GuruNews, Volume 9 Number 9, 3-5-09

Thu Mar 5 21:54:10 EST 2009

Welcome to GuruNews

Brought to you each week by the PC Gurus, a loose collection of volunteers from around the Kentuckiana region.

You can interact with the PC Guru team via our Web site, located at http://www.thepcgurus.com.  On our site you can post your computer questions, comments and rants on the forums, e-mail the PC Guru

team members and chat one on one in our nightly IRC chat beginning around 8:00 PM EDT.  You can also subscribe to our RSS feeds so you can get the latest news and forum updates from the PC Guru Web site directly on your computer.

If you're new to the Newsletter you can read back issues at Team member JP Durbin's website at http://www.jpdurbin.net.  There are links to all the old 84 Online issues as well as the new GuruNews missives.

The WHAS Crusade for Children provides year round support for needy children throughout the Kentuckiana region.  Visit http://www.whascrusade.org to make donations online.

USS Rover's list of streaming computer shows is now available for download in Excel, Open Office and Linux ready formats from http://sheet.zoho.com/public/ussrover/shows. 

To subscribe to this newsletter just drop by www.thepcgurus.com and sign up!

Vol. 9, No. 9                            

3-5-09

1 Identity protection         

2 Hard times

3 Cyber Beatlemania, TwitterFace?, more Windows security patches, PC recession

4 Writer's block cure      

5 Acrobat danger²

6 AV slowdown

I have mentioned many times the importance of protecting your identity while online.  Things have changed significantly and you need to secure more than just your Internet shopping, you need to secure your entire life.

I've talked with three different people in person over the last few days who've had their identity stolen online and have seen forum postings from acquaintances regarding bogus paper mailings, bogus attempts to use eBay and CraigsList to procure merchandise with forged Money Orders and Cashiers Checks.  Even one instance of a waitress taking cellphone pictures of the fronts and backs of credit cards.

The same cautions you've been using online should be used, especially the use of a throwaway preload credit card.  You can pick these up at many places including drug stores and big-box stores.  Even Radio Shack carries them.

Load them with your desired amount of cash and use them to shop online.  I also suggest using them as the default account for Pay Pal, which you have to have if you shop on eBay or other auction sites.

Also use it when shopping and dining out.  Avoid using a regular credit or debit card in restaurants and other establishments where the card will be out of your sight.  Standard cards should be safe when used at check out counters and at ATMs.

You might also use them for your online bill paying, since your information is stored on company servers accessible to the public.

So much for spending, how about for receiving?

If you sell items through auction sites I would suggest accepting Pay Pal only.  Payments go directly to your account, which you can then transfer to your preload card and spend or withdraw into cash.

Pay Pal has a certain amount of protection built into your account so it protects both the seller from scams and the buyer from identity theft.  Accepting credit cards online wouldn't offer as much protection, money orders and cashier's checks offer no protection  

Otherwise just practice safe shopping.  Make sure you're connected to a secure site before entering credit card or other personal information, never follow an email link asking for personal or financial data (no company asks for that) and don't purchase things from pop-up ads or spam.

In real life keep your credit cards in your sight and never give information to someone who calls you.  Those incoming calls could originate anyway.  Don't accept anything but Pay Pal online and never send any money by Western Union unless you initiated the call to a friend or relative.

It's a harsh reality we live in but don't trust anyone.  Unfortunately, it's as simple as that.

Kevin Mefford. Editor

pcguru at microdome.net

Terry Wise

www.ratland.com

Tech News of the Week

It's official: The Beatles will come together digitally this September
for their much anticipated Rock Band debut:

http://tinyurl.com/ae8xv3

Facebook on Wednesday introduced a redesigned user home page and new
public profiles for celebrities and organizations in a move widely
seen as an attempt to compete with the real-time social messaging
offered by Twitter:

http://tinyurl.com/cd9p43

Microsoft will release three sets of security updates next Tuesday,
fixing at least one critical bug in its Windows operating system:

http://tinyurl.com/bfxprk

PC shipments worldwide will drop 8 percent in the first half of this
year, according to a forecast update Thursday to IDC's Worldwide
Quarterly PC Tracker. The fourth quarter saw a 1.9 percent decline,
driven in large part by large enterprise companies delaying buying
replacement PCs during the recession:

http://news.cnet.com/8301-1001_3-10189362-92.html

Matthew Dattilo
thepcgurus at gmail.com 
www.mattstodayinhistory.com

Download of the Week

"TheSage" is a comprehensive dictionary and thesaurus that could become indispensable to writers of all sorts, including researchers, journalists, novelists, and students. It's a powerful dictionary and thesaurus program that offers many more features than similar programs I've seen. Writers who would appreciate help finding just the right word should give this program a try.  It's free here:

http://www.sequencepublishing.com/index.html 

Carlita Lupino

Cards57 at gmail.com

Threat of the Week

Last week's Adobe warning was of concern and the delay in patching the flaw until mid-March meant making a few interim changes was bad.  It has gotten worse.

A new demonstration by security researcher Didier Stevens shows the flaw kicks in if you just hover your cursor over a malformed file or if you use thumbnail view for folders containing .pdf files.

The repost last week's precautions, you should make the following changes to Adobe Acrobat and Reader:

"Launch Acrobat or Adobe Reader 

Select Edit>Preferences 

Select the JavaScript Category 

Uncheck the 'Enable Acrobat JavaScript' option 

Click OK"

Adobe still estimates a patch by March 11th.  Watch for it.

Kevin Mefford

pcguru at microdome.net

Email Question of the Week

Q:  I have a HP Pavilion Desktop x1963. I did not use it online and it was
fine. Then I decided to hook it up to the Internet. I put AVG Virus on
it and put it online. After that it slowed way down. I reformatted it
in hopes of getting some speed back. After that it was fine I did not
reload anything back on it but Microsoft Office and it was still fine.
Then I put Norton 360 and the windows updated the computer and it
slowed it back down where it was before I reformatted it. I'm not sure
but I think it may have slowed down after the Norton's was installed.
Before I had AVG on it and I thought that is why it slowed down the
first time. That is why I decided to try the Norton's. Do you have any
thing I can try short of reformatting it again to help me get some of
the speed back?

A:  Norton is notorious for slowing a PC down.  The AVG problem was
likely due to the default setting to scan every time you boot the PC.

Try removing the Norton and installing the free AVG again.  Read
the screens during setup and watch for one that asks about daily
scans, I think it's the second screen after the initial install when
the program starts and does the basic configuration.  When you see the
screen that sets the automatic daily scans (I think they're scheduled
for 12:00) uncheck the box that enables them and when prompted verify
that you want to disable.

An active antivirus program scans everything new that comes into a
PC anyway, but an occasional scan is a good idea in case something new
snuck in before the definition files were updated to prevent it.
Daily, in my opinion, is overkill.

Hope that helps and keep us posted...

Kevin Mefford

pcguru at microdome.net

Contact info and legal stuff

If you have tech support questions or ideas and/or submissions for our newsletter please submit them by visiting www.thepcgurus.com and click on the "Email the Team" icon. 

Copyright 2001-2009 The PC Gurus, all rights reserved.  Publication, rebroadcast or storage is prohibited without prior consent, however you may freely forward this publication to friends as long as A) it is forwarded in its entirety and B) no fee is charged.

Information provided in this publication is provided "as is" without warranty of any kind, either expressed or implied.  Although the information provided is known to work on most systems, it may not work on ALL systems.  Make use of any information supplied at your own risk.

The PC Gurus are a group of volunteers who provide support for the PC, Mac and Linux users in the Kentuckiana region.

To unsubscribe from this newsletter visit http://thepcgurus.com/mailman/listinfo/newsletter_thepcgurus.com or send an email to microdome at seidata.com with the words "unsubscribe newsletter" (without the quotes) at the top of the body of the message.
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://thepcgurus.com/pipermail/newsletter_thepcgurus.com/attachments/20090305/1bad1ba5/attachment.html>
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: not available
Type: image/jpeg
Size: 32012 bytes
Desc: not available
URL: <http://thepcgurus.com/pipermail/newsletter_thepcgurus.com/attachments/20090305/1bad1ba5/attachment.jpe>