Technology Blog, Web Design and SEO

As a part of the Crystal Coast Technologies Tech Support program we are now offering monthly tech support service to businesses both large and small. These services are meant to keep your PCs and your network running as efficiently as possible so that you can concentrate on the other aspects of your business. Monthly service plans include on-call support, 1 visit monthly to clean PCs, fix PCs, etc… A fully detailed diagram of your network will also be made to include all of the important information about your hardware and network connectivity. OnSite and OnLine backup solutions may also be added to the monthly service plan to make sure your data is safe and well protected in case of a natural disaster (fire, hurricane, etc…)

Email me for further details.

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4. Scan for Adware at least once per month

Using a program that specifically scans for adware can be a great tool to have for any business. Programs such as Ad-Aware and Spybot-Search and Destroy can search for any registry changes that may be caused by adware or spyware. These programs may be able to find additional adware and spyware that do not show up in your Anti-Virus program. The best part is, both of these programs are absolutely free.

3. Watch for “Click Here for $$$” advertisements on web pages.

If you see an ad that tells you it’s going to give you a ton of money, stay far, far away! About the only prize you can receive from one of these ads is a slow PC full of adware. Not cool!

2. Don’t leave company email open on a public internet kiosk

This may seem like a simple idea, but just the fact that we are a species of habit could make this a major security risk for your business. If you are travelling and need to check your email at a public PC, please make sure to close out of your email when you are finished. Some kiosks will automatically log you off after a certain amount of time, but within that time limit, all of your email is fair game for anyone close by.

1. Don’t make your password “password”

Last, but certainly not least is the rule that you should NEVER make your password “password” or something similar to a default password. I definitely agree that passwords can be the most annoying things in the world to have to remember, but they are very important to keeping your data safe. Taping them to the front of your monitor or hiding them under the keyboard may help you to remember what they are, but isn’t much of a data theft deterrent. Here is a nice write-up that Anthony did about passwords. Check it out.

So with a little common sense and a few pieces of software, you can keep your business and your data more secure!

Click here to see part 1 and here to see part 2.

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These two types of software are very similar to each other although they are not the same thing. Many times mistaken as a virus, malware can wreak havoc on any PC that it has infected. It may also drive the user to the brink of insanity. Malware or “Malicious Software” is any piece of software written directly with the intent of doing harm to the file system of your PC. Malware may be downloaded to your PC unintentionally through either a peer-to-peer file sharing program or through an opened email attachment. Malware may actually contain other malicious software such as viruses, worms, spyware, and adware. The malware software may actually corrupt the file system of your PC causing it to come to a slow crawl or even a screeching halt!
On the other hand, viruses, which are also attained through downloaded software and opened email attachments, infect the different pieces of software on your computer and may cause you to lose important data. The thing about viruses is that they may also spread to other PCs in your network using a “worm”. This can happen without any interaction from the user, and can cause major problems and even hours of downtime for a business with more than a handful of computers. Many of these viruses have also been used to “take over PCs” and use them to send out mass spam emails as well as to inundate your PC with spyware to grab your personal information.

The risk of having either of these infect your PC(s) can be greatly reduced by having properly updated Anti-Virus software installed on your PC as well as software updates, and Windows Updates.

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Many times you may wonder why you have to click on the Send/Receive button to get your email. Shouldn’t it be automatic? Yes, it should be, but by default it is not. Here is how to have Microsoft Office Outlook automatically check for your email every 5 minutes.

1. Open Microsoft Office Outlook

2. Click Tools –> Send/Receive –> Send/Receive Settings –> Define Send/Receive Groups

3. You will see a box that looks like this:

Click the checkbox next to “Schedule an Automatic Send/Receive every “5″ minutes.”

4. Click Close

All done!

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Back when e-mail was in its infancy, users used to have to pay around $20 a month for an account. I remember when having an email account was viewed as a status symbol, even if none of your friends had one and therefore did not communicate with you that way.

Fast forward 15 years and almost EVERYONE has an email account. The only holdouts are usually the elderly, infants or separatists living in one-room cabins in Wyoming. Most people even have multiple email accounts since they are available for free these days. But, of course the Spammers know that fact also and one of the biggest complaints, if not THE biggest, these days is the amount of SPAM that the average user receives daily (the FTC even has a lengthly form you can fill out to file a formal complaint). Some estimates say that as much as 90-percent of all email is SPAM, although I think that figure could be really inflated. Add to the sheer volume of spam the ever-more-sophisticated phishing attacks unleashed on unsuspecting users and it is obvious that the email method of communication is under serious attack.

One can no longer just rely on Blacklisting or blocking certain email addresses. E-mail address spoofing has rendered that technique all but useless. Blocking emails containing certain “words” is another technique that is so ’90s. Spammers are just rewriting these words so that filters c@n’t bl()ck them.

The bad guys go to these lengths because SPAM is far too lucrative a business for it to just go away. The average spammer sends 100 million messages at one time. Let’s say that only 1% get past the spam filters. That is 1 million messages that are actually delivered. Now take it a step further and let’s say that 1% of those messages are actually answered - that is 10,000 SPAM emails that are actually answered in some way by the recipient. There is not another advertising method available that provides that kind of success rate and all the spammer has to do is create an email and push the “send” button.

Make no mistake, spammers are in the lead in this race. They are hiring professional software developers to create more and more effective programs. They are also using botnets to avoid detection by ISPs and to send the emails from multiple nodes, making it harder and harder for security vendors to stop or even slow the flow.

So the next time you see spam in your inbox, try to remember what the web hosting company is up against. It requires constant effort and even that sometimes is not enough. You, however, can make things a little easier by protecting your email addresses. For example, if a website requires you to enter a valid email address in order to sign up for something, try using a temporary email address service. One that we have mentioned before is Guerrilla Mail. A service like that will keep your personal email address from ending up in some spammer’s database.

Also, if you receive an unsolicited email from someone you don’t know, don’t click the little link that sometimes appears at the bottom of the email saying “Click here to be removed from our mailing list.” Usually, clicking that link will just notify the spammer that he/she has actually discovered a valid email address.

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