John Healy's Tech Blog

Category: Computer

Posts related to computer hardware and software

  • New computer? — things to do first

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    Whether you received a new computer as a holiday gift or not, there are some standard things to do after you’ve enjoyed the out-of-the-box experience and configured some initial settings. PC World / MacWorld has some useful summaries. More below. “7 critical things to do immediately with a new PC” discusses getting Windows Updates (yeah,

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  • Fake Shipping Notifications — an annual email scam

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    Yes, it’s that time of year again. Fake shipping notifications — email messages purporting to be from mainstream shippers (FedEx, UPS, etc.) saying that delivery of a parcel / package was attempted — directing you to open an attachment or click on a link. As pointed out in last year’s post “Holiday Cyber Risks” (December

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  • Fake Gift Card Surveys — another email scam

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    Fake gift card surveys. I’ve seen more of these scams the last month or two. The email messages claimed to be from Amazon with “Amazon Coupons” as the subject. Examination of the messages revealed sender addresses having nothing to do with Amazon. Like from amazon@someothersite.com. Encoded (indecipherable) links in the bodies of the messages went

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  • Fake order confirmations — another email scam

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    Fake order confirmations. I’ve seen a lot of these the last couple of weeks. Particularly repeated email messages claiming to be from Costco (Walgreens, etc.) with “Order Confirmation” as the subject. Of course, I never placed any such order(s). Examination of the messages (without actually opening them in an email app) revealed various sender addresses

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  • Rankings of antivirus software

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    PC World’s September 30, 2014, “Free is good: No-cost Panda Software tops AV-Test’s rankings of antivirus software” article summarized rankings for antivirus software by AV-test.org and AV-comparatives.org. Antivirus suites are only as good as their latest tests. And in AV-test.org’s latest roundup for July and August, the usual suspects—BitDefender, Kaspersky, McAfee, and Symantec—came out on

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