It’s important for all of us to be aware of scams. Some scams are very clever and easy to fall victim to. Knowing about these scams helps us recognize them and avoid falling victim to them.

So, without further ado, Computer Troubleshooters presents the top ten scams.

Number 10:

You get a message on a social networking site like Facebook, Twitter, or MySpace. The message appears to be from one of your online friends saying they are in trouble and need money sent to a specified address.

What has happened is that someone has hacked into your friend’s account on one of the social networking sites like Facebook. The message you got was not really from your friend.

If you get a message like this, call your friend to make sure it’s really them before you send money.

Number 9:

You get an e-mail that predicts the result of a sports event like a football game. The next day, the prediction comes true. Over the next few weeks, you get similar e-mails correctly predicting the outcome of other football games. You then get an e-mail saying that you can purchase future predictions saying you can use the information to gamble and win a lot of money.

What has happened is statistics. These crooks send out e-mails to a large number of people with different results. Statistically, one of the e-mails will be right. Because of the massive amount of e-mails they send out, it still ends up being a good number of people who get the e-mails with the correct “predictions” in them. So they really aren’t accurately predicting the results.

Don’t answer, reply to, or send money in response to any e-mail and unless you are absolutely sure that e-mail is from someone you know and trust, or from a company you know and trust.

Number 8:

You receive an e-mail, phone call, or letter offering assistance through these hard economic times. The assistance comes in the form of mortgage foreclosure rescue, loans, debt consolidation loans, assistance with repossession, and offers to fix your credit rating.

Although there are legitimate companies who offer debt consolidation loans, most of these services are scams. Avoid them.

Number 7:

You get a phone call from someone saying that your granddaughter has been in a traffic accident. Cries for help can sometimes be heard in the background and the caller often screams as well stating that your granddaughter needs money sent immediately to cover the medical costs.

If someone you don’t know calls asking for money on behalf of one of your friends or relatives, verify before you do anything. Insist on talking to your relative or call other relatives to verify the story.

Number 6:

A customer wants to overpay using a cashier’s check and may ask  you to give the excess back in change. This type of scam is usually done for large purchases, not small ones.

What happens is that the cashier’s check turns out to be stolen or forged. Not only are you out the money for the product and the product itself, but the change you gave them as well.

If someone pays with a cashier’s check, make sure it’s for the exact amount they owe. If possible, wait to ship the product until you have money in hand.

Number 5:

You purchase a product or service either online, on the phone, or through the mail. What you thought was a one-time payment is charged to you every month. A related scam involves when you sign up for a limited trial and are required to give a credit card “for verification only”.

Basically, don’t give your credit card to any vendor without checking them out first. Type the name of the company into Google and see what you get back. There are lots of consumer sites on the internet.

Number 4:

You get a phone call from someone who says there has been a security risk on your account. The caller then conferences in your real bank whose representative asks you for sensitive information like pin number, account number, etc. The bank says everything is fine and the call is over.

What you didn’t know was that the personal who originally called was still on the phone and heard all of that sensitive information you gave your bank. Now the scammer has that information.

Number 3:

You get an e-mail with an attachment. The e-mail could say all sorts of different things. It could appear to be from a company or a friend. The e-mail may not even mention the attachment. You open the attachment and nothing happens. You go about your business.

When you opened the attachment, you infected your computer. Don’t open attachments to e-mails. Even if an attachment is a picture or video, it can be dangerous.

Number 2:

You purchase something on ebay or some other auction site. You use an escrow service which is supposed to make the transaction safer. Buyers send the money for the item to the escrow service who holds the money until the buyer receives the merchandise. Then the escrow service sends the money to the seller once they get the go ahead from the buyer. If the buyer does not receive the merchandise, or there is something wrong with the merchandise, the escrow service can return the money to the buyer, thus protecting the buyer from fraudulent sellers. There are many reputable escrow services, but some are not reputable. The fraudulent ones never send the money to the seller or return it to the buyer. These fake escrow services come and go quickly.

If you are going to use an escrow service, check them out carefully and make sure they have been in business for a while.

And the number 1 scam is:

You get an e-mail from a financial institution of some sort. These often tell you about a problem with your account, a security breach, password reset, or something like that. They provide a link to make it convenient for you to go to their website and fix the problem. You click on the link, login, provide the information asked for and you’re done.

However, the link that was in the e-mail didn’t go to your financial institution. It went to a website that was made to look just like your financial institution’s website. The login information and any other information you typed in is now in the hands of criminals who can use that information to steal the money you had in that financial institution, or use it for identity theft. This is called a phish.

To avoid this, do not click on any links in an e-mail, even if it appears to be from someone you do business with. When you get one of these e-mails, simply pull up your web browser and manually go to your financial institution’s website. Most likely you will find there is not problem with your account.

We hope this has been helpful to you.

Share on Facebook

Sometimes it seems like we are always warning you about all of the risks and dangers involving your computer, primarily the internet. We don’t want to scare people away from the internet or make them too paranoid. However, it’s healthy to be a little paranoid when it comes to online computing.

Something you should be aware of is that organized crime has begun to get into cyber theft. They aren’t going after your computer, though. They are going after big companies and financial institutions. Banks, brokers, cellular providers, utility companies, and more. The list goes on. It doesn’t matter if you have accessed any of these companies over the internet or not. These companies store information about you on their servers and that’s the information that is being targeted.

If the danger is not on your computer or how you use your computer, how can you protect yourself? Keep a close watch on your credit card statements and bank accounts. You should look over all of the charges on any bill you get to make sure there aren’t any extra charges that shouldn’t be there. If you see any anomalies, report them right away.

Share on Facebook

Screen, or display resolution is a term used to describe a setting in Windows that specifies how things will be displayed on  your computer screen. It specifies the size and quality of what is displayed on the screen. It is specified in two numbers. Height and width. These numbers are each in pixels.

A common screen resolution for a screen that is not a wide screen monitor is 1024 x 768. 1024 is the width while 768 is the height. Widescreen monitors are wider, so the first number is even bigger in comparison to a non-widescreen monitor. 1440 x 900 is a typical screen resolution for a widescreen monitor.

When it comes to display resolution, the higher the numbers, the smaller things will be, but the more stuff will fit on the screen at one time. And the lower the numbers, the bigger things will be and the less stuff will fit on the screen and you will find yourself scrolling left and right and up and down a lot.

If your eyesight isn’t too good, or you find yourself straining to read what’s on your computer screen, try lowering  your screen resolution. For example, if your screen resolution is 1024×768, try lowering it to 800×600. You can always change it back if you don’t like it.

Something else to be aware of is that just because Windows will let you change your screen resolution to a really high number, doesn’t mean your monitor can handle that resolution. If you change the resolution to something and your monitor goes black, that means your monitor can’t handle that resolution. But don’t worry. Just wait 15 seconds and it will revert back and you can try another resolution.

The flat screen monitors we have today usually have what is called a native resolution. This is the recommended resolution. It doesn’t mean you have to use that resolution. It just means that what the monitor was designed for. It will still work at other resolutions.

If you select the wrong resolution it can make things look distorted. Words and pictures might look stretched or squeezed. Or you may not be able to see everything on the screen.

To change the screen resolution on your computer, use the following steps:

XP

o   Click on Start and then Control Panel

o   Double-click on Display.

o   Click on the settings tab

o   Move the slider to the desired screen resolution and click apply.

o   Windows will change the resolution and ask you to confirm you want to keep it. If you want to keep it, click yes. If the screen went black or is too distorted to read, just wait and Windows will set it back to what it was before if you do not confirm.

Vista

o   Click on the button formally known as start and then click on Control Panel

o   Type the word: display

o   Now click on “Change display settings”

o   Move the slider to the desired screen resolution and click apply.

o   Windows will change the resolution and ask you to confirm you want to keep it. If you want to keep it, click yes. If the screen went black or is too distorted to read, just wait and Windows will set it back to what it was before if you do not confirm.

It is possible to change a setting called Font Size. For example, if you have trouble reading what’s on the screen, you can keep the same screen resolution and make your font size bigger. However, we do not recommend using this setting because it totally messes up the formatting of most websites and computer applications. The best way is to just change your screen resolution.

Share on Facebook

Here are some tips and tricks for using your web browser. All examples are shown using Internet Explorer, but most work with other browsers like FireFox and Chrome as well.

When you want to go to a specific website and you know the address of the website, type the address in the address bar on your browser, not the search box on your search engine. Here’s an example. Let’s say you want to go to our web page and you know that our web page is ct-cp.com.  Now take a look at this screenshot:

This is a partial screenshot of Internet Explorer currently on Google. Look at the top and find where it says: http://www.google.com. This is the address of the current web page you are looking at. If you want to go to a specific page, click once on that address with your mouse. This will highlight the entire address. Now you can type the address you want to go to. As you start typing, whatever is highlighted will be replaced by what you type. You only need to type “ct-cp.com”. You don’t have to type the http or the colon, slashes, or the www. In fact, on 99% of the web pages, you never need to type www. After typing the webpage you want to go to, hit the enter key on your keyboard and it will go to that web page.

If you were to type the address into the google search box, you would get search results that would include the page you want to go to and you would have to click on it to go to it. It just saves time and clicks to enter it directly into the address bar instead of the search box. Of course, if you don’t know the address of the website you want to go to, you would certainly want to use the search box.

Speaking of the search box, you don’t have to go to google.com to do a google search. If you are using Internet Explorer 7 or later, you can click in the box in the upper right hand corner of Internet Explorer, type in your search terms, and hit enter on your keyboard to search for them. This saves the step of having to go to google.com to search for something. Note that the search box can be set to use most any search engine. You can change which search engine is used by clicking on that little down arrow to the right of the search box.

If you go to a website and want to remember the address, you can save it as a favorite by clicking on the Gold Star where it says “Favorites” on the left side of Internet Explorer and choosing “Add to favorites”. Once you have a website saved in your favorites, if you want to go to it, just click on favorites, find that website in the list, and click on it.

On the screenshot above, look just to the right of the Favorites. See where it says LogMeIn and FaceBook? These are favorites that I have placed on the favorites bar. If you have a few websites you go to frequently, you can put them here which makes them quicker and easier to access. In this example, if I want to go to FaceBook, I just click where it says FaceBook on the favorites bar.

If you have clicked a lot of links and have drilled down into a web page, you can use the back button to go back to the last web page. If you want to go several pages back,  you can click the little down arrow to the right of the back and forward buttons. It will give you a list of the last 10 web pages you have been on, including the one you are on now. Click on the one you want to go to and that saves you having to hit the back button several times and waiting for each page to load. This is also helpful if you are trapped on a web page. Some web pages try to trap you on their website. If you it back, it stays on the web page you are on. But if you use the list I just told you about it, you can get back to where you were.

Tabs are another very handy feature. In the screenshot above, look just below the favorites bar. There are 3 tabs in this example, but you can have as many tabs as you want. In this example, the first tab is Google, the second is ct-cp.com (our web page), and the third is Microsoft’s website. I can switch to any of these by just clicking on the tab. I can add a new tab by clicking on the small blank tab just to the right of the last tab.

What I find is the most helpful way to use tabs is when searching. Open Internet Explorer and do a search. Normally what you might do is click on a search result, wait for it to load, look at it, click the back button, and then click another search result. This works fine, but it’s not very efficient. There is a cool way you can use tabs to make this much more efficient. After getting your initial search results, instead of clicking on each search result you are interested in, hold the control key down on your keyboard and click them while holding it down. This will go to that search result in a new tab leaving your search results in the first tab. Scan the search results and control-click all of the results you are interested in. You can do this on as many as you want, but if you get more than five to ten tabs, it gets kind of hard to manage.

While  you are control-clicking, those websites are loading up in each tab. So you didn’t have to sit there and wait for it to load. Once you get 5-10 tabs, start clicking on the tabs from left to right to check them out. If you don’t’ like it, close that tab and go to the next one. If you aren’t sure, leave that tab and go on to the next one. If you want to go back to your search results, just click back on the first tab.

Have you ever gone to a page and you got the page not found error? It could just be a glitch. Hit the refresh button and see if the page loads. If it doesn’t, hit the back button and go somewhere else. The refresh button is two arrows going in a circle just to the right of the address bar. Or you can press F5 on your keyboard.

Share on Facebook