Martha's Blog

Today I called WalMart.  I know, but I wanted to know if they carried a particular item.

I almost fell out of my chair.  It rang once and a real live person answered!  No horrible automated phone menu! I almost forgot why I called I was so astonished.

Later I called AT&T to add a service to my account. Too bad, I got that horrible automated phone menu that makes me want to jump through the phone line and strangle the jerk that came up with it, if only I knew who it was.

Oh well, can’t have everything, but still I wish ‘customer service’ really meant something. Now it’s all ‘the bottom line’. Customer Service seems to be lip service and not much else any more.  I will say when I finally got a real live person, that person was helpful even though I could tell a lot of the time it was scripted.

Martha

Why is it so important to so many folks to have hundreds of friends on Facebook?

By far the majority of these folks don’t have a clue who all of the ‘friends’ really are and I suspect they don’t care. They just say ‘OK’ and ‘befriend’ anyone who asks.

Case in point.

I think that pretty much says it all.

Martha

I always buy my tax software and complete the return on my computer. I have always felt that online services of any sort are subject to hacking and who knows how these sites are really secure? (OK, I’m slightly paranoid!)

Several years ago I decided to ‘test’ the validity of the figures my purchased software produced, so I signed up online to a well known tax software site and input the data for my return.  Being the paranoid person that I am, all I put in for personal data was my name and email address that was required to signup.  No Social Security number, no address, etc. as I used the ‘fill out later’ option for those requirements. Once I determined my purchased software produced the same figues as the online version, I was finished and never went back to
the online site.

This year my paranoid feelings turned out to be right. I started recieving emails from this tax software company informing me that my electronic returns had been sent.

Now at first I thought this was a clever and well coded phish. It all looked very legitimate except for the fact the name of another person was included in the email. I decided I had better let this company know about the phish.  So I found a contact email and forwarded one of the emails to the company.

I was totally shocked when I received a reply saying the emails were from them! The email wanted me to provide the last four digits of my Social Security number and they would provide more information. Since they didn’t have my Social Security number, that was a bit of a problem.

When I got more emails telling me the returns had been rejected due to some sort of errors I decided to see if I could find a phone number and call these folks.

I spoke to a nice man and explained the problem. He seemed to think that the person who filed the returns had used my email address. Now that explanation seemed to be totally lame (and typical!) as I just can’t believe someone would use another person’s email address for something as important as their tax returns. However he spoke to a supervisor and then he told me I would not receive any more emails from them.

Wrong! I have received at least three emails from them since then and today I got one asking me to ‘Tell Us About Your Recent ‘removed’ Support Experience’ and complete a survey!

This experience has just reinforced my belief that some things are better not done online!

Martha

Be careful when installing some legitmate programs or you may get some stuff you don’t want.

When I installed the latest version of Java on my new laptop, I noticed that I was ‘offered’ Open Office as well. While I have nothing against Open Office, in fact it is a very useful and free office suite, and is installed on another of my computers, if I hadn’t been watching I would have got the download for OO as well and it is a big download.

I like Foxit Reader and I like it much better than the piggy Adobe Reader. But the download wants me to take the Ask toolbar as well and insists I do and not just in one place. To me this is just ‘shady’ practice. I recall another ‘offer‘ that wouldn’t take no for an answer and really made me mad! I am not alone, read Bits From Bill.

Now I read that Symantec is doing the same thing! Here comes the Ask Toolbar again!

Are these reputable companies now forcing unwanted apps on us just to pad their bottom line? You bet, that’s just what they are doing.

I understand when individuals that really need the money use Google Ads and that irritating Intellitxt to help pay the bill for their websites, but for companies like Symantec? Do they need the money that badly?

A word to the wise, unless you want all this ‘value added’ stuff, watch out while installing new apps! Getting to be more dangerous on the ‘net every day.

Martha

I normally do not post virus warnings, as they are generally hoaxes.

However since a lot of people will trust stuff labeled ‘Microsoft’, I deemed it necessary to warn folks about a new or rather updated and renamed, rogue antivirus/antispyware software being offered using Microsoft’s name.

For more information, see this site.

The spyware remover being advertised on this site is SpyHunter. The site owner could be affiliated with SpyHunter and I have done some research about SpyHunter. It is a legitimate program but is not among the top ten rated removers. It also has a name that was once connected with a rogue program that is no longer available. (I suspect they should have checked that out and didn’t.)

There are a number of sites that rate spyware removers, but without knowing whether or not these sites are affiliated with any of the programs it is difficult to decide which is the best.

If you want to check to see if your favorite remover is among the top scanners, here are a couple of sites to check.

Top Ten Reviews

Safer-networking

Just keep your spyware scanners updated and scan frequently to prevent malware from installing, and if a program has a name you think you can trust, check it out first!

Martha

All of us have endured the endless onslaught of Spam for a long time and there doesn’t seem to be an end to it in sight.

In the last few months I am getting ‘invitations’ from people I never heard of to join web sites of dubious value and motives.

First it was the invitation to visit ‘my Refriendz page and see my latest photos.’ I blogged about this a while back.

But now it’s a flood from Refriendz, FriendsClub, Question It, etc and of course Grouply. I expect others will soon follow. It makes no difference, it’s all Spam to me.

I am not sure exactly how these ‘social’ sites work and I really don’t care to find out, other than they annoy folks like me who do not want those spammy emails.

But Grouply really worries me. The concept sounds good, get all of your Groups emails on one web page. There is another way to get them all in one place, folks. Download the messages to an email program or to Gmail! That way you don’t compromise your Yahoo login and password by giving it to some website!

You say, well if some fool wants to give up his or her logging credentials that’s their problem. Guess what, it could be your problem and my problem.  All it would take is for some sneaky soul to scrape his Grouply site to a blog and your email address and mine are exposed to the world.

If you have a Yahoo Group and you don’t want your Group posts on Grouply you can stop it. Just use the information here to keep your members from belonging to Grouply if you wish.  Tell Grouply to leave your Group alone

Once you enter your Group’s owner email, you get a code to enter and then you can set the controls to allow or prevent Grouply from taking control of your Group.

Now Yahoo is trying to get in on the invitations. They call theirs ‘Connections’. In all fairness, they don’t attempt to have users send an invite to everyone in their address book, but some of these ‘Connections’ are a tad dubious.

I just wish these sites would leave those invitations, connections or what ever they want to call them, alone and not keep adding to the Spam in our Inboxes!

Martha

I really like to receive newsletters; at least some of them.  At one time I did think about doing a newsletter, but decided against it because knowing me, after awhile I would just stop sending them.  If I had folks that had subscribed, I like to think this might have disappointed them.

I subscribe to a number of newsletters that I really like.  If you are at all curious which ones you can read about it on the newsletter page on Martha’s Web. I try to keep this page updated as all good things come to an end and so do newsletters.

Another reason I don’t write a newsletter is because I don’t want to give wrong information about stuff. In a newsletter (not on my newsletter page) I read some stuff about how to fix a problem with Outlook. Now I am no expert by any means, but this was basic stuff and the ‘fix’ was totally wrong!

I sometimes get really annoyed about folks who continually bad-mouth products I use and really like. I have discontinued two newsletters for that very reason. One insinuated if I use Microsoft Front Page to make my website I have ‘bad’ code on the site. I would challenge that person to find the ‘bad’ code on my site! True I remade it using Expression Web, but it didn’t have bad code before then. I have seen bad code on sites made with DreamWeaver which is what the newsletter editor was saying everyone should use. Another kept bad-mouthing Microsoft Vista to the point I just unsubbed for that reason alone.  These folks are ‘trashees‘, and so I left their cyber missives.

Most of the time I learn good stuff from my newsletters. But one thing I have noticed; they are all trying to get me to buy stuff. Generally it is software, usually security software. I don’t mind that as everyone needs to pay the bills. I just ignore most of it as I have all the software I need. I do notice the fact that some of them are insinuating what I have is not the best available.

Again, they are just trying to make some $$ but what they are pushing may NOT be the best! So while I really enjoy my newsletters I am aware that a really good newsletter takes a lot of time and work to keep up with new trends, new and good software, accurate information about ‘fixes’ and it needs to go out to subscribers on a regular basis. (There are some exceptions to the regular basis.  If the subscriber knows up front the newsletter will arrive once in awhile and not on a schedule, then forewarned is forearmed.)

Since lately I can’t even post on a regular basis to this blog, I suspect my decision to not have a newsletter is the right decision.

Martha

I never cease to be amazed at how stupid some people can be or at least how stupid their remarks can be.

I still take my local newspaper although I am not sure for how much longer. Every Saturday there is a section called ‘Cheers and Jeers’. Folks write in to ‘cheer’ someone for a good deed or a happy thing and some write in to ‘jeer’ someone for a bad or stupid thing.

Today there were a few ‘jeers’ that fall into the ‘where have you been hiding, under a rock?’ category.

One numskull is jeering the airlines for ‘price gouging’. I guess this turkey does’t have a car or he would know gas is way expensive these days. Then again, maybe he hasn’t figured out that airplanes need fuel to fly!

Then there was the guy who wants the car companies to quit running ads and ruining his TV programs. Guess he hasn’t figured out those ads are what makes his viewing programs for free! Where has he been hiding? Ads have been on TV for over 50 years, has he just now noticed? (I will admit some of those ads are obnoxious, but most TV remotes do have a mute button!)

Now comes the corker, the guy who wants our elected officials to put a limit on how many babies people can have, just like China does. I wonder if he would like to have a Communist government like China does. We have ‘over-population’ according to him. I suspect he doesn’t like kids.

Some days I just need to blow off some steam; this is one of those days.

Martha