When you email someone for the first time who is not in your address book using Microsoft Outlook, it saves it to a temporary file.  With Outlook 2007 and 2010 it is easy to delete those individual email addresses from that drop down list so you do not accidently email that person again.  This is very handy when you have someone with a new email address and you want to stop accidently emailing the wrong email address.

The procedure is simple.  Start typing in the email address in a new email window as if you are going to email them.  Their email address will appear in the drop down menu as you start typing.  Simply click the X beside their email address to delete it and it’s gone.  Or you can arrow down to highlight their name in the list and press delete on your keyboard.  Now they will never show up in that list again and you will never accidently email them again.

This video below shows how easy it is to delete unwamted emails from Outlook 2010.

The following hoax has been going around Facebook for some time now:

 Hey everybody. I like to keep my FB private except to those I am friends with. So if you all would do the following, I’d appreciate it. With the new FB TIMELINE on its way this week for EVERYONE…please do both of us a favor: Hover over my name above. In a few seconds you’ll see a box that says “Subscribed”. Hover over that, then go to “Comments and Likes” and unclick it. That will stop all our posts from showing up on the sidebar for strangers to see, but most important, it limits hackers from invading our profiles. If you repost this I will do the same for you. You’ll know I’ve acknowledged you, because if you tell me that you’ve done it I’ll “like” it.
 A BIG THANK YOU!!!!

GeekyGirl.ca has blogged about it:
http://www.geekygirl.ca/tag/facebook/

Thatnonsense.com also blogged about it:
http://www.thatsnonsense.com/view.php?id=1452

If you Google search the keywords you’ll find other reliable sources as well.

The reasons this is a hoax is because it doesn’t make sense on several levels.  I’ve recently helped a client with this same type of issue.  It boils down to your own privacy settings and the privacy settings of your friends.  Strangers will not see your posts unless you specify so in your privacy settings.

If you do as the hoax message requests, all that will happen is you won’t see that persons comments and posts.  Your friends and the public in general will still see their likes and comments depending on their privacy settings.

Let’s look at an example.  If you post a comment and your security settings are set to friends only, then only your friends will see that comment.  If your privacy settings are set to friends of friends, then your friends, friends will see it.  Even if your friend does as you ask, your friends friends will still see it.

So therefore you are in control of your privacy, asking your friends to do it is totally unreliable, not all of them would do it, even if it was helpful, and that would just be a stupid security feature.  Think about it…  Who would design a program where one of the security features requires you to ask all your friends to click this button to disable it?  Not very reliable and you have no control over it.  Spoils the whole point of it!

Think about it like this.  You leave your house for work in the morning, but instead of closing the blinds in the house, you ask all your neighbours to please not look in your house while you’re gone.  Maybe they will do as you ask, maybe they won’t, but it doesn’t mean their friends won’t come look in your windows.    OK that was probably a stupid example, but I think you understand.  If not, drop me a line at support@twinbytes.ca or post a comment below or ask a question on our page

Why have they done this hoax?  Well, I’m guessing the reasons are probably to cause unnecessary traffic on Facebook to slow it down further, just as these hoaxes are usually meant to do, but even worse…we won’t be able to see any of our friends comments or likes! ”Strangers” as they call it, which is really just friends of friends, will still be able to see it, and so your friend doesn’t accomplish what they wanted in the first place, and you won’t be able to see your friends comments and likes.  So going forward, you will not be informed if you friend made a comment on something that you would have normally liked to be informed of immediately, like birthday party or death in the family, etc.  When you think about it in those terms, whoever started this hoax is really screwing with our social networking.

On the business side, it’s bad for businesses like myself.  If my friend likes my business and then they tell all their friends to hide their comments and likes, then there goes my free advertising to their friends.  That sucks for business!  No privacy issues their, you are just letting your friends know you like my business.  If you don’t want to share this information, change your privacy settings, don’t pass around a hoax like this which serves no purpose that benefits you in any way.  The only purpose it serves is to hurt your friends and local business.

I’m a computer technology analyst and support technician who deals with security and privacy like this regularly.  You might want to undo your settings if you followed that procedure so you can keep up with your friends still and pass this blog around and share it with your friends so they also know it’s a hoax and not to pass it around.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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)

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.

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.

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.