Online I.T Support

The United States Secret Service estimated that consumers nationwide lose around $745 million to identity theft each year. According to the Identity Theft Resource Center, the average victim spends around 607 hours and averages $1,000 just to clear their credit records.

Identity thieves will employ a variety of methods to gain access to your information. They may obtain information from businesses or other institutions by:

* Bribing an employee who has access to databases
* Hacking into records
* Conning information out of employees

Once identity thieves have access to your personal information, they may use it to commit a fraud or theft in your name.

How can I tell if I have become a victim of identity theft?

Some signs include:

* Unexplained charges or withdrawals from your financial accounts.
* Bills or other mail stops arriving (the thief may have submitted a change of address).
* A credit application is denied for no apparent reason.
* Debt collectors begin calling about merchandise or services you did not buy.

Your computer can be a goldmine of personal information to an identity thief. To protect yourself and your computer against identity theft you will find the tips below useful.

* Update your virus protection software frequently and set your virus protection software to update automatically.
* Stay up to date with Windows Updates. The Windows Vista/XP operating system can be set to check for updates automatically and download them to your computer when available.
* Do not open files sent to you by strangers, click on hyperlinks, or download programs from people or companies you do not know.
* Use a firewall program, especially if you use a high speed Internet connection like cable or DSL that leaves your computer connected to the Internet 24 hours a day.
* Provide your personal information through a secured website only. While not fool proof, a lock icon on the browser’s status bar or a URL for a website that begins “https:” (the “s” stands for secure).
* Do not store your financial information on your laptop, unless absolutely necessary.
* Delete all the personal information stored on a computer before disposing of it. Using wipe utility software to overwrite the entire hard drive is recommended.

As with any crime, you can not completely control whether you will become a victim, but you can take steps to minimise your risk by remaining diligent and by minimising outside access to your personal information.

A keylogger is a program that runs on your computer but within the background secretly and records all your keystrokes. Once your keystrokes are logged, they are hidden away and retrieved at a later stage by the attacker. The attacker then carefully reviews the information in hopes of finding passwords or other information that you may have typed when using online banking or other sites such as email and then reveal them to any interested outside party willing to pay for the information.

Keyloggers can be either software or hardware based. Software based keyloggers are easy to distribute and infect, but at the same time are more easily detectable. Hardware based keyloggers are more complex and difficult to detect. For all that you know, your keyboard could have a keylogger chip attached and anything being typed is recorded into a flash memory sitting inside your keyboard. Keyloggers have become one of the most powerful applications used for gathering information in a world where encrypted traffic is becoming more and more common.

As keyloggers become more advanced, the ability to detect them becomes more difficult. They can violate a user’s privacy for months, or even years and without being noticed. During that time frame, a keylogger can collect information about the user it is monitoring. A keylogger can potentially obtain not only passwords and log in names, but credit card numbers, bank account details, contacts, interests, web browsing habits, and much much more. All this collected information can be used to steal user’s personal documents, money, or even their identity.

A keylogger might be as simple as an .exe and a .dll that is placed in a computer and activated upon boot up via an entry in the registry. Or the more sophisticated keyloggers, such as the Perfect Keylogger or ProBot Activity Monitor have developed a full line of nasty abilities including:

1) Undetectable in the process list and invisible in operation
2) Kernel keylogger driver that captures keystrokes even when the user is logged off
3) A remote deployment wizard
4) The ability to create text snapshots of active applications
5) The ability to capture http post data (including log ins and/or passwords)
6) The ability to timestamp record workstation usage
7) Automatic email log file delivery

Good things about Keyloggers

Please note, all keyloggers are not used for illegal purposes. A variety of other uses have surfaced
Keyloggers, have been used to monitor web sites visited as a means of parental control over children. They have been actively used to prevent child pornography and avoid children coming in contact with dangerous elements on the web. Additionally, in December, 2001, a federal court ruled that the FBI did not need a special wiretap order to place a keystroke logging device on a suspects computer. The judge allowed the FBI to keep details of its key logging device secret (citing national security concerns). The defendant in the case, Nicodemo Scarfo Jr, indicted for gambling and loan sharking, used encryption to protect a file on his computer. The FBI used the keystroke logging device to capture Scarfo’s password and gain access to the needed file.

Who hasn’t received an email directing them to visit a familiar website where they are being asked to update their personal information? The website needs you to verify or update your passwords, credit card numbers, social security number, or even your bank account number. You recognize the business name as one that you’ve conducted business with in the past. So, you click on the convenient “take me there” link and proceed to provide all the information they have requested. Unfortunately, you find out much later that the website is bogus. It was created with the sole intent to steal your personal information. You, my friend, have just been “phished”.

Phishing (pronounced as “fishing”) is defined as the act of sending an email to a recipient falsely claiming to have an established, legitimate business. The intent of the phisher is to scam the recipient into surrendering their private information, and ultimately steal your identity.

It is not at easy as you think to spot an email phishing for information. At first glance, the email may look like it is from a legitimate company. The “From” field of the e-mail may have the .com address of the company mentioned in the e-mail. The clickable link even appears to take you to the company’s website, when in fact, it is a fake website built to replicate the legitimate site.

Many of these people are professional criminals. They have spent a lot of time in creating emails that look authentic. Users need to review all emails requesting personal information carefully. When reviewing your email remember that the “From Field” can be easily changed by the sender. While it may look like it is coming from a .com you do business with, looks can be deceiving. Also keep in mind that the phisher will go all out in trying to make their email look as legitimate as possible. They will even copy logos or images from the official site to use in their emails. Finally, they like to include a clickable link that the recipient can follow to conveniently update their information.

A great way to check the legitimacy of the link is to point at the link with your mouse. Then, look in the bottom left hand screen of your computer. The actual website address to which you are being directed will show up for you to view. It is a very quick and easy way to check if you are being directed to a legitimate site.

Finally, follow the golden rule. Never, ever, click the links within the text of the e-mail, and always delete the e-mail immediately. Once you have deleted the e-mail, empty the trash box in your e-mail accounts as well. If you are truly concerned that you are missing an important notice regarding one of your accounts, then type the full URL address of the website into your browser. At least then you can be confident that you are, in fact, being directed to the true and legitimate website.

Search Engine Optimization And Why You Gotta Use It E-commerce is a cut throat business. You have to arm yourself with the proper know-how and the tools to make your site a cut above the rest. Each day, more and more sites are clambering to optimize their rankings in websites and if you lose your guard, you may just get trampled on and be left in the abyss filled with so many failed e-commerce sites.

Search Engine Optimization or SEO is a term widely used today by many e-commerce sites. For the past few years and the next ten years or so, search engines would be the most widely used internet tool to find the sites that they need to go to or the product or information they need.

Most people that use search engines use only the ten top search results in the first page. Making it to the first page, more so to the top three is a barometer of a sites success in search engine optimization. You will get a higher ratio of probability in being clicked on when you rank high. The more traffic for your site, the more business you rake in.

But, it is essential to grab a hold of that spot or make your ranking even better. As I aforementioned, each day is a new day for all e-commerce sites to make them selves rank higher using search engine optimization. It is imperative to make your site better and better everyday.

So just what is search engine optimization and do you have to use it? The answer to why you have to use it is an easy one. You need search engine optimization to be number one, or maybe at least make your site income generating.

With search engine optimization you can get the benefit of generating a high traffic volume. Let’s just say you get only a turn out of successful sales with 10 to 20 percent of your traffic. If you get a hundred hits or more a day, you get a good turn out of sales already. If you get only twenty to ten hits a day, you only get one or two if not any at all.

So once again, what is search engine optimization? Search engine optimization is utilizing tools and methods in making your site top ranking in the results of search engines. Getting yourself in the first page and better yet in the top half of the page will ensure that your site will generate public awareness of your site’s existence and subsequently generate more traffic, traffic that could lead to potential income and business.

Search engine optimization requires a lot of work to be fully realized. There are many aspects you have to change in your site or add as well to get search engine optimization. These will include getting lots of information about the keyword phrases that are popular in regards to your sites niche or theme.

You may also need to rewrite your sites contents so that you could get the right keyword phrases in your site without making it too commercial but light and informative. There are certain rules and guidelines to be followed with making your site’s content applicable and conducive to search engine optimization.

You will also need to collaborate with many other sites so that you could get link exchanges and page transfers. The more inbound and outbound traffics generated by sites among others are one of the components search engines uses to rank sites.

Try to search the internet for many useful help. Tips, guidelines and methods for search engine optimization are plenty to be found. Read many articles that can help you optimize your site in search engine results. The more knowledge and information you gather the better. This will all help you in getting those high rankings. This may require a little time and effort in your part but the benefits will be astounding.

If you can part with some money, there are many sites in the internet that can help you in search engine optimization. There are many sites that help in tracking keyword phrases that can help your site. There are also some content writers that have lots of experience in making good keyword laden content for your sites that have good quality.

Act now and see the benefits garner with search engine optimization. All of these will result to better traffic and more business for your site and company.

IT is a broad church and getting broader by the day. The word information technology pretty much covers every aspect of ICT. The average IT support technician in an organisation is the face of IT, in addition to fixing that malfunctioning PC at account department, they are also the first port of call for colleagues needing advice about their own personal non work  IT questions. Sometime colleagues are not aware that the average IT support guys has an area of specialisation.

The very broad question is quite welcomed as it makes IT support technicians read up on stuff the are not good at which colleagues as them. A recent question that fits this bill was an eCommerce question asked by a colleague who’s husband wanted to start an online shop.  A shopping cart called Boss Cart was reviewed to provide answers to this colleague:

Boss Cart Premium was created to make eCommerce software affordable and available to small businesses with  the desire to grown their business online but without the thousands of pounds a solution like Microsoft small business server would cost them.

Features of Boss Cart follows:

* Quick Set up
* Search Engine Friendly Ecommerce shop
* Order & Shipping Management
* Inventory Management
* Shopping Cart & Payment
* Users & security
* Display products flagged as special offer
* Bulk product upload
* Payment gateway integration
* Automatic VAT calculation

Boss Cart can be downloaded from  UK WW download pages, you can also find support for Boss Cart at UK WW.

You come across an issue where you are no longer able to send or receive emails using Outlook 2003 (Exchange). A message appears ‘You have exceeded the size limit on your mailbox’.
You delete unwanted emails but still receive the same message. Try the below to resolve:

1) Recreate the Outlook Profile
2) Open Outlook
3) Close Outlook
4) Click start
5) Click run
6) Type outlook.exe /cleanprofile and click ok
7) Close Outlook
8.) Type outlook.exe /cleanviews and click ok

If this does not resolve your issue, please feel free to post a comment.

The BCC (Blind Carbon Copy) field in Outlook allows you to send an email to a third person without the recipient knowing. For example, you send an email to a customer but would also like to send the email to your boss but do not want the customer to know that a copy has gone to your boss. This is where the BCC field comes in. By using the BCC field, the customer will not know that others have been copied into the email. If you were to use the CC (Carbon Copy) field, then the customer would know to whom a copy of the email has been sent to. The BCC field can also be used to send an email out to multiple recipients but hide their emails addresses from each other.

The BCC field can be added to Outlook, by following the instructions below:

1) Open Outlook
2) Open a new email
3) Click the options button
4) Select show BCC

You open Internet Explorer, type a website address and click go, but nothing happens. The easiest fix for this is to remove Internet Explorer from Windows components and then re add. Here’s how:

1) Click Start
2) Click Control Panel (or settings and control panel)
3) Go into Add/remove programs
4) Click the icon Add/remove Windows components found towards the left
5) Untick Internet Explorer, click next and finish
6) Follow step 4 again but this time tick Internet explorer, click next and then finish.

When launched in 2007, the developers of the Blue Ray disk said the anti piracy technology built into the disks would not be cracked for at least 10 years. But a company named SlySoft say they cracked the anti piracy technology in November 2007 shortly after the disks were released . The discs were supposed to have been protected by anti piracy system technology called BD+.

BD+ is a component of the Blu-ray Disc Digital Rights Management system. It was developed by Cryptography Research Inc. and is based on their Self-Protecting Digital Content concept. (Wikipedia)

The developers have said they will be able to relock the disks so they can not be used again in the future.

 I thought of shraing something different this time. Whilst surfing the net, i came across a video where a user named tkdman09 shows how to get your friends with two great pranks. Watch the video below.