blog

VIRTUAL Scams!

I heard about this on the news last night, then I found an article 2 1/2 years old about this–and I had never heard of this particular angle. Virtual kidnapping.

Apparently a bad guy calls who has faked the phone number of a loved one, like a college student. You THINK the call is coming from your son or daughter, you hear a muffled voice in the distance and then someone on the other end tells you don’t hang up and don’t call the police. You send them money or the kid is a goner.

Spoofing phone numbers is easy to do. The best thing to do is hang up and then call your loved one directly, hopefully your loved ond just answers calmly and you find that everything is fine and they have no idea what you’re talking about. If you get voice-mail, call 911 but then continue calling your child’s phone.

The bad guy will like all bad guys try to frighten you into sending them money, even though they don’t have your child, in fact they probably know nothing about the child. If they call back, ask them to tell you something only your loved one would know, where you went for your last vacation, the name of your pet, something like that. Don’t even use the name of your child because they probably don’t even know the name of the person they supposedly kidnapped.

Here’s the article by the AP… https://www.kxan.com/news/national-news/schools-nationwide-warn-of-virtual-kidnapping-scam-targeting-parents/994969527

A Great Addition if You Have an Amazon Echo…

The problem with the gadgets that you can connect to your WiFi (called the “Internet of Things”) like cameras, etc. is that most are made in China, sold cheap with no future support (like security updates.) TP-Link is an established networking company and they have a 2-pack of smart plugs that you plug into an outlet, and you can then control whatever is connected to it. It’s GREAT for turning on lamps, and if you’re going to be out of town over the holidays you can schedule the lights to look like you’re at home.

You set them up from your smart phone, and can control them from your phone, Amazon Echo and Google Assistant. It’s on sale for $27.99. There are cheaper devices on Amazon, but they are no-name and I doubt they will get security updates when needed. These little guys can be updated from your phone, that’s great!!! Click on the image to get the deal or click here: TP-LINK HS103P2 10 Amp Mini WiFi Smart Plug No Hub Required, Works with Alexa Echo & Google Assistant, 2-Pack, White

Newest Windows 10 Upgrade

Version 1809 just came out today, so being the sucker that I am and being willing to sacrifice my system so that you don’t have to, I upgraded. So far… not a problem. The last upgrade (1803) broke my Skype mic and camera settings, this time–no problem, it works just fine. Everything on the surface looks and works the same. I have a pretty fast Internet connection (over 200 MB/s) and a fast, overclocked and liquid cooled computer running at 4GHz with 16GB of memory, probably more that most of you have, but I started the upgrade at 8:00 pm this evening and by 8:30 I was at the desktop of the upgraded system. I’m guessing for most of y’all it will probably take an hour to two hours depending on your Internet speed and the speed of your computer.

If I see and red flags I’ll be sure to post them here, but at the moment and at first blush, it’s looks like a safe upgrade.

MINOR UPDATE: I have TWO audio outputs from the sound card on my system. One using the normal speaker output goes to the main speakers in my setup and they worked perfectly. I configured a SECOND output from the system to go to headphones (using an output otherwise used for surround sound) and that broke. I went into the Sounds settings and corrected it and now I can listen to both. A MINOR problem that most of you would never even encounter and not even Microsoft probably thought of-so not a problem, just wanted to let you know of any issues I run across after the upgrade.