Mom Dodges a Fake Antivirus Bullet

Mark Berry April 21, 2013

Tonight my mom was browsing her local utility’s web site when she got a popup “Message from webpage” that Microsoft Antivirus had found critical activity A “Microsoft Security Essentials Alert” was behind that.

My smart mom put down the mouse, picked up the phone, and called me. When I connected remotely, I found this screen:

Skype Password Token Is Not Recognized

Mark Berry April 15, 2013

So you’ve gotten rid of Microsoft Messenger and switched to Skype. But you forgot your password, and now Skype has you in an infinite loop of “Sorry that password token is not recognized.” What to do?

Secure Email Signatures in Outlook 2010

Mark Berry April 8, 2013

I don’t come across Secure MIME (S/MIME) signed emails very often so I thought it might be interesting to post a few screenshots of what happens when you receive a signed email.

SkyDrive vs. Google Drive for PDFs

Mark Berry March 1, 2013

A few notes as I test SkyDrive and Google Drive for storing some PDF documents.

Google Drive

The “drive” is a special folder on your PC. You can even put it on a mapped network drive. Nice if you are connected to a server.

Google Drive displays PDFs as fairly large thumbnails (shown original size here):

When you click to open, the PDF displays quickly in some special Google viewer.

PDF files are indexed, you can search for a word and find a file.

Google’s Terms of Service are the scariest thing about the product. While they say that the user retains ownership of the user’s intellectual property, the terms go on to contradict that by saying Google can do whatever they want with users’ content, including publish it and display it publically:

When you upload or otherwise submit content to our Services, you give Google (and those we work with) a worldwide license to use, host, store, reproduce, modify, create derivative works (such as those resulting from translations, adaptations or other changes we make so that your content works better with our Services), communicate, publish, publicly perform, publicly display and distribute such content. [emphasis mine]

I don’t see any assurance that they will not take my private PDF documents and publish them. Not sure why they would, but why claim that they have a right to?

SkyDrive

The “drive” is a special folder on your PC, but you cannot put it on a network drive.

You can optionally tell SkyDrive to give you web access to all the files on your PC. It will text, call, or email a code to your known contact points which you must enter to get access. (That’s in addition to your Windows Live logon to SkyDrive). Once you’re in, you can browse local drives (including your DVD drive) and mapped network drives. Pretty amazing, but maybe too much access from a browser. I’d probably turn that off and use other remote access methods if I need to get to my whole computer.

SkyDrive displays PDF files as big orange blocks with no thumbnails (original size):

When you click to open, the PDF displays in Adobe’s browser plugin.

The text in PDFs is not indexed, so you can’t search through them.

The Windows Live Services Agreement is much less intrusive than Google’s:

3.3. What does Microsoft do with my content? When you upload your content to the services, you agree that it may be used, modified, adapted, saved, reproduced, distributed, and displayed to the extent necessary to protect you and to provide, protect and improve Microsoft products and services. … When processing your content, Microsoft takes steps to help preserve your privacy.

Microsoft claims no rights to publish, publically display, or create derivative works of user content.

Conclusion

For now, Google Drive is the superior service for storing and accessing PDF files, but their overly broad terms of service make me nervous. (By the way, the same terms apply to all Google services, so they could publish your GMail too.)

Fake Facebook Notifications

Mark Berry December 4, 2012

It seems that fake notification emails from social networking sites are the #1 way that spammers and virus writers try to lure you to their sites. Here’s an example of a fake Facebook notification email and how to tell:

Phony AT&T Bill

Mark Berry August 2, 2012

Got a pretty realistic-looking AT&T billing notice this morning. So how to tell it’s phony? Well beside the fact that I’ve never had a $634 phone bill, all you have to do (if you’re using Outlook) is hover the mouse over various links in the email and you’ll see that they do not point to AT&T sites.

Don’t click on the links, and don’t right-click to download pictures.

Getting through Malware Monday

Mark Berry July 7, 2012

A government-supported workaround to the 2007 DNSChanger virus will expire on Monday, July 9, 2012.

To see if your computer is infected, visit www.dns-ok.us.

If you are infected, run a removal tool. There is a list here: www.dcwg.org/fix.

To read more about DNSChanger, see this PCWorld article.

Announcing MCB GoldLink to 3CX

Mark Berry July 2, 2012

MCB Systems is pleased to announce the availability of MCB GoldLink to 3CX.

GoldLink to 3CX links your GoldMine CRM software with your 3CX phone system. You can auto-dial outbound calls, find GoldMine records of callers based on CallerID, add history items for each each inbound and outbound call, and even add links to recordings made by 3CX.

For more information or to download a free trial, visit the MCB GoldLink to 3CX product page.