Warning About the Warning

I’ve had several client’s get fooled by a rogue link on websites that triggers a message “Warning, warning your computer is infected. Call this number now!” If you should ever receive this message, simply restart your computer and it will go away. You’ll be tempted, but don’t call the number given or let anyone log on to your computer. Their trick is that if you allow them access, they’ll install a virus and then charge you to remove what they’ve put on.

2017 Equifax Hack

AS OF YESTERDAY, there was national news that the credit reporting agency Equifax had been compromised and that hackers captured personal financial data on 143 million U.S. citizens.

Resetting your internet connection

FREQUENTLY I GET CALLS from clients stating their computer is running slowly. I always ask what they’re doing at the time it runs slow. The answer 99% of the time, is that they’re on the internet and the pages are loading slowly.

Password Security on the Web

I’VE BEEN SENDING out informational articles over the last several months to educate my clients on (a) how to be safer on the web and (b) how to prevent getting hacked on your digital devices. The article below is excellent and is shared from the Windows Secrets Newsletter dated March 16, 2017.

Windows 10 continues and so do the hackers!

It’s been a while since I’ve sent out any updates on the Windows 10 upgrade. Since my last post, Microsoft has moved from the upgrade being optional to automatically installing it without the user’s permission. If they can reduce their support to one operating system by eliminating the need to support Windows 7 & 8, they will cut their costs dramatically! Of course this may not be in the best interests of the user community.

Tech Tips: Recovery Drives

12/24/15 — For those of you who have updated your Windows 10 to the November 2015 update, be sure to update your original recovery drive. You can click on the search icon and type in “create” and an option will come up for creating a recovery drive.

Tech Tips

Week of 12/11/15 — Windows 10 November Update includes a bunch of new features and changes that surely will improve the overall experience of the operating system. This update brings improvements to the “Start” menu to allow users to have a fourth column of tiles, updated context menus throughout the operating system, and Cortana gets smarter with handwriting recognition and missed call notifications. The Microsoft Edge browser also gets performance and security improvements and tab preview, and a lot more.

Windows 10 Update: Tech support phone scams

Week of 12/7/15 — This email is a follow-up on my tip last week about phone scams claiming to be Microsoft. Please follow the suggestions from Microsoft to protect yourselves. ~Tom

Windows 10 Update: Scams & More Scams

Week of 11/27/15 — Recently I had a client call me after hours to ask my opinion on something. He said he’d received a call from “Microsoft” stating they’d detected some problems with his computer. I wondered “did they ask you to let them log-on to your computer?…” and he said “Yes.” I informed him to immediately shut the computer down to disconnect them.

Windows 10 Update: Non-Automatic Setting

Week of 11/23/15 — You’ll notice that we’ve renamed the weekly blog and email blast, but there’s still plenty to talk about with Windows 10 and other items of interest as well.