) and let them know their email account has been compromised; 4) If you suddenly stop getting emails, check your email settings to make sure your email isn’t being forwarded without your knowledge. (Don’t know how to check email settings?  Contact us here at 4KCC, we’ll be delighted to help.)