WyzGuys Tech Talk

This in via PC World:  Fake anti-virus product Total Security, once installed, will disable all applications except the browser, claiming the computer is “infected” and keep the computer frozen until the owner pays for their “fix.”   This works by disabling your actual security product, and then reinstalling itself in a slightly different form when you attempt to remove it using traditional means.  Read the full story on the PC World link above.

The best defense I’ve found against the ...

There is a scam being promoted on Facebook that supposedly allows you to install a “dislike” button.  Do NOT click on the short Bitly URL, it will take you to a place you do not want to go, show you images you make not want to see, and update your Facebook profile to help perpetuate the hoax.  For a complete description of the hoax including some nice screen shots, see the article on the Sophos web site.

Here’s a great tip from Support.com.  The nifty rotating Aero desktop themes that are available to you are determined largely by your language and geographic area.  As an American, I see scenes from the United States.  There are themes available in the English Language version of Windows 7 for Australia, Canada, Great Britain, and South Africa as well.

To add the themes to your palette, navigate to  C:WindowsGlobalizationMCT.  In the MCT folder you will see the additional country folders.  Open each ...

I occasionally get asked how to calibrate a monitor to get truer color, brightness, and contrast.  This is definitely an issue for professional and serious amateur photographers.  Often the results from a session in Photoshop will be dramatically different when you print the image on your photo inkjet printer.  While this simple program that is included in Windows 7  may not get you all the way to perfection, it can go a long way toward improving your viewing experience.

Click on ...

I subscribe to a newsletter called the Virus Bulletin, and earlier in August they sent out the results of their latest lab test of 54 for the most popular anti-malware products on the market.  You can see the results here.  The Reactive and Proactive Quadrant shown in the article rates a products ability to react to known virus and malware attacks, as well as its ability to proactively deal with unknown or new threats, based on technologies such ...

I have been getting several survey requests from Facebook in my email lately, and most end up in my SPAM folder, where they belong.   Do not click on any links or worse yet take the survey.  This is an exploit to allow criminal hackers to acquire your Facebook credentials and hijack your Facebook account in order to steal your identity and raise funds from your Facebook Friends.

This, unfortunately, is a really good question, and one that I may finally, after a year, be able to answer, at least partially.  My reason for signing up on Twitter was initially a defensive play, I have a significant web presence I have developed over the years around my domain name, WyzGuys.  So when Twitter launched I immediately signed up as wyzguy in Twitter.  Now you know where to follow me.

I had some difficulty finding my Twitter “voice.”  What to ...

Microsoft Office 2010 is officially released, with some new features and small changes that make this productivity suite easier to use.  The list of changes is pretty long, so we will cover them in a series of posts over the next couple of months, as I get a chance to play with the new Office myself.

The first thing to talk about is what has not changed, and that is the new ribbon user interface.  Those clients who made the upgrade ...

As many of you know McAfee sent out a virus signature file a couple week ago that falsely reported essential Windows service svchost.exe as a virus, crippling Windows systems running McAfee security products.  This issue caused the a lot of mayhem for McAfee users, and cause several of their large corporate clients to shut down all computer operations while they dealt with this mistake.

McAfee’s CEO promised to reimburse McAfee users for any expenses incurred to restore their computers to working ...

I got an email today from Sophos.  Their alert read:

Hackers have spammed out widely a malicious email attack, posing as a gift certificate for Apple iTunes. The emails, which claim that the recipient has received a $50 iTunes Gift Certificate, carry a dangerous ZIP file which can infect Windows computers.

The emails read as follows:

Subject: Thank you for buying iTunes Gift Certificate!
From: "iTunes Online Store" <software@itunes.com> ...