Tech Spot

There has been a lot of talk out there about Bit Coin recently. I have known about Bit Coin almost from the beginning. Honestly I have not given it much thought. And until last week it wasn't that relevant until I brought it with my financial adviser. He promptly told me that he would not engage in a conversation about Bit Coin. And really that is true most financial professionals will not talk about it because of its risky platform. It is exciting when technology creeps into our real world and show us how powerful it really can be. And technology really affects our everyday lives probably more than we realize. All our bank accounts are virtual and many of our transactions are digital. While I cannot find update statistics digital transaction are on pace and may have very likely surpassed cash transactions. So what about Bit Coin? I cannot tell you if it is something  you should get into. For our purposes today I will explain how it works and then you can discuss with your fina...

I write often about how to avoid scams, so I thought it would be interesting to share one the scam emails I have gotten over the years. Scammers even try to scam computer professionals. I figure it is because they fall for them. I usually engage with the scammers because... why not, here is one from a few years back. Hello Sir/Ma, I saw your advert on craigslist about your ability to repair laptops and computers.I want to know if you are capable of doing this in large quantities. I hope to hear from you soonest. Regards Benjamin Benjamin, Yes I can do laptop repair. How many do you have and where are you located? -Nate Nate, Thanks you for your response. I have been contracted to fix up some laptops but at the moment i am in Hawaii attending to some other jobs. In view of this i want you to handle the fixing of the laptops on agreed terms.If you are capable of handling this get back to me with the total cost for handling each unit based on a total cost of ten units for a s...

Tax season is here and if your like me you are probably under a lot of stress to get your documents in order before the April 15 deadline. Or perhaps you are filing an extension and will not worry about it until later this year. Regardless here are what I consider the two most common tax scams. And how to recognize them. Scammers are getting smarter and smarter every day "Be wary of anyone who asks for personal information or wants payment right now. " 1.Phishing This is a fancy word that has serious implications for you. This is usually done by sending you an email stating they are the IRS. STOP! IRS.gov states on their website that they will never initiate contact with you regarding a tax bill or refund via email. If you have not received mail or a phone call from the IRS you will not get an email. If you receive an email from what appears to be the IRS, reach out to your accountant or your IT Professional, or a trusted family member or friend. Be sure to ve...

For a decade Malwarebytes has been the chosen malware removal tool for IT professionals everywhere. Personally I recommended it to every customer and have used it to eradicate viruses from machines that no other program could. Everything has been great. Until last weekend January 27 2018. Malwarebytes put out a warning that their latest update was causing an issue on windows machines where it would basically use the majority of resources. In the early morning of Saturday, January 27, 2018, a faulty Web Protection update was released which caused a connection issue for many of our customers. As a side effect of the web protection blocks, the product also spiked memory usage and possibly caused a crash. We triaged the issue quickly and pushed a protection update on Saturday, January 27, 2018 at 10:48a PST. The affected products were Malwarebytes 3 Premium, Malwarebytes Management Console (MBMC), and Malwarebytes Endpoint Protection (aka Malwarebytes Cloud Console). Malwarebytes for M...