Speed Up the Internet for Novice Users

There are plenty of ways in which you can speed up your Internet connection. If you are struggling with a slow connection and don’t know how you can fix the issue, here’s all that you can try out just now.

• Conduct a speed test of the hardware and installed software to see if the Internet speed is below the standard speed that you otherwise enjoy. You can use an online speed tester to figure this out.
• If the speed that you are paying for isn’t the same that you are actually getting, call up your service providers and demand an explanation – don’t settle for anything below a revised payment plan or enhanced speed.
• You can also check out if your modem or router is working fine. A reset of the device can help better things.
• If you are using a WI-FI modem or router, try changing the channels and pick a channel that is less clogged. If there are plenty of appliances at your home or workplace using the WI-FI network, chances are that it may have led to network congestion and thereby resulting in reduced Internet speed.
• Trying the wired channels can also help increase the Internet speed, particularly if the problem was due to WI-FI network jamming.
• Scan your PC for malware infection and see if the reduced speed was due to a virus. Once the scan is complete, you will notice that the speed has also become better. 
• If you haven’t cleared your browser history in a long time and the cookies, cache, and others are clogging its memory, it can lead to reduced browser performance. You may feel that the slow performance is due to the Internet speed while simply clearing the browser history can do the trick here.

If none of the above works for you, you will have to opt for expert tech support so that the actual cause of the issue can be identified and adequately dealt with. Do not hesitate to call promptly and thereby fix this issue before you lose out on productivity, time, efforts, and also deadlines. 

Costco Customers Are Targeted for Phishing Scams

Every year, holiday season calls for explosion of spam, scam and a wide range of security threats. This year, a holiday themed email scam targeted customers of retail giants. Especially when customers were frequently using those stores to place orders – one of those hapless victims are shoppers of Costco.

Costco email scam

One holiday shopper of Costco have almost fallen for the prey of Costco email scam as she used both online and local retail stores and trusted the brand. Marianne Bartley, the shopper, revealed that "Costco's a very reputable company. I believe in them so I almost didn't think twice" when the email scam hit her inbox. The email stated that the company has spotted an issue with the order of delivery as the address mentioned for home delivery is incorrect. She continued with "They were going to refund me, but if I didn't do it within a week then I would be fined 21 percent" which triggered her suspicion.

The major aspect which prompted the seeds of suspicion was the language error she spotted in the mail. As she couldn’t believe which she read, she considered rereading over and over again. She realized that the grammar of the email was not correct and such incorrect language problem was unlikely from reputed brand as Costco. She said that the language grammatically was not quite right. It didn't ring true and I had to reread it."

Do not disclose your contact details

The holiday email scam also threatened to fine her with 21% of the total order amount if she would not fill out the form and furnish her contact details. Hence, she called out Costco customer service department. The national customer service of Costco clearly warned that such mails are ‘phishing scams’ and need to be deleted immediately.

"If you received an email concerning a delivery failure or cancellation: immediately delete the e-mail and do not reply. This is a phishing scam and was not sent by Costco. Costco is not affiliated with the e-mail in any way."

Hence, be prepared and refrain from falling to such lures being targeted at holiday shoppers of reputed retail giants.  

Chances of top Malware to hit SA is high in 2013

Soon after the death of former South African president Nelson Mandela, millions of people across the world shared messages expressing their grief on the social networking websites like Facebook and Twitter. But, what came as a shock is the news of cyber criminals trying to exploit people through e-mail and text messages to offer target cash for services or a business venture under Nelson Mandela’s name.  

The computer users should be careful as the hackers might try to exploit any major event to steal personal and financial information of the user. They might send e-mail or text messages from fake “distant Mandela relative” offering target cash to the people by asking their personal details. Such messages could be spam or might have malware attached to it.

As per a survey conducted by O+K Research, spam is the most common problem of computer users and about 68 % of people are concerned about unsolicited mail that increase the chances of virus infection. Also, these days more and more spammers have started exploiting people on social networking sites.

As per managing director BulkSMS.com Dr. Pieter Streicher, the social networking sites are not use to spamming and that you see a lot of them on forums on the Internet. For example, people are discussing something and suddenly someone post an unrelated comment along with an advert. Such activities are part of scams.

According to another survey conducted by researcher Giovane Cesar Moreira Moura in 2013, almost 50 % of spam was limited to 20 ISPs. One of the typical scams that hit South Africa in 2103 was a message from Sars that says that a taxpayer received substantial payment and the same was link to a malicious website that steal credit card information of users.

How Keyword Based Blocking: An ideal way to prevent kids from getting exposed to objectionable stuff on the Internet?

You cannot keep your kids away from the Internet for long. We all know that kids spend good time on the Internet. But, do you also know that they can even come across certain websites or contents that they shouldn't be viewing? No matter how hard you try to spy on their Internet activities, you cannot prevent them from accidentally clicking on a suspicious link or browsing through sites with indecent content.

It is easy for me to say all this, as I am also one of you. It has not been more than a week when I saw my kid going through stuffs that I specifically asked him not to. I was shocked to see him browse through sites that kids his age shouldn't be doing. I asked myself how can this happen or where did I lack? Then I comforted myself saying that it’s not that late after all. You too can prevent your kids from such incidents by using the Keyword Based Blocking feature to block objectionable content from appearing in the online search.

 Keyword Based Blocking is a brilliant way of customizing the online accessibility of your kids. You can use this feature to block keywords associated with particular websites or content that you don’t want to display in the online search results while your kids are working on it. At the same time, with this feature you can also limit your searches, preferring only the relevant content to display.

You simply need to choose a keyword that you want to block such as ‘adult’, and leave the rest on your software. It will then block all the URLs having ‘adult’ keyword. URLs having blocked keywords will not be displayed in the search result.

At the same time, it is also recommended not to do over blocking or under blocking of the content as it will either block all the content related to the blocked keyword or will not even block the content that you want to.

There are several good PC security solutions that offer the Keyword-based blocking feature. It is available with the TechGenie software program too. Install this software on your PC now to explore the benefits that come along with this feature. 

How Firewall Can Take Care of Your Security Concerns?

One of the biggest threats while you are connected to Internet or a network is unauthorized users’ access. As soon as a computer is connected to a network or Internet, it is exposed to malicious users and programs which can crash or corrupt hard disk content, exploit CPU resources and disable security software. At times, such attacks can be more detrimental that it may cause physical damages to an equipment connected to the PC. That’s when a firewall plays pivotal role by standing between the network or the Internet and the computer. The firewall allows and disallows connections on the basis of predetermined set of rules set by users. Hence, installing firewall is necessary to protect vital and sensitive information from being exposed to malicious users or network.

So, what does a firewall do?

Security threats are evolving to be stealthier and more sophisticated; that’s why firewalls are designed to be more robust to take care of changing security concerns. Major functions of firewall include

• Hiding internal network addresses
• Distinguishing a trusted network and a protected zone between the Internet and a network wherein it can place email and web servers. 
• Executes pre-defined security policies
• Reporting security threats and suspicious activities
• Carries out gateway defense

With an antivirus installed on a computer, do you need Firewall?

Firewalls are designed to provide first-line of protection which works alongside an antivirus. But, remember, firewall is a not a substitute of an antivirus since traditional firewalls have some limitations; traditional firewalls cannot prevent cannot work in many areas of security concerns including viruses, Trojan horse, keyloggers, spyware and adware, worms, emails containing phishing and spam attacks and linked contained in those mail messages. That’s why you need antivirus which provides total combined security of a firewall protection as well as the protection of antimalware, antispyware, anti-rootkit, browser protection plus additional support of parental control and antispam.