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Send this article to EVERYONE you know…

REALLY! The health of your computer, your friend's computer, your neighbor's computer, the government computers, my computer are all at stake. Heck, economies world wide depend on the information I am about to repeat to you and you HAVE to forward it every computer user you know! REALLY!

I cleaned up a laptop today that belonged to a sophomore in college. She readily admitted that she knew very little about her computer and knew nothing about Internet security. After cleaning off some horrific spyware and a couple of viruses, I explained to her how to maintain the standard products I add to all my customer's computer:

  • AVG Antivirus
  • Windows Defender, Ewido, SpyBot Search & Destroy, and AdAware (anti-spyware programs)
  • Mozilla Firefox (an alternative browser to help prevent the problems)

We have talked and written volumes on this subject, so I'm listing for you links to the articles and tips we have written so you can brush up and educate and inform all the computer users you know.

A friendly reminder about Snopes

It seems that late summer is one of the busiest seasons for email forwarding. People forward jokes, photos, inspirational stories, and political content to their friends.

Before you send that forward on to a friend or family member make sure to check it out at www.Snopes.com . Snopes is a database of all email that gets forwarded around the world.

The folks and Snopes work extra hard to research the truth (or untruth) behind each story they are sent.

When someone sends me a forwarded story that I find suspicious such as how the government is going to start charging for email or about how kindergardens across the country are going to take the book "D is for Dog" out of their schools because "dog" spelled backwards is "god", I head directly to Snopes.

Books on CD are a wonderful thing

Just like Rick, I also spend a lot of time in my car driving from one appointment to another. Lately I have discovered the joy of reading, both traditional books and audio books.

All through school I was never much of a reader. In fact, it wasn't until college that I actually kept up with reading the required text and that was only in classes that I enjoyed like American Government and Creative Non-fiction (yes that was a real class I took).

Late last year I installed a nice bookshelf in our bathroom and since then I have read about 5 books and too many entire magazines to count.

Use the Internet to stop solicitor calls

Two years ago, Colorado became one of the first states to institute a "no-call" list that consumers could sign up for to prevent solicitation phone calls. This past week, the FTC started a national "no-call" list. These lists must be checked by phone solicitation companies every three months to updated their databases. If a solicitor calls you and you are registered on the "no-call" list, you can file a complaint and the solicitor will be fined fairly substantially ( up to $11,000 per incident for the national list).

As opposed to spam (unsolicited email), phone solicitors are regulated and must comply to certain rules. Therefore, these lists do work. Colorado residents who signed up two years ago report that their phone solicitation calls are almost nil. In less than twenty-four hours, the national list had almost one million people sign up. The FTC expects nearly sixty million numbers to be registered by next summer.