WyzGuys Tech Talk

Happy new year friends and clients!  Here are some technology resolutions for you to implement (finally!) in 2012.  

1. Backup your files– Let’s all do this one in January.  A good backup solution basically provides for 3 copies of your data:  The original copy on your computer, a local backup of your data on an external drive, flash drive, or another computer in your operations, and an automated remote backup over the Internet, such as Mozy, Carbonite, or WyzBackup, the one ...

For those of you who have had an experience with the Fake AV or Fake Anti-Virus scam, you know how annoying it is to be tricked into paying $40 to buy something that makes you computer worse.  Well the Federal Trade Commission just wrestled $8 million from Mark and Maurice D’Souza and their company Innovative Marketing for perpetrating this fraud on about $320,000 victims.

And the biggest surprise?  The FTC is actually sending $20 to each know victim from the settlement.  ...

We have been busy at WyzGuys over the last two weeks with an unusually large number of malware infections that have come into our shop.  in almost all cases, you have to help the malware get on to your machine by clicking on a link in an email, or getting it from a fake look alike web site at the end of the link, or from a legitimate web site that has some been infected, or from a legitimate web ...

Anyone remember Netscape?  The browser that started it all, but was quickly overtaken by Microsoft’s internet Explorer in 1998, and dominated the browser market with a 95% market share until 2004.  An article on Ars Technica revealed that total browser market share for Internet Explorer fell to 49.59% in October 2011.  Mozilla Firefox has a 21% share, and the Google Chrome browser in third place with a 16% share, and Apple’s Safari bringing up 4th place with a ...

When I got my Android phone it was obvious to me that I needed something to handle the hundreds of spam messages that were making finding important emails in my smart phone inbox an exercise in futility.  I went to the Android Marketplace and signed up for SpamDrain.  Nothing to download or install, they just grab you email messages and filter out the spam before it drops into your inbox.  What I didn’t realize was that it would also keep ...

I am working with a Google Gadget that is supposed to allow me to publish my most recent web posts via my RSS feed at FeedBurner.  This posting is, in fact, a test case to see if it works.

I found instructions for this at the Digital Inspiration web blog.

Let’s see how it works.  My test page is at www.wyzguys.com/BlogFeed.html

…….time passes…….

Huh!  Not working as advertised.  I suspect I may be doing something wrong, but exactly what I am ...

One of my clients handed me a computer where all of her work and personal files in Documents, and Pictures and the like were missing.  in addition, all of her programs were missing as well.  She is running Windows 7 Professional.  Her fear, as well as my own, were that they had been deleted.  As it turned out, they had been “hidden” by the malware.  The file attributes had been changed to “hidden.”  Going to Windows Explorer, Tools, File, Folder ...

“A man can never have too much red wine, too many books, or too much ammunition” – Rudyard Kipling

Sophos has written about a new Firefox security threat.  It comes as an email advicing there is a new update.  The email reads:

Subject: New version released.

Message body:

Important notice
A Firefox software update is a quick download of small amounts of new code to your existing Firefox browser. These small patches can contain security fixes or other little changes to the browser to ensure that you are using the ...

I occasionally will publish a joke in this space.  These are courtesy of Carl Wegener from Glenbrook Lumber.

If you had purchased $1,000 of shares in Delta Airlines one year ago, you would have $49.00 today!

If you had purchased $1,000 of shares in AIG one year ago, you would have $33.00 today.

If you had purchased $1,000 of shares in Lehman Brothers one year ago, you would have $0.00 today.

But, if you had purchased $1,000 worth of beer one year ago, drank ...