Trouble accessing Internet from a Network now and then

A few years ago, I discovered a problem that kept me from accessing the Internet. My computer was on Linksys / wireless network that could manage 4 desktop PC’s directly wired too as well as wireless systems. The problem I would have is that every several months, I could not connect to the Internet.
I would spend hours trying to fix this. Then with no avail, I would call my ISP (Verizon.net) and have a techy help me through this ordeal. After this happened again several months to a year later, I again called for help. After this experience, I made notes on what happened and what was done. When it came around again and it did, I said wait a minute, I know how to deal with computers, I should be able to figure this out. So, I examined what was going on combined with what was being done to fix this. Then it hit me! They are having me do all this crap and what I really only have to do is reset my password from within Linksys!!!! All that frustration for such a simple and minor thing. So basically if you are on a network (at home), and you are not able to connect to the Internet, you can try accessing your Linksys and changing the password. This password is the SAME password that you use to check your email from your ISP. If you have any questions, feel free to email me. I do not guarantee that this is the problem that you could be facing, but, it could be a pretty good bet!

Arranging Industrial Printers for bigger companies

Regardless of the size of your company, if you are using industrial sized printers, you will need to arrange them in such a way that not only can you have proper access to all the trays and drawers in the printer, but so that the field engineer can have access to all the sides of the printer. You will need about 2′ around the whole printer for proper access. Also, the printers have their own fans, you don’t want to over crowed them.

You also need the space to clean around these printers because, the dust alone from these types can be huge. As well as toner spills from accidents, stacks of paper that is being used. The list can go on. Some of these types of printers need to be “re-balanced” every time they are moved which is a very good reason to position them once about 2′ apart from each other.

The Verdict is in on those annoying emails

If you get emails like UK Lottery or one from Microsoft or other emails referring to handling money, I just heard that they are ALL scams. Ignore them, delete them. After all, if you didn’t play, how on earth would you get an email about it anyway. I find these emails just as agonizing as spam.
I must get 2 or 3 of these buggers in a week. They only end up in the trash bin. No one should take these emails seriously. Doing so would be costly for those who do.

To find out if something you get is a scam, check out http://www.snopes.com/
for more information.

They keep coming, and I keep deleting. Some, I unsubscribe if possible. You know, don’t our
inboxes get full enough with other emails anyway?

See also Those meaningless annoying why did you get it emails

What not to spare – Revisited

Regarding information on system maintenance and backups, refer to this link:

What not to spare – Revisited – on the New PC User’s blog

SPAM – It’s effects and what to do – Part 3

Now that you have learned about some of the effects of spam, it’s time to see what can be done to deal with spam. Some of the links provided prior to this post cover some useful information in this area.

The following are steps you can take to deal with spam:

1. Make sure that your ISP’s Spam detector or Spam blocker is ON. Also, make sure that
if there are any necessary settings that go along with this, are set to your desired statuses.

2. Make sure that any “spam” or “Junk” settings are ON and set to your desired statuses when using any email browser such as Thunderbird or Netscape Inbox. Also consider reviewing any of these type of settings if you are using any web based email systems such as Yahoo.

3. Since spam can contain Trojans, you need to make sure that your firewall and anti-virus software are ON or running. Just in case any spam gets through and you don’t catch it in time and you accidentally activate something without realizing it.

4. If you receive an email and you don’t know who it is, don’t open it, delete it!

5. (if you are a business) You need to determine your policy on spam. Consider that some spam that is blocked may not be actual spam, but, what the blocker thinks is spam.

I have a spam policy for my blogs, and I admit that I have been lenient on the policy and checking it and either approving or deleting the spam that comes in. There have been a very small amount of spam that was actually worth while comments that had to be approved. This is why I haven’t enforced my spam policy to the letter. How ever, I may modify my policy a bit as time goes on.

SPAM and Phishing in todays Internet

First, in the case of Phishing, you are sent an email that looks very authentic and if you are not careful, you could get caught and end up allowing sensitive information pass right to the Phisher and then you are caught hook line and sinker. With SPAM, you are sent lots of emails or other forms of electronic messages which could bog down your system. They are both in the form of electronic messages and/or email. One can bog down your system and the other can bog down your pocket book or wallet if you are not careful. I’m currently writing a 3 part article on SPAM and with this I am going over the effects of what spam can do and how to deal with it. The first two parts are posted already. There are also some posts on Phishing. Unfortunately this SPAM doesn’t spoil and Phishers have plenty of bait to use. I’ve been seeing a lot of spam and have recently received some emails that were obvious Phishing attempts. I decided that it would be prudent to write about these issues to be able to help anyone who needs this information.

I have multiple blogs and some receive lots of spam every day. Some of the spam is close to being useful while others are not. About 99 percent of the spam received on a daily basis ends up being deleted. I’ve noticed a steady increase of spam since launching my blogs early this year. Large volumes of spam can have a bad effect on a server.

With Phishing, and while volumes of these types of email is not the issue, responding to them is. I’ve received around 3 emails this past week and they were all fraudulent emails that appeared to be from very legitimate web sites. One of the web sites, I don’t even have an account with, which made it a dead give away. I contacted both web sites and one responded right away informing me that the email was fraudulent.

Both spam and fraudulent emails from Phisher’s are security hazards and need to be treated seriously. Stay tuned for my 3rd part on SPAM – It’s effects and what to do.

Also, you can refer to the following posts:

1. SPAM – It’s effects and what to do – Part #1
2. SPAM – It’s effects and What to do – Part #2
3. What you should know about Phishing

SPAM – It’s effects and what to do – Part 2

In part 1 of this article, I used an acronym to try to describe in my view what spam was. I also provided some informative links regarding spam. In this part, I want to go into more detail on the effects of spam. Spam can effect everyone, not just business or corporate.

Here are some effects:

1. Spam Spikes: These defeat anti-spam systems that rely heavily on signatures like desktop anti-virus systems do. For smaller businesses, this can be similar to a distributed denial of service attack. Also can effect email servers.

2. Increased work: SPAM can also add to the work for those people or businesses that review what spam comes into their sites. Sometimes spam contains useful information that can get confused as spam. During such reviews, decisions are made to keep or delete selected entries. Some elect to have spam automatically blocked and deleted, thus never having it reviewed.

3. SpamZoids: This is an every day Internet User who’s PC has been infected with a Trojan that sets up an SMTP application that sends out spam. SpamZoid is a term that I came up with to describe this problem.

Here are some forms of a SpamZoid:

One form is that the user’s PC forwards spam sent by a spammer and another form is that the Trojan came preset with spam and a mailing list. Thus the PC sends out spam and the user has no idea what is going on. The user may eventually understand that the PC is becoming slower than normal. There is also a 3rd form of a SpamZoid. In this case, there is an opposite effect of sending spam out, the user’s PC automatically downloads junk files from another site on the Internet. Thus wasting disk space. I found out about this form slightly over 2 years ago when a friend of mine encountered this problem.

More to come in part 3 (of 3), or you can refer to the first post:

SPAM – It’s effects and what to do – Part 1

SPAM – It’s effects and what to do – Part 1

Serious, Painful, Aggravating Messages that you get via email, blog sites, web sites and where ever else you can get electronic messages. How’s that for an acronym? Let’s begin by talking about the first word in this acronym -

Serious: I call it serious, because, spam can be serious especially if a system gets bogged down with it, such as an attack. Those on the other side of the fence care not about those that it effects except for their own gain.

Painful: It can be painful in addition to being serious for about the same reasons and what needs to be done at times to purge it. Sometimes spam can contain Trojans or other harmful items of serious nature. I used to work for a data center, and for a time, some of the systems were not sufficiently defended against various issues. One time after an innocent email was sent, which unknowingly to all parties of concern contained a virus that crashed one of the main PCs.

Aggravating: It gets old after a while when you constantly get spam.

Messages: S.P.A.M. can come in different electronic forms. Sometimes appearing very innocent to the unsuspecting user.

I will admit that there is probably innocent forms of spam not meant to be harmful to anyone. This type would most likely fall under the “aggravating” category.

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Concerning this blog:

I’ve been faithfully reviewing, moderating and updating this blog each week as best as I can and there are times that I see spam come in that contains useful information that is intended to be of a good nature. The problem is that the information does not conform to the focus of this blog and ends up being deleted. This is not a medical site, but a blog for all PC users concerning with PC issues. There are times that I think some people waste a lot of time entering information in some sections of this blog. It’s a shame that it wasn’t in focus with this blog, otherwise, wow. Now, on the other hand, there has been a lot of spam that has absolutely no useful content at all. I won’t go into details, except to say that it was just not appropriate.
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The purpose of this post is to provide information concerning S.P.A.M.

Please see also the following links that I found on the Internet:

1. Email Spam
2. Spam in Blogs
3. Gates on the effect of spam
4. The emotional effects of spam

For a free download of spam blocking software click here. I haven’t reviewed or tested this software.

In addition to the above information, please also see my Spam Policy as it refers to my blogs.

More to come in part 2 (of 3)

How to improve system performance

Back in February of this year, I wrote a short post on improving system performance, and I thought I would revisit this subject adding to what was discussed then. My motivator for doing this is that I have been plagued with performance issues for quite some time and I find myself still battling this today. My PC is 5 years old and is a Dell XP Home edition PC. I know that I need more RAM, but for the purpose of this article, I will skip that fact. I think, however, that I may have found a significant breakthrough. I recently discovered a software called Regcure. I downloaded and installed it and after registering the software, I was able to clear up a lot of problems that I didn’t even know I had. The first scan found over a 1000 problems. I have noticed a difference in how my system performs after using Regcure. My only dissatisfaction for using Regcure, is that in order to use and remove all the problems, you have to pay an annual fee for the license, otherwise, Regcure only removes some and not all of the problems found. I’m not a big fan of having to pay annual fees for software updates unless it really grabs my attention. I will have to see what the year brings as to whether or not I renew next May or not.

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More suggestions……

Turning off the Windows Indexing Service can free up memory to improve performance. You have to decide how often you use the Windows Search utility in order to gage if turning this feature off is good for you or not.

Another way to improve system performance is to have your email filter set to block out spam. If you open spammed emails, you could unzip a trojan which can cause your system to slow up. You should set your email filters as well as having spyware, adware & malware programs installed and running to catch anything that may get through.

See also:
5 Tips on Improving System Performance

What is a Trojan Horse?

What you should know about Phishing

After a very recent phishing attempt (unsuccessful) on me, I decided to write about this nasty subject again. I recently received an email asking me to update my account information. The email provided a link for me to click on to log in and update my account information. I went to click on it and I immediately realized what this could be, so even thought I did click on the link, I did not do anything that provided any kind of useful information. So, I completely stopped what I was doing and closed it out and logged into the REAL website to verify my account status. It was ok. I immediately notified the website about the incident and they responded back that they never sent me an email and thanked me for notifying them.

You need to be really careful with the emails you get each day. Phisher’s are getting really resourceful in there ability to create emails that look authentic enough to fool you. We’ve become so automatic at times that we do things without even a thought. This is exactly what Phishers are counting on. Then, before you know it, the damage is done. This is a real serious issue, and anyone who uses the Internet, should be careful.

For more information, please see these links on Phishing:

1. Recognize Phishing scams and fraudulent emails

2. Let’s not go Phishing (a post in this blog)