Software License Giveaway: TuneUp Utilities 2010

Folks, I am pleased to announce my latest software license giveaway drawing.

The folks at TuneUp Utilities have generously donated five licenses to me, to award to my readers. I sincerely thank them for that. So I am going to do a random drawing¹ contest from folks who “enter” by posting a comment (below) or by sending an e-mail. The drawing will be held next week, and the winners announced Friday, so act now.

TuneUp Utilities is a program for optimizing your computer and improving its performance. I have been testing it for a while now. Below, I will give you my impressions and some screenshots, but first…

CNet’s Seth Rosenblatt (see, Tech Paul’s Friend of the Internet Surfer Award for December) says:

“To call TuneUp Utilities 2009 useful would drastically understate the situation. The app provides users with a powerful, well-designed utility that accesses the entire Windows maintenance tool set and more in a fast, organized, and easy-to-use series of connected modules…

The system-analyzing wizard, with its thorough reporting and upgrade suggestions, is worth the program price alone. Between the guts of steel and the stylish, logically arranged interface, TuneUp Utilities suits all users–from complete beginners who will appreciate the one-click optimization to more daring users who will experiment with all the settings.”

Publisher’s description
From TuneUp Distribution :

“TuneUp Utilities Version 2010. Enjoy Your PC: fast, stable, customized. Have more fun with your computer without all the hassles thanks to your new PC assistant. Work faster and get a better gaming experience. Now compatible with Windows 7.”

Here is a “slideshow” of screenshots of TuneUp Utilities.

This slideshow requires JavaScript.

As you can see, TuneUp Utilities is in the System Tray, as it is always running, and thus always performing those tasks (such as defrag) which keep a system “tuned up”. I found it safe. And I found it easy enough for beginners and that it also had neat goodies (tweaks) for the Power User too. As you may have noticed, it found a security issues, and offered a 1-click fix. But instead of reinventing the wheel, I will refer you to Bill Mullins’ comprehensive review, TuneUp Utilities 2010 – Is It Worth The Money?

How to enter? To enter the drawing, simply click on “comment”, and enter a name and valid e-mail (so I can send you the key) in the form. Actually commenting is optional. And, I shouldn’t have to say this, but multiple entries will result in disqualification.
The license can be used on up to three PC’s.

Again, I thank the folks at TuneUp Utilities for making this giveaway possible. A 30-day free trial of TuneUp Utilities can be downloaded here. Try it out yourself. (And then leave a comment. You may just win an activation key..)

¹ All entrants will be placed into Random.org’s “randomizer”, and the top 5 results will be the winners.

Copyright 2007-2010 © Tech Paul. All Rights Reserved. post to jaanix.

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Learn How To Get More Out Of Your Browser*

I am doing a big on-site job today, and so I must re-post a prior article. This article describes how to get more out of Internet Explorer with the use of bookmarks (“Favorites” ) and tabs. Though Internet Explorer 7 debuted some time ago, the basic lessons are the same for the current version, IE 8; and the principles apply to other Web browsers, such as Firefox, as well.

Once again, I am reminded that the simple things often make the best topics. I showed my screen to a client during a support session, and they asked me “how do you do that?”

I didn’t know what they meant, and was startled to learn that what they wanted to know was – how did I have Internet Explorer “pre-set” to several of my mailboxes, and Google’s search page? To be more specific — they didn’t know about tabbed browsing, and weren’t real sure what Favorites were either.

Tip of the day: Stop repeating yourself, get the hang of IE 7’s features. Relatively new to IE (but not to Firefox, Opera, Netscape, and others) is a feature called “tabbed browsing” which allows you to open multiple websites within a single window, and quickly switch back-and-forth between them. In this screenshot you can see how my IE usually appears.

As you can see, I typically have five “tabs” open: my Google home page, an online dictionary, Tech–for Everyone, Hotmail (now “Windows Live Hotmail”), and my ISP’s home page. When I shut down at night, I click IE’s red “X” — the big red one in the upper-right corner –and am presented with the window (You may see “You are about to close multiple tabs. Do you..?” Click on the “Show Options” link.) shown below.

and I select (check) “Open these tabs the next time I use Internet Explorer”. This option allows me to skip having to open five tabs and navigating to each of my regular websites each morning.

To open a new tab, and this works in every browser I’m familiar with, press Ctrl+T. Depending on your Settings selection (under “Tabs” in Internet Options) this new tab will open to your current Home Page, or to a “blank page”, as shown below.

Now I can type “http://www.mychoiceofsite.com” (no quotes) into the browser bar, and there I am. Or I can click on the gold star for my list of Favorites, and launch (open) a site from there.

“Favorites” is Microsoft’s word for “bookmarks”, and in the world of PC’s the two words are interchangeable. If I stumble across a particularly interesting and/or useful Website that I know I will be returning to frequently, I can “bookmark it” by clicking on the green + on-top-of-the-gold-star icon and select “Add to Favorites” (or hit Ctrl+D). My mailboxes, my favorite tech websites, Google, and an online dictionary are in my Favorites list, so I can launch (open) them with a click — which saves on my typing.

To close a tab, simply click on its “x”; which is not red but grey. The tab must be “active” (selected) to be closed.

Now set your Tabs options to keep all your browsing in one instance of IE (instead of opening another IE, a new tab will open). In the upper right corner, click on the “Tools” menu and select “Internet Options”. Look down to the Tabs area and click on the Settings button.

Now select the radio buttons to change “in a new window” to “in a new tab”, as shown below.

Related articles:
Restore Missing Favorites In IE*

Internet Explorer Runtime Error!!*

Quick Tip: Turn on ClearType in Internet Explorer

Can’t Download? Reset IE

How To Clear Your Cache

View Multiple Mail Identities in One Browser

Extracting text from Web pages*

Precautions for your Internet privacy*

Quick Tip: Customize new tabs behavior

IE’s Menu bar, Taskbar icons, and bad Updates*

Internet/E-mail Troubleshooting – JavaScript

What is a “homepage”?

How to use tabs in IE 7

Saving webpages as files

Today’s free download: (You knew this was coming … right?) An application that has gained quite a name for itself is the “alternative” browser called Firefox. If you haven’t tried this powerful, free program, nor learned about its nifty “Add ons”, I suggest you give it a test drive now. Click here to download Firefox and then click the Tools menu and then Add ons. I suggest you start with NoScript and AdBlock Plus, and then explore the vast assortment.

*Orig post: 2/4/2010

Copyright 2007-2010 © Tech Paul. All Rights Reserved. post to jaanix.

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Business As Usual: 1.5 million Stolen Facebook Accounts For Sale

One Cyber-Crook Offers 1.5 million User Accounts.. Sold In Lots Of 1,000

1.5 million stolen Facebook accounts up for grabs (click to read)

“Researchers at VeriSign’s iDefense have discovered a single hacker selling 1.5 million stolen Facebook account credentials on an underground market. The stolen credentials were put up for sale by a hacker with the handle “kirllos” who is believed to be from Eastern Europe. The hacker is selling batches of 1,000 accounts with 10 Facebook “friends” for $25 and 1,000 accounts with more than 10 “friends” for up to $45. It is estimated that 700,000 accounts have already been purchased. Compromised Facebook accounts can be used by cybercriminals to spread malware, send spam or attempt to defraud a user’s “friends.” – AM”

Kind of glad I never went in for that “social networking”/self-marketing hype. And I sincerely hope, Dear Reader, yours was not one of “krillos'” victimized accounts.

Related:
* Global cybercrime treaty rejected at U.N. (click to read)

“Russia, China and a number of developing countries could not reach agreement with the United States, Canada, the U.K. and European Union.”

* Facebook Safety: A Primer

Hmmm… wonder why China and the Ex-Soviets don’t want to get onboard..?

Maybe it’s because: “The Internet’s “shadow economy” of cybercrime is worth over $105 billion per year. Online crime is bigger business than the global drugs trade¹. No country, no person, no business and no government is immune from CyberCrime.”

Today’s recommended reading: Your Computer Is Lying To You… The Epidemic Of Rogues

Today’s free download: WOT is a free Internet security add-on for your web browser. It will help keep you safer from online scams, identity theft, spyware, spam, viruses and unreliable shopping sites. WOT warns you before you interact with a risky Website. It’s easy and it’s free.

• So easy a child can use it
• Ratings for over 20 million websites
• Downloaded 3 million times
• The WOT browser add-on is light and updates automatically
• WOT rating icons appear beside search results in Google, Yahoo!, Wikipedia, and webmail – Gmail, Hotmail, Yahoo!
• Settings can be customized to better protect your family
• WOT Security Scorecard shows rating details and user comments

[addenda: Regular readers may be getting a bit tired of my Internet security-related postings. I do understand. There’s been more of them lately. But, I ask you to ask yourself this question: what does that tell you? (about the Internet, I mean.) I hope you will conclude that you need to be proactive in protecting yourself (and being more paranoid) while online.]

Copyright 2007-2010 © Tech Paul. All Rights Reserved. post to jaanix.

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Deja Vu All Over Again.. Again

Yes, Folks, criminals are once again using Skype to send phishing “chats” in an attempt to defraud you and trick you into clicking poisoned links. So, I am re-posting this article. It is the exact same ruse I first warned of in early 2008, but (again) the name has changed.

This criminal attack will reappear every so often (roughly every 90 30 days) with a slightly different name and URL… It is a classic scareware attack. They just send these chats to all the Skype users whose name starts with A.. then to the B’s.. etc.

Chat Message Scares Reader Into Installing Malware

Today a Skype chat window opened on my machine, and presented me with a dire warning from someone named “Software Update”, “Registry Scan Online®”, “OnlineUpdate.org”, “OnlineRegistry®” Today’s flavor (I think it was “Update Instructions”..). It said that “WINDOWS REQUIRES IMMEDIATE ATTENTION” and, it provided me with a solution. 

(Click on image to see large version)

Please, folks, tell me you have spotted this for what it is. Please tell me that you knew –instantly– that this is a cybercrime attempt; that it is Phraud-ulent.

Please tell me that you know what will happen if the link provided in this message is clicked; and, please, please, please tell me you would never click the link.

Just in case you aren’t sure:
* “Software Update”, “Registry Scan Online ®”,  Today’s flavor, doesn’t exist.
* “http://www.onlinemonitor.info”, “http://www.registryscan.com”, Today’s flavor, is not registered in ARIN (the registry of Internet addresses).
* clicking the link will allow scripts to run, and/or take you to a poisoned Website which will install malware on your machine, or/and it may take you to a site that will sell you a rogue anti-spyware program
(please read my article, Is that antispyware program really spyware).

* Microsoft DOES NOT alert you via Instant Messaging. No legitimate company does. Period. Ever!
This is a classic example of a hacker’s attempt to get you to click their link.

All of this so they can rip you off. It’s these cyber-criminal’s full time job.

Please point your less-savvy friends and family to this article and educate them to the dangers of spam (unsolicited) messages and tell them– NEVER CLICK THE LINK. (Yes, I am shouting. 2010 is days away here, and I still have to say this everyday.. Sigh.)

[Note: while this article directly references the (VoIP client) Skype, you may see this type of thing in other Instant Messaging/Chat programs, and social networking communications.]

[addenda: Peter Parkes (Skype Blogger) wrote and asked me to remind my readers to, quote, “Please report users who send these messages to abuse@skype.net – that will help us to block them where appropriate.”]

Today’s recommended reading: A FREE Way to Monitor Your Kids Online Activity
“If you are a parent who has children who use the computer to access the internet it is very important that you educate yourself and your child about the dangers of the internet. It is important to have strict guidelines in place on their computer usage and a method to supervise and monitor their online activities.”

Today’s free downloads(s): I have assembled on my Website a collection of links to the best free anti-malware programs to help you prevent infection.. and clean up if you’ve been infected. To see them, click here.

Copyright 2007-2010 © Tech Paul. All Rights Reserved. post to jaanix.

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MMORPG

No time today Folks, sorry. Here’s a pretty picture…

* MMORPG = Massive Multi-player Online Role-Playing Game (such as World of Warcraft).

I built this custom “Demotivator” poster online at the Despair.com (home of the Demotivators) D-I-Y page. Upload your photo.. give it some text.. and bingo! Download the results to you computer if you like. Totally fun fersher.

See? Mondays aren’t all bad. Click here and make your own Demotivator posters.

Copyright 2007-2010 © Tech Paul. All Rights Reserved. post to jaanix.

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Amazingly Dangerous Email: Must See To Believe

Amazon.com (Evil) Deal of the Day

Folks, I just received an amazing (and dangerous) e-mail that my phishing filter/spam catcher did not catch – claiming to come from Amazon.com as one of my “notification subscriptions” –> Amazon’s Deal of the Day. It looks identical to my real notifications but…

every single link is dangerous, and they’re pushing ED drugs! These hyperlinks really take you to websites titled “http:\\######.fishenough.ru”. Seriously! (.ru = Russia)

Do I need tell you what will happen should you click a single link? Nothing good, I assure you!!!
Here’s more..

What are those red warning signals? They are automatically inserted by a tool I have installed on my machine, see, Why You Want WOT.

I kind of admire the craftsmanship that went into this.. this.. criminal attack. It fooled me for a while. But, sheeze: anyone else wonder how come these guys are still getting away with this? And maybe.. a bit fed up with it?

Are you listening, cyber czar?

Copyright 2007-2010 © Tech Paul. All Rights Reserved. post to jaanix.

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A Parachute for Your PC

A parachute is a life-saving device which (hopefully) allows an aviator to survive a cataclysmic failure of the aircraft.

Advice about “online backup” solutions

Folks, yesterday’s article deserves this follow-up re-posting. This article contains some important advice for computer users.

Dear Reader, if your hard drive died.. would you forever lose valuable tax records? Irreplaceable photographs? How about your address book? Or.. have you followed my advice, so oft repeated here, and made two separate backups and stored them in two different locations/media types? If you have, you just may have saved yourself some tears of sorrow and frustration. (And if you run a business, maybe your livelihood.)

A good backup will mean the difference between a couple hours’ of inconvenience –in case of a failure– and total loss. Just recently, I wrote an article on how having the second backup saved my bacon on an XP machine (see Back in the saddle) when its hard drive decided enough was enough.
I cannot say it often enough: computers are complex devices and their parts DO fail (and usually provide little or no warning before they do). Make some copies of your stuff.

Tip of the day: consider storing one of your system backups online. Online backups are convenient, (most are) secure, and most important, offsite. “Off-site” means, literally, “not here”, but “over there”. This is a key element in enterprise “Disaster Continuity” and you can implement it as well by taking advantage of an online storage service.
[Think of it as being like your safety deposit box. If your house (God forbid) were to burn down, get hit by a meteor, or swallowed by an earthquake.. and everything inside destroyed, you still have copies of your vital documents in your safety deposit box (right?).]

With an online storage service, you “upload” your files, via the Internet, to somebody’s server.. where they sit until you need them. When you need them, (and, I understand, hopefully you never will.. but.) you simply “download” them back onto your repaired machine.

A reader has written to ask me which of the many online storage services I recommend (thanks, Bryan W.) and inspired today’s article. Sorry to say, I don’t have a “favorite”. What I can do is tell you what to look for, and point you to a comparison list. Fair enough?

* Security: the storage service you want will have security in place so that some hacker can’t come rifling through the server, and read all your vital docs. (you wouldn’t want your bank to leave the vault wide open, and all the safety deposit boxes unlocked.. would you?) This is usually accomplished through encryption. Look to see if the data transfer occurs using SSL, that the account is fully password protected and your stored data is encrypted by some method.
* Price: some of these “storage solutions” are quite pricey, charging 10 times as much as others. Why? Shrug. Because they can? While price alone shouldn’t be a deciding factor, be aware that some places gouge.
* Size: These storage services charge you by how many Gigabytes you are going to take up on their server. There are MANY free online storage providers for very small allotments (typically 5GB’s, but some go all the way to 35GB’s), but these really won’t hold a full system state backup.. you need a “plan” that will allow you to store backup copies of each of your hard drives– with a little room to spare. But unless you’re a big corporation, you won’t need Terabytes.

To quickly see how much data is currently on your hard-drive, Open My Computer (just “Computer” in Vista) and right-click on the icon representing your hard-drive (or drives), and choose “Properties” from the context menu. You will see a pie chart showing the total size of your files and folders.

Today’s free link(s): PC World magazine has two comparison charts of online storage providers: read this first, (reviews 17 providers) then click here, (for 6 more) which will give you their number one pick(s). Then take a look at Tom’s Hardware discussion/article (click here) and, may I suggest, skipping ahead to the Conclusion will give you their results.
* My friend Mike, over on My Tech Talk, has also written about his experiences with online storage.
* And Bill Mullins discusses Mozy here.

[update 5/1/08: PCMag has just published a new article with updated reviews. They say say a new service, SOS, has ursurped the throne from Mozy. To read this updated review, click here. (I still suggest reading the others, as well, though.)]