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Wolf! Wolf! Wolf!

Yep. The sky is falling! At least if you listen to some publications.

I know many of you read tech stuff online, and that’s fine. Education is wonderful. But just be aware that the closest thing to a legitimate source and yet seems to prey on scaring you is in my opinion Forbes. They always seems to have a reason why you shouldn’t use something or do something, yet the security sources I regularly monitor don’t mention it at all (and I monitor a lot of them).

So please, DON’T go off and do something to your computer just because “you read it on the Internet”. And yes, it’s as dumb as it sounds.

You know you can ask me if you have questions. Forbes just seems to be trying to drive traffic to their site based on scaring you – and I have a problem with that.

I’ll check it out for you if you’re concerned.

Gmail Trick to Manage Spam

I know some of you have more than one email account. Your “real” account that you use with friends, and your fake account that you use to avoid junk mail.

So let me ask you, how well is that working? Your real email account gets out there is ways you don’t realize, and now of course you’re seeing junk mail in that account as well.

If you have Gmail, you just need one account. For starters, Gmail has probably the single best spam filter out there just for your regular email. BUT, if you want to have a separate email address for sites that require an email address even though you’d rather not give them your real one, then here’s a little trick for you…

Add a + (plus sign) to your existing email account right before the @ sign and then you can put whatever you want AFTER the + sign followed by @gmail.com

Here’s an example, my email address is [email protected] If a site insists on an email address that I don’t want to get mail from, I give them the following address: [email protected]

Gmail IGNORES the plus sign and anything that follows it prior to the @ symbol. I can put [email protected] or as many other things I can think of.

It’s easy to set up a filter in Gmail to tell it to automatically delete anything that you get with that address. Here’s an article to tell you how to create a filter: https://www.lifewire.com/create-rules-in-gmail-4172416. One of the options in the filter will be to Delete. Choose that and future mail to your “special” email address will be deleted with it arrives.

Happy Quarantining!

No, a Hacker Doesn’t Have Video of You Viewing…

If you get something like the message below, you should know by now as my client that this is fake. First, for most of you (I hope) you’re not watching porn. Second, no one is watching you. EVERYONE is getting this email sooner or later, kids, little old ladies, everyone! They just hope to get the folks that did in fact watch porn and “satisfy themselves” and scare them into sending money even though it’s a hoax. The only true thing in the entire message is the bitcoin address where you can send your money if you want (so please don’t). I particularly like the polite “Best regards” at the end of the message.

And FYI, Gmail’s spam filter will catch this message and just put it in spam for you.

Hello!

I am a hacker who has access to your operating system.
I also have full access to your account.

I’ve been watching you for a few months now.
The fact is that you were infected with malware through an adult site that you visited.

If you are not familiar with this, I will explain.
Trojan Virus gives me full access and control over a computer or other device.
This means that I can see everything on your screen, turn on the camera and microphone, but you do not know about it.

I also have access to all your contacts and all your correspondence.

Why your antivirus did not detect malware?
Answer: My malware uses the driver, I update its signatures every 4 hours so that your antivirus is silent.

I made a video showing how you satisfy yourself in the left half of the screen, and in the right half you see the video that you watched.
With one click of the mouse, I can send this video to all your emails and contacts on social networks.
I can also post access to all your e-mail correspondence and messengers that you use.

If you want to prevent this,
transfer the amount of $500 to my bitcoin address (if you do not know how to do this, write to Google: “Buy Bitcoin”).

My bitcoin address (BTC Wallet) is:  3Npi6VryeDuyu3zCi4CqJByt5fjwsgiake

After receiving the payment, I will delete the video and you will never hear me again.
I give you 50 hours (more than 2 days) to pay.
I have a notice reading this letter, and the timer will work when you see this letter.

Filing a complaint somewhere does not make sense because this email cannot be tracked like my bitcoin address.
I do not make any mistakes.

If I find that you have shared this message with someone else, the video will be immediately distributed.

Best regards!

I Have a Nice Desktop for Sale – $185

I just refurbished a 6 year-old Dell Studio XPS desktop computer. It has a 6-core AMD processor, an nice ATI graphics card, I upgraded the memory to 8GB and installed a brand new 240GB Solid State Drive. It has both analog and digital audio outputs (you could connect the sound directly to a nice stereo system if you wanted), lots of USB ports, can run multiple monitors and built-in Wi-fi.

It’s fast, it boots to the desktop in 15 seconds. Included is a new, clean build of Windows 10 without any of the garbage that comes with new computers, Microsoft Office 2010 Home and Business, Adobe Reader and Google Chrome along with Mozilla Firefox. The computer is completely up to date and ready to go.

If you’re computer is getting old and tired, this is faster and cheaper than trying to upgrade yours.  Don’t debate this too long because on the rare occasion I have a computer for sale, it usually goes in within 48 hours. If it doesn’t sell I’ll put it out to the general public, my clients and friends get first crack at it. Call or email me.