Disclaimer: This week's show contains what might be construed as legal advice. Please note that I am not a lawyer. Therefore, the advice I've given is personal advice, not legal advice. If you have any further questions, please consult the FTC, a Law Enforcement agency, or an attorney.
Question: A listener who shall remain anonymous says, "I had a popup that came onto my screen that said I had a bunch of viruses and it would get rid of them for $29.95. I agreed, and it did. But now, I just got my credit card statement and I see a $190 charge I don't recognize. What can I do?"
Answer: Well, the first thing you should do is call your credit card company and dispute the charge. Credit card companies usually want you to work with the merchant first, but that presumes the merchant is acting in good faith - this one's not. The next thing would be to file a formal complaint with the FTC and/or the Texas Attorney General's office. You might also want to put a fraud alert into your credit files at the three bureaus, Experian, Equifax, and TransUnion because they might use your credit card information for identity theft. We'll have links in the show notes for the Credit Bureaus, the FTC, and the Texas Attorney General. We'll also have links directly to the complaint-filing pages for those last two.
Cool Site: PC Mag: Today's cool website will focus on a site which along with its sister sites, has contributed often to our Tech Tip Friday shows. That site is PCMag.com. You may remember seeing PC Magazine in stores. They, like many magazines have transitioned away from paper publishing, at least mainly, to web publishing. This has allowed them to embrace web-based media of all kinds like audio and video podcasts. They also have how-to articles about things like building a second computer for the kids. You'll find reviews of software and hardware that you might be thinking about buying, and they have labs where they can test the things they review. For instance, I found a review of free antivirus software there. I have these all linked in the show notes.
Cool Gadget: Microsoft Security Essentials: Here's a free software gadget to check out. Microsoft has released their Security Essentials software. It requires XP, which must at least be at the Service Pack 2 level, any service pack level of Vista, or Windows 7, and supports Windows 7's XP Mode. The website includes how-to videos covering installation, running a scan, and what to do when a threat is detected. When you first install the program, it will want to update itself and run a scan. Let it, because it seems that it will keep trying until that first scan is done and this will slow your computer down. You must have an Internet connection that's active when you install because your computer must pass Windows Genuine Advantage verification. But it's free, it scans everything automatically, and I have seen it find things some of my other anti-malware recommendations didn't. Microsoft has gone green in the way you know that you're OK. By that I mean that when the castle-shaped icon for the program is green with a check mark in it, everything is OK. When it's red with an 'X' in it, there's a problem.
It's All "Geek" To Me: DDOS: This week's term is an acronym: DDOS and it stands for Distributed Denial-Of-Service attack. A basic denial-of-service attack happens when malware monopolizes your computer so that you are denied the use of its services. A Distributed Denial-of-Service attack happens when malware on hundreds or even thousands of computers try to access the same website for the express purpose of keeping that server so busy it can't respond to legitimate requests.
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This week's show contains outtakes to lighten things up a bit. Wah-hoo!
