Martha's Blog

When you joined Facebook, (or ANY other social network site) did you give them the password to your email? Why for heaven’s sake did you do that? Did you actually want Facebook to send an invitation to your bank? Did you want them to send an invitation to anyone and everyone in your address book? (And remember, some email programs will save every email address for anyone you ever sent an email including replies.)

Oh, you didn’t know they would do that?  What exactly did you think would happen when they said ‘Find friends using your email account?’ Did you think they would know exactly who your friends are and wouldn’t send invites to anyone you didn’t want to receive an invitation? Really, did you think that?

I suspect you didn’t think at all, you just blindly followed and gave them your password. For shame! Don’t you know you shouldn’t give your email password to anyone?  Even your ISP won’t ask you for your email password!  Your bank, your credit card company, Paypal, etc., none of these will ask you for your email password, so why on earth would you give a stranger your password?

Oh, you say, Facebook isn’t a stranger.  Really? Do you know who lurks behind the site that is asking for this information? I bet you don’t!

If you did fall for that ‘Find friends using your email account’ and now that everyone in your address book has been spammed at least once, all those
folks that didn’t join you on Facebook are going to spammed again to remind them of the ‘invitation’ to join you. This fact makes me wonder about the
validity of the blurb below the box to enter your password.  You know, the one that says ‘we won’t store your password’.  Then how do they manage to send out ‘reminder’ spam?

I would guess it’s because your password is still there. I would remove it if I were you.  Then you should go to where ever your email is hosted and change the password for your email account. And for goodness sake, don’t ever give away your email password again! Ever!

Martha

Why Firefox is no longer my default browser. I still use Firefox (I really need some of those extensions) but all of those ‘Firefox cannot find the server’ messages when going to websites finally just made me decide to make Opera default. Opera finds those sites just fine.

Sometimes I had to press the Retry button 3 times to get to what I know is a valid site.

At first I thought it was just my computer, but then I tried on other computers and it is the same. Then I found I am not the only one with this problem.

I looked on the Moilla forum for answers and all I got was ‘you must have spyware’,  it’s your firewall’ or some such nonsense. Sorry, I think it’s a bug in Firefox that somehow is overlooked by all of those folks that contribute. Too many people are experiencing this problem. (Some from as far back as 2005) If it is a security thing, why doesn’t it happen for all sites?

Even some Linux users have this problem.

You know what? Opera is faster and renders pages much better.

Martha

I just hate updating Word Press!

The newer versions of WP are supposed to have this automatic update feature, but it never works for me. Once upon a time there was a plugin for automatic update and that worked pretty well for awhile, but then it stopped working and the fun? began for me.

First I try to get it to automatically backup. It goes as far as downloading the new version and then it just stops. No more, nada. (I keep hoping, but it just won’t work)  At least I don’t have to update my database version every time!

I backup the site, verify the backup, de-activate the plugins and download the new version. Then I have to hunt for the instructions because I have this memory problem and follow the instructions all the while hoping it will work and I won’t have to use that backup. So far I haven’t had to use the backup, but you never know.

Then I have to remember to re-activate my plugins, check every thing to make sure all is ok and say a silent prayer.

So if anyone has an idea why that automatic thing doesn’t work, please let me know!

Martha

In case you are sitting on a sunny beach somewhere and you haven’t read any news, just about everywhere in the US is covered by an arctic blast and most of us here in the Texas and other southern states are freezing our you-know-whats off.

I read it’s darn cold in Europe as well.

I haven’t felt this cold in many a year! It’s just downright cold and there are no other words for it. I want this arctic blast to go back to the Arctic.

It’s really hard for me to think we have global warning when the weather is like this!

When it’s this cold I want to do is stay at home where it is reasonably warm. But then my little dog wants to go for a walk and so my parka that hasn’t been used in a long time comes out of the closet and away we go.

Martha

Word Press has a new version and so I decided to upgrade. Everything seemed to go fine until I reached the last step, upgrading the database. This new version requires MySQL 4.1.2 or greater (old requirement was 4.0) Now a techie I am not. So I hop to my host’s control panel and start searching for how to upgrade my WP database.

Greek! It might as well be Greek, ’cause I don’t understand this stuff.

I call the help line for my host and get a very helpful person who is trying his best to help me, but he must be in another country, because I just can’t understand what he is telling me.  Finally I mange to get most of what he is saying.  I create a new database and start the export from the old database to the new database, but the in the last step I get an error and there I am lost.  So the nice tech tells me he will send me an email with instructions on how to fix the error and now I wait for the email. (I know he knew I would never understand the verbal instructions!)

Sure enough, the email comes through with the instructions. Fortunately for me my programmer son is home and I turn this over to him. He fixes the database and now the export from the old database to the new database goes through with no errors.

So now all I had to do was update the config file and now I have the new version up and running.

I did learn something, but I hope I don’t have to do this again for awhile!

Martha

I use Secunia to test my computer for insecure applications. I had a question about something so joined their online forum to see if there was an answer there. I went through the usual hoopla when joining a forum and at last got to the Congratulations screen telling me to ‘login using the form’ below.

Except there was no form below. (In Firefox, my default browser) So I reloaded the screen.  Nope, no form.  On a hunch I opened IE and loaded the same screen.  Yep, there was the form.

Now while this is normal for some websites, the funny thing is, Secunia reports that Internet Explorer (both regular and 64 bit) are insecure and there is no fix!

Now since they know IE is insecure, wouldn’t you think their page would work in another browser like Firefox?!!!!  (But it did work in Opera!)

Martha

It’s that time again, upgrade your WordPress blog. I don’t know why the automatic upgrade doesn’t work for me any more, but it doesn’t so I had to do the manual upgrade. Again.

I just panic until the upgrade is completed. What if it doesn’t work? What if I have to do everything all over again!!! While I don’t post to this blog as often as I should, I still want to keep it!

From one upgrade to the next, I go through the ‘try and try again to do the automatic thing’ and then after about four tries I give in and do the manual upgrade.

Keeps me on my toes! Literally!

Martha

This program is not installed on my computer, yet Windows update showed I needed update KB973709 which is an update for Microsoft Office Visio Viewer 2007.

Thinking that it might be related to another MS Office product I selected all the Office updates to install and all of the Office updates failed. I tried several times and the updates always failed. So I downloaded each of the updates and installed them manually.  All installed except the KB973709, the Visio Viewer update. A search for the Visio Viewer confirmed it is not installed on my computer.

While searching for each update I found numerous entries for the failure of updates to install and they were all the same updates as the failures were for me.

Microsoft must have goofed on this update!

Fortunately I never install the Office updates when I install the Windows updates. I always install the Windows updates first. After they have installed and rebooted the system, I then go for the Office updates. The Windows updates installed just fine.

In order for Windows update to keep nagging me to install this update I had to hide it.  In the future I will check out those updates more carefully before installing them.  This ‘goof’ cost me a lot of frustration and time.

Martha

For safer surfing, better use Firefox with NoScript installed.

I have read numerous emails from folks that get one of these scareware alerts. Most of them are wanting to know how to remove it as their security protect doesn’t help.

Today I experienced first hand one of these ‘fake alert’ scareware/malwares. I like to read the comics online and have a few sites bookmarked. As soon as I clicked on one of them the ‘fun’ began.

My browser opened full screen (which is an annoyance) and then I got the alert telling me ‘your computer is infected!’ It appeared to be scanning something, however I know it wasn’t scanning my computer.  These malware writers really know how to scare folks. The alert looked real and if I hadn’t known about these scammy ‘alerts’, I might have been hooked into buying thus infecting my computer with more spyware!

Firefox had opened a new tab from a site, isoft-online. (I would not go there if I were you!) The alert was there, all but screaming at me. I could not close the tab and I could not close Firefox. My ESET flashed that a threat had been quarantined, but I still could not close Firefox.

I brought up the Task Manager and closed Firefox. When I reopened Firefox there it was again. Task Manager again closed it. The next time I opened Firefox it asked me if I wanted to restore the previous session and of course I clicked ‘no’.

Lesson learned, install NoScript on Firefox.

To test, I went back to the infected site. Something tried to load besides the site, but was unsuccessful. I am still going to update my spyware programs and run indepth scans, just to be sure there are no infections.

I checked the quarantine logs to see what was blocked and it was listed as ‘NSIS/TrojanDownloader.FakeAlert.C trojan. You just can’t be too careful on the Internet these days.

Martha

We changed our phone number recently to ‘unlisted’.  Unfortunately for us, the new number once belonged to some folks who didn’t pay their bills. For some of the calls we’ve manged to convince the callers that the debts don’t belong to us and they have stopped calling.

One type of call I really hate are the jerks that give you the option to ‘Opt out’, but you have to listen to the entire call to get the option to press ‘2′ or another number to opt out. Those calls ensure that I will never under any circumstances use their product/service or whatever they are trying to sell.

But the worst offenders are the ‘robo’ calls, especially the robo calls using spoofed phone numbers! These perps belong to the same class of email scammers that fill our inboxes with spam!

I keep getting calls from folks trying to get me to lower my interest rate on my credit cards. I just need to ‘press 1 now to speak to a representative’.These calls are filling my answer machine so I decided to see if I could ‘opt out and answered a call. The robot went through
the spiel and I patiently waited for the call to get to an option for opting out. However I waited in vain! Instead the annoying person repeated three times ‘Press 1 now!, each time getting louder and more annoying.

I decided to call the number displayed on the caller ID and was greeted with the message ‘your call cannot be completed as dialed’. So what is going on? Is this really a legitimate call for me to lower my interest rate? Nope, it is a scam.  They will try to sucker me into paying for some scammy service that doesn’t really exist or they just want my credit card details so they can steal them and rack up a lot of fraudulent charges.

So from now on when the phone rings if I don’t recognize the number, the answer machine will just get busy. Or maybe I’ll just turn the sucker off!

Martha