It has been a long time since we were in touch, but it looks like I’ll be

sending lots of tips and tools from now on

Here are 2 goodies I sent on my twitter as well:

Surprise..non techie friend found this - Free Privacy/Cleanup tool,

very nice worth $49 only until 31 Jan!

http://budurl.com/FreePrivacyTool

Maybe now friends will stop asking me setup their net…

How to Setup your Small Network (EASILY) guide

http://budurl.com/EasyNetworkGuide

Yours,

Jack.

Hackers use secret  SEO  techniques (Google search engine tricks) to get

their link appear on page 1 Google search results for searches related to “labor day” special sales.

Imagine this: You live in the US, you just got your labor day vacation rolling, you pick up

a cool bear from the frig and head on to your laptop to stroll around the web, looking

for labor day deals. You always tend to buy when you are on vacation…right?

And then you see this nice link in Google search, click on it, and damn! It takes

you to web page warning you that your computer is infected with Viruses.

It then invites you to download a new Anti Virus - the best they have.

All this happens as you are pooling your credit card to get ready and buy something.

Shi*** you say, I can’t put my credit card online if I have a Virus.

Why didn’t that damn Anti Virus program I have warn me about that Virus.

And then you might actually download the new (fake) Anti Virus mentioned there and actually

get a Virus or a Trojan installed on your computer…

There are many reports showing that a large percentage of the Computer Viruses

are built and set to gather personal data that will be used later on by organized crime

groups - yeh, people used to call it the “Mafia“.

My question to you is, how many times you think the Mafia takes Google each week?

Here are several tips to get you going on having better defense against the Mafia online:

1. Consider shopping in web sites you already know and have in your bookmarks.

2. Even if you use Google or other search engine to look for deals, write down the details of the deal

and then search those details in the specific site they belong to (eBay, Best Buy, whatever)

3. Use tools that I sent you in the past such as Mcaffee Site Advisor.

4. Do not ACT according to websites you visit accidentally if  they warn that your computer is in danger.

I do not know a legitimate site that would do that. If you have concerns about your Anti Virus,

try out a new one, by looking in Computing Magazines such as those I publish on the Blog here.

Here is a free Anti Virus that I like: Avira Anti Virus at: http://www.free-av.com/en/download/index.html

She told me she started getting warning notifications

of her Norton Security Suite saying “A remote system is attempting to access CHROME  on your computer”.

CHROME was the internet browser she was using (a program similar to Internet Explorer or Firefox).

Norton Firewall was asking if this remote computer should be allowed to access her internet browser…

She said that Norton defined this as a “Low” Security Risk and she asked if she should have confirmed to

approve this access or deny it.

I must say that I found many people who had this question and each time it was a different

program on their computer that the “remote system” was trying to access.

Sometimes it was MSN Messenger and sometimes “SVCHOST” and others.

Do you remember the “3 Little Pigs”? You probably heard it more than once when you were a kid…

One of the lesson was - you should not open the door for strangers no matter what they tell you.

Mommy should have the keys and does not need you to open the door for her.

If in doubt, close it out…

Same goes to Norton Anti Virus, Avira Anti Virus or any other similar Security solution - tell them to deny access.

What the error message “A remote system is attempting to access” or similar to it means is that your Firewall

detected a computer on the internet which is trying to “talk” to one of the programs on your computer - without

having the permission to start a conversation.

If the program in YOUR computer was to start a communication with a remote computer, such as a web site

or a service, your firewall would detect any response from that remote service as is and allow it.

But if your Firewall detects a trial to start communication that you did not ask for it will warn you.

In some cases where for example you have a “peer to peer” program such as those used for file sharing

(bearshare, bittorent and others) there might be a situation where other computers try to

start talking to your file sharing program.

A good program would tell your Firewall to allow such communication when you installed it, and therefore

you should have to warnings later on…

So bottom line, it looks like you should tell your firewall to deny such trials to access your computer.

Another question is what should you do if this alert pops up a lot…

I’d say, you can tell your firewall to automatically deny access in such cases without asking for your

intervention.

You can lower down the amount of such cases by setting your router to deny any access into

your network unless you started the communication.

That’s it for now…do let me know if you had such issues as well and if this article helps you!

P.S. I started reading PC Magazine Digital edition…saves trees and costs less!

(Someone told me installing auto-form programs can cause this)

Ever had to set up a new computer and wondered how can you copy all your firefox settings ?

Ever had to set a fresh firefox copy having to go over 100 add on downlods and installations ?

Here is a save-time hook:

Use “FEBE” Firefox extension to backup ALL your Firefox stuff.

When you have to re-load your firefox stuff you only install Firefox then FEBE and then use FEBE to restore all the other settings, bookmarks, addons, etc.

All this can be zipped into a single file.

I will soon be creating a video showing all the special tweaks you should pay attention to.

http://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/2109

In that case we could sign up to YouTube, Myspace or one
of the other big vid sites.

The more we publish our video, it has better chance to get
to our customers.

But then we’d have to figure out how to format our video to the specific format that web site requires…

Then run the conversions on our poor PC for HOURS…

and then take care of the upload for each and each video site.

After all this we could not always figure out how much our video was successful…

No fear, rescue is around the corner

Take a look here for a great web site that will do
most of the work for you and save time and money.

http://www.tubemogul.com

They have those goodies:

+ You upload once to TubeMogul at any format and then it Automatically Uploads to 12 sites (at once) -

including Google Video, MetaCafe, MySpace, AOL, Yahoo!, Revver, YouTube and more

+ Very easy to use through its menu system

+ Create Thumbnails photos for your videos - to attract click on per the best scene

+ You upload FLV file and TubeMogul automatically translates this info the format for

each of the video sites (MOV, WMV, AVI,…).

+ Automatically track results on one dashboard (how many and from where saw your video, and more stats)

As you know NetObject Fusion is one of the Web Creation software tools many people use and like. It allows you to build great looking web sites really within matter of hours in many cases. Thing is this babe costs almost 200$…

And we are into money saving…right ?

So here is what you do to save 90$ of this software:

If you go to http://www.netobjectfusion.com/ you’ll see it says “Buy Fusion 10 FULL $200″ or so.

And then it says “Upgrade $100″ or so.

Thing is if you search for the upgrade options it seems to mention version 8 and 9 as the possible products to upgrade from.

Well, we like free - right ? And legal as well of course.

So we download the free limited version at:

http://www.netobjects.com/html/essentials.html

Go ahead and install the software (which may suffice you for many simple cases) .

Then as you run it you should see it says on the top of its online page you can upgrade to the latest

Fusion version paying about $100 or a bit more.

Go ahead and do that if you want the software.

I tried it and it works for v10.0 and I guess for newer versions as well.

It appears that NetFusion Essentials actually is identified as “v7.5″ and as I tried it this is upgradable to v10

or newer - as tried on my PC.

Of course that as you purchase and before paying read through the instructions and make sure all is OK.

And you can always submit a question to NetFusion and verify this option if you want to be 100% sure this still works.

Now, how much time did it take you reading this post?

I bet not much more than 2 minutes…as promissed.

That’s it for now guys !

Your Best IT Friend.

“Sorry, but I will have to Format your Computer!”

Feeling the Chill in your back already ?

We all relay on our computer be there when we need them…

But what happens if … Your disk gets broken… Your computer gets stolen…

A Virus totally ruins your files… You accidentally erase your 3 months project…

And while all this happens, your backup on disk or CD does not work ? ? ?

This is always horrifying to think about all the data and time you could loose!

But I found out You don’t freak out…

In just 22 Clicks you will have no worries anymore About Loosing your Data and Files!

You can forget to backup,

You can Forget about Paying Tech Support

You can stop worrying about your PC dropping dead

It doesn’t matter if you have a PC or a MAC

I have prepared a simple report with live screen shots showing you how

In just 22 Clicks you will have no worries anymore About Loosing your Data and Files!

Download this simple report here and use it before your PC dies out on you.

President Obama Malware:

The email offers news of Barack Obama’s speech and a recording after he won the elections.

If you click on the link it will say you need to install the latest version of Adobe Flash player.

The link actually takes you to a malicious Web site.

Although the file there is called ‘adobe_flash.exe’, it contains a trojan program that will take control

of your PC.

Facebook Confirmation Malicious mail:

This attack could trick you into believing that the message is a Facebook friend-add confirmation.

The “From” address in the message is set so that it looks like it is from Facebook.

Once you click on the link it will start the infection process.

To defend your self of both those attacks, you can use the same tips I shared on my Video on protectingyour Pay Pal account here:

http://www.youtube.com/bestitfriend

As said in past messages I am working on several projects that will help you out, one of them

is a How-To video showing how to tune your Norton Security Suite to both protect you and

also eliminate the computer slowness they have if Norton is not properly set.

For Essential protection from viruses, hackers and privacy threats –

You can use Norton Internet Security 2009

You just installed a new great program and suddenly your PC
is crashing with Blue Screens and you can’t do a thing.
Sometimes is just freezes each few minutes.

Then you wish you could take it back to normal…
You have backup for your files…but not for your Windows Operating
System…you are in trouble.

And now you have to pay your tech guy to reformat it and go through
the agony of finding all your software disks and licenses…

Not any more!

Check this out — http://discount.mybuylink.com/backup/

Acronis are cutting the price for their True Image Home amazing backup
program from 50$ to less than $10 — that’s 80% discount!
It now costs less than $10!

But this deal is valid for just one week !

You have to buy it for each PC you want to install it on
and you should have a free disk with enough disk space
or DVD Drive that can write to DVDs so you can dump your
backup on it.

Here is the link (and yes I get a small commission)
Just save your time and tell your friends to buy it now and start backup!

http://discount.mybuylink.com/backup/

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Ahhhh…almost forgot it!

Once you buy it you can get your $10 back! Simply send me your receipt and I can get you in the BestITFriend Base
subscription for $10 discount - Just $7 instead of $17 for the first month.
Following payments will be $17 only a month.
What’s in the monthly BestITFriend Base subscription?

Here is what I got:
1. Frequent Updates about alerts you should know about and what to do.
2. Fr-ee programs and tools that save you time
3. Tips that you can use to keep your PC secure and fast.
4. Weekly How-To Video per the survey’s you fill and tell me
what you want to learn.
So here is what you need to do:

1. Buy the backup Tool here:http://discount.mybuylink.com/backup/

2. Send me the receipt and get access to BestITFriend Base

subscription for just $7 the first month.

Following payments will be $17 only a month.

See you inside BestITFriend!

Microsoft “Add/Remove Programs” option at the control panel, this probably also means

your Windows system has a bit of a mess. Well, at least in regards to that program you can’t remove.

Having this situation you want to have a backup of the system, done when the system was in a good state.

But not always you have a usable backup.

Here are some additional options that allow you do deal with the problematic program

with a reduced risk and therefor reduced need to recover using a backup.

Firstly, Windows XP includes a built in utility that allows backup and recovery of the critical

system files and Windows registry.

You should use it before you try and remove the “bad” program.

You run it using “Start->All Programs->Accessories->System Tools->System Restore”

Then you can both select to create a “Restore Point” that you can reverse to if you need.

You can also view which other restore points have been done in the past, either by you or by

other programs that automatically triggered that operation prior to commencing their own installation.

The restore point does not take more than few minutes and small amount of disk space.

NOTE: Do NOT exercise repetitive massive use of switching restore points. This could lead to more issues.

You should use it only when you have a problem that cannot be solved easily.

Then you want to recover to the most recent date where you assume the system was working fine.

Here are several ways to take care of the misbehaving program that fail to uninstall:

1. Disable the program startup using its own menus and options.

2. Disable the program startup using the “Start->Control Panel->Administrator Tools->Services”

You have to select the service that seem to be related to the “bad” program and set its startup to

“disabled”. You should also stop it.

3. Disable the program as you try to find it in the “msconfig” utility (Start->Run->

then type “msconfig” and press enter. Try and locate the program within the different tabs.

4. You can try and rename the folder where the program resides. That’s usually at

“C:\Program Files\”.

There are more ways we would discuss future threads, but the above options refer to the more

easy options.

P.S. If you really want to save money and time and get a reliable backup, here is a download

link for a free trial of “Acronis True Image Home” program.

I have been using it for years at home and for small businesses.

It will do full backups as well as automatic daily backups.

It allows restore of your PC even if it was completely destroyed, within 1 mouse click.

If your data and time are worth more than $50, don’t think twice!

Get this tool here: Acronis True Image Home

There is also a Free trial for it here

Yours,

Jack.