Reducing junk e-mail “spam” has become the most common question I receive from customers. Here I will list my latest tips to help you avoid getting overwhelmed with the junk e-mail. Remember when you first got your email address – you probably got little to no spam? The longer you have you address the more likely you are to get spam – and the amount increases over time.

• Use several email addresses. Most Internet Service Providers let you create several email addresses and you can also create free accounts through Yahoo or Google. Use one address that you only give out to close friends and family. A second one you give to businesses or companies when you order online. Another one for newsletter subscriptions or mailing lists. To keep your personal, business and newsletter e-mail more organized and separated, most e-mail programs (such as Outlook or Outlook Express) or email providers will let you setup filters that can automatically move mail addressed to your different email accounts into separate folders.

• Make it a habit to use BCC (Blind Carbon Copy) when sending email to more than one person – and tell your friends too. Using BCC helps prevent Spambots and viruses from spreading junk email. Read more about how to use BCC and why here.

• Local spam filtering programs have become ineffective. Some spam doesn’t get blocked – other legitimate mail gets put in the spam/junk/bulk folder. Blocking senders is waste of time, since most spam now comes from randomly generated fake email addresses and it’s unlikely that you will get spam from the same random address again.

• Use an e-mail service with good spam filters – Yahoo and Fusemail are 2 of my favorite email service providers. Though occasionally they will wrongly identify spam and non-spam, Fusemail has several filtering options that lets you fine-tune your specific needs.

• Use a service that uses ‘whitelist’ and “challenge/response” filtering which only puts emails from known or verified senders in your Inbox. Anyone else that tries to send you e-mail will first have to respond to a one-time confirmation message and verify that they are a real person trying to send you a message. Once they respond to the verification message, that sender is put in your whitelist of approved/verified senders and future emails will be put in your Inbox without delay. Since spam emails are most often from random and invalid email addresses or from spoofed addresses – a spammer in not likely going to respond to a verification request. Fusemail (mentioned above) features whitelist and challenge/response filtering.

• Change your email address – and change it each year using the year as a suffix. As I mentioned above, when you first got your email address you likely had little or no spam. If you change your email address yearly you start off each year fresh and spam-free. You can notify your friends that beginning with each new year your email address will change to something ending in the year (i.e. joesmith2007@yahoo.com). But Spambots likely won’t figure out that change and will just keep sending it’s junk to your old “2006” address.

• Use Gmail’s + addressing – Gmail has a unique feature where you can add a “+[anything]” to your email address which will be delivered to you. You can then use a filter to automatically sort emails sent to a + address. For more details see this link.

If you are still using AOL dial-up internet service and paying more than $20 per month, you can now get AT&T’s high-speed DSL internet service and keep AOL at a lower combined price than you are paying now.

If you are an AOL dial-up customer, they have recently offered customers who have subscribed to high-speed internet a lower rate of $4.99 per month to keep them as a customer and still allow them to keep using the familiar AOL software and AOL e-mail. On August 2nd AOL announced that beginning in September they will be giving away their e-mail accounts and software at no charge in hopes that advertising revenue will make up the difference. Former AOL subscribers who cancelled within the past 2 years will be able to reclaim their old AOL.com e-mail addresses. You can read more details here.

When ordered online, AT&T DSL starts at $12.99 per month and is available in most areas of the Reno/Sparks area. At that price you get speeds that range from approximately 300-1200 Kbps. Compare that to a maximum speed of 50 Kbps available on AOL and other dial-up internet services. Besides getting internet transfer speeds that are 6-24x faster, DSL internet allows you to be on the internet and be talking on the telephone at the same time.

To summarize, AOL subscribers can get AT&T DSL and keep their AOL browser and e-mail for considerably less than they are paying now. Computer Techs technicians can help you order DSL through AT&T’s web site, verify if your computer is compatible, set-up the DSL software, modem and filters, and tutor you on the AT&T Yahoo services.

9/9/06 UPDATE: AOL now has 2 price plans. $9.95/month for dial-up access, or FREE for no dial-up access. To change your plan to one of the new plans go to AOL keyword “changeplan”.

Microsoft officially ended support for Windows 98 and Windows ME on July 11. That means they will no longer offer telephone support if you have a computer with those operating systems. More importantly they will no longer be offering security patches and critical updates. Those operating systems are now more vulnerable to operating system and browser exploits, hacker attacks and viruses.Through the end of this year is a good time to think about upgrading to a new computer with Windows XP if you still have an old computer with Windows 95, 98 or ME. New computers are becoming less expensive as manufacturers and retailers begin to clear out inventory in anticipation of the new Windows ‘Vista’ Operating System, which is due to release in early 2007.Also, Intel has just released a new, faster processor which will push down the price of the computers with the older (pre-August) processors. Computers with processors that have been manufactured in the last few years are still considerably faster than the processors in an older computers that came with Windows ME and earlier.You might be thinking “Why not wait until Windows Vista comes out next year”? From what I’ve heard about the new features that will be available with Windows Vista, I see no compelling reason at this time for people to upgrade. New computers released next year will likely be more expensive since they will come preloaded with Vista which requires more expensive hardware to take advantage of it’s more advanced features.

Computer techs are more frequently coming across problems with wireless home networks where too many wireless devices in close proximity are causing interference and reliability issues.

If you have a wireless network and are experiencing frequent drop-outs or disconnects, there are some things we can do with your existing equipment to help reduce the problems. However a few of our customers have had too much interference in their neighborhood to reliably operate on a wireless network. If that is the case I am now recommending a newer wired technology that uses the existing household power plugs and wires to connect computers and share high-speed internet connections in different rooms.

A common question I am asked is how to print web pages without cutting off the text on the right-hand side of the paper. Web site designers don’t always think about the printability of their page when they design a web site. You may be able to correct the problem by adjusting some settings in the Page Setup menu of your web browser to make all of the text fit on a standard size piece of paper.

In Internet Explorer go to File > Print Preview > click the Page Setup icon and change the margins to a lower number (0.3 inches for example). If that doesn’t help you can choose to print the page in Landscape Orientation (sideways on the paper). If you use Firefox, the AT&T Yahoo Browser or AOL’s browser, the adjustments are similar. Just look for “Print Preview” in the File menu.

Many companies are now offering prepaid and pay-per-call telephone tech support. These services can be useful in some cases, however I still believe that on-site service is the most time and cost efficient way to troubleshoot problems with your computer. I often get calls from people that have spent many hours with telephone technical support which was unable to resolve their problem. Quite often I have solved their problem on-site in less than an hour. We use specialized tools and programs that help us diagnose computer problems quickly and accurately.

Also, don’t forget that we offer one-on-one tutoring. Print out our tutoring form so that you can write down things that you would like to learn as you come across them. Once you have enough items written down that take at least an hour to tutor you on, give us a call to schedule an appointment.

The social networking website MySpace.com is very popular with teenagers and singles. The site allows anyone to create their own web page or ‘space’ that can be customized with pictures, music and colorful graphics. People will often publish information about their interests an hobbies. Friends or strangers can post messages and pictures on anybody else’s MySpace page.
 
The problem with MySpace is that for the most part it is uncensored and some users have posted pictures that could be considered pornographic, and comments that are crude or violent. Some have found it as a way to express feelings or opinions that they wouldn’t necessarily say if they weren’t hidden behind a keyboard. I feel that many parents would be shocked by the stuff that some of their teenagers post on their MySpace page.
 
As a parent of a pre-teenager, I recommend to all parents of teenagers who use MySpace that they view their son or daughter’s MySpace profile and talk to them about what is appropriate and what is not. 
 
Alternatively, there is commercial computer monitoring software that can monitor and/or disallow access to programs or websites – or allow access on a timed basis. I have researched and tested a few computer parental control programs and have found my favorite to be a program called Cyber Patrol.
 
If you need help limiting or monitoring your children’s internet usage, ask us if Cyber Patrol would be good software for your computer. If so, we would be happy to install it for you and configure the powerful features to your needs, and train you on how to get the most use from the program.

Misleading marketing companies and individuals are making money off internet users by publishing websites in attempt to make money from people that accidentally misspell web addresses, click links on search websites and charge for “free” software.

• Misspelled web addresses – Be careful when you type in a website into the address bar of your internet browser. Clever people have published websites that take advantage of misspellings or transposed letters. Some of these websites look similar to the correctly-spelled websites that people intend to type. Others are search pages that get paid for every link that is clicked on the site. Such sites may even attempt to make it your browser’s ‘Home Page’.

I came across an example of this when I recently tried to renew my driver’s license at www.dmvMv.com instead of www.dmvNv.com The bogus site brought up a search site not run by the State of Nevada Dept. of Motor Vehicles – but it looked official. The publishers of look-alike websites make money from every link that is clicked on.

• Links on reputable search sites may not always take you to a trustworthy website – When you use your favorite search engine (Google, Yahoo, MSN, etc.) to help you research unfamiliar websites don’t always trust the first website you come across. A few months ago if you searched for “Firefox” (a popular free web browser alternative to Internet Explorer), on Google a top-listed link would take you to a website named freedownloadhq.com. That site will let you download and install Firefox for free, but require you to pay if you want to use it. Many people have paid this company for the Firefox browser, and were unaware that the same program is free from the publishers at www.firefox.com

• Free coupons – There are websites that let you print out manufacturer coupons for free or deeply discounted items at the supermarket. However the coupons are counterfeit. If the deal sounds too good to be true – it probably is. The publishers of these websites often make money by selling your e-mail address or selling you the coupon at a discount. For more information visit www.cents-off.com

Many people have asked me about a letter they have received after their 1-year commitment to SBC (now AT&T) DSL is over. In the letter SBC has offered to continue their DSL on a month-to-month basis for a rate of $34.99/month.

What they don’t mention in the letter is that you can call them and often get a much better monthly rate if you agree to continue DSL service for another year and/or add other SBC/AT&T services to your phone bill. I have had SBC DSL for over 5 years, and my price for DSL has gone down every year. Several customers have reported that after I had told them to call for a better rate – they are now paying anywhere between $19 and $26 per month.

Unfortunately I’ve heard that the rates being offered are not consistent between all the SBC customer service reps. If you aren’t offered a fair deal by one rep, you may need to politely say ‘no thank you’ and call back to speak to a different rep. Some report that they received a good deal from the Customer Retentions Dept.

If you are a Charter High-Speed Internet customer, I’ve been told that their customer retentions dept. will offer you a rate of $19.99/month for 6 months if you mention that you want to switch away from Cable to DSL.

According to Wikipedia “phishing” is a form of social engineering, characterized by attempts to fraudulently acquire sensitive information, such as passwords and credit card details, by masquerading as a trustworthy person or business in an apparently official electronic communication, such as an email or an instant message. The term phishing arises from the use of increasingly sophisticated lures to “fish” for users’ financial information and passwords. (Click on the Wikipedia link at the beginning of this paragraph for more information including detailed examples claiming to come from eBay or PayPal). I’ve recently come across a new Phishing scheme that causes a window to pop-up on a computer claiming to be from AOL, and requesting information you should never give out on the internet – such as ATM PIN number. Luckily the customer did the right thing by not filling out the form, called AOL and confirmed that this is a phishing scheme. You can see the official-looking window below.