WyzGuys Tech Talk

I just got off the phone with a friend who lives up north in Wisconsin.

She said that since early this morning the snow has been nearly waist high and is still falling. The temperature is 32 below zero and the north wind is increasing to near gale force. Wind chill is -59. Her husband has done nothing but looking through the kitchen window and stare.

She says that if it gets much worse, she may have to let him in.

Thanks to ...

There is a recent spate of news surrounding the vulnerabilities that have been found in wireless routers and access points made by popular manufacturers such as Netgear, Linksys/Cisco and others.  The most recent center on remote access and control via port 32764.  A detailed article on this issue and two others that have come to light lately can be found on Computerworld.

There is a quick and easy way to check your wireless device for this flaw.  First get ...

LogMeIn Free, a staple for those of us providing remote support to other computer users, is gone.  But there are alternatives, such as Windows Remote Desktop, Team Viewer, Join,Me, VNC, and WebEx.  Links to these products are below.  For more information you might check out the article on PCWorld.

The web addresses for these services are:

• TeamViewer — http://www.teamviewer.com/en/index.aspx
• RealVNC — http://www.realvnc.com/
• Join.me — https://join.me/
• WebEx Free — http://www.webex.com/

Windows Remote Desktop is built into the Windows operating system.  ...

What a mess!  Every day it seems some new fresh hell emerges from the Target Christmas attack story.

• Brian Krebs, a security consultant an blogger, releases a story first describing the exploit.
• 40 million credit card transaction sessions, including card number, expiration date and PIN numbers stolen straight off the point of sales systems (POS) used at the store checkout lanes.
• These cards are sold on the Dark Net, the Internet underground where cyber-criminals exchange ...

The discussion is not really Comcast vs. Century Link but DOCSIS vs. DSL. Cable companies use Data Over Cable Service Interface Specification as the Internet signaling specification, and phone companies have used some form of Digital Subscriber Line. Cable is always faster, until we finally all get FiOS (Fiber Optic Service) that we have been promised since Judge Green broke up the Bells in 1982.

Right now, cable is always going to provide faster speeds, and almost always is a ...

As we were discussing in the last article, the goal is to make the data on your old drive useless or unrecoverable by anyone who might get ahold of your computer after your are done with it.  Lets take a look at several methods from easy and weak to irretrievably strong and secure.

• Quick reformatting using Windows.  You can make Windows reformat the drive on a reboot, which will render the computer unusable on completion.  The quick reformat process on removes ...

When you are done with your computer, what happens to your hard drive?  When you properly recycle a computer, no one in the recycling crew is going to wipe that hard drive for you, unless you have made specific arrangements for that to happen. For example, my friends at Renovo Data Services in Eden Prairie MN will destroy your hard drive if you ask them to do it, for a fee.  But this is a procedure that at the very ...

Those of you who have subscribed to Comcast Business Class Signature Support, or on the consumer side, Xfinity Signature Support, it looks like Comcast has decided to get out of the computer support business.  You will want to check these links for more information.

• Business: http://business.comcast.com/ssr
• Consumer: https://signaturesupport.xfinity.com

At WyzGuys, we are authorized contractors for both of these programs, but frankly I am not going to miss the competition from Comcast.  In my humble opinion they should stick to ...