Our phone service is having a switching problem in relationship to my main phone line’s ability to receive calls. I apologize for the inconvenience – please use (843) 883-4055 to call us until further notice. Thank you for understanding.

**UPDATE** According to my phone company, I am a victim of what is known as “Phone Slamming“. It is the illegal practice of switching a traditional wireline telephone company for local, local toll, or long distance service without permission.

**UPDATE 2** As of this afternoon, phone service has been restored to (843) 767-9500. Thank you for your patience.

Apple is a company known to keep its product releases shrouded in a cloak of secrecy. It’s almost comical because there are a lot of successful websites dedicated to rumors around the company, its products, and its personnel. Can you think of any other company out there that the public has so much interest in? This is the kind of fanaticism reserved for musicians and athletic organizations. Somehow, Apple has learned the formula to pique the interest of not only its customers, but even its haters as well (Apple haters can’t wait for a new opportunity to bring out a cliche joke about one-buttoned mice).

So, for most regular people who don’t want to buy a new Mac and find out three weeks later that a faster/bigger/cooler machine is released, the obsessive data crunched by these rumor sites can be used to their advantage. Now, lets be sensible about the source of information received from a website that is designed around rumors. A lot of the time they are just plain wrong. The Apple tablet has been rumored for years now, and every January for the last three years there have been promises of a life altering device that will solve every one of your problems and be only 10mm thick. But, as far as their actual computers are concerned, there is a lot of external information to get a relatively accurate time frame of when a product will get updated so you can avoid that end-of-life purchase burn.

Step in the infamous rumor site MacRumors.com. This site has some of the most ridiculously obsessive news posts regarding Apple Corp. on the planet, but they have a very valuable resource that can ease your mind if you are planning to purchase a new Mac anytime soon. It is the MacRumors Buyers Guide. Basically how it works is they track the release cycle of Apple’s most popular products and track component manufacturer releases (like Intel) to figure out an average time each product exists on the market before it gets upgraded or replaced. So when the need arrives to purchase a new Mac and you have a little bit of time to wait, start with the buyers guide. Don’t bother asking Apple store or support employees for any information about product releases. They really don’t know – trying to brag them with cupcakes will not work.

Merry Christmas and a belated Happy Hanukkah to all of my fantastic clients! We had a great year and I’m looking forward to serving you all in the new year. FYI, we will be open on the week of Monday, Dec 28th 2009, but will be closed on New Years day.

Eddie, the Golden Retriever says Merry Christmas!

Over the last few weeks, the amount of service calls I have received regarding malicious software infections have been a lot higher than usual. It seems like the creators of various rogueware applications that pretend to be security software are cashing in on the holiday surge in spending. This has been a real cause for concern among my customers as the future of dealing with these kinds of infections appears bleak because they get sneakier, more common, and tougher to prevent. I have been answering a lot of questions regarding these attacks and I have decided to address the most common ones in this article.

First off, a little background. Who are these people? Well, the majority of the infections seem to point back to a Russian software company called Bakasoftware. As reported on Wikipedia; in November 2008, it was reported that a hacker known as NeoN hacked the Bakasoftware’s database, and posted the earnings of the company received from XP Antivirus. The data revealed the most successful affiliate earned $158,000 in a week. And that’s just one of many affiliates! In this InformationWeek article, they estimate that cybercriminals are earning about $34 million per month from rogueware, which typically sells for between $49.95 and $79.95. In December of 2008, the FTC issued a temporary halt to a massive scareware scheme, and two companies were charged in that case – Innovative Marketing, Inc. and ByteHosting Internet Services, LLC, who operate using a variety of aliases and maintain offices in various countries. According to the complaint, Innovative Marketing is a company incorporated in Belize that maintains offices in Kiev, Ukraine. ByteHosting Internet Services is based in Cincinnati, Ohio.

How did you get infected? Well, the overwhelming majority of people I have helped have been running Windows XP and are using Internet Explorer as their web browser. This doesn’t mean that Windows Vista or Windows 7 are not vulnerable (I have cleaned up a handful of infections on Vista computers, but Windows 7 is still too new and I have not personally dealt with any such infections on it yet), it just means there are a whole lot more XP users out there. It does not affect Apple’s Mac OS X, so unless you are running Windows XP in Boot Camp or in a virtual machine like Parallels or VMWare’s Fusion, Mac users need not worry. This article on Wikipedia sums up the most common ways computer get infected:

Rogue security software mainly relies on social engineering in order to defeat the security built into modern operating system and browser software and install itself onto victims’ computers.

Most have a Trojan horse component, which users are misled into installing. The Trojan may be disguised as:

* A browser plug-in or extension (typically toolbar)
* An image, screensaver or archive file attached to an e-mail message
* Multimedia codec required to play a certain video clip
* Software shared on peer-to-peer networks
* A free online malware scanning service

Some rogue security software, however, propagate onto users computers as drive-by downloads which exploit security vulnerabilities in web browsers or e-mail clients to install themselves without any manual interaction.

I have found that Facebook has been the latest and most popular tool in socially engineering victims into infecting their computers. The most common instance is an email within Facebook’s direct messaging system that comes from a friend and asks quite generically to check out a video or photo with a link to a website outside of Facebook. After that the user will get a pop-up message that their computer is infected, and will ask if they want to install security software to clean the infections. Here’s the rub, even if they click cancel on the message, it will go ahead and install itself anyway.

Why didn’t my Anti-Virus program stop this? Battling these types of infections is an uphill battle. Security software is only as good as the latest virus definitions that are installed. The malicious software coders are putting out mutated versions of their software daily, and once they get on your machine they typically disable your anti-virus program’s ability to update itself. The only proven way to prevent these infections is to either disconnect from the Internet or not use a Windows based PC! Unfortunately, that is not possible for the majority of people out there, so there are some things you can do to avoid them.

The first step is to recognize the events that lead up to an rouge infection. Downloadsquad has a great article on
how to spot a fake anti-virus program. From their article:

Here are some things to look for:

* cheesey names – never mind the old adage, with these programs you usually CAN judge the book by its cover. Rogue antivirus programs typically use names like Antivirus 360, WinAntivirus 2009, Spyware Police, SpywareProtect, etc.

* alerts that just don’t belong – Windows will tell you if you’re not running antivirus software or the definitions are out of date, but it won’t tell you that an infection has been found. Windows Defender will pop up alerts, but not Windows itself or the Windows Security Center. Alerts that claim Windows has found infected files are pulling your leg.

* poor grammar – Windows has its weak points, but real system messages are usually very well written and clear. Alerts from rogue apps don’t have the same attention to detail.

* bogus scanning – lots of these apps pretend to scan your system and find all kinds of infected files. Watch what folders and files are being scanned and see if they match the infected files being found.

If the scan is going through c:\windows\ and infected items in folders like c:\temp or c:\documents and settings\ are popping up, it’s bogus. Real virus scanners will display infected items as soon as they find them in the folder that’s currently being scanned – not random stuff from who knows where.

The old thought on preventing viruses was to never open email from an unknown source. While that is still true, nowadays most of the time these infections come from a person you know who may have been infected and is spreading it. They also come from websites that get hacked and advertising networks that become compromised. These types of infections usually take advantage of known and patched security holes, but because of the inconsistency of many software programs proprietary updating systems, most computer users get frustrated and confused by the daily reminders to update their programs and operating system and choose to ignore them altogether. This, coupled with the knowledge that the rogue vendors use almost identical automatic update methods to infect computers make users afraid to update anything!

Another personal gripe is that there are still people out there using Internet Explorer. No matter how much I preach, there are a lot of people that just don’t care. I suspect these are the same people who re-elect corrupt politicians because they don’t know who the alternatives are, and are too lazy to learn. This gets me angry, because the alternative browsers are free. They cost you nothing, yet so many people are not using them! Furthermore, most of them are better and faster. There is no legitimate technical source that will disprove that fact, yet people are scared to change.

Who are the alternatives? Well, there are a lot, but currently the 3 most popular are Mozilla Firefox, Google Chrome, and Apple Safari.

So, there you have it. The best way to realistically prevent an infection is the ongoing knowledge of how they are spreading as well as the knowledge of how your computer and its programs update themselves. You also have to stop using Internet Explorer for all but certain sites that are too stupid/lazy to follow internet standards (such as the CTAR MLS site which mostly works as of this writing in Firefox, and a lot of local government sites). Don’t use Internet Explorer for Facebook, Myspace, Twitter, or similar social networking sites. Sorry if this comes across as harsh, but the truth hurts – especially if it involves extra effort on your part. But, if you’re reading this far into the article, you obviously care enough to learn about malicious software prevention so you are on your way!

OK, last but certainly not least, what should you do if you are infected? This varies from case to case. The latest malicious infections are downright evil. They will not let you run programs, if you start up in safe mode the computer crashes before it can even boot, and if you install a removal tool it will delete it as soon as you install it. The most current ones are really sneaky, as they will infect your computer and pester you for a day or so and then go dormant. You will believe that it just went away on its own or that your anti-virus program took care of it, but it is still there in the background collecting information such as credit card numbers and passwords. So how can you fix it?

The best thing you can do if you are not confident in your abilities to deal with an infected computer is to call a professional. I know I deal with these problems on a daily basis, so what might take a novice days to deal with will take me about an hour. If your time is valuable and you can afford it, the cost of hiring a pro will be well worth it – and we guarantee our work. The alternative is to do it yourself with the help of some great online resources. My favorite database of how to remove known infections comes from the website bleepingcomputer.com. The methods that these infections use to make your life miserable are always changing, so when it comes to computer security, you need to strap on your tinfoil hat and be weary of everything you do on the internet. Or, just buy a Mac. To date, I have never personally encountered a virus on a Mac.

This is just a quick little post to inform you that Apple is giving away a free holiday music compilation on the iTunes Music Store. Check out the list of songs/artists here.

Here are some great products no matter which way you look at it. But for this article’s sake, we’re listing 2 items in each category. A low priced item and a high priced item. The only prerequisite is that they are well received items no matter what the cost, so depending on your budget, you can’t go wrong. And another thing to note is that these aren’t the lowest priced or highest priced items in each category, they are just great values at each price. This means that there are cheaper Blu-Ray players, but they might not be nearly as good as the one I suggest. There are certainly more expensive ones, but as far as price for features and style, there is no sane reason to spend much more (in my humble opinion anyway).

Blu-Ray Player:

High – Playstation 3 250GB – Yes, it’s a game console, but it is also a great Blu-Ray player. In fact, I’m sure a lot of PS3 owners out there use the Blu-Ray player more than they use it to play games on!

Low – Samsung – BD-P1600 Blu-Ray Disc Player – Samsung has been one of the better producers of home entertainment equipment for a while now, and this is no exception. With built-in WiFi, Netflix streaming, and 1080p output, this is a great looking and inexpensive device.

Laptop Computer:

High – MacBook Pro 15″ Designed like no other personal computers out there, Apple continues to pave the way for everyone else. Top of the line performance and a virtually virus-free experience if you have the money to invest in this piece of technical art. This is the machine that will facilitate your photography, film making, music composition and recording, or just good old fashioned computing needs.

Low – Asus Eee PC Netbook – If you’re like most people, you use your computer to get on the internet and read your email, pay some bills, and check Facebook. If that is the case, then a Netbook computer is the right choice for you. Also, if you travel a lot, there’s nothing like a day’s worth of battery life on one charge to keep you going.

Point-And-Shoot Camera:

High – Canon Powershot S90 IS – Camera geek Ken Rocwell has been gushing about this camera since before it even came out. It’s as close as you can get to a full sized DSLR’s image quality in a compact point and shoot digital camera.

Low – Panasonic Lumix DMC-FS7K Panasonic makes some of the finest compact digital cameras around. Their secret? The lens of course! This one has a f/2.8 Leica DC Vario-Elmar 4x Optical Zoom Lens. Yes, that Leica.

Electronic Book Reader:

High – Amazon Kindle 2.0 – The wireless 3G worldwide access is what set the Kindle apart from other eBook Readers. That, and the fact that you can read it in just about any lighting condition makes this a worthy investment.

Low – Sony PRS-300 E-Reader Pocket Edition – Long battery life, quick page turning, and the ability to read many file formats (such as PDF or MS Word) make this a great value with no subscriptions or commitments.

Portable GPS:

High – Garmin Nuvi 1690 – Get real-time content on the go such as fuel prices, traffic conditions, and Google Local searches. The Nuvi 1690 comes with 2 years of the nüLink! subscription service that costs only $5 a month after the 2-year period ends.

Low - TomTom One 140 – This is the GPS I use. It is very small, but very readable. You can even put it in your pocket when you’re parking at the movie theater at night! I’m a fan of most of TomTom’s GPS devices, so maybe I’m a little biased.

TV’s:

High – Samsung UN55B8500 55″ 1080p LED HDTV – It’s an LED TV, which means it uses light emitting diodes to illuminate a liquid crystal display. Aren’t you glad you asked? The benefit is that it is super thin – only only 1.6″ deep. It also has an incredible range of brightness with a 7,000,000:1 contrast ratio. Don’t forget about the plethora of connectivity options including a USB 2.0 Movie Multi-Media Center and easy access to your PC or mobile device’s digital media!

Low – Vizio 42-inch SV421XVT 1080p LCD HDTV – If you are looking for a great looking TV that won’t break the bank, you can get a 42″ Vizio for well under $1,000. It has a dynamic contrast ratio of 50,000:1 , and features SRS® TruSurround HD technology which creates a high quality surround sound experience while providing optimum bass performance, high frequency clarification and dialog clarity (according to their documentation at least). I have a 32″ Vizio in my bedroom that has been a very solid TV for the last few years. I wouldn’t recommend it if I thought it was no good!

I’m sure a lot of my less technical customers will read that title and not truly understand what that means. Let me try to explain what a DNS Server is and does in the simplest terms. A DNS server is like a GPS system for the internet. You type in a website address in your web browser, and the DNS server is responsible for finding the computer that is hosting the website you are trying to get to. This happens very quickly, and in most cases, you load the website in a few seconds. Because of the way the internet works these days, you internet service provider (ISP) provides a DNS server for you and you never have to think about it. So why would you want to use anyone else’s DNS servers?

Well, according to Google, the claim that theirs is faster and more secure than what your ISP provides.

While there are a lot of open DNS servers, including OpenDNS (which allows you to create an account and customize your DNS settings), for most people the task of setting up an alternative DNS server is confusing and not worth the hassle. So why do it? Well, besides the added security and performance, Google has promised accuracy. This means that if you type an address improperly, Google will not redirect you much like my ISP (currently Comcast) does. From their introduction to the new service, “Google Public DNS does its best to return the right answer to every query every time, in accordance with the DNS standards. Sometimes, in the case of a query for a mistyped or non-existent domain name, the right answer means no answer, or an error message stating the domain name could not be resolved. Google Public DNS never blocks, filters, or redirects users, unlike some open resolvers and ISPs”.

Google, has put together a pretty good “how-to” on how to change your DNS settings to their new servers. As always, feel free to contact me if you need help setting this up.

A while back a customer of mine asked me about the legitimacy of the Video Professor. For those of you who don’t know, the Video Professor is a series of computer training videos that are heavily advertised here in Charleston on TV, and more recently through popular social media sites Facebook.com and Myspace.com. My customer wanted to know if it was a good deal or not and if the videos were as helpful as advertised. I told him that while I had never seen any of the Video Professor branded materials, that I thought for some people it was a lot easier to learn certain concepts from a “live” video instructor than just a how-to book. In fact, I think CBT’s (computer based training – which are multimedia and interactive training sessions a computer) are sometimes better than classroom training as you can go at your own pace. It really depends on how you personally are able to consume and retain information.

What I never even thought of when he asked the question was the business model of a service like the Video Professor. I never looked further into how this company does its business because I am personally not the audience for this particular product. I did pick up from the TV commercials that it was similar to the Columbia House CD club that I got roped into once when I was a child. You may remember those – you got to pick 10 CD’s for a penny, and then you were sent a random CD every month along with a hefty bill (for an unemployed 13 year old). The trick was that you had to be very conscious of how the club worked and diligently mail in the title of the CD you really wanted every month and then remember to cancel you membership when you fulfilled the minimum requirement of full priced CD purchases. The problem was, no 13 year old I knew ever completed the program without getting a lot of CD’s they didn’t want or by getting their parents to bail them out. Nowadays, there are a lot of companies that use a similar model, but they always use your credit card! So instead of getting a piece of mail reminding you that you have an obligation to their service, it just shows up as a line item on your credit card bill. For me personally, that just wouldn’t work out. I would forget about it and continual get charged money for something I didn’t really need. I can’t imagine I’m not alone either, but that is just speculation. The big difference now is that you have an open forum called the internet to research any product before you make that impulse purchase.

With any product, you will find a lot of opinions that run the range of experiences with it. The truth is that the most vocal group are the ones that get burned by a product that does not live up to expectations. It becomes hard to filter through the negative minority to get a clear picture so you have to use a bit of common sense.

When I stumbled upon this article entitled “Video Professor Tries To Bully Washington Post, Fails”, it definitely piqued my interest. The author of the article, Michael Arrington, who is known lately for his crusade against social media gaming scams, has been doing a great job in my opinion of putting some of the more questionable internet business models under a microscope. It seems that according to Arrington, that while breaking no laws, the Video Professor purchasing model is quite confusing for the impulse buyer. The charges are not small either, ranging between $190 – $290 per product that are regularly sent to you if you do not opt out first!

In my opinion, it is a shame that the validity of the actual product is tainted by a business model that is associated with a bad experience I had with the old CD clubs 20 years ago. I for one would not recommend this product based on the subscription model alone. I feel that if the product was that good, people would buy more because they wanted it, not because the are obligated to. While I can’t say I don’t trust the content of the Video Professor, I can say that I don’t trust the business model of it.

That’s right, if you are a Charleston area Realtor and you show a beautiful townhouse (133 Darcy Avenue in Goose Creek) to a qualified buyer between Nov. 17th and December 17th, 2009, you will automatically be entered into a drawing for a free service call from Charleston Tech Support! Check out SCrelocators.com for the details.

Newsweek blogger Daniel Lyons has an interesing article about the security woes of Facebook.

I have long been spreading the word to my customers about the security problems of social networking sites like Facebook, Myspace, & Twitter. Much like email, they have become a necessity in the lives of many of us who depend on the internet to aid in running our businesses. Also like email, they are a breeding ground for everything that is malicious on the net. Luckily the same security tips apply.

Here are a few quick tips to help make sure you don’t have to give us a call to clean up the computer equivalent of H1N1 that you might catch from malicious wrongdoers.

1) Just because it’s coming from a friend does not mean it’s OK. If you get an out-of-character direct message on Facebook or Twitter from a trusted person linking to a strange website, it might mean they have been infected and are spreading the infection to you. Don’t click on the link. Instead, contact that person and ask them if they did indeed send it!

2) Don’t give out personal information to online “Applications”. You really don’t need to give your cell phone number to the Mafia Wars or Farmville people. It’s a scam. They will start billing you through your cell phone if you do for what amounts to virtual goods.

3) If your computer has a pop-up that says you’re infected and it’s not coming from your anti-virus software, then that is most likely some malicious website trying to infect you. Don’t click anything! Hit Alt-F4 to close the window or just shut down your computer immediately. If anything strange happens afterwords it may be too late, at that point give us a call.

4) Keep you computer and its security software up to date. I know the constant Microsoft updates are bothersome, but the majority of malicious software out there attacks computers that could have avoided the infection if they were properly patched. Anti-Virus software is complicated and cumbersome. Take the time to learn the basics of how to update it and run a security scan so that you are familiar with it in the case of a fraudulent security notice as stated above, and more importantly so that you are pro-actively protecting yourself!

5) If it’s too good to be true, than it is. That is not technical at all, but it rings true most of the time. Sure there are some great free things like AVG Anti-Virus and Malwarebytes Anti-Malware, but a lot of the time you will be paying a price for something that is advertised as free. Use your head, and use Google to research a freebie before committing to it. It will save you a lot of time and possibly money down the road.