Staten Island Seniornet on-line Forum

New computer set up

admin — Tue Jan 29, 2008 2:19 pm

Author: admin

Posted: Tue Jan 29, 2008 2:19 pm

Try this site:

http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/using/setup/expert/crawford_november12.mspx

It works very easy, I've used it on a few computers.

Miss Staten Island

admin — Tue Nov 06, 2007 5:57 am

Author: admin

Posted: Tue Nov 06, 2007 5:57 am

My granddaughter, Kristie, is participating in the Miss Staten Island Pageant and as part of the program she is raising funds for the charitable organization Children's Miracle Network. If you can and would like to contribute to this worthwhile cause you can do so through the link in Kristie's email which I am forwarding to you.

Visit her link in any case and see how lovely she looks. We are very proud of her.

The pageant will be held this Saturday, November 10, at New Dorp High School at 5:30 pm. Anyone may attend and the tickets, which are $25 & $20, may be purchased at the door.

Thank you,
Dora Valente

http://www.missamerica4kids.org/m.aspx?i=4091809EEA1126&e=67B3C0C093

Yea, you guessed it Another scam

admin — Sat Jul 21, 2007 12:48 pm

Author: admin

Posted: Sat Jul 21, 2007 12:48 pm

This time the scam is to scare you into installing a security patch that will infect your computer.
You may receive an e-mail like this for example:

Worm Alert!

Dear Customer,

Our robot has detected an abnormal activity from your IP address on sending e-mails. Probably it is connected with the last epidemic of a worm which does not have official patches at the moment.
We recommend you to install this patch to remove worm files and stop email sending, otherwise your account will be blocked.
Customer Support Center

There is nothing more easily believed than your ISP Customer Support Center offering you protection from viruses while secretly infecting your PC. That's the trick being used by the 'Robot' virus which began hitting inboxes in July 2007. It looks like a helpful message from a system administrator informing you that your PC is likely infected with a worm (detected by a robot's spotting "abnormal activity from your IP address", technical stuff really gets users) and offering a patch the user can install to fix the problem.

However, the patch itself is a Trojan which installs itself in the Windows system folder as the file
windev-72b5-203e.sys.

The payload is a variation of malware that has been given variety of different names by different security vendors, including the following:
Trojan.Packed.13 (Symantec)
W32/Nuwar@MM (McAfee)
Worm:Win32/Nuwar.JT (Microsoft)
Mal/Dorf-A (Sophos)

E-Mail Scams

admin — Fri Jul 06, 2007 10:03 am

Author: admin

Posted: Fri Jul 06, 2007 10:03 am

This one is called the Jury Duty Scam:

Yes, that's right. Another scam has been making its rounds and once again. Chances are, you've probably received an e-mail about a new scam, entitled "Jury Duty," and you're probably wondering if it's true or not, well, it is!

The scam actually starts out with a phone call from the scammer. They tell you they work for the local court and that you have failed to show up for your jury duty assignment. The scammer then goes on to tell you that a warrant has been issued for your arrest.

Of course, by this time, you are in panic and when they ask you for your information to verify everything, you give it to them right away. This information includes your social security number, your birth date and quite possibly, your credit card number. You know, everything the scammer needs to commit identity theft. It's an easy way to catch you off guard and when you're upset, you're more likely to give out your personal information. It's a win-win situation for the scammer.

The FBI has stated that this scam has already occurred in Michigan, Ohio, Texas, Arizona, Illinois, Pennsylvania, Minnesota, Oregon and Washington state. They are also reminding you that court workers will never call and ask you for your personal information over the phone. They usually deal with everything through the regular mail. If you're careful not to give out any of your information over the phone, you will be just fine. Just use some common sense and these scam artists will not be able to get away with this any longer.

Are you ready for Vista?

admin — Sat Mar 03, 2007 5:20 pm

Author: admin

Posted: Sat Mar 03, 2007 5:20 pm

I try to keep up with technology as best as I can. However, I cannot afford a new computer just now. As you all may know all new computers come with some version of MS Vista (new super operating system).

Those of you that have purchased a new computer with Windows Vista be aware that everything may not be peaches and cream. In doing research for this article I found that some of my software and hardware may not work with Vista. For example, I was very disappointed with my Logitech Quick Pro 4000 camera. It won't work with Vista and they tell me it never will.

Anyway, I thought I should share some links to make it easier to find out what will and what won't work with Vista. Starting with the Windows Vista Home Page:

http://www.microsoft.com/windows/products/windowsvista/default.mspx

http://www.iexbeta.com/wiki/index.php/Windows_Vista_Software_Compatibility_List

http://kb.wisc.edu/helpdesk/page.php?id=5175

http://forums.microsoft.com/TechNet/ShowPost.aspx?PostID=801350&SiteID=17

http://www.iexbeta.com/wiki/index.php/Windows_Vista_Hardware_Compatibility_List

This last link is actually a download patch to fix a problem with a list of software. Look on this list you may have one of the programs this patch will help:

http://www.softwarepatch.com/windows-vista/windows-vista-software-compatibility.html

E-mail addressing - good advice for everyone!

admin — Sun Feb 25, 2007 9:16 am

Author: admin

Posted: Sun Feb 25, 2007 9:16 am

Do you really know how to forward e-mails? 50% of us do; 50% do NOT. Do you wonder why you get viruses or junk mail? Do you hate it? Every time you forward an e-mail there is information left over from the people who got the message before you, namely their e-mail addresses & names. As the messages get forwarded along, the list of addresses builds, and builds, and builds, and all it takes is for some poor sap to get a virus, and his or her computer can send that virus to every E-mail address that has come across his computer. Or, someone can take all of those addresses and sell them or send junk mail to them in the hopes that you will go to the site and he will make five cents for each hit. That's right, all of that inconvenience over a nickel! How do you stop it? Well, there are two easy steps:

(1) When you forward an e-mail, DELETE all of the other addresses that appear in the body of the message. That's right, DELETE them! Highlight them and delete them, backspace them, cut them, whatever it is you know how to do. It only takes a second. You MUST click the "Forward" button first and then you will have full editing capabilities against the body and headers of the message.

(2) Whenever you send an e-mail to more than one person, do NOT use the To: or Cc: columns for adding e-mail address:

Always use the BCC: (blind carbon copy) column for listing the e-mail addresses. This is the way that people you send to only see their own e-mail address. If you don't see your BCC: option click on where it says To: and your address list will appear. Highlight the address and choose BCC: and that's it, it's that easy. When you send to BCC: your message will automatically say "Undisclosed Recipients" in the "TO:" field of the people who receive it.

Have you ever gotten an email that is a petition? It states a position and asks you to add your name and address and to forward it to 10 or 15 people or your entire address book. The email can be forwarded on and on and can collect thousands of names and email addresses.

A FACT: The completed petition is actually worth a couple of bucks to a professional spammer because of the wealth of valid names and email addresses contained therein. If you want to support the petition, send it as your own personal letter to the intended recipient. Your position may carry more weight as a personal letter than a laundry list name and email address on a petition.

So please, in the future, let's stop the junk mail and the viruses.

Do NOT send "Prayer or Good Luck Chain" e-mails

admin — Thu Feb 08, 2007 8:47 am

Author: admin

Posted: Thu Feb 08, 2007 8:47 am

Why you SHOULD NOT send "Prayer or Good Luck Chain" e-mails, or add your name to petitions, etc.

To whom it all concerns:

Just a word to the wise. E-mail petitions are NOT acceptable to Congress or any other municipality, nor in Canada. To be acceptable petitions must have a signed signature and full address. Same with "prayer chains" -be wary.

Almost all e-mails that ask you to add your name and forward on to others are similar to that mass letter years ago that asked people to send business cards to the little kid in Florida who wanted to break the Guinness Book of Records for the most cards. All it was, and all this type of e-mail is, is to get names and "cookie" tracking info for tele-marketers and spammers to validate active e-mail accounts for their own purposes.

Any time you see an e-mail that says forward this on to "10" of your friends, sign this petition, or you'll get good luck, or whatever, it has either an e-mail tracker program attached that tracks the cookies and e-mails of those folks you forward to, or the host sender is getting a copy each time it gets forwarded and then is able to get lists of "active" e-mails to use in spam e-mails, or sell to others that do.

Please forward this notice to others and you will be providing a good service to your friends, and will be rewarded by not getting 30,000 spam e-mails in the future.

(If you have been sending out the above kinds of email, now you know why you get so much spam!)

You're doing yourself, your friends and relatives a BIG favor by "BCC" all your e-mails. Send the e-mails to yourself,and leave out the "headers".

Read the Facts about these petitions:

http://www.snopes.com/inboxer/petition/internet.htm

Cannot open "Winfile.dat" files in your e-mail?

admin — Tue Feb 06, 2007 8:40 am

Author: admin

Posted: Tue Feb 06, 2007 8:40 am

Some emails come in as originalmail.eml in this case the winfile.dat hidden within the originalmail.eml. I tried a few decoders and the easiest to use is called "Decode Shell Extension". I downloded this program and now what I do when I get an "originalmail.eml" I save it to the desktop, then right click on it and choose "Decode" it is automatically decoded and creates a winfile.dat that is opened by winfile opener. Download the decoder:

http://www.funduc.com/decext.htm

You may have recently received an e-mail with a "Winfile.dat" attached that you cannot open. Well there is a free Winmail Opener program you can download called appropriately "Winmail Opener". Read all about it:

http://www.eolsoft.com/freeware/winmail_opener/

In case you can't find the download link:

http://www.eolsoft.com/download/winmail_opener.exe

For you MAC users:

http://www.joshjacob.com/macdev/tnef/

What are Zombies?

admin — Thu Jan 18, 2007 8:38 am

Author: admin

Posted: Thu Jan 18, 2007 8:38 am

Yahoo, AOL even Google toolbars are offered on just about every program you download today. I always uncheck the "do you want toolbar".

Free on-line course on how to protect your computer

admin — Mon Jan 15, 2007 8:16 am

Author: admin

Posted: Mon Jan 15, 2007 8:16 am

Cnet has started a free on-line course on how to protect your computer. The course has Six Lessons:

PC Protection 101
Lesson 1: Viruses, worms, and Trojan horses
Lesson 2: Spyware and adware
Lesson 3: Good passwords vs. bad passwords
Lesson 4: Securing wireless networks
Lesson 5: Protect your identity in cyberspace
Lesson 6: Dealing with spam

It may be worth your while to register and yes, it's free:

http://pc-protect.classes.cnet.com/

Windows Defender - MS free Anti-Spyware program

admin — Thu Jan 11, 2007 8:44 am

Author: admin

Posted: Thu Jan 11, 2007 8:44 am

If you have Windows XP and are looking for a good Anti-Spyware program than Windows Defender fits the ticket, it's free and it works. Please take note, Windows Defender no longer supports Windows 2000.

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyId=435BFCE7-DA2B-4A6A-AFA4-F7F14E605A0D&displaylang=en[url]

Trojan Flooder.AKE - AVG users

admin — Fri Dec 29, 2006 9:32 am

Author: admin

Posted: Fri Dec 29, 2006 9:32 am

If you're like me, when you see the word "Trojan," you probably panic. Am I right? Of course, a Trojan is pretty much only associated with a virus (or at least some sort of threat) in today's computer world. They are basically completely destructive programs that disguise themselves as very helpful and useful programs. But, in all actuality, they contain hidden code which allows them to do harmful things to one's computer.

In the past month, a new Trojan has made its way onto the scene. It is called the Trojan Flooder.AKE and it has been found to mostly affect AVG users. There are a couple of symptoms with this that you can look out for. First of all, an alert box will pop up on your screen, telling you about a new threat found on your computer and that you should "heal it now." If you do that, your computer will restart, but that same message will still be there. Your computer will then be stuck in a loop of "flooding."

As I said earlier, this mainly only affects AVG users, so if you use AVG for your antivirus program, be on the look out for this. It may pop up on your screen at any time, so just ignore it and you should be just fine.

In case I'm too late in this warning, I found this on Yahoo Answers:
How to fix trojan flooder ake?

Solution #1:
1. Boot your computer to Safe mode. Power on (or restart) your computer, keep pressing F8 key until the Startup menu appears and choose "Windows in Safe Mode".

2. Uninstall AVG through the control panel "Add or Remove Programs" applet.

3. Reboot.

Solution #2:
1. Boot your computer to Safe mode. Power on (or restart) your computer, keep pressing F8 key until the Startup menu appears and choose "Windows in Safe Mode".

2. In the Windows Safe mode, navigate to following folder:

C:\WINDOWS\system32\drivers\

3. Rename rename the following files to avoid furhter deleting of "winlogon.exe".

AVGCLEAN.SYS -> AVGCLEAN.SY_
AVGRSXP.SYS -> AVGRSXP.SY_

4. Launch Registry Editor (regedit.exe) and remove the "__delete" value in the right pane from this key:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\Curr...

5. Restart the computer back to Windows normal mode

6. Update your AVG program to latest virus base version. Launch AVG or open AVG Control Center and press F9 key to update your AVG.

7. Then rename the SYS files back to their original names

AVGCLEAN.SY_ -> AVGCLEAN.SYS
AVGRSXP.SY_ -> AVGRSXP.SYS

8. Restart your computer for to get AVG Resident shield loaded again

Solution #3:
If either of the above solutions do not work, you will have to reinstall your Windows operating system.

http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20061212061655AAi1goP

Buying a new PC - AMD vs. Intel - Dual Core 64

admin — Wed Dec 20, 2006 8:58 am

Author: admin

Posted: Wed Dec 20, 2006 8:58 am

Tom's hardware does a great job of testing hardware. They recently ran two pc's, an AMD vs.. Intel dual core cpu's for 18 days.

To summarize in as few words as possible, AMD chips run cooler with less power consumption and are the best for single application software. Intel runs hotter with more power consumption but is better for multiple software applications due to Hyper-Threading.

If you have the time and inclination you can read all 29 pages. Just be aware if you want to run Vista you should have one of these cpu's and at least 2gb of ram, yikes!

http://www.tomshardware.com/2005/06/03/dual_core_stress_test/index.html

Can your computer run Vista?

admin — Wed Dec 20, 2006 8:09 am

Author: admin

Posted: Wed Dec 20, 2006 8:09 am

I follow all the newest trends in computers so I'm always interested in upgrading. Vista has some pretty stiff requirements. I am a member of cnet and get all their reviews, etc. They sent me a free Vista readiness advisor. So check this out, I have a 2.53ghz Pentium 4 cpu with 1.5gb ram and a 128mb nvidia card. My computer failed!

http://reviews.cnet.com/4520-3672_7-6671810.html?tag=nl.e501

Telephone tax refund

admin — Sun Dec 03, 2006 8:07 am

Author: admin

Posted: Sun Dec 03, 2006 8:07 am

What is the telephone tax refund?

The telephone tax refund is a one-time payment available on your 2006 federal income tax return, designed to refund previously collected long-distance federal excise taxes. It is available to anyone who paid long-distance taxes on landline, cell phone or Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) service.

Why is the government refunding these taxes?
Several recent federal court decisions have held that the tax does not apply to long-distance service as it is billed today. The IRS is following these decisions and refunding the portion of the tax charged on long-distance calls. The IRS is also refunding taxes collected on telephone service under plans that do not differentiate between long distance and local calls.

The telephone tax continues to apply to local-only service, and the IRS is not refunding taxes charged on local-only service.

The IRS will refund to you the taxes on long-distance service billed to you for the period after Feb 28, 2003 and before Aug 1, 2006. Taxpayers should request this refund next year when they file their 2006 tax returns.

How do I get the telephone tax refund?

In general, anyone who paid the long-distance telephone tax will get the refund on their 2006 federal income tax return. This includes individuals, businesses and nonprofit organizations. The 2006 return is usually filed during 2007.

The IRS is making it easier for taxpayers by offering a standard refund amount between $30 and $60, so they don�t need to gather old phone bills. Taxpayers who choose the standard amount will only need to fill out one line on their tax returns. The standard amount is based on actual telephone usage data and the amount applicable to a family or other household reflects the long-distance phone tax paid by similarly sized families or households. Using this amount is the easiest way for taxpayers to get their refunds and avoid gathering 41 months of old phone records.

Businesses and nonprofits must fill out the new Form 8913 and base their refund requests on the actual amount of tax they paid. The IRS is considering an estimation method that businesses and nonprofits could use for figuring the tax paid and is asking for public suggestions on potential methodologies that are both accurate and relatively easy for taxpayers to use. Comments should be e-mailed to Telephone.Tax@irs.gov and must be received by Sept. 15, 2006.

Who is eligible to request the telephone tax refund?

In general, any individual, business or nonprofit organization that paid long-distance tax for service billed after Feb 28, 2003 and before Aug 1, 2006 is eligible to request the refund.

What is the standard amount?
Individual taxpayers can take a standard amount from $30 to $60 based on the number of exemptions claimed on their tax return. For those claiming:

� one exemption, the standard refund amount is: $30
� two exemptions, the standard refund amount is: $40
� three exemptions, the standard refund amount is: $50
� four exemptions or more, the standard refund amount is: $60

The instructions to the 2006 1040 tax forms will provide more information on how to determine the correct number of exemptions. (Because the term, �exemptions� does not appear on Form 1040EZ, people who fill out this form should follow the instructions carefully.)

The standard amount is based on actual telephone usage data, and the amount applicable to a family or other household reflects the long-distance phone tax paid by similarly sized families or households. Using this amount is the easiest way for taxpayers to get their refund and avoid gathering 41 months of old phone records.

To read the entire article go to the IRS website:
http://www.irs.gov/newsroom/article/0,,id=161506,00.html