Regular Guy Computer Services

01/18/2024

I just watched an interview of the CEO of HP on Squawk Box and he was directly asked about the class-action lawsuit against HP regarding HP's disabling of printers using non-HP ink. He made several small excuses about intellectual property but went on to say that their end goal is to make printing a "subscription service". So in his world you would pay a fee every month/year to have the ability to print, even if you didn't print anything. They also went on to say that customers using non-HP ink are not good customers and they don't want them. You could use this information as you wish to make future purchase decisions regarding printers.

01/17/2024

01/17/2024

Stop using Google Search. Usually the top several results are either Spam or links to scammers.

A new study by German researchers found that Google Search is plagued with SEO spam.

12/21/2023

https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-67663128

Judge says hacker remains a high risk through his skills and motivation to carry out cyber crime.

07/20/2023

Its about time Microsoft.

Standard license holders will get access to more than 30 types of logging previously available to higher paying customers, and all logs will be stored for twice as long, 180 days, by default.

07/19/2023

https://techcrunch.com/2023/07/17/microsoft-lost-keys-government-hacked/?guccounter=1

China hacked dozens of email accounts, including in government. Microsoft opens up, slightly, about how the hackers pulled off the heist.

05/11/2021

Outlook fix is live, I went into File, Office Account, Office updates, update now. Close and re-open Outlook. Fixed.

05/11/2021

Many of you, me included are fighting this issue this afternoon all of a sudden. It's not you, it's a Microsoft issue. Sit tight for now, check email via the online portal, or your mobile, they are not affected.

03/25/2021

Integrity is key in my job. This guy should never be hired in the IT field again. Next to your legal counselor and your doctor, I have access to extremely sensitive information about you and losing that trust is not acceptable. Your IT people should be just as private with your info as your doc and lawyer.

https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/news/security/resentful-employee-deletes-1-200-microsoft-office-365-accounts-gets-prison/

A former IT consultant hacked a company in Carlsbad, California, and deleted almost all its Microsoft Office 365 accounts in an act of revenge that has brought him two years of prison time.

11/16/2020

If you are using Teams quite a bit now, and would like an Audio Conferencing option for free (!) for a year, check out the promo Microsoft has going right now.

https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-365/blog/2020/09/08/3-deals-meeting-calling-experiences-microsoft-teams/

By working closely with our customers, we’ve identified a few key trends that define how customers are using meeting and calling solutions and rethinking how your communications infrastructure can support long term resilience and productivity.

11/10/2020

Chrome/Google will now warn you of compromised passwords that you have saved in your Google account.
https://support.google.com/accounts/answer/9457609?hl=en

You can find out if passwords in your Google Account may have been exposed, are weak, or are used in multiple accounts. Then, you can change any unsafe passwords to keep your accounts more secure.

10/01/2020

This month Microsoft drops security update support on Office 2010 plus drops support for Office 2013 to connect to Office 365 Services. Upgrade soon!

04/05/2020

I know a lot of you are using Zoom during this crisis. You might want to look at Microsoft Teams if you haven't already. You can get it for free for a period of time, plus it's fully encrypted and they don't share your info with Facebook without your consent.

https://www.theverge.com/2020/4/5/21208636/zoom-ceo-yuan-security-privacy-concerns

Eric S. Yuan said the company is working to prevent future Zoombombing incidents.

03/15/2020

What are you doing for Spring Break? My younger son Tyler and I had planned to ski in Keystone and Arapaho Basin beginning tomorrow morning, but all Colorado resorts closed for the week as of this morning. So for us, lots of screen time coming up. Besides finishing the first season of Hunters on Prime, I've created a new virtual Domain Controller and migrated to it, as well as installing a new Exchange Server 2019 and in process of migrating to it as well from my SLOW 2016 Exchange Server. Not nearly as fun as skiing, but I'm getting needed stuff done.

01/15/2020

Windows 7 dies today according to Microsoft. If you're still using it, make plans to upgrade or replace soon. For all you Windows 10 users, there's a big security hole being patched with today's updates, be sure to run them sooner rather than later. Looks like the picture I have posted below. Hopefully there's no bugs in them.

11/25/2019

Black Friday Special: Dell Optiplex Small Form Factor 3070 PC - $699 (regular price $749)
• Intel® Core™ i5-9500 (6 Cores/9MB/6T/3.0GHz to 4.4GHz/65W)
• Windows 10 Pro 64bit
• 8GB 1X8GB DDR4 2666MHz
• M.2 256GB PCIe NVMe Class 35 Solid State Drive
• 8x DVD+/-RW 9.5mm Optical Disk Drive
• Dell MS116 Wired Mouse
• Dell Multimedia English Keyboard - KB216
• Intel® Integrated Graphics
• 3 Years Hardware Service with Onsite/In-Home Service After Remote Diagnosis (from Dell)

*****Must be ordered verbally or by email by 5PM Friday, Nov. 29th, payment due before order is placed.*****

10/11/2019

https://www.windowslatest.com/2019/10/09/windows-10-kb4517389-printing-start-menu/

Yesterday, Microsoft released new Patch Tuesday cumulative updates for Windows 10 version 1903 and older versions with a number of fixes aimed at enterprises and general users. According to Microsoft’s updated changelog, Windows 10 KB4517389 finally resolves all the printing related problems. Some...

09/25/2019

https://www.computerworld.com/article/3440677/microsoft-delivers-emergency-security-update-for-antiquated-ie.html

The browser flaw, a classic 'zero-day' vulnerability found by a security engineer with Google's Threat Analysis Group, is already being exploited by attackers.

09/24/2019

Here's how Emotet works. Blog is from last December, but the North Koreans are ramping up again for another launch of this stuff. Don't be surprised if one or more hits your inbox. Just don't open it.

https://www.welivesecurity.com/2018/12/28/analysis-latest-emotet-propagation-campaign/

An analysis on the functioning of this new Emotet campaign that affecting countries in Latin America taking takes advantage of Microsoft Office files.

08/22/2019

If you are sick of having Google serve up ads like crazy, and tired of them tracking every thing you do online with their Chrome Browser, you absolutely need to download Brave and try it out. Set your default search engine to Duck Duck Go. I have been testing Brave Browser for a few weeks and I'm extremely happy with it. I've stumbled across one website (Logmein) that doesn't work with it at this time, but that's it. It also has it's own built in ad blocker, and since Ad Block Plus isn't really helping like it did in the past, that's even better.

https://brave.com/

Welcome to the new Brave browser. Experience a faster, more private and secure browser for PC, Mac and iOS and Android. Block ads and trackers that slow you down, cost you money and invade your privacy. Join the Brave revolution, learn more.

01/31/2019

This is why you need multi-layer security for your business. Today a customer that recently renewed a security services bundle for his firewall needed support from his practice management software provider for a couple issues. This company uses a tool called fastsupport, and they keep an easy to download copy of the software right on the support section of their website. The customer called me after several attempts with the software support techs to download this software. They said it was the firewall blocking their support tool, and that it shouldn't be doing that. The message is in the picture that they were getting. They then called me, and I logged into their system and was able to see the same thing. I temporarily turned off the firewall's anti-virus feature, and the same tool download was then blocked by the ESET EndPoint Antivirus on the computer. I relayed that to the customer, and said it is very unlikely we have a false positive here when two separate systems see the same trojan. ESET later confirmed that it was in fact infected with a trojan. The software provider later removed the infected support tool from their website.

While this firewall and security services bundle is not cheap, it likely saved this customer from a damaging data breach, which would have been infinitely more expensive.

12/24/2018

Holiday hours: Dec. 24th & 25th, closed. Dec 31st & Jan 1st, closed. Dec 26-28 and Jan 2nd-Jan 4th are completely full on the schedule. Next open availability is the week of Jan 7th. Merry Christmas!

12/17/2018

The holidays can be stressful enough, but my Monday has been spent doing a server recovery for a local small business here in Overland Park. As an IT Pro, working through a recovery of this type is the most stressful situation I can think of that I get involved in. The customer's business is hanging in the balance as only 6% of them can survive a data disaster long term. If there is data loss, I always feel terrible, even though it's never been my fault. Many customers do not think the large investment in a full recovery solution is worthwhile. It's the mentality that "it won't happen to me".

This customer took my recommendation over two years ago to make a significant investment in a quality recovery solution. He did not opt for the cloud solution, just a local external backup drive rotation. Because he did not opt for the cloud solution, while I was working through the restore process, he was not able to access any data and thus was down for about 6 hours today. However, about 3pm today, the most recent backup that I took at 8:56am today restored properly, with a newer RAID controller and all new hard drives. This is important because a cheap or file-based backup solution would not work with new hardware - the server would "blue screen" on first boot up, and would require a full re-install of the operating system, settings, drivers, and then the data restore to function.

As we verified Quickbooks was working and up to date, and we could open the latest data files for the management application, I was very happy that all this customer lost was about a day of productivity. I will sleep well tonight.

11/20/2018

Please, don't waste your money. As a wise Jedi once said, "These are not the droids you're looking for."

10/04/2018

Microsoft 365 is secure, it's your users that aren't.

A typical Office 365 attack looks something like this:
1. Hacker sends an email spoofing a person of authority in the company—the CEO, CFO or the IT help desk. This will come from an external email address, but be designed to look internal.
2. The phishing email will ask the person to “review a document” with a link to what is assumed to be the OneDrive document for review.
3. The link, however, will take the user to an exact replica of an Office 365 login page, where they will capture their credentials.
4. The hacker will login to the user’s account and implement email rules to create silent back door access:
1. Forward all incoming emails to an external address,
2. Delete certain new emails in Sent Items,
3. Move/Delete all incoming emails into a sub folder.
5. The hacker can now send phishing emails from this user’s account with impunity. All future phishing attacks will come from within the company with a real internal address.

09/10/2018

New type of phishing attack - remember to look at the from email, something legit from fedex will have a fedex.com after the @ sign of the email address. In almost all cases with phishing email attacks, the domain name is something random.

https://securitynews.sonicwall.com/xmlpost/lnk-file-is-actively-being-leveraged-to-run-file-less-powershell-script/

08/01/2018

Did you know that 46 million SMB users rely on devices four or more years old? Businesses using older devices are experiencing—or will soon—a lack of performance, mobility and outdated security features. With more than 50 percent of cyberattacks affecting today’s small business – upgrading your devices isn’t a choice, it’s mission-critical.

06/20/2018

Did you know that keeping those old PC's (and yes, Macs to) around costs EACH employee that has and old PC an average of 91 hours of lost productivity per year? That's over two weeks. I'm very confident that those employees would rather be paid for some vacation time to somewhere nice and not sitting in their office waiting on their old computer. If your computer is over 3 years old, it's worth looking at replacement. It might be fine if it was on the higher end when new, but if not, it might be costing you money.

https://www.intel.com/content/dam/www/public/us/en/documents/articles/pc-upgrade-old-pc-costs-article.pdf

06/04/2018

Apple is touting the Do Not Disturb feature at the World Wide Developer's Conference this morning, but they've had that feature already.