Avoiding a Virus

Malware and Viruses are constant problems when using a computer. Because everything seems so invisible when using a computer a virus really seems impossible to predict or to find. So, the result is that many of us are always fearful that we might get a virus and are not even clear how it happens. 

The best defense against viruses is to be prepared and to not get them in the first place. There are a few things that you can regularly do in order to prevent getting viruses.

1. Most Importantly make sure that you have installed on your computer effective virus protection software. The most common ones are McAfee and Norton, which both have an annual fee. They are both very good. A free one is called AVG. If you go to the first link after you search for AVG you will come to the paid version which costs approx. $40/year. Keep looking until you find the actual free version. It is not as powerful as the paid version, but it does what you need it to do.

2. Back up, back up, back up!!!  I cannot emphasize this enough. Unless you do not care about anything on your computer and don't mind losing all of it you need to back it up on a regular basis. The frequency of your back ups depends on you. If you use your computer a lot once a week is good. If you just use it now and then maybe once a month is OK. If you have a business and depend on that data daily every day backups are good. There are online programs that you can purchase for around $40 a year that will do a regular back up to a server somewhere (in the cloud). Those servers are also backed up on a regular basis. This type of software is a simple solution. 

Another solution is to get a back up drive. There are drives on sale at Office Depot, Staples and many other places. They usually plug in using a USB plug. If you have a Mac you can use Timeline with an external drive to back up your files. If you do not have a Mac you can use any of the back up softwares with a removable drive rather than the cloud. This is so important that if you don't understand what is written here you should find someone to help you. 

There are two types of back ups.  One is a data back up. This is what most back up software does.  It will make a copy of all of your files and data (information saved on the computer), but it doesn't save programs. This type is the most common. Many people keep the original disks from the software they purchase or have paid for them and know that they can download the software again. The other type is an image back up. This is much more extensive and will copy all of the programs on the computer as well as the data/files. If you use a data back up you still need to make sure that you have copies of all of the programs you have added to your computer. 

3. NEVER click on a link or an attachment that you are not sure about. There are many negative hackers who can even make your email message look legitimate and put a link into it that opens a virus on your computer. If I get a message with a link from someone I know, I open a new message put in their address (never reply) and ask if they sent it to me. Most likely they did not and will let you know that. If they did send it you can ask them to send it again. People I know would not send a link without explanation and so often without asking I just delete the message.

4. If you are not sure about a link and it looks legitimate you can hover your mouse arrow over the link. Usually in the bottom left corner of your screen you will see the actual URL that your computer will take you to. If you do not recognize the link or it doesn't seem to be related to the sender do NOT click on it. Any legitimate company will send you a link with their company name in it (like www.facebook.com). 

IF YOU DO GET A VIRUS ALL IS NOT LOST

You can go to a Geek (look online for computer repair in your area) and ask for help or call the 800 number of your computer maker. If you have backed up your data or have an image of your computer they can help you restore it. If you don't care about what was on your computer before you can reset it back to the way it was when it was new. One big problem with viruses is that they multiply, so it is possible that people in your contact list will get email that looks like it is from you with a link they should not click on. For this reason if you know your computer has a virus immediately take it off the network. For wired computers unplug them from the ethernet cord. For WiFi computers go to the set up and end all of your Internet connections.  

Computer viruses are changing and getting stronger all of the time. One recent malware is called Cryptolocker. It will scan a hard drive and then encrypt files so that they can no longer be opened. The only way to get them back is to pay anywhere from $100-$300 to de-encrypt them. That is why it is so important to follow the prevention tips above. 

If you do click on something and get a CryptoLocker message or something like that immediatly disconnect from the network. This is one thing you can do to keep from using your contact list to send out other messages that may infect other machines. 

Virus Protection on Windows 8

This is NOT an April Fool's Post!! Have a great day!

Windows 8 comes with Virus Protection built in. You do NOT have to purchase McAfee, Norton or download AVG like I wrote about in an earlier post. 

Here is what you can do to see what is already set up.

 

1. Go to the Charms Menu (the bar to the far right of your screen that appears when you put your mouse in the top corner)
2. Click on SEARCH.  There is a picture of a magnifying glass to represent it.
3. Click on Apps if it is not already chosen and type in “windows defender”.
4. A window will come up showing you how Windows Defender is set up.

It is set up to automatically do real time protection and to keep up with new virus and spyware definitions.  You can do a scan manually by clicking on Scan Now. A full scan took me less than an hour while I did other things on the Surface. My copy of Windows 8 was set to do quick scans and it had just done one when I was working on it and I didn’t even notice. 

There are four tabs on the window that appears:

Home-This tab is the one that always appears when you set up the program and is described above.

Update-This tab shows you when the virus and spyware definitions were last updated. There are new viruses and spyware everyday, so it is set to automatically update, but you can click the button and manually update if you want.

History-Virus protection programs quarantine items that might be harmful. You can see a list of these items or a list of the ones that were scanned and allowed or both by clicking on the View Details button in the middle on the bottom of the window

Settings-If you know of certain files that you never want scanned you can designate them from the scan here. There is probably no reason to do this since the scan is done in the background and doesn’t take too long, but if you want it to go faster for some reason you can designate that certain things are not scanned. You can also set how long the computer keeps quarantined files (that were identified as having viruses) 

SHARING VIRUS INFORMATION

Microsoft collects the virus information from your computer to help protect everyone who uses the Microsoft Security program. You can opt out of this or allow them to collect more information by going to Settings and choosing MAPS (Microsoft Active Protection Service). The default is set to Basic membership. 

THE SEARCH FUNCTION

Something I learned when trying to find apps and while writing this is that SEARCH on the Charms Panel is really powerful. If there is anything that you used to do with your computer and need to find out how to do it with Windows 8 you can just type the item into the search window and then choose Apps, Settings or Files and you will be given a list of the items it finds.  I used it to find Windows Defender and Control Panel.

Clean Up and Maintenance of Your Computer

This is one of those important things that no one tells you to do and you always feel uncomfortable knowing that there is probably something you should be doing. Then if your computer breaks down one day you think it must be your fault. 

Actually taking good care of your computer is not too difficult or confusing. There are things that you can do beyond what I talk about here, but they are not necessary for most home users. See links below if you want to know more.

There are things that EVERY computer owner should do regardless of if you are using Mac or PC and then a few specific things to each operating system.

1. The MOST important thing to do for any computer is to BACK UP regularly. It can (and does) happen that your computer completely shuts down. You do not want to lose all of the files that you have on your computer, so it is important to have a second copy. You can use an external hard drive, a CD or DVD, or somewhere on the Cloud using a service like Dropbox, iCloud, SkyDrive, Google Drive or one of the many others. Here  is a link to several reviews of free back up software. http://www.techsupportalert.com/best-free-backup-program.  When you back up your files are all backed up so that you can get to them again, but not your programs. If you want to have a backup of all of your programs so that you do not have to download them individually again you can use Acronis or Norton Ghost which will "take a snapshot" of your whole hard drive. 
2. Physical cleaning of the outside of your computer. This is important because the crumbs that get into your keyboard, the dust that gets into the fan and the general grime can cause your computer not to work as well as it can. Here are suggestions for each of the parts.

• Screen - Use screen cleaner that does not have ammonia or alcohol. For a laptop, set the back of the screen onto a towel or something soft on a table while holding up the keyboard with one hand. Spray the cleaner onto a soft cloth and clean the screen gently with a circular motion.
• Keyboard - Using a similarly damp cloth clean the outside of the keys. Use compressed air to clean out the crumbs and dust that collects under the keys. You can use an antibacterial wipe on the keys since lots of hands touch a keyboard.
• Wipe outside with the damp cloth.
• Clean up the files on your desktop by either putting them into folders that are meaningful OR moving them to other folders in your file system. Each thing on your desktop takes up some of the memory that your computer needs to run. Your computer can slow down if there are too many things just left on the desktop.

Always do the updates that your computer recommends. Most of the time a window will pop up saying that you should update something and you can press OK or cancel. If you always cancel these things you may be stopping your computer from doing some things that can really help.

One more good habit to get into is to empty the trash weekly or even daily depending on how much you use your computer. Everything in the trash is taking up some of your memory until you empty it out. The whole reason that the trash can exists is so that you can change your mind and drag something back out of the trash if you decide that you need it. Once you are sure that everything is not needed empty what is there so that it does not take up space.

Use a surge protector for plugging in your computer. If the electricity is interrupted (like when you are struck with lightening) it will protect your computer from burning out.

Completely shut down and restart your computer regularly (maybe overnight?). When your computer shuts down and restarts many things happen in the background that clean up some of that background stuff that the computer automatically does.

PCs (by this I mean any computer that is not a Mac. It could be IBM, HP, Dell or one of many other companies. You should add these practices to the above in order to maintain your computer. 

• Make sure you have a good Anti-Virus program and that you keep it up to date. There are lots of Anti Virus programs that you can download and you probably have one that came with your computer. There are free ones  http://www.techsupportalert.com/best-free-anti-virus-software.htm and also ones that you can pay for like Symantec, Norton or Barracuda. Do not load more than one on your computer because they can conflict with one another and will not be effective. 
• Regularly download updates because hackers are always busy creating new ways to get into your computer. If you want to avoid getting a virus there are a few things that you can regularly do. 
• NEVER open links from email if you don't know the person or even if you know them and they JUST sent a link with nothing else. There are hackers that send out email with a link and make it look like it is coming from someone safe. The link might open to a website with an automatically downloading virus 
• Do NOT trust any email from a bank, PayPal, Amazon, Western Union, or any company that looks legitimate, but tells you to give them an account number, send them money or anything that sounds fishy. It probably is a scam. There are lots of these going around and it is REALLY easy to click on a link from one of these to find out more, but it is better to just delete them. If it is from a real company they will NEVER ask for personal information like account numbers in email. You can often look in the TO: section at the top to see who it was sent to. If it was sent to a bunch of people that you do not know it is spam.
• Defragment your computer hard drive monthly. As you save, delete and move your files around they create gaps in the hard drive space which are not used because they are small bits stuck inbetween other stuff. Defragmenting pushes all of the stuff together creating more open space. This is less important than it used to be since Hard Drives are bigger than they used to be, but it might help if your computer is running slowly. The Defragmenter is on your computer. Most likely you will find it under System Tools-disk defragmenter.

On a Mac

1. Remember the things above that appled to both computers. Macs have TimeMachine installed which can do your back ups on a regular basis. There are some features of other programs that you can pay for which TimeMachine does not have. Macs get fewer viruses, but it can still be an issue. You can pay for a virus protection program or get one free. Here is a link to a free one: http://www.sophos.com/en-us/products/free-tools/sophos-antivirus-for-mac-home-edition.aspx
2. If your Mac gets slow and bogged down there are a few things you can try to see if they will help. Your Mac has something called Disk Utility which is a program that you can run to see if there are any problems on your hard disk and it will fix them. You can find it by clicking on Mac HD, in the Applications File under Utilities. You can also run a program like Onyx which can clean off the HD of any issues that are slowing it down. Some articles I read called for using the Disk Utility regularly, like every three months. 

MacWorld's Maintenance Calendar - MacWorld offers a free download of a calendar to remind yourself when to do different maintenance tasks. http://www.macworld.com/article/1133696/maintenance_cal.html

For even more on cleaning your mac look at this MacWorld article:

http://www.macworld.com/article/1057796/2407mobilemac.html

Virus Anxiety and Internet Security

If you have ever thought you had a virus on your computer you understand the anxiety and confusion that it can bring. I will attempt in this post to make things a tiny bit clearer for you so that the next time this happens you will feel more confident dealing with it.

VIRUS PROTECTION

A virus is a computer illness that can be passed from computer to computer through the network. Sometimes viruses are malicious, someone created them to mess something up. Sometimes they get into your computer and use your information (Like sending email out to all of your friends in your name). The most important thing you can do is to have a VIRUS protection program running on every machine that you use, especially if you have a PC. But a virus protection program is no good if you have not set it up to download the new virus definitions regularly and to run through your computer on a regular basis. There are new viruses created every day and so it is impossible to install something one time and then be done with it.

GET A VIRUS PROTECTION PROGRAM

There are several very common virus protection programs available. Some of the best known are Norton, McAfee, and AVG, but there are many others. They all work in similar ways. After you buy the software you continue to pay a smaller monthly or quarterly fee and every day at a time you set up, all of the new virus definitions are downloaded. The next time you run your virus protection it will find any problems. You can set it up to automatically get rid of the viruses it finds. It creates a report so that you can see what it has done. You can run it in the background and do other things, but it may slow down your computer. You can also run it at a certain time when you are not using your computer (midnight), but you have to leave the computer ON and connected to the Internet.

AVG has a free version which is simpler, but is often used by nonprofit organizations that do not have money to purchase a full protection program. Each of the other programs does many other things, so when you are looking for one to purchase you should compare them. Look at a comparison site like: http://anti-virus-software-review.toptenreviews.com/ the different programs are listed in a chart and you can see what is the same and different about them. They all work, so choose one that seems the most helpful and affordable to you.

BEST ADVICE 
1. Never click on links that are sent to you in email! The link on the email may actually take you somewhere different than it says because it just connects to code in the background which you do not see. You can go to the Internet and type the URL that you see into the Location bar.
2. REGULARLY back up everything that is on your computer so that if the worst happens and you lose everything on that computer you will have a back up and can start over.
3. Keep your virus protection program up to date.
4. If your computer gets a virus relax and expect that it will be a hassle and take some time, but it will be resolved. Hopefully you have Virus Protection installed and active, so you can just call the 800 number if you need help.
5. Do not pass on hoaxes (see below)

THE 800 NUMBER VOCABULARY
Once you have a Virus Protection program your best friend is the 800 number. There are so many different things that can happen that it is difficult to cover them all here. If you have the phone number handy you can call and get help when you need it. I was recently helping out a Child Development Center with a laptop that they had. I just could not figure out how to make the Virus Program (AVG) that I had downloaded work correctly. I used the 800 number and even though I did not understand every word that the person from the Philippines was telling me I was able to follow their direction and eventually it all worked!

What often happens in cases like this is that the help desk person uses vocabulary that is new to you and so it is very difficult to understand what they are trying to say. Additionally, customers often say things like "my computer is broken" and so the help desk person has very little to go on when trying to help. I am starting to keep a vocabulary sheet that I will post as an attachment on the right side of the blog. Here are today's words:

malware - short for malicious software. Software that gets onto your computer and does bad things. Malware is the larger term for virus, worm, trojans, and spyware.
virus - a small program or script that does something bad to your computer.
hacker - someone who "hacks" or gets into computers by getting passwords or creating programs
worm - a type of virus that replicates itself in your computer causing problems
trojan horse - viruses that masquerade as regular programs like games, but do damage.
system software or files - the programs that make your computer work.
operating system - They system that makes your program work. Examples are Mac OSX, Tiger, Lion, Windows XP, and Windows 2007.
version number - You may be asked what version you are using of the anti virus software or of the computer. The person helping you should be able to explain how to find this out.
firewall - A system designed to prevent unauthorized access to a private network. You probably do not need this for a home computer, but they are regularly used for public places. A firewall is just like a wall that keeps people from accessing things.
Internet Security vs. Virus Protection- Virus protection programs are  limited to keeping viruses from getting onto your computers, but there are also programs that offer Internet security. Internet security refers to protection from identity theft while using the internet and many other things. 

Start-Run - You may be asked to go to START and choose RUN. Run will open up a black window with white letters. This is programming language and you can type into this area and make things happen. The tech person helping you will tell you what to type. One example is cmd which means command and tells the computer what to do
spyware - a program put onto your computer without your knowledge that sends out information about what you do on your computer.
Phishing - The act of sending email to someone that looks legitimate and causes them to click on a link or reply to the message. This is used to get people to surrender private information that is used for Identity Theft.

EMOTIONAL STATE
If you are sure that your computer has a virus the first thing to do is to relax about it. There is nothing that anxiety will solve and it can make you prone to bad decision making. If you are very frustrated it is best to set your computer aside and do other things for a few hours and then go back to it. Most likely you will have to be on the phone with someone in the Philippines for hours trying to explain what is happening and maybe understanding only a fraction of what they say to you. You WILL succeed and things will clear up. Just do not expect it to be quick or easy.

HOAXES
If you are like me, you regularly get notes from friends telling you of urgent things that you need to do. Maybe it is sending a note to someone to cheer them up. Maybe it is clicking on a link. Maybe it is just warning you that something horrible will be happening in the next week.  Sometimes these are legitimate, but other times they are hoaxes which float around for years and years on the internet. You can find out by going to a website that keeps up with all of the hoaxes that are out there and researches them to find out what is true. Always make a point of going to one of these sites to be sure that what you have received is legitimate before doing what it says or sending it on to other friends.



Snopes.com - http://www.snopes.com/snopes.asp






Hoax Slayer - http://www.hoax-slayer.com/

A fun place to learn about hoaxes through out history is the Museum of Hoaxes: http://www.museumofhoaxes.com


The Museum of Hoaxes has a Test to see if you can recognize a Hoax photo.
http://www.museumofhoaxes.com/tests/hoaxphototest.html