Tech Help and Discussions

Watched a News Clip of a shooting. My immediate attention was drawn to News readers hands and fingers. WTF!!! That is scary.

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DSTM replied November 6, 20168 yr

Hello I thought the way to recover the lost Wi-Fi password was to reset the button under the Comcast router and then enter the characters on the bottom. My brother said his friend did it with her phone. How can this be done? TY Peter

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peterr replied October 31, 20168 yr

Thanks to Andrew O’Donnell of SophosLabs for his behind-the-scenes work on this article. There’s a new fake support scam in town, hiding behind a file calling itself Microsoft Security Essentials, and it’s trying to trick victims into contacting bogus help centers. The malware, known to Sophos as Troj/Diztakun-A (Microsoft calls it Hircurdismos), is strangely reminiscent of what many readers will know as lockscreen ransomware from back in 2012. Lockscreen ransomware froze your computer with a web page that tried to squeeze you into paying a “fine”, often for alleged copyright infringement or porn-viewing “offences”, after which the lock screen would be removed. …

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allheart55 Cindy E replied October 26, 20168 yr

Hello I have Windows 1607 and was reading about firewalls after failing the GRC leak test. I found it is unreliable but got me thinking. I read Defender can scan better offline but do not know how. I clicked settings and at the bottom it says scan offline and the click seems to depress but nothing happens, unless it does and I don't know it. I cannot go offine to run it. Could you please tell me how this is done as it says it is more effective than online? TY Peter

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starbuck replied October 26, 20168 yr

Remember when Google’s default setting was to maximize your privacy? Well, Google doesn’t. The internet’s biggest advertising company has now quietly shifted its baseline privacy behavior, so you’ll want to watch out if you’re creating any new accounts. As ProPublica explains, Google has shifted the default setting for all new accounts. While you used to have to opt-in to receive specific, personalized, tracking-based advertising, new accounts will have all those privacy-eroding settings enabled from the start. It’s basically the second step in a change that Google first unveiled back in June, when it opened its one-stop ad-and-privacy-settings shop. On Google’s …

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DSTM replied October 26, 20168 yr

A cyberattack that took down large swaths of the internet around the world on Friday was carried out, in part, by unsuspecting devices connected to the internet. Security firm Flashpoint said it believes that digital video recorders and webcams in people's homes were taken over by malware and then, without owners' knowledge, used to help execute the massive cyberattack. Hundreds of thousands of devices appear to have have been infected with the malware. It was a distributed denial-of-service, or DDoS, attack. Using the malware, hackers were able to flood a website with so much traffic that it impaired normal service. The DDoS attack overwhelmed the servers o…

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allheart55 Cindy E replied October 23, 20168 yr

Windows 10’s cumulative updates have ballooned in size, and a similar bloat will also affect the Windows 7 updates that Microsoft revamped this month. According to data published last month by LANDesk and refreshed by Computerworld with October’s numbers, Windows 10 cumulative updates for the three versions of the new OS have surged in size. Updates for Windows 10 version 1507—the debut that launched in July 2015—have grown 153% (for the 32-bit edition) and 181% (64-bit), from 184MB and 368MB to 466MB and 1,034MB (or over a gigabyte), respectively, in just over a year. Those for version 1511—Windows 10’s first “feature update,” issued in November 2015—exploded …

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Tony D replied October 20, 20168 yr

After raising $50 million earlier this year from Fidelity, security startup Malwarebytes said that it would use some of the funding for acquisitions, and today comes some related news. The company is acquiring a startup out of France called AdwCleaner, whose product specifically tackles and removes adware and has seen a total of 200 million downloads across Windows XP, Vista, 7, 8, 8.1, 10 in 32 and 64-bit platforms. Malwarebytes will keep the AdwCleaner brand for now. Over time the plan is to gradually integrate its software into Malwarebyte’s wider product set, which currently addresses malware, ransomware and exploits that fall under the radar of many of the b…

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Tony D replied October 20, 20168 yr

Hello This is a combo keyboard and mouse. It seems to run OK. I went to device manager and updated the driver online. There is no difference. I went to Logitech but there seems to be no need to get a driver. Is this just lug and play with no need to attend to drivers? TY Peter

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peterr replied October 18, 20168 yr

If you’ve ever browsed some of the internet’s seedier nooks and crannies, you might be familiar with a particular type of scam: The pop-up warning (usually accompanied by a loud, alarm-like sound) telling you that your computer has been compromised and you must call tech support immediately. To people who know better, it’s a minor nuisance but to people who aren’t as scam-savvy, it’s a ruse that brings in millions of dollars to jerks around the world, including a Missouri-based operation that has been shut down by the Federal Trade Commission. The FTC announced today that it has filed suit against the owners of four companies that allegedly used fake pop-up warnings to…

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allheart55 Cindy E replied October 13, 20168 yr

Working on a Windows 98 machine. Had to chuckle. Hard drive disk spaced used is 2.3 GB which includes applications and files. I'm used to seeing upwards of 80 GB in use these days.

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starbuck replied October 12, 20168 yr

DXXD ransomware v1 decrypted, v2 undecryptable A new ransomware that goes by the name of DXXD uses the Windows Legal Notice screen to show a ransom note even before the user logs on his or her computer. The Windows Legal Notice screen is an intermediary screen that appears before the Windows login form and, as its name hints, it's there for the purpose of showing various types of legal notices and other messages before a user can use the PC. This is the first time a ransomware author has used the Legal Notice screen to show a ransom note, but won't be the last. A very efficient way of delivering a ransom note While users can dismiss the notice by pressi…

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allheart55 Cindy E replied October 11, 20168 yr

I think Trump won. What are your thoughts. Both terrible candidates IMO.

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allheart55 Cindy E replied October 10, 20168 yr

Indonesian police have arrested a man for allegedly streaming porn on a billboard viewable to passing motorists in the south of Jakarta, the BBC reports. The AP has named the man as Samudera Al Hakam Ralial, a 24-year-old IT analyst, and reports that he has confessed. According to Jakarta Police Chief Muhammad Iriawan, the suspect claims that the porn broadcast was accidental. The billboard displayed footage from a Japanese porn film for 5 minutes on Friday before power was eventually cut off. However, that was long enough for an untold number of motorists to capture video clips on their mobile phones, and the porn rapidly spread on social media from there. …

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DSTM replied October 6, 20168 yr

Check it out. I think it would work on any device. http://iphonedpt.awardspace.com/

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allheart55 Cindy E replied October 6, 20168 yr

I'm looking at a few boxes of VHS tapes. The players are becoming obsolete and rare.\ Looking to digitize them. I'd like to put them on a hard drive because I believe hard drives are more reliable than DVDs. Once in a digital format, I'd like to have the capability of editing and burning the files to DVDs. Oh, DVDs may also go the way of VHS in a few years. So I should probably plan for the future. How in the world do I do this? Guess I need a video/audio card for a desktop computer and software. I have a VHS player that still works. Has the yellow, white, red connections for video, and stereo audio. I think it also have an S-Video output, Comment, suggestions,…

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Tony D replied October 6, 20168 yr

If you refuse to pay up, the malware vanishes from your PC -- but leaves everything fully encrypted. Kaspersky has released a decryption tool for the Polyglot ransomware to assist victims in recovering their files without giving in and paying a fee. On Monday, the cybersecurity firm launched the free tool (.ZIP), which is suitable for the Polyglot Trojan which is also known as MarsJoke, a strain which has been linked to attacks on government targets. Ransomware is a particularly nasty kind of malware which has hit the headlines over the past year after targeting victims including businesses, hospitals, and universities. What makes the malware strain particula…

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starbuck replied October 5, 20168 yr

Home renovations can turn up some strange things, but a family in the UK found something slightly more alarming than mold or a leaky roof. The Pipewell, England residents discovered a 3-foot-wide nest made by wasps that had taken up permanent residence in their attic, the BBC reports. According to the Northampton Chronicle & Echo, a property that had sat unoccupied for years was once home to some 10,000 wasp squatters. Undisturbed by human activity, the wasps constructed a massive sphere connected to the outside by a long, "intricate" tunnel. The discovery was made by exterminators who had been called in to treat a woodworm infestation and subsequently discovere…

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Bill M. replied October 5, 20168 yr

Yahoo Inc last year secretly built a custom software program to search all of its customers' incoming emails for specific information provided by U.S. intelligence officials, according to people familiar with the matter. The company complied with a classified U.S. government directive, scanning hundreds of millions of Yahoo Mail accounts at the behest of the National Security Agency or FBI, said two former employees and a third person apprised of the events. Some surveillance experts said this represents the first case to surface of a U.S. Internet company agreeing to a spy agency's demand by searching all arriving messages, as opposed to examining stored messages o…

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Bill M. replied October 5, 20168 yr

Amazon detests fake reviews. In October 2015, it sued over 1,000 people over them. More recently, in June, it cracked down on a bunch of companies that it said paid people to produce reviews. Amazon undercover investigators have found that those paid product pushers don’t necessarily bother to even write the reviews themselves: they expect the companies to supply them with whatever fluff they want to stuff into the bogus reviews. To sneak past Amazon’s “Verified Purchaser” system, which tries to ensure that reviewers actually bought the product, dishonest reviewers even arranged shipment of empty boxes. In fact, in June 2015, Amazon introduced a new artifi…

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allheart55 Cindy E replied October 4, 20168 yr

I cannot stand the new Outlook.com. Does anyone else care for it? I may have to switch back to Yahoo.

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DSTM replied October 2, 20168 yr