The State of Solid State Drives
Thirty years ago, General Motors introduced solid state voltage regulators that were built into the alternators on its cars. Previously, all voltage regulators were bulky electro-mechanical devices in housed in black metal boxes mounted to the engine compartment firewall or on the top side of a whee...
This Is Tech Support. You Are About to Be Scammed.
Internet usage continues to expand as coverage becomes more available and as users are added by the thousands. Those users include people who do not understand what goes on behind the scenes as well as others who know that they do not know. Scam artists have been around throughout recorded histor...
The Wisdom of Whitelisting
Do you remember the good old days when we were able to tell the bad guys from the good guys on TV westerns by the color of their hats? Cyber vocabulary includes the term “black hat.” It is derived directly from those old westerns and those dirty, low-down, dastardly villains. Today, the term is u...
Why Old Methods Can’t Stop Ransomware
During the American Revolution, sentries guarding encampments reportedly shouted, “Halt! Who goes there? Friend or foe?” As far as we know, there are no statistics that indicate how many foes identified themselves as such – or lived to tell about it. Ransomware is not easily identified As of this...
Top Ten Computer Problems Your IT Specialist Can Fix Remotely
Remote IT support has come a long way, with many IT issues able to be solved without having the device in hand. An IT technician can usually speak with the user and handle most issues remotely. This means you don’t have to live in the same city as the IT expert. It also means that they must be able...
Why Backups Aren’t Enough
Perfect backups will not always prevent the consequences of a ransomware attack, but backing up is vitally important. The Problem with Ransomware: A high-profile ransomware attack hit a well-known transportation agency over a recent holiday weekend. This attack was a major eye-o...
Ten Computer Repair Myths
If you’re like most of us, it’s hard to know what’s fact and what’s fiction when it comes to computer repair. We thought we’d take some common myths and shed some light on what you really need to know. Slow computers need to be reformatted. This is perhaps one of the most common myths out there...
Your Mobile Phone Calls May Be Up for Grabs
You’ve seen the cell phone intercepts, tracking, and cloning in the movies and on TV. It’s scary, but you know that it is make-believe. You’ve read the headlines about the NSA listening in on cellular conversations. That’s really scary, but you don’t really care because you think that they won’t...
The Sky Is Falling! The Sky Is Falling! Dropbox Got Hacked!
“Have you heard? Dropbox was hacked!” “Oh no! When did that happen?” “In 2012.” “Now you’re telling me?” If No News Is Good News Does That Make Old News Bad News? Well, it’s a little bit of both. The good news is that it is old news. Dropbox has fixed their security issue...
Scareware – What Is It? Should You Be Concerned?
According to IN Homeland Security, the probability of scareware, a software developed to be the solution to a nonexistent problem, is going to make a huge return. The possibility of these forecasts being true seems rather high. A security specialist recently got in touch with the Spiceworks IT pl...