Introduction to Linux Ubuntu 11.10

Posted on January 16, 2012 by Daniel Gauthier

If you are a Windows user and have been thinking about switching to a Mac for reasons of more stability, security and less viruses, you might want to check out this video below on Linux Ubuntu.  It’s a free alternative to Mac and Windows and best of all, it runs on Windows type hardware so you are not stuck with expensive Mac hardware.

This video is not meant for experienced Linux users or technicians.  This is meant for users that know little about computers and want to learn about this new alternative which can save them alot of hassle and money with a more secure and stable system at a fraction of the cost of a Windows or Apple computers.

This video shows Ubuntu 11.10 which is only one of many versions of Ubuntu.  There are versions like Red Hat which you can download and buy from www.redhat.com and they offer full support on this product.  www.ubuntu.com is where you can download the free Ubuntu from and you can purchase a support package from them as well if you choose to.  Although it’s nice to have a local technician that can support Linux, and that’s what I can help you with if you live around Markham, Ontario Canada.

www.linux.com will give you lots of information about Linux in general.  If you want to see a list of various Linux versions available, click this link: https://www.linux.com/directory/Distributions/desktop

Linux may not be 100% ready for business users, but for personal use, it’s perfect, unless you’re a gamer and many Windows based games won’t play on Linux.  But then again, there are ways around the issue with Linux software such as www.playonlinux.com and www.winehq.org   Some printers may not be compatible and networking file sharing might be a challenge, but again, for personal use, it’s most likely not something you’ll be doing and so it is a non issue.

On the plus side, many things are going to the “cloud”.  All online based, which means, no installing any software on the computer, which means, you can use Linux no problem, because all you need is Internet access.

Community support from www.ubuntu.com/support/community and articles like this and videos like I made for you above, all help make the transition to Linux that much easier.

If you’re interested in Getting your computer converted to Ubuntu, or have a new one built for you, contact me via www.twinbytes.ca and ask for a quote.

Posted in Linux / Ubuntu, Software | Leave a comment

Calls from Microsoft about computer problems – phone scam

Posted on January 7, 2012 by Daniel Gauthier

Many people are getting calls now from companies who initially identify themselves as Microsoft saying that they noticed you have problems with your computer and they need to be fixed right away before your computer crashes. Once you start questioning them, they sound a little fishy and some will hang up on you right away, but some will actually give you their company name, website and call back number. A client of mine gave me this information from one that gave them all their contact info sounding very legitimate, but when I called them back myself, although they sounded very legitimate, they changed their story multiple times while I was on the phone, and made outright lies.

When I called this one company back, I pretended I was a friend calling to check them out, and eventually near the end of the call, I said I was a technician calling and they still didn’t hang up. They got balls! Here’s basically my recreation of the phone call, more or less summarized. The guy I spoke to on the phone at this company that initially identified themselves as Microsoft, we’ll call the “ScamTech”.

Before we start this dialogue, let me just point out to you that Microsoft never has and never will, call anyone directly. Someone may call you who is Microsoft certified but on that note, nobody, and I mean NoooooBoooody can ever say that they can see you have problems on your computer and that is why they are calling. Which is what these guys do. If they can see you have problems, that means they are already the problem because they hacked into your computer to spy on you. I’ll save the other details for you to read in the dialogue below:

***********
Me: I’m calling back because my friend got a call from you guys saying you found a problem with their computer and they were wondering how you found their number in the first place.

ScamTech: When you get errors on your screen that say “Send error report to Microsoft”, we get notified and are able to call you.

Me: That’s not true because I know for a fact when you read the fine print on the “Send error report” dialogue box on your computer it says “no personal identifiable information will be sent with this report. Microsoft will not contact you directly.”
So that’s not true and I also know Microsoft will never call anyone, so why did you tell them you are calling from Microsoft.

ScamTech: We didn’t say we were calling from Microsoft, we work on Microsoft products. And sometimes we get information from your Internet provider.

Me: Internet Providers like Bell and Rogers have privacy policies and it would be against the law for them to give out information, to any third party companies which would include you. So you didn’t get my friends number from their Internet provider or Microsoft. Also, I’m not just their friend, I’m a computer repair technician investigating this which seems to be a scam.

ScamTech: Oh, it is not a scam. We just call people from the phone book and ask them to check the event logs and it shows errors and we ask them if we can connect into their computer to fix it and if they agree, we will go ahead and fix it.

Me: That sounds more like what’s happening here. Chances are everyone has errors in their event log, so you are guarateed to find errors with every call. The problem is it doesn’t mean they have a realy problem. I’m surprised you haven’t hung up on me yet. I just wanted to see what you had to say about this since my client was suspecious about it. It sounds like you are running a legit business but you are going about it sneaky and we are getting mixed answers between what you tell them and what you are telling me. You changed your answer from getting information from Microsoft, to the Internet provider, to looking up their number in the phone book. You also told them you are calling from Microsoft and then changed your answer there too.
That’s all I need to know. Thanks for your time.

****
One of the reports I got from someone said they got their money back when they asked for a refund which was surprising.  The concerning part is what where they doing for 3 hours until the client decided to unplug their computer from the Internet and say this doesn’t feel right.  I then look at the computer and find hundreds of virsues.  They weren’t running a virus scan, they were only looking around it seemed according to some of my clients reports.

So if you get a call from someone claiming to be able to see you have computer problems and they want remote access to your computer so they can fix it. Start questioning them. They may hang up right away. If the don’t.  Ask them for a call back number and their website address.  Call your local trusted computer technician like Daniel at www.twinbytes.ca and we can help you if you truly do have a problem. Most likely your computer is fine as long as you don’t download any software that they tell you to download. If you did download something, you should immediately unplug your computer from the Internet and call your local computer repair company.

Posted in Scams & Hoaxs | Leave a comment

Change email passwords regularly

Posted on December 29, 2011 by Daniel Gauthier

Happy New Year!

Here’s a tip to start your year off right!  It’s also serving as a reminder which I will try to do more often for everyone via my Facebook, Twitter and Linked In pages.  It’s time to change your passwords for…well…everything probably.

OK, so there are two points to this article, one is your passwords should be at least fairly complex, depending on what it gives you access to.  The second part is, you should change your passwords regularly.  How often depends also on the level of importance to those types of files.

One thing that happened to a client of mine today that also recently happened to a friend has prompted me to write this article today. If you ever received an email from someone you know but it doesn’t sound like something they would send, that was probably not them and their account was hacked and you should get them to read this.  If you received emails or phone calls from people you know saying they received emails from you that doesn’t seem to have come from you, then your email account has probably been compromised.  Now I know this is only to do with email, but this article is about more than just emails.  It’s your Facebook, online banking, etc.  But because email is so common to get hacked, that’s how people get tricked into clicking on links in emails because most people are told, “Don’t click on a link in an email from someone you don’t know”.  Well, that’s good, but sometimes you shouldn’t click on links even when it is from someone you know.  Because it wasn’t really from them.  They were hacked.  OK, let’s move on.

The second part is short so lets’s address that first.

Change your passwords often

Something like online banking, you probably want to change the password every few months at least, if not every month which is not very realistic for anyone to do.  At least, if you suspect a problem that someone may have hacked your account, you can change your password at that time to stop the issue from continuing, and then report the issue to the bank, or whoever depending on your situation.  If you have just done something stupid, or think you’ve possibly compromised your account and it’s too late to undo your actions, no problem.  Just simply change your password immediately and you’re safe.

Something that goes hand in hand with passwords is security questions.  These are questions that an automated system will ask you for to reset your password if you forgot it.  This is another way in for hackers.  They can just click on the link saying “I forgot my password” and then they get a prompt saying “no problem, just tell us the name of your dog and we’ll tell you your password”.  Awesome!  Guess what happens next…

Let’s say I’m your neighbour, I’m hacking into your account, I know your email address, I know you have a dog and I know it’s name because I see you often outside yelling at it.  :)   So, I punch in that name and bingo! I’m into your account, I know your password, and I can send and receive emails just like you.  Or if it’s your bank account, “cha ching!”  Moral of the story, in addition to not having simple passwords, you need to not have simple security questions.

How to choose a good password

The best way to explain this is to say what’s a bad password.  Don’t use dictionary words.  Go to www.dictionary.com and type in your password.  If it comes up, you could easily be hacked.  There are problems out there that will go through the entire dictionary and try all the words.  There are more advanced programs that will do more complex algorithms like adding a number at the beginning or end of your password.  That makes it easy to guess as well.  Assuming your password is hack, here’s a list of bad passwords.

hack
1hack
2hack
3hack
4hack
7hack
8hack
9hack
hack1
hack2
hack3
hack4
hack5
hack6
hack7
hack8
hack9

I think you get the idea based on my examples above what a bad password is.  A good password is one that meets us somewhere in the middle between an easy one and a very complex password.  Complex passwords are being required more and more.  Just today I helped a client change his email password and it was only 5 characters long and it said the minimum length is 6 characters.  Depending on the service you are using, they will force you to have a certain length of characters and sometimes enforce other characteristics of a good password.  I will list them for you.

  1. Minimum 6 characters long
  2. Minimum 1 numeric character (0-9)
  3. Minimum 1 alpha character (a-z or A-Z)
  4. Minimum 1 uppercase letter (A-Z) and 1 lowercase letter (a-z)
  5. Minimum 1 symbol (!@#$%^&*()-+=/?.,<>`~)

A good password would use 3 of the 5 above mentioned characteristics of a complex password.  An example would be if I used twinbytes but instead used tw1nbyte5.  This password was already more than 6  characters long, but was all lower case and had no other characteristics to it.  What I did to keep it easy for me to remember was I changed the i to a 1, and the ‘s’ is similar to a number 5 so I made it a ’5′.  Now my password has at least 6 characters, numbers and letters.  That’s 3 of the 5 requirements for a really good complex password.  Now ofcourse I would never use that as a password because I just gave that out to everyone here, and because it’s still fairly easy to guess.  Let’s try….  How would you change the word ‘love’ to be more complex?  1ove.  We changed l to a 1.  That’s too easy, if you know what someone’s password is, just try changing any ‘l’ to a ’1′ and ‘e’ to a ’3′, letter ‘o’ to a number ’0′, etc.  There’s a few possibilities that make it harder to guess, but at least it’s not a dictionary word by throwing a number into it, a program that automatically guesses passwords will have a harder time guessing that password.

So back to my example tw1nbyte5.  3 out of 5 requirements met.  How to make this harder would be simply adding symbol in there somewhere.  At the beginning or end makes it easier for you to remember, but putting it in a random spot makes it harder.  Also, making one or two letters uppercase.  Now all 5 requirements are met.  Using are same example would look like this: tw1nbyTe5*   Now we have the uppercase letter and a symbol.  To make it harder still, make another random letter uppercase, add another symbol and to really go crazy, make it a sentence like:

Tw1nByTe5re@11ykn0w5h0wt0M@k3AG0oDpA55worD

Incase you can’t decipher the above, I wrote: Twinbytes really knows how to make a good password.

Change your passwords now, change them often, and make them hard to guess.  Not hard for people to guess, but hard for computers to guess.

 

Posted in Online Services, Software | Leave a comment

The future of Apple, Microsoft, and Linux…

Posted on December 18, 2011 by Daniel Gauthier

When I started playing around with computers including programming and games, it was around the age of the first personal computer with Commodore 64 using tapes, which then lead to 5 1/2 inch floppies, and then to 3 1/4 inch floppies with the hard shell.  We finally got into CD’s which was great!  Then DVD’s came, USB flash drives, external hard drives and now BluRay discs!  Somewhere in all the excitment, I forgot to mention when the computer finally changed over from being run off a tape cartridge and floppies to hard disks.  Anyway, that’s not what this article is about.

The early computers where based on Unix (originally spelt Unics which stood for UNiplexed Information and Computing Service, until 1970 when it could support multiple simultaneous users), which is what I learned on initially.  Mac operating systems are based on unix which is part of what makes them so stable.  DOS (Disk Operating System) came out later in 1979 which is what Microsoft Windows is running on.  So for all these years, all Mac versions are running basically a GUI (Graphicaly User Interface) off a Unix system.  All Microsoft Windows versions over the years is running off a DOS based system.  So, with this so called “newer” Linux operating system starting to get more media coverage, all it’s various flavours are based on a Unix shell.  That’s right, same as the Mac.  So here’s the beauty of the Linux systems, but first it will be helpful to take a step back.

Microsoft Windows can run on any software, can use any hardware, and has been referred to as a mistress, who will be compatible with anyone, but not very stable or reliable.
Apple’s Mac can only run certain software that it authorizes to run, although there are ways around it, but also can only run on their own hardware (more expensive, and you thought Microsoft was trying to monopolize…), but then you get a more stable and reliable system.
Now here’s the beauty of Linux.  It runs on a Unix based system (like the Mac) but can be installed on any PC based hardware (like Windows), so you have the better security and stability like the Mac, but with the less expensive hardware like the PC, and many more choices in hardware too!  Oh, and the kicker…Linux is FREE!  Now before anyone gets carried away, there are versions of Linux you must pay for, such as Red Hat but you get support with this as well.  You can find a variety of versions and other information on the following website: https://www.linux.com/directory/Distributions/desktop

You can download a bootable CD, so you can try it on your computer without installing anything to your hard drive.  If you like it, you can install it side by side with Windows and have a dual boot system.  Reboot your computer and choose if you want to boot into Windows or Linux.  It’s a great way to play with it and slowly transition over to Linux.

It will be interesting to see what happens over the next 5-10 years.

Posted in Hardware, Linux / Ubuntu, Software | Leave a comment

Hard drive warranties are being reduced

Posted on December 14, 2011 by Daniel Gauthier

Both of Western Digital and Seagate internal HDD will be changing their warranty policies on the new year of 2012.

Western Digital – Effective date on January 2nd, 2012.
Desktop and Mobile (Blue and Green family lines) change from 3 years to 2 years. Black product line will remain at 5 years warranty. Enterprise class products stay at 5 years warranty.

As of January 2, 2012 Desktop and mobile Western Digital Blue and Green will be 2 years.

As of December 31st, 2011 Major desktop and mobile products from Seagate will change from 2 years to 1 year, 5 years become 3 years and most of the Enterprise class products will reduce their warranty from 5 years to 3 years.

This makes you ask the question, why are these warranties being reduced?  Are they known to be not as reliable drives anymore?  Are people using warranties more often?  We know the computers are not made as well as they were in the past.  They are cheaper to buy, but they are built with plastic instead of metal, no CD’s included, and hard drives are made cheaper as well.

Regardless of warranty, hard drives store your data, and they are one of the most common components in a computer that regularly fail.  Don’t forget to do regular backups and you should be fine.  Hopefully you don’t have to purchase a new hard drive soon, since the prices more than doubled in end of October after that flood in Thailand. (See our previous blog)

Posted in Hardware | Leave a comment

Computer repair tip #2 – Windows updates, Adobe updates, Java, etc.

Posted on December 5, 2011 by Daniel Gauthier

Typically, when speaking with some people, they say “I have Norton installed” or “I have AVG” or some other antivirus program they will quote, telling me it is up to date and doing scans.  What they don’t realize, and I explain to all my clients, is that anti-virus software isn’t enough.  No matter what program you have, and no matter if it was free or a really expensive software package.

Some anti-virus suites come with extra protection including firewalls, spyware, rootkit scanners, etc. but there is still a risk.  In order for Internet, email and other programs to work on the Internet, there need to be doors open.  With these doors open, hackers find weaknesses and can get in.  Windows provides regular updates to patch these holes.

If you are relying strictly on anti-virus protection, you are at risk of getting a virus still, which your anti-virus program may not know about, as well as a hacker which you are then at risk of something far greater than a virus… Identity theft!  If you don’t truly understand what identity theft is, you can be screwed out of millions of dollars you don’t even have, and it is almost impossible to prove it wasn’t you that purchase that boat, motorcycle, cottage, Ferrari, etc.

Windows updates are critical to your system performance, stability and security.  Although they have been know to create problems themselves, it has been proven that installing your updates as part of a preventative maintenance plan, far outweighs the potential issues that can be caused by installing those very updates.

Same thing goes for installing updates for Adobe Reader, Adobe Flash, and Java updates which are common on all computers.  Other updates are also available for various software applications you run on your computer.

Install your updates as you are prompted, and check your anti-virus regularly to ensure it is still working.  Even though you maybe bought a paid version and it is supposed to be automatic.  Check it to be sure the things that are supposed to be happening automatically, are happening automatically.  If you don’t have time to do it yourself because you’re running a business, or don’t know how or don’t want to learn how to stay on top of all this; you can hire Twinbytes to do this for you.

Posted in Computer Repair Tips, Software | Leave a comment

WiFi health concerns in school – view from a technology expert

Posted on November 18, 2011 by Daniel Gauthier

As a computer technology expert, author, regular guest speaker on CKWR radio as well as a speaker on Breakfast Television and Rogers Daytime, I write my professional opinion on this issue.

From a recent article in York Region’s paper parents are pulling their kids out of school due to health concerns around the wireless network access (WiFi) in schools.  There are actually two issues to address here which these parents are not considering.

The health concerns of WiFi is one issue to address and is an ongoing study with scientists testing the effects on the human body.  Let’s set that aside for scientist and look at the obvious facts.  The second thing which is more important at this point in time, which is more easily measurable by anyone (non-scientist)…How different is WiFi in schools from your home?

I had a phone conversation today with one of the people in charge of technology at the York Region School Board.  We went through the facts of how wireless is setup in the schools.  We determined that the wireless routers used in schools, which some parents are so worried about, are the exact same wireless routers that are used in their homes and businesses.  Wait…what?  Wireless in schools is the same as in our homes?  OK, so let’s think about this for a minute then.

If parents are pulling their kids out of school because of health concerns of wireless, I wonder if they have WiFi in their homes?  Almost everyone and their grandmother has WiFi now in their homes.  Oh, and if you don’t have it in your homes, your next door neighbour has it.  On both sides of you, the house behind you, and the houses accross the street!  Holly crap!  Not only is this sounding like the same concerns but possibly worse?  You can take your kid out of school, but what are you going to do about your neighbours?  Are you going to threaten all your neighbours to disable their wireless or you will move?  lol, I’m sorry but I have to laugh at this.  OK, let’s take this a step further; Kids typically are in school for 6-7 hours.  How much time do the kids spend at home with their WiFi at home?  At least 8 hours sleeping, plus however many hours playing on their wireless laptop, wireless iPod, iPhone, X Box, Nintendo, etc.  What?  You don’t have wireless at home, but I bet your kids friends do.  “Mom! Can I go over to Jimmy’s house and play?”.  “Sure honey.”  What’s the chances his friend has WiFi?  Unless you move to a deserted island, you’re surrounded by wireless.  Sure, if Wifi is a health hazard, you are healthy living away from it, but you’ll go nuts living in isolation.  I’m sure this whole ordeal is not healthy to go through in itself.  Do you know being stressed is not healthy?

Do you see where we are going here with this?  WiFi is everywhere and no different from what is in the school.  So to take your kids out of school to avoid Wireless (WiFi) is crazy!  You are sacrificing your childrens education, (God help our future leaders!) and they are still being exposed to WiFi in other places they live, play and visit.  So you are still being exposed to the same WiFi (whether a health risk or not) and not only are you still being affected by the WiFi outside of school, but your children are missing out on a proper education.  These children are going to be leaders of our country when we are old farts!  Do you really want uneducated adults leading our country when we are old and relying on them?  I think not.

To wrap up, people are sheep and like to follow enthusiastic people.  I’m sure more than half the parents involved in this campaign is doing it because they are easily manipulated convienced of anything someone is doing with passion.  If the leader is strong enough, they can get many followers.  I ask that anyone who knows parents involed in this protest to please get them to read this or if this article makes sense to you, and you agree with me, please talk some sense into them.  All of our futures depend on these children, so I truly, honestly, sincerely hope these parents will come to their senses.

Posted in Hardware | Leave a comment

Computer hard drive prices more than doubled in price in about a month!

Posted on November 10, 2011 by Daniel Gauthier

I recently went to order a hard drive through my regular supplier and noticed there are none showing with prices.  I asked them and it’s due to the prices of hard drives recently sky rocketing that they can’t keep updating the price list because every day it seems to be going up a bit more!

I read an article that claims price increases are due to a flood in Thailand where almost half of the manufacturing takes place for Western Digital and Toshiba.  In one aspect it makes sense with regards to supply and demand, but is it truly necessary to increase prices this much?  And why is it affecting Seagate prices and other brands?  Also, when the affected manufacturing plants are back in operation, will they  lower their prices back down again or keep them up there since they know we are willing to pay any price.  When we need the parts, we need the parts, regardless of price.  This is not fair though and it will be interesting to see what the competition does when the playing fields are level again.

In the mean time, hold on to your hats, and hopefully we don’t get too much more of an increase with public media most likely blowing this entire story up to be much bigger than it actually is, which I’m sure is helping the manufacturers justify these ridiculous price increases.

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Apple Vs. Windows, who needs repairs more often?

Posted on November 8, 2011 by Daniel Gauthier

Apple vs. Windows.  There’s obviously more computer repair shops for Micrsoft Windows than there are for Apple computers.  But Microsoft also has more market share too.  So you can’t compare directly like this who has repairs more often.  You need to break it down by market share, do a little math and figure it out.  Let’s walk through this together.

Oh, and before we get started, this is not meant to be an attack on Apple, but instead, it’s to educate those ignorant people thinking Apple is better that Microsoft without backing up their thinking on this.  I think you’ll be in for a rude awakening here by the time you read this through.  Statistics for market shares pulled from http://chitika.com/ and the other statistics for repairs are calculated by TwinBytes Inc.

Current market shares as of September 2011 according to insights.chitika.com

Windows 78.3%
Mac 9.6%
Linux 2.2%
iOS 5.5%
Android 3.3%
Other 1.2%

Current stats on Google for how many times the following keywords are searched for each month as of the writing of this article:

apple repair = 201,000
pc repair = 1,500,000

Basic math…
1,500,000 x 13.4% = 201,000

Therefore 13.4% of people search Google for Apple repair versus PC repair.  I think we can all agree on this so far.  Let’s continue.

Since apple currently owns close to 13% of market share, these numbers are relative.  You see, if you Apple had 50% market share they may both have close to 50% share in search results for repairs, according to these statistics.
Therefore, people search online just as often for apple repairs as they do for PC repairs, relative to the number of computers sold by that vendor.  You just don’t hear about it as much because Apple has only 9.6% market share.

OK, so now that we know how often people search for what, let’s gather more information.

Apple is 9.6% market share and 13.4% searches for apple repairs.
Windows is 78.3% market share and 86.6% searches for PC repairs.

So, Apple has about 4% more searches for repairs compared to their market share
Windows has about 8% more searches for repairs compared to their market share
Now, with that said, Windows has about 8 times mores market share but has only 2 times as many searches for repairs.  You could say, with these statistics, more people search for apple repairs than they do for pc repairs.  Which means maybe we could possibly safely say, that apples require more repairs than PCs?

(Keep reading below this chart)

Statistics for Apple and Microsoft market shares

You see, you could say, apple needs only 201,000 repairs versus 1,500,000 with Windows, or if you look at it relatively speaking, and compairing the ratio of repairs on the equipment to how many sold, it almost turns the tables.

Taking a look at it by operating system rather than vendor name:
33,100 monthly Google searches for OX X repair (One of Apple’s latest operating systems)
450,000 monthly Google searches for Windows 7 repair (One of Windows latest operating systems)

Therefore about 13.6% are monthly searches for OS X repair versus Windows 7 repair.
Pretty damn close to the other search terms!  0.02% difference.  See some consistancy here?  My point being, Apple products break down just as often as PC’s according to this statistics and calculations.  Some people have Apple’s that never break down.  But guess what, some people have PC’s that never break down.

OK, let the comment wars begin!  lol…

Posted in Hardware, Software | Leave a comment

Businesses recieving payment by Interac Email Money Transfer

Posted on November 3, 2011 by Daniel Gauthier

I had my first email money tranfer payment a while ago and deleted it by accident probably thinking it was spam because the person didn’t tell they paid that way, and I called the bank to see how secure this is, and they confirmed the procedure and that it is safe.  The only way I knew about this was when I called to ask for payment on an outstanding invoice and they said they already paid via email.  I thought, what?  You can’t pay invoices by email?  But then I found out, yes, it’s a new feature with the banks and I must have deleted his payment thinking it was spam.

The only problem I see with this is you have to click the link to receive the payment and it takes you to your bank account where you can then type in your bank number and password.  I don’t like this for a couple reasons.  One problem is there are so many scams out there where people get emails saying something about their bank account having a problem, or whatever and they need to click the link to log into their bank and fix the issue.  The link seems to work, it goes to your login page, your login works and you can see your bank info.  Everything seems fine, however, they just grabbed your bank info and your account is now comprimised.

This email money transfers work similar which will make it difficult when people are receiving emails unless they know it truly came from that client.  Many people spoof emails and that makes the email appear to have come from someone you know but it it didn’t really come from them.  This is really bad because you believe it’s real and move forward with the instructions, next thing you know you’re a victim.

The other problem I had, I’m used to logging in with my personal account, then switching views to see the busness.  This way, I don’t have to remember both bank numbers.  The problem I have is I logged in with my personal account, as usual, but the options for me to choose which bank account to transfer my clients payment to didn’t include the business bank account.  All I could do was decline the payment and put a note in there saying, “Sorry I logged into the wrong bank account”.  They had to resend payment which was frustrating for them I’m sure, and also the fact I had to bother them with a phone call about it, when the secret answer was one I would have known anyway.  I just had to call to confirm it is real, and because I screwed up and logged into the wrong bank account, I had to get them to send payment again.

Most people click links and do online banking without thinking twice about it.  Don’t get me wrong, I’m up to date with the latest technology, but just because I’m in the business, doesn’t mean I have to use it if I feel it is a potential threat.  As long as these payments are being transfer via links in email, there’s a connection where someone can hack this payment process and comprimise both our accounts.  Online payments are fine, but if you send payment to someone by email; your bank account is connected via a link, that sends by email, which then goes from your email to my email, now linking via my computer which either of us could have a virus to begin with, and then linking to my bank account, now both our bank accounts and email addresses are linked and if someone intercepted this transmission, which happens out there in the online world, we could both have our bank accounts comprimised.

Technology is supposed to make life easier, but instead, with something like this, it’s putting us more at risk and costing more time having people like me call to confirm it’s real.  An alternvative to this, you can always tell your clients, you do not use this method of payment.  Some hackers out there realize the risks and so even them, with their highly technical skills, they do not do any form of online banking.  That has to mean something when hackers refuse to do banking online!  Stay safe my friends.

Update November 3rd 4:00pm – You’re not going to believe this.  Click the picture to make it bigger and read below.

email scam about e money transfer which is normally safe.Here’s an example of an email I just got today from someone trying to pull this very scam on me that I talked about in this blog 9am this morning.  Maybe it’s a co-incidence, maybe I’ve been targeted after writing about it, but either way, I was able to trace the IP address it came from to the host provider, which then traces it back to the individual customer of theirs, and then we can bust them for trying to hack my bank account.  If you hover over any link in an email you recieve, you can see if it points to the same address or not.  You can see in the image here (click to make it bigger, then hit the back button on your browser to come back here) if you hover over the link for the legit site name, it says it’s going to some ip address instead.  Also, since I don’t recognize the name or the amount, and there is no email address for the guy that tells me who it is, plus the fact that my Outlook program identified it as a potential phising scam at the top, it makes it clear to me it is a scam.  So obviously I didn’t click the link.  What I did do, is a reverse lookup on the ip address, determined it was a customer from www.theplanet.com and I reported it to the abuse email they have and we’ll see about next steps from there.  This is no different from email you get claiming to be from your bank and asking you to click a link.  I always said, you bank would never send you an email, so just don’t click on any links.  With this new service to email money transfer, apparently it is safe, but you need to still be careful you know who it is from, and it truly came from them, otherwise you could be clicking on a scam like what I got.

As an Ex-Law Enforcment officer, I’m here to bust these people. Saving the world from cyber crime, one criminal at a time…

 

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