Friday, May 28, 2010

Ever Suffered Cell Phone "Bill Shock?" You're Not Alone

I guess this Maximumpc post applies to nearly all of us now.

"It's a good idea to closely monitor your monthly cell phone usage, especially if you're on a family or some other kind of shared plan. Otherwise, you could end up with "bill shock" at the end of the month. As the FCC tells it, one out of every six Americans has been caught off guard with a higher-than-expected cell phone bill.
This stat comes as part of an FCC-commissioned study in which it was discovered that some 30 million Americans have been surprised at their phone bill. Out of those, 33 percent said their bill was $50 more than what they were expecting, while 23 percent said it was more than $100.
The FCC wants put into place new rules in the mobile phone industry that would prevent bill shock from happening, such as requiring carriers to notify customers when their cell phone bills start to get out of whack. In the meantime, treat the study as a reminder to keep tabs on how many minutes you and your family are chewing through every month."

Thursday, May 27, 2010

Rogues

Those of you who have been bitten by a rogue program, and others as well, may enjoy this web site. It is essentially a "rogues gallery", kepy up to date and containing a lot of very useful information.

Bharath's Security Blog

Wednesday, May 26, 2010

And the answer is...............


TuneUp Utilities.

I do not like to pay for software any more than I have to. I avoid fee-based software as much as possible. My recommended security suite consists of all free programs, and that is what I use. Please see Please take heed and secure your system now! to review the programs in my recommended security suite.

TuneUp Utilities is a fee-based program. I just checked at their web site and the going retail price today is $49.95 for a copy that may be used on 3 systems. I don't like this one bit, but I have to tell you that it is worth it, especially if you are a hands-on, fairly technically savvy user. Two pieces of good news: one, they seem to be always having sales and you can buy it for less if you watch for sales, and two, you can download and install the full package with full functions absolutely free for 30 days.

Whenever I work on your systems either at your home or at mine, I use TuneUp Utilities to clean your registry and I use many other of its functions. You see, this is not a one trick pony. TuneUp Utilities does many things and does them all well. Before you decide to purchase TuneUp Utilities, you should also know that this German company has of late been coming out with annual versions, and they charge you again, but at a much lower rate (like maybe $19.95) to upgrade from one version to another, for example the 2009 version to the 2010 version. However, it is not all bad news: the differences from one year to the next might not be dramatic, and the old version will continue to do its thing as long as you have it. It's just that somewhere down the road you might want to invest in an update to get enhanced features.

Okay, Ive already gone on too long. Send me a personal note at pcdoc at brpcdoc dot com if you have questions.



Tuesday, May 25, 2010

Complaints Board

Kim Komando was really lambasting RegCure in today's Tip of the Day column titled "A Bad way to fix your registry". She seemed quite upset, so I thought I'd do a little investigating. She referred to a web site I had not heard of before but which I find very interesting. It is called Complaints Board. Check it out and maybe you will also find it useful.

I am aware of the fact that some of you use RegCure. If you go to this Complaints Board web site and search on RegCure you'll find 719 complaints (as of this writing) from people who don't like it!

I also don't like it and have never used it for the simple reason that their trial version has limited capability, meaning usually that they will do a teaser scan saying you have so many problems, but if you want to fix them you have to pay their fee. I personally consider this a scam, and would not buy it for that reason.

If you really want to try a registry scanner, tomorrow I will name one that I use on all of my customer calls. You can download their full-function version for free usage for 30 days! Now that is a trial I can live with. In fact I liked it so much that I bought the product. Tune in tomorrow for my registry cleaner recommendation.

Monday, May 24, 2010

Email “Spamming” and Email “Spoofing”

I found this interesting. Many of my customers ask about spamming and spoofing (although they may not be familiar with the term). This article should clarify what each is and the difference. I found this at http://www.anti-abuse.org/email-spamming-and-email-spoofing/



Within these days of massive communication via e-mail, it comes to be quite important for anyone to be familiar with the following two terms: email “spamming” and email “spoofing”.
  • Email spamming refers to sending email to thousands and thousands of users – similar to a chain letter. Spamming is often done deliberately to use network resources. Email spamming may be combined with email spoofing, so that it is very difficult to determine the actual originating email address of the sender. Some email systems, including our Microsoft Exchange, have the ability to block incoming mail from a specific address. However, because these individuals change their email addresses frequently, it is difficult to prevent some spam from reaching your email inbox.
  • Email spoofing refers to email that appears to have originated from one source when it was actually sent from another source. Individuals, who are sending “junk” email or “spam”, typically want the email to appear to be from an email address that may not exist. This way the email cannot be traced back to the originator.

Malicious Spoofing

There are many possible reasons why people send out emails spoofing the return address: sometimes it is simply to cause confusion, sometimes it is to discredit the person whose email address has been spoofed: using their name to send a vile or insulting message.
Sometimes email spoofing is used for what is known as “phishing”, which aims to trick the recipient into revealing passwords or other information. For example, you get an email from what appears to be the PayPal’s account verification department, or from your ISP, asking you to go to a Web page and enter your password, or change it to one of their choosing.

Dealing with a Spoofed Email

There is no way to prevent receiving spoofed emails. If you get a message that is outrageously insulting, asks for something highly confidential, or just plain doesn’t make any sense, then you may want to find out if it is really from the person it says it’s from. You can look at the Internet Headers information to see where the email actually originated.
Remember that although your email address may have been spoofed this does not mean that the spoofer has gained access to your mailbox.

Displaying Internet Headers Information

An email collects information from each of the computers it passes through on the way to the recipient, and this is stored in the email’s Internet Headers.
Tip: Internet Headers are best read from the bottom up, as they are added to as the email passes through the system.

Virus spoofing

Email-distributed viruses that use spoofing, such the Klez or Sobig virus, take a random name from somewhere on the infected person’s hard disk and mail themselves out as if they were from that randomly chosen address. Recipients of these viruses are therefore misled as to the address from which they were sent, and may end up complaining to, or alerting the wrong person. As a result, users of uninfected computers may be wrongly informed that they have, and have been distributing a virus.
If you receive an alert that you’re sending infected emails, first run a virus scan using a full-featured locally installed anti-virus program (e.g. Norton Anti-Virus, McAfee, Nod32, AVG, BitDefender, etc). If you are uninfected, then you may want to reply to the infection alert with this information:
“Your virus may have appeared to have been sent by me, but I have scanned my system and I am not infected. A number of email-distributed viruses fake, or spoof, the ‘From’ address using a random address taken from the Outlook contacts list or from Web files stored on the hard drive.”
But keep in mind that a virus alert message is quite often auto generated and sent via an anti-virus server and so replying to the original email may not elicit a response.
Alternatively, if you receive an email-distributed virus, look at the Internet Headers information to see where the email actually originated from, before firing off a complaint or virus alert to the person you assume sent it.