The Computer Tutor

There is yet another virus making the rounds on Facebook, and it’s tricking a lot of users into clicking on it and infecting their computers.     Here’s what the message looks like:   I’ve gotten these Facebook Messenger messages from several of my FB friends. It always has the same content – your first name, followed by “it’s you?“, along with what looks like a link to a YouTube video. This is a very common tactic in virus emails as well – it’s specifically designed to arouse your curiosity. In fact, one of the most effective tools for spreading malware is the curiosity of the recipient. Lots of people read that and think, “What is this? My friend found a video of me on YouTube?” Of course, they could reply to the message asking about the video and wait for a response from their friend. But that might take too long, right? Curiosity demands an answer now! The easiest thing to do, to satisfy that curiosity quickly, is to just click on the link and see that video. Except it’s not a video. The image in the email is created to look just like what a YouTube video link looks like, but instead of taking you to YouTube, the user gets redirected to a website that LOOKS just like YouTube (or some other video sharing site), but then a pop-up appears that says you need to install something to allow you to view videos. Completely fake of course, but it’s designed to look completely authentic. Again, for some people this could still seem to be legitimate, since there are often pop-up messages telling you you need to update this or that software. So they figure they’ll just get this quick update and then be able to view that video they’re dying to see. But rather than installing or updating a video player, the link they just clicked instead installs malicious software that compromises their Facebook account. And then guess what happens? They start unknowingly sending Facebook message to all of THEIR Facebook friends, with the same link and the same vague “___, it’s you?” message. And the cycle continues. Except now instead of your friend sending out the fake, malicious messages, now it’s YOUR Facebook account doing this to all of YOUR Facebook friends. This goes back to one of my top rules for using the internet: Don’t click on any link unless you know exactly, with certainty, where it will take you. And for the people that “only click on something if it came from someone I know” – this fake Facebook message will ONLY come from someone you know. So the criteria of “someone I know” is not relevant. You’d think after this same message keeps sending out the same malicious link and download, Facebook might get the hint and block those messages. But so far that has not happened. It’s up to you to be vigilant. If you do find that your Facebook account has been infected like this (or with any other malicious software) get in touch with me (or whoever you use for computer service) to get it cleaned up. This can be handled remotely so you shouldn’t have to bring your computer anywhere to get it resolved. The post Watch out for this fake Facebook video message first appeared on The Computer Tutor.

Scott – You’ve piqued my interest with this sentence that you sneaked into a recent podcast: “Really, sending pictures by email is a bad idea to start with, but that’s a story for another day.” How about making that day next week’s podcast? I want to know what you recommend. Photos are a problem I constantly struggle with – both sending and receiving. Keep up the good work. Cheers, Terry   You shouldn’t send photos as email attachments. Especially if you have a lot of photos you want to send. Here are a few reasons why not: It’s inconvenient for you. If you have several pictures on your computer, and you want them to also be on someone else’s computer for viewing, it’s not a simple one-click process. Especially if the pictures are in different folders on your computer. You either have to send all of them at once (which might be too big), or you have to send one or two at a time, in several separate emails. And your email program (such as Outlook) is slowed down while it sends all those pictures out. Pain in the butt. It’s inconvenient for the recipient. After you’ve gone through the whole process on your end of attaching all those pictures, now your recipient has to go through the process of receiving them. The same slowdown your Outlook had when you were sending them, the recipient’s Outlook also slows down as it brings in all those emails with attachments. This is less of an issue with high-speed internet, but I remember a while back I would just have to walk away for a while all those pictures downloaded. They might not get sent. Aside from all inconvenience on both ends, you have to also consider the actual rules of your email provider. For most of the web-based email, there’s a limit on the size of attachments. Most of them run 10 mb to 25 mb. If you have a few high-res photos, that won’t work. I believe Google raised their limit to 50 mb, but that’s still pretty limiting. Which means you are forced to split up the files and send several emails. They might not get opened. Here’s my policy on email attachments: I don’t open them. What if I get an email from someone I know, and it has an attachment? I don’t open it. What if my own mother sends me an email, with an attachment? I don’t open it. Email attachments are still one of the best ways of spreading a virus, only because people are so easily tricked into clicking to open them. You might get an email from Fedex saying they are having trouble delivering your package, and the invoice is attached. Even if you are actually expecting a package by Fedex, that email did not come from Fedex and the attachment is actually a virus. The only exception I make to opening an attachment is if the person sending it to me tells me ahead of time what it is and that they have sent it. This information cannot be in the email itself – it has to be knowledge or information I have gotten separate from the email (such as by a phone call or by speaking to that sender in person). That’s the only way you can know for sure what an attachment is, and that it’s safe to open. Imagine mailing a full-size brick by sticking it in a padded envelope. It’s a pain for you to send it, a pain for the recipient to receive it, and it most likely won’t make the trip. That’s how inefficient it is to send a set of photos by email. So how DO you get a picture (or group of pictures) from your computer to another person? The basic process is this: you upload the pictures to the “cloud”, then get a link you can share for those pictures you just uploaded, and you send an email that includes that link. That sounds a lot more complicated than it is. If you saw last week’s blog post, that was when I showed you how easy it is to automatically backup the photos on your phone (and on your computer) using Google Photos. Google Photos is an example of cloud storage (“cloud” just means some other computer than yours – your pictures are on Google’s computers). When you go to photos.google.com, there are all of your pictures, available for viewing. You just need to choose which ones you want to send, and get a link to just those pictures. Here’s an example. In my Google Photos, here are a couple of pics of my little Fenway. These were taken shortly after he came back from having some dental work done, so he was still a little sedated. Anyway, let’s say I want to send these two pictures to someone:   When you move your mouse over a picture there, you’ll see a little checkmark appear in the top left corner. Click that for each picture you want to send. You’ll see how many you’ve selected:   Now go up to the top of the window and click on the “Share” button:   In the new window, in the options at the bottom, click on “Get Link”:   Next window will display the link – that&

For a lot of people, the most valuable thing stored on their computer (or their phone) is the collection of photos. A lot of things can be replaced, but not the photos. In case you didn’t know, there’s a way to back up your photos that is 100% automated and completely free. You should be taking advantage of this.   This is one of those things that I do as second nature now, and for that type of thing I sometimes forget that not everyone knows about it so it might not occur to me to do a blog post about it. But recently I’ve talked to some clients that were completely unaware of this service, so it reminded me that I need to talk about it here. For a quick overview, here’s what I am able to do now. Once this is set up, you can do the same thing. Like most people, I take pictures on my phone. It’s an Android phone, but iPhone can do this same process. So let’s say I walk out my front door and take a picture of my car:   I can then walk back inside to my office, and see that the picture I just took is already viewable on my computer. I didn’t have to click “upload” on any program, I didn’t have to connect my phone to my computer with a USB cable, and I didn’t have to pull out the phone’s memory card and plug it in to the computer. It’s all automated. So that means even though I might have a ton of important, irreplaceable family pictures on my phone, they wouldn’t be lost forever if my phone got dropped in the ocean or run over by a truck. I can still get them on my computer (or any computer with an internet connection). To do this, you’ll need a Google account. If you have Gmail, that’s the same thing so you already have the account you need. If you don’t have a Google account, just go to Google.com and create one (it’s free). On your phone, go to the Google Play Store (Android) or the App Store (iPhone) and get the Google Photos app and install it. Open the app, click the 3 horizontal lines in the top left, and choose Settings. The very first one in the list is called “Back up and sync”. Click that and make sure it is enabled. This means that any picture you take will be automatically uploaded to Google Photos (photos.google.com) immediately after you take the picture. And the fact that it’s automated is critical. I mean, if you had to remember every so often to manually back up the pictures on your phone, how often would that happen? If you’re like me, not very often. Automation means you don’t have to worry about forgetting to do it. And this isn’t just for your phone – you can upload all your pictures from your computer to Google Photos as well. Think about that – a free, automated backup for all your pictures. No more excuses for not backing up! I would definitely not recommend that Google Photos be your ONLY backup, but it should absolutely be PART of your overall backup strategy at least. If you need help setting it up, get in touch with me. The post Automatically backup your photos online for FREE first appeared on The Computer Tutor.

If you’re using Windows 10, your computer has the built-in ability to bring up a chat window so you can communicate with an actual person from Microsoft. You don’t have to go to their website, and you don’t have to pick up your phone.   All too often, someone will contact me about a computer problem, and the conversation starts with that person saying, “I was just talking with Microsoft on the phone, and they told me…”. At that point I already know what has happened. In most cases, I’ll let them continue and tell the rest of the story though. A lot of these people really want to tell me the details. But in the end, I already know that the person they spoke with was not Microsoft, it was just a scammer pretending to be Microsoft. So I always have two questions: Did you allow this person to remote in to your computer? Did you give this person your credit card number? The answers to those two questions will determine how we proceed. I still find it pretty amazing that people will still believe and trust a random stranger on the phone who claims to be with Microsoft, even though the scam is so widely known now. But what if you need to actually talk with someone who really does work at Microsoft? Maybe you got a new computer, and you’re trying to install Office 365, and it keeps coming up with an error. Well, Office 365 is a Microsoft product, and you paid them money for it, so they should be available to help you install it, right? Of course. Rule #1 is don’t do a Google search to find their phone number. If you do that, it’s very likely you’ll be talking to another scammer. And the truth is, you don’t even need to call them at all. And you don’t need to try to navigate the Microsoft website trying to get to tech support. You can bring up a Microsoft tech support agent in a chat window – right from your computer. Here’s how you do it: 1. In the search box in the lower left corner, type: Support 2. In the search results that come up, click on “Contact Support”   3. Now you’ll see a chat window come up:   Don’t get too excited yet though, because you still haven’t contact a real person from Microsoft. This is just their artificial intelligence robot that they would like you to try to use first. 4. At this point, you can try typing your actual question, such as “I can’t install Office”. But that means you’re going to continue to have to work with the robot as it tries to figure out what your problem is. Instead, if you want to get to a real person, just type “I want to talk to a real person”. Then type it again.   5. They’ll still want you to at least indicate what kind of problem you’re having by choosing from a couple of dropdown menus:   So just choose the proper selections. In this case, in the first menu you would choose “Office” and in the second list you would choose “Tech Support”. Then you get to find out how long you’ll be waiting. In this example, it was prime time – 8:30 pm on a weeknight – and I would have either been waiting about 1 1/2 hours for a call back by phone, or for the 15 people ahead of me in chat to get finished.   I usually prefer to use the chat window, since I then have a record of the conversation that I can refer back to if needed. And I don’t have to try to understand what the agent is saying if his non-US accent makes conversation difficult. When you choose Chat, you’ll see a countdown so you’ll know when it’s getting close to being your turn. For some reason, even though there were 15 people ahead of me, in the chat window my position was 22. Not sure how that happened.   When your turn comes up, you’ll actually be chatting with a real live person from Microsoft! Well, more likely someone working from their home in India or the Philippines, as a contractor for Microsoft. But at least you’ll know you’re not speaking to a scammer. The post Chat live with a real Microsoft agent, right from your Windows 10 PC first appeared on The Computer Tutor.

You probably already know you can go in to your web browser’s settings and clear ALL your cookies for every website you’ve visited. But did you know you can also go in and clear out the cookies for a specific website? You sure can.   And why would you want to do that? In some cases, a website might be using an app that is not working properly and you want to view the site “cleanly” (without cookies from previous visits to the site). In my situation as a tech, sometimes a client will tell me that they’re having trouble with a particular website, and if I have visited that site in the past, the cookies from that site might prevent me from seeing the same thing my client is seeing. You certainly could go in and just clear ALL the cookies from ALL the websites you’ve visited, but that becomes really inconvenient because it might cause you to have to log in to all those sites again when you go back. In this case, clearing all your cookies is kind of like demolishing a house and rebuilding it just to replace a broken window (yes, there are other options which I’ll cover at the end of this post). So rather than clear the cookies from every website, you want to just clear the cookies from the one website that is giving you the problem. Here’s how you do that. How to clear cookies from a single site in Chrome: 1. Click on the Settings icon in Chrome (the 3 dots in the top right) 2. Click on Settings, then scroll down and click on Advanced 3. Scroll down to the Privacy section and click on Content Settings 4. Click on Cookies 5. Click on See all cookies and site data Now you’ll see a (probably long) list of the websites that have stored cookies on your computer. If you want, you can scroll down the list and find the site you’re working with. But the easier way is to just put the domain name (or part of it) in the “Search cookies” field to go straight to the cookies for that site.   Then when you see that site name, just click the trash can to the right of it to delete the cookies for just that website. When you’re done, just close the Settings tab. How to clear cookies from a single site in Firefox: 1. In Firefox, click the settings button (3 horizontal lines in the top right) 2. Click on Options 3. On the left side of the window, click on “Privacy and Security” 4. In the History section, click on “remove individual cookies”:   Then you’ll see the list of the individual sites. Just like in Chrome, you can scroll down the list and remove the one you’re looking for, or you can type the domain name in the search at the top.   There are a couple other considerations when thinking about this process. If you don’t want to clear ALL the cookies and other information because your browser stores all your passwords and you’d have to log in to each site again, I would encourage you to rethink your password storage process. If your browser stores your passwords, they are not secure. Anyone that uses your computer (or hacks into it) can have your entire list of passwords within a few seconds. You should use LastPass instead. It’s free and secure. I wrote about LastPass here. Also, there’s a different way to view a website and not have it affected by cookies, history, passwords, cache, or anything. Just use your browser’s “incognito” mode. In Chrome, click the Settings button and choose “New Incognito window”. In Firefox, it’s the Settings button, then “New Private Window”. When you open a website that way, it’s as if you have never visited that site before – so no cookies will be in effect (and visiting that site will also not be stored in your browser history). The post How to clear cookies for a specific website first appeared on The Computer Tutor.

A lot of people have HEARD of “zip files” but are not really familiar with what they are specifically. Here’s how they work. Part of the confusion with this is that it’s not really obvious or clear what is meant by a folder being “zipped”. I mean, everyone knows what a zipper does, but how does that relate to computer files? It might be easier if “zipped” were replaced with the word “compressed”. A zipped folder is just a folder that holds other files or folders, but compresses them so that they take up less space. Think of it like this. Imagine you’re out camping, and you spend the night in your sleeping bag.   When you wake up in the morning and you’re packing up to hike for the day, do you just scoop up the sleeping bag and start stuffing it into your backpack? Of course not. It’s going to take up too much space, and it will be awkward and frustrating to carry it around like that. Instead you carefully and strategically fold it, then roll it up to be as small and compacted (compresses) as possible:   Now you can fit it in your backpack for easy transport, and still have room for all your other essentials. I love efficiency! A zipped/compressed folder does pretty much the same thing. Let’s say you have a folder on your computer, and there are 20 pictures in that folder. You want to send those pictures to someone through email. Well, it would be pretty cumbersome to attach 20 pictures to an email. Or send 20 emails, each one with an attached photo. (Really, sending pictures by email is a bad idea to start with, but that’s a story for another day.) Instead, you could “zip” all 20 photos into a single folder, then just attach that one zipped folder to your email. Not only is this more efficient, it’s actually going to be a smaller overall file size. The 20 pictures might have a total size of 9 mb, but compressed into a single folder you might have a total size of 7 mb. The email recipient gets the email and opens the zipped folder (we’ll talk about this process in a minute), and there are all 20 pictures. Another practical use: You have thousands of pictures and you want to put all of them on a little flash drive to carry with you, but your flash drive is an older one that only holds 4 GB. Putting the pictures on there directly would mean they wouldn’t be able to fit. But in a zipped folder, you can get them all on there. You also sometimes see zipped files being used on websites, for downloading software. Rather than having you download the full (uncompressed) file, the website might offer the option of downloading a zipped file. Since that file size will be smaller, the download will be faster. Here’s how you can create your own ZIPPED folder: First, you start with a folder on your computer that has several files in it. This can be a folder full of Word documents, or PDF files, or pictures. Doesn’t really matter what type of files you use. With that folder open, hold down CTRL and tap the letter “a”. This highlights all of the files. Now, do a right click on one of the highlighted files and choose Send To – Compressed (zipped) folder. You’ll see a new folder there on your screen. That’s your newly-created zipped folder, and it has all those files in it (even though you still see all the files in the same place they were in that folder already). That’s how easy it is! Now you can do whatever you want with that zipped folder. And if you delete the zipped folder, all of your original files will still be in the original folder just like they were when you started.  The post What’s a ZIP file anyway? first appeared on The Computer Tutor.

Hello Scott, My daughter got me addicted to podcasts, and I follow about 15 different ones. Yours is the one I look forward to the most. You provide a great service to a growing audience. Thank you. I have a Windows 7 desktop and it’s time for a new one. I am planning to buy a Windows 10 PC in a month or two. I am very concerned about how to get all my files (Word/Excel documents, photos, music, videos, etc.) onto my new PC. When I upgraded to Windows 7, I recall purchasing software that came with a cable. I connected the two computers together, and my files magically appeared on my new PC. I don’t see such a device being available today. What is the best way for a novice like me to get all my files to my new PC? And how can I confirm they all actually arrived? Thanks, Scott, and I hope you find my question to be of general interest! -Richard   Thanks Richard! This is a good question, and probably a timely one since lots of people got new computers at Christmas and might be wondering how to get all their “stuff” over to the new one. Richard mentioned previously using a type of “data transfer cable” and a program that somehow moved everything over. Personally, I don’t recommending doing that. I don’t know if they are even still available. I experimented with something like that many years ago and it didn’t work very well. The process that I use is pretty simple. The only extra equipment you’ll need is a USB portable drive, such as this one (which is available on Amazon):   This little drive comes with one short cable, which plugs into any of the USB ports on your computer. When you plug it in, it will show up as another drive (such as drive E or drive F, whatever the next available drive letter is alphabetically). Here’s the process (and remember, we can only copy files and folders – actual programs such as Microsoft Word, etc. will have to be installed directly on the new computer from a disc or a download): 1. Plug the portable drive in to your old computer. On that portable drive, make a new folder called “Documents”, and open it (it’s empty of course). Drag that window to the right side of your screen. 2. Open a new File Explorer window (Windows key + E) and move this window to the left side of your screen. Open the Documents folder so that you can see all of your files and folders in that window. 3. Select everything in that folder by clicking Ctrl + A. On one of the selected items, do a right click and choose “Copy”. 4. Now click back over to the other window – the one showing the empty “Documents” folder on the portable drive. In the middle of that window, do a right click and choose “Paste”. At this point, you’ll see the computer go through the process of copying the contents of your old computer’s Documents folder over to the Documents folder on the portable drive 5. Repeat steps 1 through 4 for each folder you want to move over to the new computer. This usually includes Documents, Pictures, Music, Videos, Desktop. Those folders are easily found. Website Favorites/Bookmarks can be moved over but the process is different based on what web browser you use. Outlook emails can also be moved over but the process is more involved than what this blog post is covering today. 6. Connect the portable drive to the new computer and open it in a window which you’ll move over to the left side of the screen. Open the “Documents” folder on that drive so that you can see all of your documents. Hit Ctrl + A to select all of the documents, then do a right click and choose Copy. 7. Open a new File Explorer window and move it to the right side of your screen. In that window, click to open the Documents folder (which of course would be empty at this point). Somewhere in the middle of that window, do a right click and choose “Paste”. Now you’ll see the Documents that are stored on the portable drive being copied to the Documents folder on the computer. Repeat that process for each folder on the portable drive. When that’s done, your computer will now have your data in the right place and ready to use. Of course, there are a lot of other things that need to be done when setting up a new PC (particularly a Windows 10 computer) but following the process above will at least get your important files and folders copied to the new computer so you can use them. The post How to move all your files and folders to a new PC first appeared on The Computer Tutor.

If you use Word and sometimes put pictures and captions in your documents, you will probably find today’s tip helpful. Sometimes when you have a picture and a caption in Word, and you try to move the picture, the caption doesn’t get moved like you would expect it to. Here’s how to fix that (and thanks to reader Marloes for suggesting this as a tip).   Here’s a little background, if you’re not familiar with this. Let’s say I have a blank Word document, and I put in a picture of my dog, Fenway:   I can right-click on the picture to get a menu, and you can see that one of the options is that I can “Insert Caption”: So I do that and type in his name, and now my picture has a caption: But here’s the problem. If I decide later on, maybe after I’ve typed up 10 pages in this document, that I want to move that picture to a different spot, it doesn’t work properly. I can drag that picture wherever I want it to go, but the caption still stays back in its original place. Why is that? That’s a good question to ask Microsoft, since they designed Word to work this way. I cannot think of any logical reason for it. Obviously if you made a caption for a picture, the caption should move with the picture. But it doesn’t. But here’s the fix. Before inserting the picture, you just insert a 1×1 table:   Then, you put the cursor inside the table and insert the picture there. Then you add the caption. By default, the table’s borders will be visible in the document. If you don’t want that, you can right click on the table and choose Table Properties – Borders and Shading and choose “none”. When you do that, anyone reading the document would not even know a table is there – they will just see the picture and the caption. So now you have a table, with your picture inside the table, and the caption under the picture. If you want to move the picture somewhere else in the document, you don’t move the picture – you move the table. And whatever is inside the table (the picture AND the caption) just comes right along with it! It’s unfortunate that we have to create workarounds like this just to make a Word document appear like we want it to appear, but that’s the way it is. At least this particular problem is solved. The post How to move captions with pictures in MS Word first appeared on The Computer Tutor.

Today’s tip comes from a question I got recently: Is there a simple way to type a single word and have it list the font name and display the word, so you have a sample of all your font styles? Thanks – Stephen Yes, Stephen, that is possible!   A few years ago I did this in MS Word, the hard way. I typed out the alphabet and the numbers 0 through 9 in a Word document, then copied and pasted it so I had that same set of characters displayed like 60 times. Each one was on its own line. Then I went back to the first one, highlighted it, and changed the font to the first font in the list. Then I went to the second one and changed that one to the second font in the list. I went through that process for every line, so that I could see all of my fonts displayed in the same place. What a pain that was! But I only had to do it once, then I printed that multi-page document and kept it around for handy reference. I don’t need to go through that time-consuming process any more, and neither do you. Let your computer do this work for you, like it’s supposed to! You do this through a little piece of software called FontViewOK. You can download it free, here. When you are at that page, be sure to click on this link to download it:   If you’re not using an ad blocker (and why aren’t you??) you’ll see a few fake “download” buttons and links so be careful. When you have the .zip file downloaded, double click to open it. When you see the file inside called “FontViewOK.exe”, just click and drag that to your desktop. That’s it – there’s nothing to install. Now you have this icon on your desktop:   Just double click that to run it. When the window opens, you can type the alphabet or anything you want into this field:   You also have the option of formatting the text like italic, bold, etc. You can also control the size of the font being displayed, but it defaults at 48 and I thought that was a pretty good size. The end result is that you have a scrollable list of all your fonts showing whatever text you typed in the sample box:   And it’s handy to have the actual name of the font right under the words in that font. If you click “FontViewOK” at the top of the window, you’ll see you also have the option to print that whole thing.   For mine, I have 208 installed fonts so it would have been a 19 page printed document. I declined to do that, but you might want to have a printed copy for easy reference. And why would this program have an option at the top that says “Coffee”? Because it’s free for you to use. But if you get some use from it and want to thank the software developer, a man named Nenad in Germany. You can click the “Coffee” button and it will take you to a purchase page where you can send a few dollars to buy Nenad a cup of coffee. Nenad and his son   Nenad has actually created quite a few cool little Windows programs like this one. You can see all of them listed at the home page of his website: http://www.softwareok.com/  The post How to display all your font samples in one place first appeared on The Computer Tutor.

In my podcast a couple of weeks ago I mentioned Bitcoin just in passing, and I had some listener inquiries about it. Obviously it’s been in the news quite a bit recently, and some people are asking about what it is, how it works, and how someone can actually purchase it. So today I’ll provide on overview, and some resources you might find helpful.   First things first: This post is not being offered as investment advice. I am not an investment or cryptocurrency expert and this article is presented without any legal or financial recommendation or advice. All investments have a certain level of risk, and you can lose money. As you might imagine, a discussion about Bitcoin and cryptocurrency has the potential to get VERY technical. That’s not what I do here and it’s not my intention. The idea with today’s blog post and podcast is to present the basics and answer the most common questions, then if you want to pursue more in-depth research I’ll provide some resources for that. Interesting story: If you had purchased $10 worth of Bitcoin back in July 2010, and kept it until today, do you know what it would be worth now? $2.1 million. That’s over two million US dollars that you would have right now, for a $10 investment. You know what they say, hindsight is 20/20. What is Bitcoin? In simple terminology, Bitcoin is currency that is digital rather than physical. It is decentralized, so transactions can take place using Bitcoin without the need for a bank, and without the need for a government and politicians to create and regulate the money. Here’s a video that gives a simple explanation in 3 minutes: https://youtu.be/gi_AbgkCYfc   How do I get Bitcoin? That’s the big question. Bitcoin is obviously very popular now, so everyone is asking, “How can I get some?”. Basically there are 3 ways you can get Bitcoin: You can buy it from a person, or by creating an account with an online exchange. Create your account and connect a credit card or a checking account, and you can purchase Bitcoin using US dollars or whatever your local currency is. You can earn it. If you’re a business, you could tell your customer base that they can now pay you for your products and services in Bitcoin, rather than your traditional local currency. You can “mine” it. This means you can set up a computer that’s dedicated to solving complex cryptographic problems and finding bitcoins that way. With lots of people now doing this, and some people or companies set up dozens or hundreds of computers for this purpose, this can still be profitable but requires a little more technical expertise. It is doable though (if you’re interested in mining, I invite you to join my Facebook group “Custom Mining Rigs” here). There are actually even Bitcoin ATMs located in certain areas. You put in cash, you get Bitcoins in return. Interesting story: In the early days, Bitcoin had very little value and only a very few people had even heard of it. It was kind of a “geek” thing. So there was this computer programmer named Laszlo Hanyecz who owned some Bitcoins, and on May 22, 2010 he purchased two Papa John’s pizzas from a fellow programmer for 10,000 of them. At the time, that translated into about $25 US dollars. Today, it would be around $110 million – making those two pizzas probably the most expensive pizzas in history. And May 22 is still known as “Bitcoin Pizza Day”.   Is it risky? Yes. It is risky. There are people saying that the Bitcoin bubble is about to burst. And others are saying Bitcoin will continue to increase in value, with the value of a single Bitcoin hitting $50k or $100k within the next year or two (it’s currently around $12,000). The truth is, no one really knows. As with any purchase, don’t risk more than you can afford to lose. But the returns so far have been incredible. There are people that play the ups and downs and try to time their purchases to buy Bitcoin when it dips slightly, then sell when it skyrockets. To me, that’s a very high-stress method. Those guys spend every minute of the day watching graphs go up and down and hoping they guess correctly. Then there are others who just buy and hold. Just purchase a certain amount on a regular basis, on the assumption that it will continue to go up over time. This strategy has made some people Bitcoin millionaires. Again, whatever method you choose, understand the risks involved. Interesting story: James Howells is another name that is significant in the history of Bitcoin. He was one of the people who used his computer to “mine” Bitcoin. Remember, since Bitcoin is digital, you can actually store it on your computer’s hard drive. But if that drive dies or gets destroyed, the Bitcoins are gone. Howells mined about 7500 coins, and eventually stopped because his girlfriend at the time didn’t like th

It’s the weirdest thing – as I get older, a lot of websites have decided to make their print size smaller and more difficult to read. So rude of them! But in Chrome (and Firefox), I have the option to make the words bigger.   I get this request fairly often from clients. Sometimes they think they’ve figured out how to do it themselves. But that’s only temporary. They’ll open Chrome, click on the 3 dots, and spot the menu item that says “Zoom” with a percentage next to it. They’ll adjust it to 125% or 150% which makes everything on the page larger (including any images), and it all looks great. Problem solved, right? No – it only changes the appearance of that one website. When a different website is opened, it will be reset back to the standard 100% and everything is back to small size again. But you CAN adjust the size of what you see on the screen, and have it stay that way for every website you open with Chrome. You just have to get into the Settings section. So you need to click on the 3 dots in the top right, then click on Settings. Scroll down a little to the “Appearance” section and you’ll see a couple of places where you can make this adjustment:   If you want, you can change just the font size. The options are: very small small medium large very large So you can experiment with it, and see which one you like the best. For some people, this is the only adjustment needed. If you’re reading a blog, or an online article, or your Facebook news feed, you might only need for the text itself to be larger. This will solve that problem. The other option you can see listed is page zoom. You can zoom out (meaning everything on the web page gets smaller) or you can zoom in (everything gets larger). Again, this is something you can experiment with to see how you like it. You have options ranging from 25% of the normal size, all the way up to 500%. Once you have these things set to your preference, just close the Settings tab (there’s no “Save” button to lock in your choices). Now you can close Chrome, or even restart your computer, and when you come back you will still have those Font Size and Page Zoom settings the way you like them. And what if you’re using Firefox and need to make these adjustments? You have the option there as well, although it works a little differently.   For page zoom, you can click on the 3 horizontal lines in the top right corner, and in the menu that drops down you’ll see Page Zoom percentage options. You can change the settings here, but you can only change this on a page-by-page basis. So if you want to adjust Page Zoom on a different website, you’ll have to go to that website and make the same adjustment. For font size, you can make that change and have it in effect for ANY websites you visit. Just click the 3 horizontal lines, then click Options. Scroll down to the “Language and Appearance” section and choose the font size you want:   For both Chrome and Firefox, you also have the option to change the actual font (Times New Roman, Arial, etc.). I wouldn’t recommend this in most cases, unless the font being used by the website makes the text too difficult to read. The post How to change the font size when viewing websites first appeared on The Computer Tutor.

For quite a while, Firefox was my default browser. I’ve been using Chrome as my default for several years now and I really like it. But the new super-fast version of Firefox might be tempting.   When your Firefox gets upgraded to the new version (version 57) this is the message you’ll get on the screen from Chris Beard (CEO of Mozilla, the company that creates and distributes Firefox);   What are the pros and cons for using the new Firefox? PROS: First, it’s just faster. I have not run any scientific side-by-side tests comparing the speed to older versions of Firefox, but it’s clear to me that the new Quantum is absolutely, noticeably faster. I have Firefox set to open a certain set of websites (11 sites, each one in its own tab). Until now, I’ve waited for all those pages to load each time so I know about how long it takes. Now, it takes much less time. You’ll notice the difference. Second, it uses less memory. This means if you’re running Firefox with a bunch of tabs open, it won’t slow down the other programs running on your computer. The developers claim that Firefox Quantum uses 30% less memory than Chrome uses (I have not verified that claim). Third, it just looks cool. The new Firefox has a new design that leans toward “minimalistic” which I like. But it’s more than just a change in the appearance. With the newer displays using high-resolution, this Firefox works better and appears “crisper” on the screen. CONS: Some extensions might not work. I have a client who loves an extension that puts her bookmarks in 3 rows right there at the top of the screen. With the new Firefox, that no longer works. On the other hand, some extensions that did not work previously with Firefox might work with the new version. I recently wrote about QClean, a browser extension that blocks Facebook ads (such as Sponsored Posts). At the time, that extension worked fine in Chrome but not in Firefox. But it works in the new Firefox. And a lot of developers are working on getting their extensions updated so they too will work going forward with Firefox. There are other changes that add new benefits (such as the new “Library” feature, and the built-in ability to take screenshots) which add to the allure of Firefox Quantum. Are these changes enough to lure me away from Chrome and change my default browser to Firefox? The jury is still out on that, but I definitely like these new changes. You can get Firefox (free of course) here: getfirefox.com The post The new Firefox – better than Chrome? first appeared on The Computer Tutor.

I write about scams fairly frequently on this blog. Sometimes it’s because of a new one I’ve just heard about, and I want to warn my readers to be aware of it and not get taken. In some cases, it’s because I’ve just had to deal with a client who has become the most recent victim and lost money or had their computer compromised or infected. Those stories don’t usually have a happy ending. But today, I’m writing with some good news.   With a lot of scams, there is one common element: Western Union. When a scammer wants you to send money, there are a lot of different reasons they come up with but usually only one method, which is Western Union. When you send money to someone via Western Union, it’s pretty much the same as handing over cash. There is no identity tracking to determine who got the money, so after you pay the money and then later on realize you’ve been scammed, you have no recourse to try to get your money back. It’s just gone. Until now. It appears that Western Union was at least partially at fault. They received “hundreds of thousands” of complaints about money transfers related to fraudulent lottery schemes, fake family emergencies, advance-fee loans, online dating and other scams. In spite of being aware of these things, they failed to act. They also failed to discipline problem agents, and they failed to have effective anti-fraud policies. In the face of all that evidence, Western Union has settled with the Federal Trade Commission and agreed to pay $586 million to victims that file a claim. Here’s a summary of how the claim process works:   So if you were a victim of a scam and lost money by using Western Union, be sure to file your claim. You start this process at FTC.gov/WU and just follow the instructions there. Don’t procrastinate, because your claim must be filed by February 12, 2018. Some people are asking, “What if I don’t have any documentation proving I was scammed?” This would not necessarily be that unusual, since the scammers don’t typically provide a lot of paperwork for a trail. And the scam may have happened years ago, so you might not still have copies of those old emails that went back and forth. File your claim anyway, and provide as many details as you possibly can. Even without documentation, the Department of Justice will try to verify your claim, and if they do, you could get some money back. Now here’s an interesting little twist. This settlement will probably result in a NEW scam. Obviously, anyone filing a claim in this situation, by definition is someone that has been scammed before. The scammers know this and will be counting on the possibility that those people are still susceptible to being scammed again – so these crooks will be offering to “help” in the claim process by filing the claim on the behalf of the victim – for a fee, of course. Don’t pay anyone to file the claim for you! Filing your claim is free and it’s not difficult, so don’t get scammed a second time. You might not get back ALL the money you lost, and the money you do get back could take a year before you actually see a check. But it’s worth taking a minute to put in your claim. And hopefully Western Union will get its act together so this stops happening so frequently. The post Scam victims can get some of their money back first appeared on The Computer Tutor.

Lots of people are posting videos on Facebook these days. Videos tend to catch a little more attention than a static photo, and a LOT more attention than a simple text post. What if you want to download someone’s video from Facebook and save it to your computer? In the past it was not very easy to do that, but now there’s a really easy way.   I’ve been downloading Facebook videos for a long time. In fact, that’s how I ended up with a video going viral a couple of years ago (seriously viral – way over 50 million views), which netted me over 14,000 followers on my Facebook profile page. That might be a good case study story for a future blog post (if it’s of interest, email me and let me know). But back then, downloading a video from Facebook to your computer was complicated. You had to get the actual URL for the video, then change the URL so that it displayed the “mobile” view, then save the video to your computer. Not very intuitive. Now you can get a video from Facebook much more easily, just by using a Chrome extension called “Facebook Video Downloader – Save FB Video”. At least that’s what I think it’s called (more on that in a minute). Here’s how you do it. Using the Chrome browser, go to this website: https://fbvideodownload.space Up in the top right corner of the page, click to add the Chrome extension:   Then you’ll see a little pop-up window to confirm, and you’ll click on the “Add extension” button. Now if you look up in the top right corner, you have a new icon on your Chrome toolbar. It’s a blue circle:   What confuses me a little is that the creators of the extension seem like they couldn’t really decide what to call it. In the Chrome store, it’s called Facebook Video Downloader – Save FB Video. On the website, the title at the top of the page says Online Facebook Video Downloader. And if you just mouse-over that new icon on the Chrome toolbar, you’ll see Social Video Downloader. I guess they just don’t know about the concept of consistent branding. Anyway, now you’re ready to download a video from Facebook. When you see a video on a friend’s page, nothing will look different – until you move your mouse over the video. When you do that, you’ll see a little “Download” button in the top right corner:   When you click that button, you’ll be taken back to the website where you got the extension, and you’ll see the name of the video. And just to the right of that, you’ll see a big green button that says “Download video in SD”: So you just click that to download the video to your computer. NOTE: if you’re not using an ad blocker (and why in the world wouldn’t you be using an ad blocker??), be very careful because there will be ads that have a big green “Download” button. These are designed to trick you into clicking on that ad, rather than the actual Download button for the video. As with all downloads in Chrome, it will show up in the bottom left corner of the browser window. You can open it there, or open the folder where it’s stored and move it to where you want it. This particular extension does not have a version for Firefox (at least not that I could see). I’m pretty sure there is a similar extension for Firefox that would download videos though. There are others that work in Chrome as well, but this one works fine and is pretty easy to use so this is the one I’m sticking with (until it stops working anyway). The post How to easily download Facebook videos to your computer first appeared on The Computer Tutor.

It’s that time again – today we’re featuring some websites I’ve come across recently that I think you might find useful or entertaining.   Fotoforensics http://fotoforensics.com/ These days, you can’t really say for sure if a photo you’re looking at is the real thing, or if it’s been “doctored” with Photoshop or some other photo editing software. Well, at least you can’t be sure with just your human eyes. At the Fotoforensics website, you can upload a photo and have it analyzed for editing. Personally, I’m not really convinced of its accuracy. You be the judge.   The Hemingway Editor http://hemingwayapp.com/ Great tool for writers. Helps you avoid bad sentence structure, weak phrases, mixed use of passive and active voices, etc. The site actually has a desktop app you can download so that it runs directly from your computer. From the site:   Family Watchdog http://www.familywatchdog.us/Default.asp Ever wonder about your neighbors? Maybe not your next door or across-the-street neighbors, but what about those that are in your neighborhood but you don’t really know? If you’re concerned about where the registered sex offenders are living in your city, this is the site to check on. And believe me, when you put in your address or zip code, you’ll be surprised to see how many of them are living right there in your area.   Go Remote jobs https://goremotejobs.com/ This site helps you find work that you can do from anywhere, simply because it is all digital. Think about it – no commute, flexible working hours, and you can live anywhere in the world you want to! Working remotely is not for everyone. You have to treat the business hours the same as if you were working for an employer. But if you have a skill that’s appropriate for it, you should consider doing it.   Soapbox for video creation https://wistia.com/soapbox Soapbox is a great little tool if you want to make “talking head” videos that look professional. You just install it as an extension for Chrome (it’s free). Record your video using the webcam built in to your laptop, edit it, and upload it to share with anyone who needs to see it. Watch the video on the home page of the site to get an overview of how it works.   Online Solitaire http://www.solitairebliss.com/ Nothing too amazing here, but if you find yourself with an internet connection and some time to kill, this site offers you the Solitaire you are craving.   Awkward family photos http://awkwardfamilyphotos.com/ Every family has them. The one photo, that when you’re looking back at it, makes you think “What were we thinking?”. This website is full of these awkward photos – some intentional, some not. Here’s one that the family thought was so funny they used it as a Christmas card.   Legal documents https://www.wonder.legal/us/ What if you need a simple legal document, but you don’t want to spend hundreds of dollars having an attorney draft it for you? That’s the idea behind this site. The document templates here actually WERE created by attorneys and legal experts (the website’s FAQ claims). You just answer the questions that need to be included in the document to make it specific to your use. It’s not a free service – the documents range in price from $1.99 to $19.99. Is this a substitute for a lawyer? No. But for some people and some situations it might be sufficient (and a lot less expensive).   Hacker Typer http://hackertyper.com/ This one’s fun. Just go there and start typing. You’ll see.   The post Some more cool websites you might like first appeared on The Computer Tutor.

Everyone knows Craigslist as “the” online classified ads site. It’s been around forever. But now there are other options so we’re not stuck with the limitations of Craigslist anymore. The site I really like is called OfferUp.   You can use OfferUp from your computer (just go to offerup.com) but it’s really designed to be used from your phone. That’s what makes it so incredibly easy and fast to use, whenever you want to sell something. From your phone (Android or iPhone) get the OfferUp app, then just follow these steps in the app: Click on Post Choose a picture to display (you can use up to 5 pictures). You can either take a picture with your phone right then and use it, or select from pictures that are already on your phone. Write the title, like “full size mattress, great condition” Write the description and selling price Click “Post” and your ad is live So simple! And a lot better (in my opinion anyway) than Craigslist. Here’s why I say that: – OfferUp has a much more modern user interface. If you look at the Craigslist website, you’ll see that it is using the same boring format that was there when it was originally created. – When you post on OfferUp, the item for sale is immediately live. With Craigslist, it’s usually at least 15 minutes before it shows up in searches. And sometimes when Craigslist “ghosts” your ad, it NEVER shows up. And they don’t contact you to tell you that. – OfferUp has user ratings. This is one of my pet peeves about Craigslist – when I set a time to meet someone who is either selling something, or buying something from me, at least half the time the other person just doesn’t show up. Even people that email and say “I’m on my way now” somehow never make it to the meeting spot and don’t call or email to say they won’t be there. With OfferUp, if someone does that, you can include that information in the rating/review so that other people will know about it before they decide to deal with this person. When someone knows their reputation is at stake, they are probably going to act more responsibly. Craigslist has no user rating system and both parties can remain anonymous if they want to). – OfferUp has it’s own messaging system, built right into the app. This is very convenient. Craigslist still relies on its antiquated “anonymous email” process. – With Craigslist you cannot repost or “bump” an item for sale more than once every 48 hours. OfferUp gives you the option to do this more often (at a cost of $1.99). This just means your item goes back to the top of the list, so that users who are browsing are more likely to see it. – OfferUp gives you a real-time display of how many people have viewed your item’s listing. This is nice to know. With Craigslist, you can add some code and display a counter in the listing itself I think (or at least you used to be able to) but it’s not a part of Craigslist’s process and it’s definitely not as easy. I think the only advantage for Craigslist is the fact that it has been around longer, so more people are aware of it. However, OfferUp has become a dominate player in this game so when you list something, it will be seen by a lot of people. I recently did list a mattress on OfferUp, like I mentioned in the example above. This was late one afternoon. It ended up getting 82 views, and someone came and purchased it the next morning. Can’t complain about that. There is another popular app that works similarly to OfferUp. It’s called LetGo. Pretty much the same process, but I just like OfferUp better. If you are really serious about selling something, probably the best strategy would be to OfferUp, LetGo, AND Craigslist. They’re all free, and the more eyeballs you can put on your item, the better, right? Do you use an online selling service such as these, that I didn’t mention? Let me know in the comments.  The post This classified ads service is better than Craigslist first appeared on The Computer Tutor.

Everyone knows to be careful of scammers when shopping on Craigslist (actually everyone doesn’t know that, but they should). And lots of people are aware of potential scams on eBay, since just about anyone can sign up as an eBay seller. But Amazon – now that’s a place with a great reputation for excellent customer service, so it must always be a safe place to shop, right? Not always.   There are a couple of things that most people assume when shopping on Amazon: The product being offered for the stated price is a legitimate product that will be shipped to you after you purchase it. If there are any problems or you are not satisfied, Amazon’s great customer service will immediately take care of the problem – usually with a refund. And there’s a good reason why most people assume those two things; because that’s what usually happens. But there are some Amazon shoppers who are waking up to the surprising fact that things don’t always go that way. In a lot of ways, Amazon is kind of like eBay. Anyone can sign up to be a seller on Amazon. Just like anyone can sign up to sell on eBay. And since anyone can do it, there are scammers that create Amazon seller accounts just for the purpose of defrauding buyers. Here’s how it works: Mr. Scammer signs up to be an Amazon seller. He creates a new listing page where he is selling iPhone 8 smartphones for $699. Personally, I don’t use an iPhone, but for anyone who’s shopping for a new iPhone, that’s an amazing bargain (if it were genuine). So someone shopping for a phone finds that deal and immediately plunk down a credit card and makes the purchase, thinking they just got the deal of a lifetime. A day or two later, the buyer gets a notification from Amazon that the item has been delivered. But the buyer is confused, because nothing has been received. Check the front porch, check the mailbox, nothing there. But Amazon’s notice says it was delivered by Fedex – it even says someone signed for it. Huh? So the buyer goes to the Fedex website, with the tracking number. Sure enough, Fedex says the package was delivered and signed for right on time. But when the buyer checks more closely, he sees that the package was in fact delivered – just to a different address in the same city. In fact, it went to a business address. So someone from that business signed for it. And that’s what makes this scam work – when Fedex tells Amazon that the package has been delivered, they don’t tell Amazon what ADDRESS it was delivered to. All Amazon knows is that the package was shipped, and Fedex confirms that it was delivered. But when the buyer contacts Amazon to explain the problem, Amazon will just immediately refund, correct? No, they probably won’t. From their standpoint, your purchase was delivered (even though they don’t know where it was actually delivered to). So the scammer keeps the money and you have nothing. Some buyers who have been scammed this way have actually gone to the business where the package was delivered. Of course, the employees who work there are completely confused because Fedex brought them a package and had them sign for it, but the box was just empty with no contact information. So it doesn’t really help to go there to try to track it down. This is a growing problem, so I’m sure Amazon will figure out a way to keep it from happening. One clue obviously is the address for the delivery, but another suspicious factor is the weight of the package. An iPhone and accessories should obviously weigh more than an empty box. But at the moment, Amazon is usually siding with the seller since it looks like everything went as planned, from their perspective. How can you avoid this scam? First, if an item is obviously WAY underpriced, that should raise a red flag. Yes, Amazon does have some bargains sometimes and items can be sale priced to clear out inventory from time to time. But the iPhone is one of the most in-demand products in the world, so seeing it priced substantially lower than the norm should tell you something. Second, check on the seller. If the seller is brand new and has a bunch of products listed that are too-good-to-be-true bargains, just keep looking. It’s tempting to buy anyway even if you’re suspicious, but just know that you might be throwing money away. Don’t be a victim. The post New Amazon scam to watch out for first appeared on The Computer Tutor.

For some reason, Microsoft doesn’t want us getting in to the Control Panel on our computers. In Windows 10, they’ve created a different thing called “Settings”, but Control Panel is still there (at least for now) if you know where to find it. Here’s how to get to it easily in Windows 10.   Depending on how recent your Windows 10 updates are, you might be able to get to Control Panel by just holding down the Windows key and tapping the letter X. That brings up this quick menu, and Control Panel is right there.   But that only works if you DON’T have the most recent major Windows Update, called the Creator’s Update. Not everyone has it yet, so that’s okay. You’ll get it eventually. If you do have that recent update, you can still pull up the Windows key + X quick menu, but Control Panel is no longer listed there. So what we want to do is get access to it initially, then set it up so that it’s EASILY accessible from now on. The way to get to it is to click the “Search” option in the lower left corner (the magnifying glass icon) and in the search field, just type the word “control” (without the quotes). You’ll see Control Panel as an option to click in the search results:   And when you click it, you’ll see the old familiar Control Panel window there. But do you really want to go through that whole process each time, just to get to Control Panel? I don’t. It would be much easier and faster if you could just find it in one of these locations: listed in the Start menu as an icon on the desktop pinned at the bottom of the screen on the taskbar Or if you want, you can put it in all three of those places! Here’s how you do that. To pin Control Panel to the Start menu: Search for “control” as above, but this time RIGHT click on it and choose “Pin to Start”:   Now when you click the Start button, you’ll see a new tile in the menu named Control Panel. To make Control Panel an icon on the desktop: Right click on it in the search results again like above, but this time choose “Open file location”. That shows you a window with some files listed, and one of them is Control Panel. Do a right click and choose Send to – Desktop (create shortcut):   To pin Control Panel to the taskbar: The taskbar is the toolbar that runs across the bottom of your screen. It’s a handy place to put program icons that you want to have easy access to. Once again you’re going to right click on Control Panel after searching, and this time choose “Pin to taskbar”. Now you’ll see the Control Panel icon, sitting on the taskbar waiting for you to open it whenever you want:   So now you have easy, quick access to Control Panel. Here’s the funny thing. On my computer, I don’t really even go into Control Panel very often. But I still like knowing that I have easy access to it. Maybe it’s just a psychological thing – Microsoft says they don’t want me to use it, so that makes me want it even more than I otherwise would. The post Get back easy access to Control Panel in Windows 10 first appeared on The Computer Tutor.

Windows 10 is created and distributed by Microsoft, so it has its own agenda about what programs and settings should be the defaults and how you should use your computer. In my opinion, it’s MY computer so I want to set it the way I want to use it. This isn’t always consistent with Microsoft’s wishes but I sure hope they’ll get over it.   I have a whole routine I go through whenever I set up a Windows 10 computer (whether it’s a brand new one a client just bought, or a laptop I’m refurbishing to sell). But the 3 things I’m talking about today are changes you can make (and should make, in my opinion) as a bare minimum. They’re pretty easy to do, and the more we can push away Microsoft’s advances, the better. 1. Change Chrome to the default browser When you first run Windows 10, the default web browser will be Edge. Of course it will, since Microsoft makes Windows 10, and Microsoft makes Edge. But most people don’t like Edge. For me, I use Chrome for almost everything (and if you prefer Firefox, that’s a good option too although it does have some limitations). To make Chrome your default browser, click the Start button, then click on Settings. Click on the “System” option. On the left side, click on “Default apps”. Look down the list to find the “web browser” option and click on Edge. You’ll get a little window that looks like this: Click to choose Chrome. You’ll probably get a little window asking you to at least TRY using Edge, but click on “Switch anyway”. Chrome is now your default browser.   2. Change Adobe Reader to the default PDF viewer This one really ticks me off. Windows 10 by default is set up so that when you click to open a PDF file, it opens in… the Edge web browser. Why, Microsoft? Why would anyone want to open a PDF document in a program that’s designed to view websites? It’s just nuts. But we’ll take care of it. And if you did just now get a new Windows 10 computer, chances are it doesn’t have Adobe Reader even installed on it. You can get it at Adobe.com – just scroll to the bottom of the page to find the download link. And watch out for the pre-checked boxes during the installation – make sure you UNcheck all of them so you don’t get any extra junk on your computer. This one starts off the same as the first one – click the Start button, then click on Settings. Click on the “System” option. On the left side, click on “Default apps”. Look down the list toward the bottom, to find the link that says “Set defaults by app” and click it. In the next window, click on the Adobe Acrobat name in the list, then click on “Set this program by default” at the bottom: Now if you want to check it, just go to your Documents folder and open a PDF file. It should open in Adobe Reader.   3. Get rid of the Edge tab in Internet Explorer This one could be considered kind of a minor thing, but it’s still something I always change. When you get a Windows 10 computer now, it will come with both the Internet Explorer and Edge web browsers installed. Of course Microsoft wants you to use their newest one, Edge. So when you open Internet Explorer, there’s an extra tab at the top with the Edge logo, and you can “conveniently” click that tab to open the Edge browser. It looks like this before changing the setting:   To get rid of it: In Internet Explorer, click Tools – Internet Options. In the new window, click on the “Advanced” tab and scroll down a short way to see the option called “Hide the button (next to the New Tab button) that opens Edge”. Check that box and click OK.   Like I said, that “Edge” tab in Internet Explorer is not a big thing. I don’t even use IE so I would never see it. But sometimes Microsoft’s advances seem like mosquitoes that we have to keep swatting away. And I’ll swat Edge away any chance I get. Remember, the 3 things I listed here are only 3 things. There are lots of other things I do when setting up a Windows 10 computer to make it as easy and safe to use as possible. If you need help with that, I can do a full setup remotely – so it doesn’t matter if you’re here in Safety Harbor, Florida or anywhere else. The post 3 settings I always change in Windows 10 first appeared on The Computer Tutor.

So many people are worried about identity theft now. Especially with the recent problem with Equifax, where the personal information of 143 million people was hacked into. What should you do? Should you hire a company like Lifelock to protect your credit file? In my opinion, definitely not (for more than one reason, which I’ll cover).   Imagine this scenario. Your friend comes to you and he’s very worried that someone will get into his house and steal his valuable items such as his computer, his television, his jewelry, etc. He’s frantic and he doesn’t know what to do. So you ask him: “Do you have good, strong locks on all your doors?” He confirms, he has good locks that are very strong. “And you keep all your doors locked at all times?” And your friend says, “Oh no, of course not. I keep them unlocked all the time. It would be too inconvenient to have to unlock a door every time I come home!” How would you even respond to that kind of logic? He continues – “Actually I was thinking about hiring a security guard, and the guard could let me know if someone does break in to my house while I’m not there. Then I can come home and see if anything was stolen.” Doesn’t that sound like complete nonsense? He’s going to leave the doors unlocked (even though they each have a strong lock that could be used). And then he’s going to pay a security guard – not to keep the bad guys out, but just to let you know when someone has broken in so your friend can go in later and assess the damage. Any reasonable person would say that’s a really foolish plan. But that’s exactly the plan that most people have with their credit file, and all of the personal information it contains. If you’re like the vast majority of consumers, your credit file is like an unlocked door. Anyone with a little bit of information (like the information that was leaked from Equifax recently) can use your information to get a credit card, take out a loan, get a new cell phone, and all kinds of other things. You would have no idea it’s happening. And there’s a very good chance your information was part of what the bad guys have in their possession. Oh, you have a “credit monitoring” service like Lifelock? That doesn’t lock the door. It’s like the security guard in the example above – it just notifies you when someone breaks in. Wouldn’t it make more sense to PREVENT anyone from getting in, in the first place? There’s a way to do that, and it’s not difficult or expensive. It’s called freezing your credit file. When you put a freeze on your credit file, it means no one – not even you – can do a credit check, open any new credit accounts, or anything else that requires access to your credit file. This is the lock that keeps your credit file and all of your personal information safe. But what about when you DO want to open a new credit account? Then you just temporarily “unfreeze” your file. When that’s done, the freeze goes back into place so that you’re again fully protected. You will need to do this with each of the 3 credit bureaus: Equifax, Experian, and TransUnion. (Don’t be surprised when they try to scare you with the “inconvenience” of freezing your file. Each of them make a lot of money selling their “credit protection” services – and when your credit file is frozen, you probably don’t have any use for those services.) What does it cost? Currently, Equifax is not charging to do this (how nice of them, since they completely screwed things up with their weak security). For the other two credit bureaus, it can vary state by state. For me, I paid $10 each for Experian and TransUnion. How to freeze your credit file First up, we’ll do Equifax. First thing to do is make sure you have Adobe PDF Reader installed on your computer. Equifax is going to show you a PDF document that includes your PIN. You’ll need that PIN to get back in to your credit file, and they’re only going to show it ONCE – so make sure you have Adobe PDF Reader installed and ready. Now, go to https://www.freeze.equifax.com/ Fill out your personal information and submit: Then confirm you want to place a security freeze: You’ll get a confirmation that the freeze has been processed: Then, click the link to view the PDF document that includes your PIN: REMEMBER – store that PIN in a safe and secure place, because you’ll need it in order to get back in to your file. Next up, let’s freeze Experian. Go to: https://www.experian.com/freeze/center.html Click on “Add a security freeze” and then choose “Apply online”: Fill out your information. For the selection of the PIN, I recommend letting them choose the PIN for you rather than creating your own. Submit the

Do you know what your laptop does when you close the lid without powering it down first? Does it shut it off, or put it to Sleep mode, or Hibernate, or maybe it does nothing at all?   It’s interesting to find out what people think about this process. Some people assume that when they close the lid, it shuts off the power to the computer. For others, all they know is that when they open the lid the next time, they can just click to sign in and they can use the computer again (without having to wait for it to do a full bootup process). The truth is this: shutting the lid on your laptop can make the computer do whatever you want it to do. It’s fully configurable! If you don’t do anything or change anything, in most laptops the default setting is that the laptop goes into Sleep mode when the lid is closed. For some users, that’s fine. What if you want it to go into Hibernate mode, or actually fully power down, when you shut the lid? You can change that by making an adjustment in the Power Options area. To get to Power Options: In Windows 7 – click the Start button and in the search field type “power options” and you’ll see the Power Options link show up at the top of the Start menu. Click that. In Windows 8 – hold down the Windows key and tap the letter “x”. In the menu that comes up, click on Power Options. In Windows 10 – hold down the Windows key and tap the letter “x”. In the menu that comes up, click on Power Options. Then click on “Additional power settings”. At that point you should see an option on the left side that says “Choose what closing the lid does”. Doesn’t get any clearer than that, right?   When you click that, you’ll be presented with a screen that gives you a drop-down menu for what you want to happen when you close the lid – whether running on battery, or plugged in:   Your options are: Do nothing (laptop stays full powered on even when lid is closed) Sleep mode Hibernate mode Shut down (go through the Shut down process and completely power off) You might want to have it do something different if it’s running on battery, to conserve the power. But there is no right or wrong choice here – it’s whatever you prefer, based on your usage and preference. And as you can see in that screenshot, you can also choose what you want to have happen when you hit the Power button, or when you hit the Sleep button (if your laptop has one). You are in control! The post What happens when you close the lid on your laptop? first appeared on The Computer Tutor.

Recently I got a message from one of my readers, Mike – Boo. I asked a question some months back which you mentioned, but did not answer. Perhaps I can ask again? I need to limit my search results by date. For example, I want to search for mythtv. This is sort of useless and I find many old out of date results. Some info is outdated, some is flat wrong, some companies or web sites have closed down. I waste lots of time checking the results. Is there a way to search for mythtv, but use a date limiter of ONLY the last 3 years and not all the old useless junk? I mostly use the search engine duckduckgo but sometimes use Bing, Google, or Yahoo. I am on your mail list and have enjoyed your weekly mail for the past 2 years. Thanks.   I don’t know how Mike’s question slipped through the cracks but I told him we would get it answered, so here it is. (Side note: I asked Mike about MythTV since I had never heard of it. He said: It looks a great deal like Windows Media Center and allows you to play all your media files like movies and TV shows. But if you add a TV tuner card, it becomes a PVR (Personal Video Recorder). Using PVR functions, it goes online and gets the TV schedule data, uses mysql, and presents the results for you to search. Once you find what you want to record, it sets the timers, records your shows, and chops out the commercials for you. All this is called the backend. The frontend portion can be used for playback on as many of your network machines as you like. You can also install both front and back ends on the same machine.“) Sounds like interesting software. If you use it, let me know in the comments below what you think of it. But this isn’t a software review post. Mike wants to know how to do a search, and limit the search results to a particular period of time. He specifically wants to see only the things that are from within the past 3 years. And he mentioned that the search engines he uses are DuckDuckGo, Bing, Yahoo and Google. Here’s how it works for each one of these. DuckDuckGo Summary: can’t do it. DuckDuckGo.com is the search engine for people concerned about privacy. Their policy is: “We don’t store your personal info, we don’t follow you around with ads, and we don’t track you.” Unfortunately, they aren’t set up to do what Mike is requesting. If you do a search with DuckDuckGo, you’ll see the search results and right up above that there’s a drop-down menu that says “Any Time”. When you click that, you can choose to narrow your search results to the past day, week or month:   Bing Summary: able to do it. Bing.com is the search engine owned by Microsoft. They do everything they can to promote it and encourage people to use it, but it still only gets used by about 7% of internet searches globally (by comparison, Google gets about 81% of searches). Personally, I don’t like Bing at all. However, Bing can be configured to narrow search results to specific dates. You do your regular search, then look for the drop-down manu that says “Any time”. At the bottom of that menu is the place where you can enter the dates you want to use for your search results:   Yahoo Summary: can’t do it. Yahoo.com is one of the oldest search engines. In fact, I remember it being the first one I used when I first got on the internet. But back then it was called a “search directory”. If you use Firefox, the default search engine it uses is Yahoo (I usually change that to Google when I’m setting up a new PC). Unfortunately, Yahoo is also not able to filter search results by specific dates. It offers basically the same options as DuckDuckGo. When you do your search, click on “Anytime” and you’ll see the options for day, week or month – but nothing more specific than that:   Google Summary: able to do it. Google.com – you’ve probably heard of it. It’s the 800 pound gorillas in the search engine industry. And why do so many people use it? Not because they force it on people like Bing tries to. It’s because their search results are the most relevant. To get search results based on a particular set of dates, first do your regular search. Then click on “Tools”, then click on “Any time”. In that menu there’s an option for “custom range” where you can enter the dates you want to use:   As you have probably guessed, out of these 4, I prefer Google just because the search results usually give me what I’m looking for. Want to try a comparison for yourself? Do a search in Bing, then open a new tab and do the same search in Google. For example – I searched on “did the red sox win their last game?”. Bing search results gave me generic information:   Google search results specifically answered my question:   I know that’s not a comprehe

Thanks to a really good ad blocker (Ublock Origin), I see almost no display ads on most websites. It’s wonderful. But if that’s the only ad blocker you use, you’ll still see ads on one popular website – Facebook. Here’s how you can get rid of the ads on Facebook as well.   Facebook is kind of tricky about how ads are displayed. They try to make the ads sort of “blend in” with the other content so you’ll maybe not notice that it’s an ad and you’ll just keep reading it. And they put ads all over the place: Suggested pages and Sponsored posts:   Right-side column on newsfeed:   Right-side column on profile page:   Under comments in photo view:   What I really hate is when I’m scrolling down the news feed and come across something that seems like it could be interesting. I start to read, then I notice that word: “Sponsored”. Just someone trying to sell me something. I think Ublock Origin might get rid of some of these ads, but those “Sponsored Posts” seem to fly under the radar for most traditional ad blockers. But not any more! When I use Facebook now, I don’t see any of those ads. That’s because I use a browser extension called QClean. You can get it free at http://qcl.github.io/QClean/. At that page, just scroll down and choose the download based on the web browser you use:   Update: apparently this extension is not compatible with the current version of Firefox. Just follow the directions to install it. Mine is installed to use with Chrome of course, since it’s my default web browser. Once it is installed, go to Facebook and you’ll see the QClean icon light up right there in the top right corner (might show up somewhere else in browsers other than Chrome, I’m not sure):   What you WON’T see are all the ads that used to show up all over your Facebook pages. I’ll bet you won’t even miss them. I sure don’t! The post How to get rid of sponsored posts (ads) on Facebook first appeared on The Computer Tutor.

Do you have a bunch of pictures saved on your Windows 10 computer? It’s really easy to view them in a slide show, full screen.   (yes, those are my pups – Lilly and Fenway – in that picture) There are lots of ways to view the images stored on your computer. You can see them on your actual monitor, you can connect your computer to your large screen television, or you could even connect a projector to your laptop and put them up on a big screen if you want. But you still need a way to have the pictures rotate one after the other without your having to manually open one, close it, then open the next one. All of them should display in order, automatically. In Windows 10 this is pretty easy. Here’s how you play a slide show in Windows 10: 1. Go to your Pictures folder, then open a sub-folder of pictures that’s in there (or you could just view pictures that are in the root level of your Pictures folder). Ideally, your pictures will be sorted into folders such as a particular vacation, or Christmas, or an event you attended, that kind of thing. 2. Click one time on one of the pictures in the folder. 3. At the top of the window, look for the “Manage” tab and click on it. Then click “Slide show”, and just sit back and watch the show!   You know when I find things like this the most useful? At family events, such as birthdays, wedding receptions, or funerals. You can hire a company to create a slide show with an audio soundtrack for you, and spend a few hundred dollars. Or you can use the process outlined above – put all your chosen pictures in a designated folder, and play the slide show while your music plays from iTunes or a few mp3 files that you have picked from what’s stored on your computer. It works wonderfully and costs you nothing. The post Watch a slide show of your pictures in Windows 10 first appeared on The Computer Tutor.

A little while back I discovered a service that doesn’t cost anything and can sometimes be useful. Now my post office sends me a picture of what the letter carrier will be putting in my mailbox later that day.   I don’t know how long the US Postal Service has offered this service, but I just discovered it and I like it. My snail-mail delivery is in the afternoon. Sometimes as early as 2:30 pm, sometimes as late as 5:30 pm. I don’t know why there is such a difference in time each day, but that’s how it happens. There are a few situations where it would be nice to know ahead of time what the mailman is going to deliver that day: If someone has mailed me something (such as an eBay purchase) and it’s taking longer than expected to show up, the sender might call or email me in the morning or mid-day to see if it has arrived yet. If the mail has not yet been delivered for that day, I wouldn’t know yet if the product would be coming that day or not. I have some clients that still pay me by writing a check and putting it in the mail. I usually get a few of these in the mail each week, so I try to “group” them in a single deposit in order to just make one trip to the bank instead of several trips. Problem is, even though I want to go to the bank AFTER I see if any checks show up in today’s mail, my bank closes most days at 5 pm. So if the mail is delivered later, or this is a day that no checks were in the mail delivery, I waited for nothing. If I’m away from home for a few days and something important gets delivered, I might prefer to have a friend or neighbor go and pick it up rather than have it sit there in the mailbox until I get back home. Not to mention, I just like knowing what’s coming in the mail later today! With this service, all of that is taken care of. Every morning between 7 and 7:30, I get an email from the post office. The email tells me what mail will be showing up in my mailbox later that day. The first part of the email looks like this:   Then below that, there are actual scans of the pieces of mail that are scheduled to be delivered that day. They look like this:   As you can see, this isn’t just an email “telling” me what mail is supposed to be delivered today – it actually shows me pictures of the mail pieces. I had no idea that the US Postal Service actually created a scanned image of each piece of mail. But since they’re already doing that, might as well take advantage of it and have them notify you what to expect in your mailbox. NOTE: this is only for letter-size mail pieces. Packages, magazines, etc. are not included in the notification. To set this up for your address, go here: https://informeddelivery.usps.com/box/pages/intro/start.action. It’s completely free for US residents. And I’m curious – have you heard of this service before? Or was this the first time you were made aware of it? Leave a comment below. The post How to get a daily email preview of your snail mail delivery first appeared on The Computer Tutor.

I love Airbnb and I’ve used the service several times. But unfortunately, like with many things today, the scammers have figured out a way to trick you out of your money using the Airbnb service. Here’s how it works and how you can avoid it.   I love Airbnb (use this link to get $40 off your first trip if you want to try it out) and have used it several times. If you’re not familiar with it, Airbnb is basically an alternative to staying in a hotel. Anyone that has a home with a spare bedroom, or a condo they’re not using, or even a whole house, can list that space on the Airbnb website and rent it out for whatever price they want to put on it. I tend to be pretty open to trying things like this, and every time I’ve used it has been a positive experience. It saves me money, and I get to meet new people who are sharing part of their home with me. My wife was a little hesitant the first time we used it when traveling together, but she’s a fan of it now too. The main concern for most people who hear about it for the first time is safety. Not just for the guest, but also for the homeowner who is apparently just inviting random strangers to spend the night (or several nights). But there are security measures built in to the process, mainly based on reviews. Both hosts and guests get rated and reviewed (by each other) after a visit, so you can look at that information before you make a reservation. It’s nice to hear what other people have said about a host before you go there. But like almost every other area of our lives, the scammers have figured out a way to manipulate it. The way they do this is actually kind of clever, but you can easily avoid getting caught if you know what to look for. To fully understand this, you need to know that when a host lists their location for booking on Airbnb, one of the things they decide on is how they want to handle cancellations. There are 3 standardized options: Flexible – this means a guest can cancel a reservation up to 1 day prior to arrival and get a full refund (except for the Airbnb fees, which are minimal). Moderate – this means that to get a full refund (less fees), a guest would need to cancel at least 5 days before arrival. Strict – cancellation by a guest must be at least one week before arrival, and the guest would still only receive a 50% refund. The policies listed above are all in reference to when a guest cancels a reservation. But what if the host cancels the reservation? That means the guest is entitled to a full refund. And that makes sense. If you book and pay for a room, and the host cancels your reservation, of course you should get all your money back. So here’s what the scammer does: They list their location as available for rent, and they choose the Strict cancellation policy. They take a reservation, and the guest makes the payment. A week or two before arrival, the host sends an email to the guest, saying “I’m really sorry, but I’ve had a medical emergency come up and won’t be here – can you go in to Airbnb and cancel your reservation?” The guest, not paying any attention to what the cancellation policy is (and feeling sorry for the host and their sad story), cancels the reservation. The guest gets a 50% refund, and the host keeps 50% – for never having a guest. So for example if the room was $50 per night, and the guest booked and paid for 3 nights, that’s $150. The scammer “host” makes $75 for doing nothing. And remember, this is just one reservation – the scammer can fill up a calendar with these. And think about this other possible plot twist: since the scammer will never host anyone, he doesn’t even need to list his own house. Anyone can go on Google and get pictures of a really nice house, full interior and exterior shots, and just list it as their own house. And at a discounted price too – they can list a $200 per night property and only ask for $125 per night, just to get more reservations. Now you might be thinking, “Great scam, but how long would it go on? If someone gets scammed, they’re going to leave a bad review, so future guests will read that and not book with this host any more.” Unfortunately, it doesn’t work that way. You can only leave a review for a host if you actually stayed as a guest with that host. Since the visit never took place, you can’t leave a review. As you might imagine, the most common victims of this scam are people who are new to Airbnb and are not really familiar with the cancellation policies. For a guest that initiates a cancellation of this type, Airbnb does tell them that they will be losing 50% of their payment – but some people just don’t pay attention and don’t think about it. That’s what the scammers are counting on. How to avoid this Airbnb scam: First, you can just avoid using any hosts that have chose

Recently a client called me in a panic, because he was in the middle of using his laptop and suddenly it shut off and now it wouldn’t boot up again. By all appearances, his laptop was just dead. Here’s how we handled it.   I have to tell you, I really love using this trick. To someone that watches it happen, it’s like magic. One minute their computer is completely dead – no lights, no fan, nothing on the screen, and pushing the power button has no effect at all. Many times when people contact me with this situation, they are already thinking “Great, now I have to buy a new laptop”. That just makes the effect that much more impressive when their laptop is suddenly working fine again. What happens is that sometimes the computer can slip into a Hibernate mode and not be able to come out of it on its own. Kind of like a person with a traumatic injury that goes into a coma. Except with a person, usually you have to just wait and hope they come out of it. With your laptop, we can snap it back into reality with this little trick. Here’s the process: 1. Unplug the power cord 2. Remove the battery (you’ll need to flip the laptop over to get to the battery) 3. Turn the laptop back over as if you’re going to use it, then press and hold the power button for 30 seconds (yes, you won’t see anything happen since the battery and power cord are disconnected) 4. Plug in the power cord (with the battery still removed) 5. Tap the power button as you normally would to turn on the computer, and watch it boot up like normal (magic!) 6. After it is fully booted up, go through the shut down procedure to turn it off 7. Reinsert the battery 8. Boot it up again, and you’re back in business This works on both PC and Mac laptops, although the problem that sometimes arises is that some are poorly designed and you aren’t able to easily remove the battery without disassembling the laptop. You can blame the manufacturer for that inconvenience. The post The secret repair trick that techs don’t want you to know first appeared on The Computer Tutor.

Everyone seems to be in a panic about privacy these days. All the big companies want to know everything about you, and most people are reluctant to give up any more information than they really need to (with one exception – we willingly tell Facebook everything about ourselves). But when Google asks you for your phone number – you definitely should give it to them.   “What??” “Google is evil! They want to know too much about me!” “I don’t want to give them any more personal details!” That’s fine. I understand that. And in general, I agree with the idea that protecting your personal information is a good thing. But this is an exception. First of all, this only applies if you have a Google account. How would you answer these questions: Do you use Gmail? Do you use a Google Calendar? Do you use Google Photos? Do you have a YouTube account? Do you use Google Drive? Do you get apps from the Play Store for your Android phone? If you answered “yes” to any of those questions, you have a Google account. Now the big question: why does Google want your phone number? What are they going to do with it? Well, they aren’t going to call you at dinner time to sell you a time share or ask for a charity donation. Google wants your phone number, so they can help you get your account back if for some reason you are unable to log in. For me, all of my email comes in through Gmail (I actually have several Gmail accounts, for different purposes). What if suddenly you could not access your email account? How big of a problem would that be for you? That means you can’t get new emails coming in now, which is an issue in itself. But you also cannot go to Gmail.com and access any of your PAST emails (although you still could see the old emails if you have them stored on your computer). You also don’t have access to your Gmail contact list. Or your Google calendar. Or any of the photos you have backed up in Google Photos (a great way to backup all of your photos, by the way). Or anything else you use your Google account for. This would be an issue you would want to get resolved as soon as possible. And the way to get it fixed is for Google to either send you a text message with a special one-time code, or to call you and give you that code. You enter that code on their site, and you then have access to change your password to a new one. And you’re back in business that quick. But if Google doesn’t have your phone number, it’s not that easy. They could also send that code to an alternate email address that you provide them (yes, you should give them that information as well). Hopefully you still have access to that old email account – you might not though, if it was from an internet provider you cancelled 10 years ago. You can also resolve this by answering some security questions that Google has on file. Assuming you remember those answers. I had a client recently that had to answer one of those. The question was “What is your favorite movie?” and she had to think about it for a minute because she originally answered that question a few years earlier. Fortunately she was able to get it right after a few tries, but it was a little risky to depend on that one thing. Giving Google your phone number and the other information they need is really easy. Just go to Google.com and sign in to your account. Then click on your picture up in the top right, and in the drop-down menu click on “My Account”. On the next page, look on the left side for the “Security Checkup” area and click on “Get Started”. Google will walk you through the rest from there.   Keep this in mind: you can only do this BEFORE you lose access to your Google or Gmail account. That means you need to do it now! The post Google wants your phone number – so give it to them first appeared on The Computer Tutor.

Online scams are a huge problem, and it seems like they won’t be going away anytime soon. I recently had a client who almost got scammed and wasn’t even aware of it until I explained what happened.   Laura contacted me about buying one of my refurbished laptops. Her laptop had been running really badly recently so she was considering getting a new one. I answered some questions (we were communicating via Facebook chat) and eventually we were talking about her current laptop and the possibility of getting it repaired rather than replacing it. I explained to her that diagnosis was free, so it really would make sense to at least explore that option rather than just giving up on it and buying a new one. So a couple of days later she brought it to me. Whenever someone brings me a computer for repair, I try to ask a lot of questions and get as much information as possible. Sometimes just one question, one little bit of info, can make a huge difference in the outcome of a project. That was very true in this case. So she brought me the laptop, and the first thing I noticed was that it looked fairly new. Of course, outward appearance is not always an indicator of what kind of condition a computer is in, but it’s often a pretty good sign. Also, I could tell from my communications with Laura that she is someone who is very attentive to detail – the type of person who is careful, organized, and would take good care of her things. As part of our conversation, it came up that she had purchased the laptop new about a year ago. That naturally lead to my question, “Is it still under warranty?” Typically the manufacturer’s warranty is one year from the date of purchase. Her response: “No, I called HP and they said the warranty has expired.” Whenever someone says they have called and talked to some large online company (HP, Dell, Lenovo, Microsoft, AOL, Yahoo, etc.), my next question is: “How did you get their phone number?” Laura: “I found it online.”   <alarm bells – warning – alert – Danger, Will Robinson!> From experience, I know that when someone looks up a “tech support” number online, the number they find is most likely NOT going to be a phone number for the actual computer manufacturer’s tech support department. Of course, when they call that number, the answer will be something like “HP Tech Support” or “Microsoft Tech Support” or something similar, so there would be no reason to suspect anything. But on the other end of that line is a scammer ready to steal your money. I asked Laura for more details about what the “HP” representative told her. She explained that he was sorry to inform her that the warranty had expired, but that she could purchase an extended warranty. Laura didn’t recall how much the new “warranty” would cost, but typically these things sell for $200 – $300. Fortunately, she did not purchase from the scammer, but contacted me instead to talk about getting a new computer. I explained to Laura that she was most likely NOT talking to an actual HP representative. She was pretty surprised to find out that she had probably been talking to a scammer. These criminals are really getting pretty good at fooling people into thinking they’re legitimate, and in many cases they are successful. Just not this time. At this point I couldn’t be 100% certain until I did some more research. So I told her I would check into it, as well as diagnose the laptop’s problems, and get back to her. My next 3 steps: Back up her important data. The computer was not working properly, and there was critical data on it, and she had no backup. So the first priority in any case like this is to make sure whatever data is still accessible gets saved to a separate drive. I was able to save all of her important stuff. Check the hard drive health. My diagnostic testing came back with the result that the hard drive was failing. This is also known as a hard drive crash. This would explain all of the problems the computer was having when Laura was trying to use it. Check on the warranty situation with HP (the REAL company this time). Turns out Laura’s laptop was actually still under warranty. And how much time was left on the warranty? TWO DAYS. No time to waste. I contacted Laura immediately (this was still the same day she dropped it off) and told her what I had found out. She came back right away and picked up the laptop as well as the portable drive that was now safely storing her Documents, Pictures, etc. I heard from her later that day. She had called the actual HP phone number (which I gave to her) and they confirmed that the laptop was under warranty. They will be sending her a shipping box to pack up her laptop for shipment to HP, for them to repair at no cost to Laura whatsoever. What I expect they will do is replace the ha

Had this come up with a client recently. His email inbox was constantly showing the wrong time for incoming emails. He could receive an email at 2 pm, and yet when he looked at that email, it would show that it arrived at 9 pm. In fact, he demonstrated the problem while he was here at my home office. I sent him an email, it showed up in his inbox, but the “arrival time” displayed was several hours into the future.   He had been dealing with this mystery for quite some time before telling me about it. Of course, the first thing he checked was the date and time for the computer itself. Those were correct. The problem was that his time/date was incorrect inside his email settings. This applies to any of the Microsoft-related email services: MSN, Hotmail, and Outlook.com (note: Outlook.com is Microsoft’s web-based email service – not the MS Outlook software that comes with Office). For each of these services, there’s a setting that allows you to designate a particular time zone that you want to use just for email purposes. This is a separate setting from the traditional time zone setting in Windows. Here’s how you change that time zone setting in a Microsoft web-based email account: 1. Sign in to your MSN, Hotmail, or Outlook.com email account. (These screenshots are from my Outlook.com account. I don’t have an MSN or Hotmail account, but the process should be pretty similar since these are all Microsoft services.) Click on the gear icon in the top right:   2. In the drop down menu, choose “Options”   3. In the window that opens, look over on the left side and click on “General”, then click “Region and time zone”:   4. Now you’ll see a screen where you have a drop-down menu to choose your correct time zone. Once you’ve done that, click Save:   Now you can click on “Options” in the top left and you’ll go back to your email Inbox, ready to work. Here’s a question for you – why would you want to change the time zone in your email program, but not for your computer in general? Leave a comment below with your opinion. The post Why do my incoming emails show the wrong time? first appeared on The Computer Tutor.

Recently, Facebook has been overrun with all kinds of warnings about hackers and viruses. I’ve gotten numerous direct Facebook messages from friends, alerting me of these problems and encouraging me to forward the same message to all of my contacts. I won’t be doing that.   Here are a couple that I’ve received recently – This reminds me of the old days when people would get these “alerts” by email, with the instructions to forward them to everyone in their email contact list. And believe it or not, this stuff still actually remains in email circulation, even though it seems to have died down some. But I might have a skewed perception of this, since whenever I get one I immediately reply with the request to never send me those things. In addition to Anwar Jitou and Jayden K. Smith, other names that you might see in these warning messages are Tanner Dwyer, Christopher Butterfield, Stefania Colac, Alejando Spiljner and Bobby Roberts. What you might notice is that all of these messages contain 3 common elements: A big warning Potential disastrous consequences Instructions to share/forward to everyone you know Oh, and they have one other thing in common: THEY ARE ALL HOAXES. None of these things have any shred of truth or reality. You can’t get “hacked” by accepting a friend request. You can’t get “hacked” by one of your friends accepting a friend request from a hacker. Here’s another one that’s still making the rounds: You’ve probably seen some Facebook users copy and paste this as a post to “protect” their online pictures. Complete hogwash. Maybe you’ve seen this one, where Facebook is now charging fees to users in order to retain privacy: I repeat: THESE ARE ALL FALSE. So what should you do if you get a message like this? Do not forward it, like it, love it or share it. Do not copy and paste it as a post. Do not send it as a message to any of your friends. Just delete it. If you want, you can send a message to the person that posted it and link to this blog post. Then at least they will know that what they are sending out is 100% false. People do this with good intentions, so most would probably not post this stuff if they already knew it was completely made up. They just don’t know. “But Scott, what if I get one that is actually true?” You won’t. But if it makes you feel better, just do a Google search on one of those “hacker” names and the word “hoax” and see what comes up. What you will see are dozens – maybe hundreds – of blog posts and articles and news reports, all telling you that it’s just a stupid hoax. Then you can go back to Facebook and delete it. But you can save some time, because this requires no research. Just delete it. The post Finding and destroying Facebook hoaxes first appeared on The Computer Tutor.

Chrome is great even if you just leave it alone and use it with the default settings. But I like to customize and “tweak” it a few different ways to make it even better.   Basically what I’m describing here today is the process I go through when I’m setting up Chrome on a client’s computer they’ve just purchased, or on a laptop that I’ll have available for sale. The following steps involve going in to the Chrome Settings. To get to that area, you need to click the 3 little dots in the top right area of the Chrome window (see below). That will give you a menu, and in that menu you can click on “Settings”.   1. Set Chrome as the default browser. In a new computer, Windows 10 REALLY wants you to use their Edge browser to view websites. So if you don’t change anything, Edge will be the default browser. In Windows 7 or 8, the default is Internet Explorer. We don’t want that; we want Chrome. So go into Settings , scroll down to the “Default browser” section and click on “Make Default”: For Windows 7 or 8, that’s just about all you have to do. For Windows 10, it will take you to a “Default Programs” page in the Windows settings, and you have to choose Chrome from a list. They’ll pop up a message about how great Edge is to talk you out of it, but you just click on “Switch anyway” and it’s done. 2. Set your home page tabs. When Chrome opens, you can have it open just one tab to whatever website you want (such as just the plain Google search page, or Facebook, or something else). Or, you can have it open a bunch of tabs with a different website in each one. For me, I have about a half-dozen tabs open each time I open Chrome (these are websites I visit regularly). So the first thing you do is open up whatever websites you want, one in each tab. You just need to get Chrome set with those websites. Then click to the Settings area, and scroll down to the “On Startup” section, and click on “Open a specific page or set of pages”, then click on “Use Current Pages”. Now close Chrome and open it again, and you’ll see all of your tabs are right there, and they’ll be there like that every time you open Chrome. 3. Set your default search engine to Google, and get rid of the others. Of course, since Chrome is a Google product, the default search should be Google already. So just go to Settings and scroll down to the “Search Engine” section. Make sure Google is the one displayed like this: Then click on the “Manage Search Engines” arrow and you’ll see a list of the “other” search engines that are available (like below). Click on the 3 dots out at the right side of each one, and choose to remove them one by one (except for Google, of course). Why Google even includes those other search engines, I don’t know (especially junk like Ask).   4. Set up your ad blocker. I wrote a whole blog post about this recently. The ad blocker I use and recommend is uBlock Origin. If you open Chrome and do a Google search for “ublock origin” it will be the first thing that comes up. Just click it and follow the instructions for installing it as an extension in Chrome. It’s the best thing in the world for blocking ads on almost any website you visit. For my own computer, the other extension that I definitely install is LastPass. This is the program that stores all of my passwords for me. This means that I can use really long, random passwords – and LastPass actually creates them for me as well. I don’t set up LastPass on the laptops that I sell because you have to have a LastPass account (which is free). But I definitely recommend it. 5. Display the bookmarks toolbar. For websites I check on regularly, I like the convenience of having them right at the top of my Chrome window, ready for me to click at any time. To do that, you have to tell Chrome to display that toolbar all the time. To do that, just hold down Ctrl and Shift, and tap the letter “b” (for bookmarks). You’ll see the toolbar show up right under the address bar in Chrome. And you can drag any website address there you want, and it will always show up there for quick, easy access. These are the things I do as part of my routine when setting up Chrome. But of course, there are LOTS more ways you can customize it. There are thousands of Chrome extensions that do all kinds of cool things (in fact, I’ll probably do a blog post about the best Chrome extensions at some point – if you have a great one, let me know about it). The post How I customize Chrome first appeared on The Computer Tutor.

Microsoft Office is a group of programs, including Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook and others. Most of the time these programs work fine, but occasionally they can misbehave. What a lot of people don’t know is that there’s a quick fix you should try before you call your computer tech for a repair.   The programs in Microsoft Office are large and complex. Most people, including myself, use just a very few features out of all that are available. I might use MS Word to write a letter to the Safety Harbor city commission, or document a recipe, or print the customer intake sheet that I fill out when someone brings me a computer to repair. Nothing fancy. But there’s a lot going on behind the scenes with any of the Office programs – and that means there’s also a lot that can go wrong. Maybe Outlook decides it won’t send a new email you just created. Or your new PowerPoint presentation won’t run when you tell it to. Or a formula isn’t working right in an Excel spreadsheet. What do you do when that happens? For a lot of people, that’s when I get a phone call. Usually I can remote in and figure out what’s going on and get it fixed. But before you spend money on a software repair, there’s something you can try on your own. It’s very simple, and in a surprising number of cases, it takes care of the problem very quickly (and no, I’m not talking about restarting the computer – although it can’t hurt to try that too). Microsoft Office has a built-in “self repair” function that most people have never tried. So when an Office program starts acting up, do this: 1. Go to Control Panel, to the “Programs and Features” section. In Windows 10 you can just click Search and type “uninstall” and click on that item in the menu that comes up. 2. In the list of programs, find Microsoft Office:   3. Do a right-click on Office, and in the little menu, choose “Change”:   4. Now a new window opens, giving you the option for a Quick Repair or an Online Repair. I usually try the Quick Repair first and see if it does the trick. If the problem persists, go back through this same process and choose Online Repair. Click the Repair button.   5. You’ll get another window reminding you that you can’t use the program while it’s being repaired. So click “Repair” again:   6. If you have any Office programs open at the time, you’ll get the notice that they need to be closed:   7. You’ll get a little progress window that you can watch for the brief time that it takes to run. When I ran this it took less than 30 seconds to finish. Your mileage may vary.   8. And before you have time to get bored, it’s done:   That’s how easy this is. These screenshot images are from my own computer which is running Office365, but the process is very similar even for earlier versions of Office. The post MS Office not working properly? Here’s a quick fix first appeared on The Computer Tutor.

Windows 10 has been out for almost 2 years now. If you’re still running Windows 7 or Windows 8.1, is it time for you to upgrade? Maybe.   A little background first. If you’ve been reading this blog or listening to my podcast for the past couple of years or longer, you know that I did not take kindly to Microsoft’s rollout of Windows 10 back in the summer of 2015. They were forcing the “free upgrade” on Windows 7 or 8 users, even if people specifically opted to NOT take it. And many of those that ended up with Windows 10 had all kinds of problems with it. It was a nightmare, and Microsoft lost a lot of credibility with their users because of it. During that first year, I voiced my disgust with Microsoft and Windows 10 loudly and often to my readers and listeners. As a result, many of those that follow me online are still using Windows 7. And I still get the question sometimes, “Should I upgrade to Windows 10 now? Is it safe?”. This is especially compounded by the fact that my OWN computer now is running Windows 10. But that came about rather unexpectedly. My previous computer died and its replacement happened to be running Windows 10. I didn’t intentionally just do the upgrade. Should you upgrade now? If you’re using Windows 7 – you probably don’t need to yet – but there are some disclaimers. Frankly, there’s nothing wrong with Windows 7. It works great. So if your computer is working okay (and the hard drive has been tested and is not showing signs of failure), you can stick with Windows 7 for now. But keep in mind, sometime in the next couple of years, you’ll need to start thinking about either upgrading your computer to Windows 10, or replacing that computer (and the new computer would have Windows 10). Windows 7 will be supported until January 2020, but you DON’T want to wait until December 2019 to start thinking about this. There’s no big hurry at the moment, but get it done before the rush. If you’re using Windows 8.1 – you probably should upgrade – but there are some disclaimers here too. This is not because Windows 10 is so great, but rather because Windows 8 or 8.1 is just so awful. It was a goof-up by Microsoft. They screwed up the whole Start button and Start menu, making Windows confusing and difficult to navigate. Of course, if you’re used to using it and it’s no big deal, then don’t worry about upgrading right away. But in my opinion, Windows 10 is working well enough that you would probably like it better than the crummy design of Windows 8.1. Windows 8.1 will be supported until January 2023 so you’ve got lots of time to make that decision. But for me, I’d much rather be using Windows 10. And, it’s not like the upgrade is perfect either. Windows 10 still has issues, and not all of them are just bugs in the software – some are built right in to the operating system intentionally by Microsoft. Some of the things I don’t like: Telemetry – this is the big set of “features” that most people consider an invasion of privacy. It’s actually listening for you to do a voice search, it tracks all kinds of stuff about what you do, and it sends all that information back to Microsoft. Not cool. When I’m setting up a new Windows 10 computer, I disable all of those “features”. The junk in the Start Menu – When you click the Windows 10 Start button, the menu is filled with junk like Candy Crush, XBox games, ads to buy MS Office, movies, TV, Minecraft, and lots of other stuff. Just lots of visual noise. I delete most of that junk. System Restore off – this makes no sense, but in many computers I’ve found that System Restore is turned OFF by default. System Restore is a great tool to use in solving problems, but it has to be turned on before the problem occurs in order to be useful. Cortana and the talking installation – Cortana is the “artificial intelligence” component that allows you to “speak” with your computer. When Windows 10 is first installed on a computer, the Cortana icon (a circle) is bouncing up and down on the screen, offering to help you search and whatever else you need to do on the computer. Personally, I find it really annoying. It reminds me of the old Microsoft Office mascot “Clippy” (the annoying paper clip that was always bouncing up and down and offering to help you write a letter). Changing default programs – this is just Microsoft being Microsoft again. 99% of computer users, when clicking a PDF file, expect it to open in Adobe Reader. Adobe Reader is the worldwide standard for opening and viewing PDF files. But in Microsoft’s twisted logic, the user would rather have a PDF file open by default in their crappy web browser, Edge. Why? It makes no sense other than to annoy people. And if you do change the default P

Now that most people have smart phones, and we all have a high-resolution camera with us at all times, there are new ways to use them popping up all the time. What we’re talking about today is a great example of that. Who would have thought that your cell phone could actually save someone’s life – but it’s true.   What we’re talking about here is human trafficking. This is something that’s easy to not really think about much because most of us don’t see it happening. But it is definitely happening, and most likely it’s going on right there wherever you live. Some numbers: Up to 300,000 Americans under 18 are lured into the commercial sex trade every year. Human trafficking is a $32 BILLION-a-year industry. The only bigger industry in the world is drug trafficking. Sex trafficking is in all 50 states. 75% of underage sex trafficking victims said they had been advertised or sold online. The most common venue where traffickers exploit their victims: hotels. It’s easy for law enforcement to go undercover and find the online and underground forums and websites where these kids are being advertised. They can see pictures of the child. And they can also see the hotel room where the pictures were taken. But that’s not enough – what’s needed is a database of pictures of hotel rooms all around the country (or world). That’s where you come in. This is a good example of crowdsourcing. Millions of people are traveling and staying in hotel rooms every day. What if everyone just snapped a few pictures of their hotel room, then uploaded those pictures to a common location? Then, when cops see a child being advertised, they can use their computers to compare that picture with the database of pictures already stored, and possibly find out exactly where that child is. This is now happening! It’s been made possible through a smartphone app called Traffickcam. The website is https://traffickcam.com/ but you can get the app directly from the Google Play Store or the Apple Store. It’s free of course. Once you have the app on your phone, you use it to take a few pictures of your room every time you stay in a hotel. Those pictures are automatically uploaded to the database, so that authorities can use it to find these young people being trafficked. When I first heard about this, I was questioning in my mind whether it could actually be useful. I mean, my work doesn’t usually require me to do overnight travel so I’m usually in my own bed here in Safety Harbor each night. But I have been in a bunch of hotels, and in my mind the rooms all kind of look the same. You know – you walk in, bathroom is immediately to your right or left, then the closet, then the room with the bed, and the window on the far wall with the AC/heater unit under it. How would you differentiate among tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands of rooms? But they are different. Especially when you take 4 pictures of each room, including different angles of the main room, and the bathroom. There are lots of points of comparison that a computer program can run through very quickly, and hopefully come up with a match that can lead cops to where the trafficking picture was taken.   Currently, the Traffickcam database has 157,616 hotels in its database, and there are over 1.6 million photos. And it’s still relatively new – it was only introduced a year ago. There are about 85,000 iPhone users, and 35,000 Android users. That’s such a small percentage of smartphone users – which means there’s a whole lot more potential for this to be really effective! So get the app on your phone, and then tell your friends and family to use it as well, whenever they travel. And don’t waste your pictures – if your hotel room pictures include any people, they’ll be rejected for use in the database.   The post Smartphone app that could literally save someone’s life first appeared on The Computer Tutor.

Think about when your internet connection isn’t working properly. Maybe you’re getting a “Page cannot be found” error, or your computer can’t find the wifi signal, or perhaps websites are just loading reeeaaallly slowly. If you call your internet provider, what’s the first thing they’ll tell you to do? Restart your modem and router. But even better than that – have your modem and router restarted automatically for you, every single day. Sometimes my clients will call me when their internet is not doing what it’s supposed to do. Here in Safety Harbor, we have a few good options for high-speed internet, so we can get kind of spoiled with that super fast connection so when it slows down or something goes wrong, I get a phone call. My advice for this is the same thing the actual internet service would say – restart the modem and/or router. In many cases, that solves the problem and the connection is nice and fast again. So it makes sense to restart your modem and router every day – proactively – to just avoid having to do it when the speed or the connection drops. But who wants to do that manually? Modems and routers aren’t always located in the most convenient places. In some cases, you have to get on the floor or behind a desk just to access it. Then you’ll have to unplug it, wait a while, and plug it back in. Pain in the butt! And even if you do have easy access, you won’t do it every day. And that’s the whole point – the daily reset is the key to getting the benefit from this. No worries! Now you can have it happen automatically for you. You don’t have to unplug and re-plug. You don’t even have to remember it! All of this is done through a little device that just plugs into your wall outlet. It’s called a NetReset and you can get it at Amazon here: http://amzn.to/2rWqAjn It’s pretty simple. This is what the front looks like:   And this is the back:   This is the NetReset plugged into the wall, and of course Lilly (one of my two Yorkies) has to inspect it:   Using this thing is really simple. You plug it into the wall, and then you plug your modem in one side, and your router in the other side. I use this here in my office in Safety Harbor every day. In my case, my modem and router are all in one unit, so I only need to use one of the outlets. Then there’s the little display at the top with the small white buttons. You use the “Clock” button and then Hours/Minutes to set the current time. You use the “Prog” button and then Hours/Minutes to set the time of day you want your modem/router to be shut down and then restarted. I set mine for 4 am since no one in our house would be using the internet at that time. Since the internet will be cut off briefly while the reset is happening, you want to make sure it happens at a time that’s convenient. For most people, that’s sometime in the middle of the night. A daily 4 am reset does cut the internet off but only for a few minutes, so it should have no effect at all on any antivirus updates or Windows Updates. The GOOD effect is that your modem and router will start each day fresh, and ready to deliver all the goodness of the internet to you all day! When you order yours from Amazon here (http://amzn.to/2rWqAjn) Amazon pays me a small commission, which helps support this blog and my podcast. Of course, I only recommend things I use and approve of personally. If you get one, I’d love to hear what you think of it. The post New device to speed up your internet consistently first appeared on The Computer Tutor.

Recently I got some reports from people that something weird was happening on their Windows computer. Every so often a window would appear on the screen and then immediately disappear. It would happen so quickly there was no chance of seeing any words or error message – it would just flash on then disappear. Then I noticed it also happening on my screen. What is this weird thing that’s happening to our computers?   Honestly, when I first heard about it, I kind of assumed it was virus or at least some type of malware. But it was too coincidental that all of these people were having this same issue. And even though I would never say anyone is 100% “immune” to a computer infection, I would be very surprised if I got one because I am so aware of them and my computer is so well-protected. Turns out, we can thank Microsoft for this one. This is happening as a function of Microsoft Office. There is a computer task related to Office, called “OfficeBackgroundTaskHandlerRegistration”. None of us really need to know what this thing does from a technical standpoint, but it’s basic job is to update “relevant Office data”. And it does this every hour pretty consistently, as long as an Office program (such as Word, Excel, Outlook, etc.) is running. The fact that the window flashes on the screen every time it runs, then disappears immediately, is just a bug in the software. Eventually it will be fixed with a regular Office update. In the meantime, here’s how to prevent it from happening: 1. Open Task Scheduler. In most cases, to do this you can just click the Microsoft logo in the bottom left corner of the screen, and in the search field type Task Scheduler, then click on it when it shows up in the menu above.   2. In the next window, click the little “greater than” sign next to “Task Scheduler Library”:   3. When you do that, it will expand. Now click the same thing next to “Microsoft”, then click to highlight “Office”. You should now see a window that looks like this:   4. You will see that list in the middle has an entry called “OfficeBackgroundTaskHandlerRegistration”. Do a right-click on that and choose “Properties”. Now you should see this window:   5. Right in the middle of that window, you see that there’s a button called “Change User or Group”. Click that. In the next window, in the white area, type the word “SYSTEM” and click OK:   6. Then click OK again to close the remaining window, and click the X in the top right corner to close the Task Scheduler window. That’s it! No more mystery flashing window. The post That window that keeps flashing on the screen every hour – here’s the fix first appeared on The Computer Tutor.

If you’re on Facebook, you’ve probably seen this happen. You suddenly get a friend request from someone you’ve already been friends with for a long time. What’s the best thing to do in this situation?   First off, I want to say up front that when this happens, it is not a “hack”. I put that phrase in the title of this blog post and in the graphic above mainly so that people would have an idea of what I’m talking about. That’s because whenever I see this happen on Facebook, the thing that happens most is that other friends will post a message on the victim’s Facebook profile: “I just got a friend request from you. Your Facebook has been hacked!” And of course that is followed up by all the well-meaning but misguided suggestions that the person should immediately change their passwords and check for viruses. In reality, no Facebook account has been hacked or compromised at all. All that has happened is that a scammer decided to create a new Facebook account using your friend’s name and your friend’s profile picture. That way, at first glance, it does actually look like your friend’s Facebook profile. Then the next step for the scammer is to send out friend requests from the fake profile to all of the people that are actual Facebook friends with that person already. The scammer knows that a bunch of people will know immediately that it’s fake. But he also knows that there will be some people that say “Hmm, a friend request from Bob. I thought I was already friends with him. Oh well, *ACCEPT*” There might be only 5% or 10% that just automatically accept the fake friend request. But if someone has 500 friends, that’s 25 to 50 people that get suckered in. These are the people that typically click on just about anything. We all know people like this. So what’s the end game here for the scammer? What do they hope to achieve by tricking all these people into becoming friends with a fake profile? There are actually a lot of different strategies here. The key element here, however, is trust. If the “Fake Bob” account sends these people a direct message, as far as they’re concerned, they are communicating with the ACTUAL Bob. So maybe Fake Bob tells all his “friends” about this great website where you can get new iPads for $10 (scam) or maybe he pleads for his “friends” to wire money for a short term emergency loan (also a scam). The point is, the “friend” is more likely to go along with it since there is already some trust between the two people on Facebook, and maybe even in real life. Usually when I get a fake friend request, I go to the fake profile to see who has already fallen for it and just accepted the friend request without checking it out. Usually there are a few people already listed there as “friends”. This is the proof that it’s really easy to trick people on Facebook. Almost effortless. So what should you do when you see this happen? Obviously you don’t want to just join the crowd and post on your friend’s profile “Hey, your Facebook got hacked!” since that does no one any good. Fortunately, Facebook has created a pretty simple process that allows you to report the problem, have Facebook check it, and get the fake profile taken down very quickly. Here’s how to handle a fake Facebook friend request: 1. Go to the fake friend request, and click on the name:   2. This takes you to the fake profile page (the profile created by the scammer). Click the 3 dots, and in the drop-down menu, choose “Report”:   3. This will bring up the beginning of a multi-part form that allows you to tell Facebook what’s going on so that they can check it out. First thing to check is “Report this profile”:   4. Next window, check “They’re pretending to be me or someone I know”:   5. Next window, check “Someone I know”:   6. Next window, click on “Submit to Facebook for review”:   7. Facebook will then ask you to tell them which friend’s profile is being faked. You can start typing in the name and then just choose from the option listed:   8. At this point you’re pretty much done. The next screen will give you a few other options but really all you have to do is click “Done”:   9. Within a short time (usually a few minutes), you’ll get this notification from Facebook: That’s just automated but at least it confirms that they received your submission. And that’s really all you need to do. Facebook will check it out (and it’s possible that other friends have reported the same fake profile). What usually surprises me now is how quickly Facebook deletes the fake profile page. I usually go back to the fake profile and check on it every so often (and I usually see n

I recently got this voice mail from one of my podcast listeners: “Hi, my name is Bridget and I’m calling from Oregon and I appreciate your show so much. I do love my computer, but there is one thing I just don’t understand. But first – let me admit, I am over 50 (haha). What I don’t understand is Flash. I’ve been warned to remove Flash completely but then I go to websites that say you have to have Flash. Should I have this? Thank you Scott, tell me what to do.”   Thanks Bridget! You’re definitely not the only one asking this question and getting mixed messages. Flash has been around a long time. In the early days, the websites that displayed video content did all of that by using the Flash technology. But then as it became increasingly popular, it also became more of a target for hackers. Unfortunately, Flash is not all that safe. New security problems are found all the time. So many websites are doing away with using it, in favor of safer ways of displaying video. Even YouTube used to use Flash to show their videos, and now they use a different technology called HTML5. However, some sites do still display content using Flash. So that’s the problem – I could make a kind of all-encompassing statement like “Flash is not safe! Never use it again!” but I would immediately get feedback from people because the websites they go to regularly still rely on Flash to some degree. I’m talking highly-trafficked websites like CNN, Huffington Post, Fox News, Starbucks, etc. But I also can’t in good conscience just tell everyone “Flash is fine, use it all you want, don’t worry about it” because then there would be people whose computers get compromised because their Flash player is outdated and not secure. Even if you keep it as updated as possible, sometimes the updates are released a while after a security flaw is discovered. With that in mind, my recommendation is this: disable Flash in your web browser(s) unless you actually need it based on particular websites you visit. You could disable Flash as a sort of “trial run” to see if you can get by without it. I’m sure a lot of people wouldn’t even miss it, and your computer is safer if you don’t have it. How to disable Flash in your browser: (and of course I’m talking primarily about Chrome and Firefox since those are the two best and most popular browsers – in my opinion) To disable Flash in Firefox: First, click the Settings icon (the 3 horizontal lines in the top right), then click the Add-ons button:   On the left side of the next screen, click on the “Plugins” link, and you’ll see that one of the listings is “Shockwave Flash”:   In the drop-down menu next to Shockwave Flash, choose “Ask to Activate” Now, if you come across Flash content in websites, Firefox will notify you and you can decide if you want to view the Flash content or not. Only allow it if you trust the website and you need to see that content. To disable Flash in Google Chrome: Click the Settings icon in the top right (the 3 vertical dots), then in the drop-down menu choose “Settings”:   On the next screen, scroll to the bottom and click on “Show advanced settings”   Now go down to the section called “Privacy” and click on the “Content Settings” button:   A new window opens, and now you scroll down to the section called “Flash” and choose “Ask first before allowing sites to run Flash”. Then click “Done” to close that window.   And here’s another important tip: If you happen to land on a website and it immediately pops up a warning that says “In order to view this content, you need to update your Flash player (recommended)” or something similar, don’t follow the instructions given by that pop-up. Don’t click “OK” or “Update” or whatever it wants you to click on. These are mostly fake warnings, designed to get you to click and download bad stuff to your computer. If you feel you need to get an updated version of Adobe Flash, get it straight from the Adobe.com website (and be sure to uncheck the pre-selected boxes during the process, because Adobe also tries to sneak junk into your computer). The post Should you be using Flash? first appeared on The Computer Tutor.

After last week’s post about the website with the large volume of ads that would have normally been eliminated by my ad-blockers, I got some inquiries asking what software I use to avoid seeing any website advertisements.   For me, there are 3 basic reasons to use an ad-blocker: To stop seeing all the annoying ads. Of course, this is the big reason most people decide to use an ad-blocker. Many ads are disruptive, and are designed specifically to be that way. After all, if the ad just blended nicely into the background, no one would notice it, right? Apparently the obnoxious ads are the most effective. So lots of people love having something that will squash those stupid things into oblivion. To allow web pages to load more quickly. For some websites, much of the content are the advertisement images. If a web page has 10 ads, that means those 10 things have to load before you can view the entire page. Why wait for something to load, when it’s something you don’t even want to see in the first place? Ads that are blocked don’t load, so the web page finishes loading more quickly. To browse websites more safely. This is one that most people don’t even think about, but it might be the most important factor. Even when you visit a well-known, legitimate website, there could be an ad on that site that is malicious. Your computer could get infected by that ad – even if you don’t click on the ad itself. If the ad is blocked, the infection is also blocked (most likely). To handle all of these issues, I use a popular ad-blocker called uBlock Origin. It’s free. I use it in conjunction with both Firefox and Chrome, since those are the two browsers I use most often (mostly Chrome). uBlock Origin works as a browser extension. When I set up a new PC, part of the configuration is to include uBlock Origin in those two browsers. When it’s running in Chrome or Firefox, you’ll see this little icon up in the toolbar:   To get it for Firefox, open Firefox and go to: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/ublock-origin/ Then click on “Add to Firefox” then click on “Install”. You’ll get the notification that it has been added to Firefox. To get it for Chrome, open Chrome and go to: https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/ublock-origin/cjpalhdlnbpafiamejdnhcphjbkeiagm?hl=en Then click on “Add to Chrome” and confirm that you want to add it as an extension. You’ll get a notification that it has been added to Chrome. If you use the Microsoft Edge browser you can also get the uBlock Origin app from the Microsoft Store. I don’t like Edge at all and therefore don’t use it, so I can’t really comment first hand on how well uBlock Origin works with it. To show you the difference this little extension makes, here’s a website that I use frequently to get a piece of software that checks hard drive health. This first image is with NO ad-blocker. Those 3 display ads take up much of the screen, not to mention they have the fake “Download” button to mislead you into clicking on the ad:   And here’s the same website with uBlock Origin running and blocking the ads:   Really makes the website more user-friendly and easier to look at without all the junk ads cluttering up the page, don’t you think? Originally, I was using an ad-blocker called AdBlock Plus. It works okay, but the default settings don’t block ALL the ads on each website. AdBlock Plus is configured initially to allow ads to be displayed if they aren’t seen as “annoying”. So if you want to actually block all the ads, you have to go in and change the settings to tell it to do that. Since I set up ad-blocking on multiple computers each day, I got tired of doing that. uBlock Origin works great right out of the box. No ad-blocker is 100% effective so even with uBlock Origin running you might see the occasional ad. But if you really want to see the difference, use it for a while and then go use a friend’s computer to view a few websites like MSN or Yahoo. You’ll wonder how you ever put up with that garbage for so long! The post The ad-blocker I use and recommend first appeared on The Computer Tutor.

Last Monday we talked about taking some non-essential programs out of the “auto-startup” process in order to speed up your computer. Today we’ll go over an easy way to figure out if you should actually uninstall a program from your Windows computer.   You know how it is – when you go into Control Panel to the area where it lists all the programs that are there (it’s in the “Programs and Features” section), it can be a little overwhelming to decide what programs are not needed. On the other hand, you don’t want to just forever accumulate more and more software and never get rid of any of it. In most of the computers I see, there are programs installed that the owner didn’t even intentionally put on there – they just “slithered in” with some other program – so you definitely want to get rid of those. There are probably several programs installed on your computer that have names you aren’t familiar with. How do you know if it’s something you can get rid of, or if it’s something you need? That’s where ShouldIRemoveIt comes in. It’s free software you can get at ShouldIRemoveIt.com. It’s free. I found out about this from my podcast listener Ron, who sent this email after last Monday’s blog/podcast: Hi, Scott. In my old age I can’t remember whether I heard about the Should I Remove It program from your podcast or not! You can download it from www.shouldiremoveit.com. It kind of goes along with this week’s suggestion about background programs and it might help folks decide whether or not to disable them from the startup area. Best regards, Ron Thanks Ron! I checked out the program and it seems to do a pretty good job. But here’s the trick – the program itself doesn’t make a particular recommendation about whether or not you should uninstall something from your computer. It just gives you more information about it, AND it tells you what most other people have done with it. Then you can decide for yourself if you want to keep it or get rid of it. Go to the website and just click to download the program. Watch out for some misleading ads on the site – they’ll have a big green “Download” button to, in hopes that you’ll mistakenly click on that instead. Hate those ads. If you use an ad blocker, you won’t see them. I disabled my ad blocker just for this review, and believe me – this site is pretty bad with the deceptive ads. Download and run the installer as normal. I was happy to see that it didn’t try to sneak any junk in with it.   When the installation finishes, you can choose to launch the program immediately. At that time, it will also open a new webpage with an invitation to download some other program that you don’t want (the one I was presented with was some program to check for outdated drivers and update them – those are always junk). That’s some irony – the website that’s showing you how to get rid of unwanted programs is also advertising unwanted programs. When you run the program, it immediately shows you a list of the programs installed on your computer:   As you can see, for each program it also displays a column for “Ratings” and another column showing the percentage of people who removed that particular program from their computer. When you click on one of the programs, you can get more information about it. For example, I clicked on the first one in my list, called CDBurnerXP. This is what it shows me then:   So I can see that 29% of other users have removed it, and also some other information such as what version it is, when I installed it, and the size of the installation. If I want to, I can just click to uninstall it. But there’s that other button that says “What is it?”. That’s where you can get more information about that program… but only after you view and close another obnoxious ad for crappy “driver update” software. This one is a huge display ad right in the middle of the page, covering all the text. Just click the “X” to close the ad (or better yet, use an ad blocker and never see that junk). I was surprised at how much information is actually provided on this page – much more detail than I expected to find. It tells me: What the program is and what it does The software creator’s own description of the program Overview If the software bundles other stuff with it during the installation A list of the files installed Program behaviors An analysis of how it uses resources on your computer when running Comments from other users about this program As I said, that’s a lot of data about one program. I don’t know if all of the other programs in their database are covered in that much detail. Most users probably wouldn’t even need that much information, but it&#

When a Windows computer is running slowly, one of the first things I check is this: How many programs are running at the same time, both visibly and in the background? The more programs are running, the slower they all run. So let’s streamline your computer and run only those programs that are needed.   This is something I see all the time, and it’s an issue that eventually returns even after it’s fixed. On a new computer – software companies pay to have Dell or HP or any other computer manufacturer include their software on any newly built PC. It’s bad enough that the machines are loaded with this bloatware, but in addition the computers are instructed to automatically run a lot of these programs every time the computer boots up. On an already-in-use computer – Got a new HP printer? After you install the software for it on your computer, check that startup list – you’ll find several HP programs that have been added. Do you need these things running in order to print? No. All they do is slow down your computer. And HP isn’t the only culprit here – most printer manufacturers do the same thing. So the end goal here is to make sure that the only programs running on your computer at any given time are the ones that you need to have running. Here’s how you do that: For Windows 7: Click the start button, and in the search field, type msconfig, then click on msconfig in the menu above when it shows up. In the new window, click the Startup tab. Go down the list and UNcheck the programs that don’t need to be running all the time in the background. Click OK, and restart your computer. For Windows 8 or Windows 10: Hold down CTRL and SHIFT, and tap the ESC key. Click on the Startup tab. (If you don’t see any tabs, click “More details”). For each item in the list that does not need to run all the time, do a right click and choose “Disable”. (some of them might already have the disabled status – that’s fine). Close the window and restart your computer.   And the big question: What should I uncheck or disable? In most cases, you can disable: any HP or Dell programs iTunes Adobe Reader MS Office Any printer-related software OneDrive Skype Logitech QuickTime Google Chrome Cyberlink Apple Push Spotify or Pandora Any toolbars Things to remember: Don’t disable everything in the list. Some things SHOULD be running all the time, such as your antivirus, or your online backup service, or maybe Teamviewer (if you have a service that monitors your computer’s security). By disabling or unchecking a program, you aren’t removing it from your computer. If it turns out a particular program does need to run in the background, you can just go back in an re-enable it. If you see something in the list and you don’t know what it is, leave it enabled. If you want, you can research the file name and see if it should be running or not. The post Speed up your PC by optimizing the startup programs first appeared on The Computer Tutor.

All of my email is sent and received using Microsoft Outlook, and there’s one feature of Outlook that I use all the time – the ability to send an email at a future date and time, rather than having it go out immediately.   Why would I want to create a new email, or reply to an email, but then send it at a later time? Mainly, to avoid getting into an email-based “chat” situation. Here’s what that means. I’m in my home office, working on various things, and an email comes in. Could be from a client, a friend, a relative, doesn’t matter. They’re asking a simple question, like “Do I need to bring my computer to you for a virus removal?”. On the surface, that seems like a “yes or no” question, and that’s kind of true. The answer is no, I don’t need to have physical access to the computer in order to remove a virus. But really, in order to give a thorough answer, I need to ask other questions, such as What are the symptoms? How long has this been happening? Did your antivirus program report it? Is your backup current? This is because in some cases, people might THINK they have a virus when it’s something completely different. So when that question comes in by email, I COULD immediately reply with those questions and then just go back to what I was doing. But guess what – since I responded immediately, there is always going to be another email following up on those questions with answers and more questions. And this person knows I’m at my computer, and will naturally expect another quick response. And it continues back and forth – I call this “email chat”. Don’t get me wrong – I don’t mind communicating by email, and I certainly don’t mind when someone inquires about hiring me for my computer services. The problem arises when I’m in the middle of doing something else that requires a certain degree of concentration, and every 3 minutes I have to stop and reply to the most recent email. So why not just ignore that first email, and reply later? That’s an option, but the problem with that is that I’ll forget about it, and more emails will come in, and before long that first email is buried in the mix and I don’t notice it until a few days later. That’s not professional and I don’t want to make anyone wait that long for an answer. But there is a solution, thanks to Outlook. When you use Outlook for your email, you have the option to create an email now, but send it at a later time. Or even a later date. That solves the problem! I can write the email now and schedule it for later in the day. So I don’t forget to reply, but I also don’t get caught in the immediate back-and-forth email discussion right at the moment. Here’s how you schedule an email in Outlook (images are from Outlook 2016 but are similar for Outlook 2013 and 2010 – and if you’re still using 2010 you really should upgrade): 1. In Outlook, click to create a new email. 2. In that window, look up in the top left and click on this icon. The icon is like a landscape note in the front and a portrait note behind it: 3. When you click that, you’ll see a new window open with lots of options. You might have fun checking out all the stuff in this window, but the one we’re concerned with now is down in the “Delivery options” section. Check the box that says “Do not deliver before” and then just choose your date and time when you want the email to be sent. Then click Close. 4. Now, that email will sit in your Outlook outbox until it’s time for it to be sent. A couple of things to be aware of with this: First, if you have an email scheduled for a future date or time, and you click to close Outlook, you’ll get a little warning telling you that you still have emails in the Outbox waiting to be sent. Don’t worry about that, just tell Outlook you want to exit and send them later. Second, Outlook has to be open and running at the scheduled time in order for a scheduled email to get sent at that time. If your computer is turned off, or not connected to the internet, or Outlook is not running, it won’t get sent at that time. But it will get sent the next time Outlook is running.  The post How to schedule sending an email in Outlook first appeared on The Computer Tutor.

Usually I talk about stuff that pertains specifically to computers, but I recently started using a really handy program that will work on computers, tablets and phones (PC or Mac). It’s called Simplenote.   For comparison, this is “kind of” a competitor to Evernote. If you haven’t used Evernote, it’s a program for capturing information and storing it no matter where you are or what you’re doing. For example, if you see a news article online that looks interesting but you don’t have time to read it at the moment, you can click to store it in Evernote and read it later. It runs on all your devices (including your phone) so you have all your stored notes with you all the time. There have been a few times that I’ve tried to really get into using Evernote because it offers SO much in terms of what it can do. The funny thing is, Evernote has so many “bells and whistles” that it became kind of overwhelming. There is a bit of a learning curve in using it because of all that it does. There are whole books written about how to use it, and Evernote has its own podcast about using it. For some people, it’s more than is needed. And, in order to use all the features, it costs between $35 and $120 per user, per year. Then recently I came across Simplenote. You can get it free at Simplenote.com. It’s free. Using Simplenote really couldn’t be any easier. Just set up a free account at the website, then download the program to your computer. You might use it primarily on your smartphone, but it’s good to have a copy on your computer also. It installs without trying to sneak any bad stuff in. When you run it on your computer, you’ll see how clean and simple the interface is. To create your first note, click File – New note:   You’ll see “New note” listed on the left side, and the cursor is flashing out in the main part of the window. Whatever you type on the first line will be the name of the note. Everything on the next line and following will be the contents of the note. So let’s say I wanted to make a grocery list. I might call the note “Shopping” which means it will also be in a larger font. Then below that, I’ll make my list of items. So the screen will look like this:   So far, nothing too exciting, right? I mean you could use good ol’ Notepad on your computer if all you needed to do was make a list. BUT now go to your smartphone and get the Simplenote app (either from Google Play, or from the Apple Store, depending on what kind of phone you have). With the app open, log in to your Simplenote account, and what do you see? Your grocery list, that you created on your computer. So you can have this ongoing grocery list that you can update whether you’re at home in front of the computer, or out somewhere when you just have your phone. But that’s not all! Once I have this list created, there’s something else I can do with it. I can share it. Now my wife creates an account and gets the Simplenote app on her phone. Then I go back to my computer and click on the “Share” button in the top right corner:   That gives me this new window, where I just enter her email address (the one she used to create her account). Now, that particular note (the grocery list) shows up on BOTH of our phones and computers. And we can each edit it in real time. So if I think of something to add, I put it on the list, and it’s on the list on her phone almost immediately. So each of us always has the most current version of the list. So far, that’s what we’ve used this for mostly. But for me, I have lots of computer stuff I’ll make lists for (such as email server settings for the various local internet providers). But the uses for this are endless – names for Christmas shopping a simple daily to-do list various date reminders (such as when you last changed the AC filters) Step by step processes for things you don’t do very often I haven’t been using Simplenote for very long, but I can imagine it’s going to become an important part of my daily routine. What would YOU use it for?    The post This computer/smartphone app is really handy first appeared on The Computer Tutor.

I’m on Facebook quite often, and it’s not just to talk about my computer repair business here in Safety Harbor, Florida. I’m in groups with a variety of topics, including ultramarathon running, using diet to avoid preventable diseases such as cancer and heart disease, cooking with my Instant Pot, and lots of others. When someone posts a really good question or idea on Facebook, and you want to hear what others have to say about it and make sure you don’t miss anything, what do you do? A lot of people think they need to post a comment in order to be notified about future comments, but that’s completely unnecessary.   If you’re on Facebook, I’m sure you’ve probably seen this. You might be in a Facebook group about cooking, and someone posts a question like “What’s your favorite recipe for a quick and easy evening meal?”. Well, you know that’s going to prompt a lot of answers and input, and the people in that group want to be sure to not miss any of the comments. And everyone knows, if you comment on a post, then you get notifications when someone else comments on the same post. That means that everyone sees things like people commenting with the single word “Following” – Or the more “minimalist” people who feel like they have to leave a comment but don’t want to write a whole word, so they just type a few dots – And here’s the most obnoxious one – someone took it upon themselves to create a large image of a dot. So instead of just typing a few dots, some people actually post this large image as a comment:   As a result, it’s disappointing and frustrating when you see an interesting post on Facebook and it shows lots of comments, but then you find out that lots of them aren’t really comments at all. Or even worse, you get a notification on your computer or phone like, “Robert has commented on your post” or “Jill has replied on a post you are following” so you click over to read what they had to say, and it was just “following” or a few dots. Waste of everyone’s time. The solution is really easy, if people just knew about it. Facebook has a system already in place that will notify you of any new comments or replies on any post you want to follow. How to follow a Facebook post without commenting on it: 1. Look in the top right corner of the post for the link that gives you a drop-down menu: 2. When you click that drop down menu, find and click the option that says “Turn on notifications for this post” –   That’s all you have to do. Now you’ll get a notification each time someone comments, or replies to your comments, anywhere in that particular post. And now you can spread this tip! Whenever you see someone post “following” as a comment, just reply to their comment with this link: ComputerTutorFlorida.com/followtip That will lead them right to this article so that they can know how to get notifications without commenting, just like you now know how to do. The post How to follow a Facebook post without commenting on it first appeared on The Computer Tutor.

If you found a flash drive on the ground or someplace out in public, what would you do with it? A kind-hearted person would of course want to get it back to its rightful owner. But to do that, you would need to connect it to a computer and see if anything on the drive might indicate who the owner is. But… you might want to think twice about doing that.   There’s a new kind of flash drive being made now, and anyone can buy one for $50. But it doesn’t store any files or folders. In fact, you couldn’t put any data on there even if you wanted to. The purpose of this flash drive – the actual reason it is built – is to kill your computer. Or any computer into which it’s inserted. Here’s how it works: The USB port on your computer actually has a little bit of electricity in it. That’s why you can plug some things into a USB port, and you don’t have to plug them into an electrical outlet (like a portable drive for doing a backup). Some things require just a little bit of voltage, so they can run on just the power that’s being delivered by that USB port. But this new drive has an electrical part on the inside known as a capacitor. A capacitor stores electricity. So when you plug this “killer” flash drive in to a computer, the capacitor takes that little bit of electricity being delivered, and it stores it. Then it gets some more and stores it too. And again, and again. It just keeps storing up more and more electricity until it eventually has a very large electrical charge being stored. When it gets to that point, where it’s storing lots of electrical energy, it suddenly releases all of it at once. All of that voltage and current is way more than a computer can handle, so it fries the motherboard and that computer is dead. And how long does it take for that entire process to happen? A small fraction of a second. It’s pretty much instantaneous. And of course, the big question – why would anyone buy one of these things? Supposedly, for techs to use for “testing”. There are all kinds of warnings about how you shouldn’t use this device to destroy anyone’s computer, but you know those warnings are only there for legal protection and to avoid liability. People are going to use these things to kill the computers of people they don’t like, or maybe as some kind of a “prank” – but it’s sure not a very funny one. An interesting aspect of this is that there are people who know what this thing does, and yet they still stick it in their own computer just to watch it happen. Check the video below – it shows a bunch of these guys doing just that. And one of them even sticks it in the USB port on his CAR. So if you happen to see a flash drive that doesn’t seem to belong to anyone, and you’re curious about what is on it, you might want to just toss it in the trash. Or at least try it on a computer you don’t care about. The post The flash drive that will KILL your computer first appeared on The Computer Tutor.

That area in the bottom right corner of your Windows screen is just loaded with valuable information. But in a lot of cases you don’t see everything that’s going on down there because some of the icons are hidden. Here’s how to get all those icons to be visible all the time.   The image shown above is the Notification Area on my main computer. I don’t always have all of those icons there, but what I like is that whatever is running there at any given time is visible at a glance. Microsoft does not have it set that way by default. If you don’t make any changes, you’ll be able to see some of the icons down in that area, but not all of them. There will be a little triangle icon at the left end of that row, and when you click that you’ll have the option to see all of the icons that aren’t displayed naturally. But that’s a pain! What if you just want all of them to show, all of the time, without having to making any extra clicks to view the hidden ones? Easy! Here’s how you get all of the Notification Area icons to be visible, all the time: In Windows 7 or 8: Click the little triangle, then in the new small window click on “Customize”. In the new window, at the bottom, check the box that says “Always show all icons and notifications on the taskbar” and click OK:   In Windows 10: Anywhere in the taskbar, do a right-click and choose Properties (or on some computers, “Settings”). In the new window, click on Customize:   On the next screen, click “Select which icons appear on the taskbar”:   On the next screen, turn on “Always show all icons in the notification area”:   That’s it! Now, you will always see what icons are there without having to click on anything else to see the “hidden” icons, since none of them will be hidden. The post How to see ALL your Notification Area icons, all the time first appeared on The Computer Tutor.

Sometimes it’s nice to know how to do things really quickly on your computer. And sometimes you might need to delete your browser history (the list of all the websites you’ve visited in a certain period of time).   Why would you need to delete your browser history? Lots of reasons. Maybe you’re shopping for a Christmas or birthday gift and you don’t want your spouse to see that you’ve been visiting some jewelry websites. Maybe you borrowed a friend’s computer and you don’t want your web history mixed in with his. Or how about this – you’re writing a novel that includes some terrorists or a serial killer, and you’re researching “how to kill someone and not get caught” – that’s not really a Google search that you want your spouse to stumble across, right? Whatever your reason is for needing to delete your browser history, that’s your business. What I’m explaining today is how to do that as quickly as possible, no matter what web browser you’re using. That’s the thing – when you try to do this by the “regular” way, each web browser has a different process. You have to find the History section in the toolbar or the drop-down menu, then you have to get to the spot where you can clear the history, and these things are different in Chrome, Firefox and Internet Explorer. Here’s the simple way to clear your browser history: Open your web browser Click CTRL + SHIFT + DELETE Clear history In Chrome, when you hold down Ctrl and Shift and tap the Delete button, you get this window:   That drop-down menu gives you the option to clear your history for the last hour, the last day, the last week, the last 4 weeks, or the entire browser history. In Firefox, that keyboard combination gives you this window:   As you can see very similar and pretty intuitive. For Internet Explorer, also similar (but you don’t really still use Internet Explorer, do you?):   So whatever your reason, now you know how to very quickly get in and delete your browser history. And before I get a bunch of email – yes, there are ways of searching the internet via one of the above-mentioned browsers, and have it not record any of the history in the first place. That’s a different tip for a different day. The post Delete your history in less than 5 seconds – in any browser first appeared on The Computer Tutor.

The hackers and scammers continue to come up with new ideas to trick you into downloading a virus to your computer. The latest scheme is a pop-up in Chrome that says the page won’t display properly because you’re missing a font. Here are the details so you don’t fall for it.   This is targeted at people who use the Chrome web browser (which is currently over half of all computer users). Here’s how it works: You’re browsing whatever sites you normally visit, and maybe a few you haven’t visited before. Suddenly the site you’re on has text that is not readable – just a bunch of characters that don’t make any sense. Then an error message comes up in the middle of the page, looking like this:   I have to admit, this error message is pretty well crafted. It has the “clean” look of a message from Google. The spelling and grammar are much better than we usually see from virus creators. The “Update” button looks accurate, as does the Chrome logo in the top right. And since the text on the screen (behind the error message) is unreadable, it makes perfect sense that the website is using a particular font that you don’t have installed as part of Chrome. So there is seemingly nothing suspicious about the message that tells you you need to update your Chrome Font Pack. So it’s pretty easy to understand why someone would just click on the “Update” button without really thinking anything nefarious is going on. But when the update button click leads to a file being downloaded called “Chrome Font v7.5.1.exe”, that should start to raise some concerns. First, you should never download a .exe file and run it unless you are 100% sure what it is and what it will do. Second, the “Help” prompt on the screen says you should see the download file called “Chrome_Font.exe” which is different from the actual downloaded file name. Also, Chrome might even pop up a little warning to tell you that this file is kind of suspicious so you might want to think twice before running it. As this virus becomes more well-known, the antivirus programs in use will be more likely to catch it as well. But your best first defense is to follow the best guidelines, and never download anything if you’re not sure what it is. The post New virus trick to watch for – the “missing font” hack first appeared on The Computer Tutor.

In Windows 7 (and earlier versions of Windows), the Start menu was simply a way to navigate to whatever program or file you needed to open. In Windows 10, Microsoft seems to think that it should now be used as their own private little billboard on your computer. Today we’ll talk about how to take back some control of that space.   One thing that I really, really dislike is advertising being forced on to me. It’s one of the reasons I don’t watch television, and it’s the primary reason I don’t listen to commercial radio while I’m driving (I either have a podcast on (and I can fast forward through the commercials), or Pandora (the $3.99/month ad-free version). So when I got my Windows 10 desktop computer several months ago, I was less than pleased to see how Microsoft freely posted all kinds of stuff I don’t need or want all over the Start menu by default. Stuff like: X-Box Minecraft Flipboard OneNote Get Office on your phone or tablet PicsArt Photo Studio Groove Music Microsoft Solitaire Collection Politically biased “news” articles Cortana Windows Mail Twitter Microsoft Edge browser MSN Weather Not to mention the actual ads that Microsoft throws in there unless you disable that “feature”, which is turned on by default. The good news – it’s easy to get rid of all that junk if you know how. First thing you need to do is turn off the blatant ads that Microsoft wants to push to you (of course, MS doesn’t call them “ads” – they’re merely “suggestions”. Whatever.) To do that, get to Settings. You can click the Start button, then click on Settings, or you can just hold down the Windows key and tap the letter “I”. Then click Personalization, then Start. Look for the “Occasionally show suggestions in Start” and turn it off:   Then, the second thing to do is clean up all the clutter that Microsoft puts in your Start menu. This is really easy. Click the Start button (lower left corner, the Microsoft Windows logo) so that the Start menu appears:   Now pick one of the tiles you want to get rid of. I’ll start with the green X-Box tile in the top row. Do a right click on it, so that this little menu comes up, and choose “Unpin from Start”:   As soon as you click that, you’ll now see an empty space where that tile used to be displayed. So just go through and do that for every tile you don’t want to see, until the Start menu is trimmed down the stuff that might actually be useful. Now, with your Start menu having a fresh “start”, you can drag the tiles around in whatever order you like. You can also add things the Start menu, just by right-clicking and choosing “Pin to Start”. See – Windows can actually be useful when you kick Microsoft’s junk out of the way and put your own stuff there!  The post Make the Windows 10 Start Menu less annoying first appeared on The Computer Tutor.