Don’t Become a Victim of Online Scammers

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We’ve all had our eye caught by the catchy banner or spam that sucks us in and sometimes keeps us there. The issue at hand is being able to identify the product or service being offered as being legitimate.

Because there is no single agency that polices the Internet to assure that everything is safe and truthful, the responsibility lies on our shoulders. You need to learn to distinguish scams from the truth so you don’t lose money, your identity or worse.

Here are a few valuable tips that can help you identify and avoid those online scams.

  • Do some homework and check up on the site or individual that is making the offer. Search engines can help you with this research. If it not legitimate, you will quickly find information about the scam. If it is a legitimate offer, you’ll find comments and information about that as well.
  • Make sure your spyware and antivirus programs are working and are up-to-date. Many scammers use emails to disseminate their viruses and stealth programs designed to steal your information or harm your computer.
  • Refer to the Federal Trade Commission and read up on the latest fraud information. You can also see if the company or individual you are researching is listed as being fraudulent. You can also see if there have been complaints filed again the company.
  • Do a quick WHOIS search to determine the owner of the domain name that has caught your eye. If the registration information for the domain seems shady, it’s a good idea just to stay away.

 

Filed Under: Guidance & Advice, Spam Tagged With: ,

How to Eliminate That Annoying Spam

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It’s a safe bet that no one out there likes email spam. We all hate those unwanted, sometimes offensive, email messages that seem to fill up our inboxes. Spam often occurs when users visit unsecure or unsafe sites and fill out forms with information. Those sites, in turn, then take that information and sell it to companies. Unfortunately, even some safe sites that say they won’t sell your information, often do. So what can we do to eliminate spam?

Use two different email accounts. Create a professional account first. This should generally be your name followed by the email service. The next one should be the one you will use when you will be submitting your information online.

Never open email messages from people and address you don’t recognize. Spammers have systems that can actually know when you’ve opened the message, and they will start sending you more emails.

Use an email spy filter. These systems let you create a contact list and keyword lists that will flag spam. Many email systems have these filters in place for your use.

Don’t use your professional address to register or purchase anything on line. This is where the secondary email comes into play. Check both address accounts daily.

Don’t send forwarded emails. Spammers will sometimes send out jokes and such to fish for more contacts. They send out these emails, you forward them and now the spammers not only have your email address, but those individuals to which you sent the message.

Filed Under: Guidance & Advice, Spam Tagged With: , ,

Identifying Common Computer Problems

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We’ve all had that feeling of dread when you suspect that your computer is failing or broken. Your heart starts to beat faster and you get a bit nauseous. The first thing you worry about is losing information that is on your computer. All that information including access to email, passwords, logins, favorites, histories, pictures and so much more could be lost or damaged.

Most computer issues can be separated into two areas: hardware and software. It’s not hard to learn which area is causing the problem and you may even be able to repair the problem.

Hardware
Listen for problematic or strange noises. These types of noise can precede major failures. For instance if the start-up winding sound which is normal gets louder, this could indicate the first stages of hard drive failure.

If you computer unexpectedly shuts down, but you can turn it back on; this is a symptom of a possible overheating issue. Check to ensure that your vents and fans are not dirty or blocked. Clean them if necessary, and if the problem continues, it’s time to call a professional.

Software
If your computer is experience software problems, you may notice that its start-up time is getting slower, the computer is slower in general and odd things are happening. You may have an operating system problem or a virus. You should run your antivirus program immediately.

After running the antivirus program, make sure your operating system is up-to-date. Install any updates that you need to and then reboot your computer. If this does not fix the problem, perform the System Restore function.

Filed Under: Protection, Technology, Warnings Tagged With: , ,

What It Takes to Protect Your Identity in the 21st Century

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Some of the information written here might shock you, some of it might make you laugh and still others, will simply make you nod your head with a calm affirmation as if saying, ’yep, that’s for sure.’ Identity theft: that’s a surefire issue still. What with the rise of the internet, it’s become easier and easier to steal someone’s identity, go into someone’s bank account, take someone’s house, erase someone literally from the face of the planet! (Well, at least the digital planet).

What does someone do? How to go about instilling identity theft restoration in your life? How do you get your life back?

Keep an Eye on Your Credit Cards!

Should be a no-brainer, really. But you’d be surprised how many shoppers accidentally leave their cards at the cashier’s. Your friendly teen point-of-sale fresh face might be a skilled, true-blue titanic hacker ready to squash your whole line of credit into dust if you walk out that department store door without your plastic.
You may walk back into the store with all the pandemonium of shopping and never really realize that you left it on the counter, because it probably won’t be there. Then you’ll second guess yourself: maybe you left it in the fitting room, maybe you left it at the coffee shop, the food court, the movie theater! Dear God, you’ve lost your credit card–to a hacker behind the counter.

Buy a Shredder!

And that’s one of the ‘yep, that’s for sure’ ones. Obviously. The tried-and-true methods of identity theft would be to rifle through someone’s garbage. An identity thief would strike gold if going through a big black bag full of passwords, user names, account numbers and other goodies. That’s like candy.
You’ve got the all-purpose shredder, and that same thief would need a whole lot of glue to figure out how all the little strips are put together just to figure out if that ’6′ is really a ’6′ and not an ’8′–if he or she even gets lucky enough to figure out that it could be a ’6′ or an ’8′! And then that thief would have to do some of that same deduction for about nine, or 10, or 20 other digits. Hard work. Yes, a paper shredder is crucial.

Watch Your E-mail Carefully!

You can bet everyone laughs at this–not at the prospect of getting scammed, but the lengths in which some will go to scam you! Don’t deny it–you get them in your INBOX all the time. Everyone does. They’re called e-mail scams. And they can be quite funny.
Usually they masquerade as your bank, or some other organization–typically from Zimbabwe or Poland–about a fund of a ton of money in your name. Sure. And then they ask you for their personal information. Sure. Click delete; move on.

Protect Yourself

It is, however, no joke. You never know what lurks around the cyberspace corner. How do you protect yourself in this century?

Filed Under: Guidance & Advice

Practical Ways to Keep Your Computer Free of Viruses

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There are so many products out there designed to save your backside from unexpected attacks on your computer. Those nasty gremlins come in the form of malware, viruses and spam. Some are really devastating to your computer hard drive and others are simply annoying and time consuming. Either way, you don’t have to spend the rent to prevent unwanted visitors from landing in your system.

How To Send Spam Visitors To the Neighbors

Send that unwanted email to visit someone else. No, no, no. Don’t forward it to the annoying guy next door. That’s just a little joke. Instead, set up an extra email account or two. Keep your primary account for friends, family, and maybe business. Then set up a few accounts, via a free email service, for online shopping and browsing. Seems like every website wants you to register. It’s hard to tell if they’ll protect your privacy or not. Assume they won’t. Never enter your primary email into any website. Use those others. Then remember to check them regularly for things you do need, and then purge them to get the junk out of there.

Let’s Talk About the Kids

It’s impossible to prevent kids from going to those sites that will infect you with a virus or malware. Kids love free stuff, but they’re usually to naive to realize anything that sounds too good to be true probably is too good to be true. Best, low cost solution? Buy them a cheap little netbook. Let them destroy their own computer. Explain that when they kill it, they buy the next one.

Minimal money spent. Invasion thwarted! Awesome!

Filed Under: Spam Tagged With: , ,

Viruses Can Lurk on Legitimate Websites, Too

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There’s a myth that viruses only hang out on porn sites, shopping surveys, and other spammy places on the Internet. What you may not realize is that a virus can attack your computer from what appears to be the safest site you could visit. Here are a few reasons to keep your anti-virus up-to-date.

A Virus Disguised In Email

Of course, this seems like a no-brainer, but sometimes we get emails with legitimate titles. They’re not always some Viagra discount pitch. They very often have titles that actually pertain to things we’re interested in. Naturally, we open them up and discover we’ve been duped. Look closely at anything that doesn’t come from a legitimate friend or associate, and don’t click a link if you’re the least bit uncertain. Make sure you’re running the latest version of your anti-virus, too. If it happened to you, chances are it happened to many people, and your anti-virus either already has or will very quickly create a solution.

But That’s My Favorite Online Newspaper!

Sometimes, it’s not our favorite, safe and legitimate websites that get us, but the advertisers who are there. It may be the ads or pop-ups that contain the virus. Be super careful with this. Again, make sure your anti-virus is current. Unfortunately, there is no safe place on the Internet. The viruses will find you if you’re online enough.

How Does This Happen?

Viruses are malicious scripts or code, so they’ll be slipped into the legitimate code to hopefully fool you and websites into passing them on. The bottom line is that you have to be careful and pro-active with you anti-virus.

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The Best Spam Filters For Personal Use

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When it comes to personal computing, ease of use is paramount. Most personal computer users are doing some pretty basic stuff, like checking email or Facebook. They may find their inbox full of unwanted spam, but there are some good free products that will rid your email of unwanted messages.

Block Spam For Free

The causual computer user prefers to use free software and services whenever possible, and there are some free anti-spam programs out there that work pretty good. Most reviewers recommend Mailwasher. It not only does a fairly good job of getting rid of the spam, it does it before it downloads into your mailbox. That means you download mail faster, and that stuff gets dumped before it gets to your computer. Spam often contains viruses and malware, so a free program that washes the mail before you get it will definitely show up on most reviewers “best of” lists. Other choices include XTerminator and SPAMfighter Standard.

The Best Anti-Spam Money Can Buy

Like anything in the world, you get what you pay for when it comes to a spam filter. Therefore, the easiest to use and most thorough programs will cost a little money. However, at less than $100 a year, their well worth it if they save your hard drive from overcrowding or some pesky virus or malware.  Cloudmark Desktop shows up on several reviewers’ lists, so for $40 or so, it would be a good buy. It uses the input of millions of users to constantly battle the spam masters. It also never blocks legitimate email.

What works today to filter spm might not work tomorrow, so keep anti-spam updated.

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How To Protect Your Computer From Viruses

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Computer viruses are very common and if you spend a lot of time on the computer, it is important that you know how to protect your computer from them. The first thing you need to do is install an anti-virus package. This will tell you whether or not you actually have a virus. There are free ones you can find online, but they may not be as effective as some of the other ones such as Norton or McAfee.

Set up the software so that you automatically receive updates. It is important that you have the most up to date protection because viruses change all the time. Once your software is installed, you can run a scan on your computer and it will tell you how to get rid of any viruses you may have. Do some research about all the different types of software you can use and choose the best one for your computer.

Be careful of what you download and the sites you go on. There are a lot of things on the Internet that can be harmful to your computer. Also, do not open all of your emails. Only open the ones that are from people you know or other emails you are expecting. If you do not know who the email is from, you will probably not want to open it. Email is probably the most common way people spread viruses. Do research before you download anything and find out if it is safe for your computer.

 

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Common Computer Problems

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In the world today, people are becoming more reliant on technology, so it is important that everything works correctly. To reduce the number of problems your computer may have, you will want to install an anti virus program and do occasional maintenance.

The most common computer issue people have is the computer running too slow or you cannot access the Internet. The main reason this happens is there are too many programs on your computer and it doesn’t have enough memory. There are a few solutions to this problem. Clean out your start up folder and your scheduled tasks folder. You will also want to upgrade your memory.

Here are some other common computer problems. If your computer freezes, simply reboot the system. If your computer wont turn off, you may have to pull the plug and it will restart. Another common problem is if you can’t find the program you are looking for. This can be caused by your icon or shortcut being deleted. Check system help to create a new shortcut.

If your computer is making noise, your hard drive may be failing. If this happens, back up all of your files and then call someone who can help. If you lose a file, you can probably find it in the recycle bin. If you have already emptied your recycle bin, there are still ways you can get your deleted files. If your printer isn’t working, first check all the cables and then restart the printer and it should start working.

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How To Get Rid Of Spam

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The longer you have an email, the more spam you seem to get. Sometimes it can seem to take forever to sort through the important emails from the trash. However, there are ways to get rid of or avoid spam. One way to avoid spam is by creating two email accounts. Have one account for family, friends, and other important people and have the other one for when you need to sign up for an online service. This way, you only check your spam email when you sign up for something.

There should be a filter function in your email. When you get spam, you can “mark it as spam” and it will prevent you from getting any more emails from this place. There is some spam that isn’t really spam, but can flood your inbox like newsletters from services that you have signed up with. If you unsubscribe to these, they will stop appearing in your inbox.

Social networking sites such as facebook and myspace will tend to fill up your inbox quickly. You can turn the email setting off in the settings section of these sites. Do not open any emails from people or sites you do not recognize. There are a lot of spam emails that have viruses when you open them and should just be deleted. Also, some sites will start sending more spam once you open one of their emails. When you have two accounts, remember to check them both regularly so you do not miss any important emails.

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