Beware, fake anti-virus program targeting firefox users

A new, but old scam is out there targeting Firefox users.  Beware of any "Windows Update" page that pops up when using Firefox.  It is a scam scareware attempt to try and get you to install a bogus anti-virus program.  First thing to beware of is that Firefox does not have the ability to trigger a Windows Update screen.  Only Windows itself and Internet Explorer can do that.  In general, beware of any pop-up trying to alert you to a security problem, they are almost always fake.  Ctrl-Shift-Esc will bring up the task manager to allow you to safely exit the popup.  More on the scareware here.

Why won't you let me just quit you?

One of the more annoying aspect of signing up for all of the services on the net is the apparent inability to cancel/delete/unsubscribe/quit the service when you want to at a later date.  Well, those days are over, check out Accountkiller.com.  This site gives you detailed instructions on how to cancel/delete/unsubscribe/quit most of the popular services on the net.  It will also give you a blacklist of sites that will not let you eliminate yourself from their site if you join.

Yes, even tech repairmen can be creepy...

A story out of California where a Mac Repairman working for a local repair shop was arrested after it was discovered that he installed spy camera software on customers computers.  He was pretty sophisticated too.  He had it alert his phone whenever a customer was on their computer.  How he got caught was pretty ridiculous as well.  Read the story to find out how.  Simply put, as smart as he was to set it up, he was just as dumb in how he got caught. 

Use Ninite to keep all your programs up to date

One of the keys to locking down your computer from malware is to keep ALL your programs up to date, not just Windows.  I know it can be a pain cycling through all of your programs and determining which ones are up to date and which are not.  Introducing Ninite.com.  The only purpose of this site is to keep everything up to date.  Simply put a check next to every program you want updated and follow the prompts and the Ninite installer does the rest.  If you are already up to date, it simply skips the install, if not, it updates your program to the latest version.  If you find something you do not have, simply pick it and it will install it with the rest.  The best part is that it ONLY installs the program.  It will not install any typical add-on programs that you may encounter when you try to install the program yourself.  I've mentioned Ninite before but it cannot be mentioned enough.  Too many people only think of Windows when updating their system.  All your programs need your attention.

He hit "@" instead of a "D"

Yep, this is how U.S. Representative Anthony Weiner got into trouble.  In sending his colorful pictures of himself to the woman in Seattle on Twitter, he made the mistake of hitting the @ symbol instead of "D", turning what would have been a private tweet into a public one.  Before you think how something so comical could happen, check out this site: Damnyouautocorrect.com.  A site dedicated to true mistakes sent over text messages from iphones thanks to the auto correct feature.

Another reason to use Dropbox

Dropbox is a free service that allows you create a folder on your Internet accessible device and synchronize the files over multiple devices.  For example, you type up a recipe on vacation with your laptop, drop it in dropbox and now every other computing device that you installed Dropbox on (home computer, ipad, smartphone, etc.), now has that exact copy available for access.  It is a cool way to synchronize important files over multiple devices.  A pretty cool feature that is not talked about much is that Dropbox archives all previous versions of whatever documents you saved in Dropbox.  So if you accidentally erased a document or made changes that you want to reverse, you can look at previous versions of the document in your Dropbox and recover it.  Did I say it was free too? (up to 2GB, paid version allows more storage)