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What is 'Phishing' and how can I avoid it?
'Phishing' is the system some computer scammers use to steal personal information and passwords. Usually it involves a cleverly disguised email or webpage to fool you into thinking it comes from a legitimate source.
Some of the ways to avoid being phished are to:
Never click on to a link or reply to an email claiming to be from a bank. In almost all circumstances, a bank will call you if they need critical information from you and will identify themselves in a manner that makes it clear that the call is authentic. They will never ask you to update your password through an email by sending it to them, nor will they ever ask you to send through any of your personal details in an email.
Know what your antivirus program is. For most of our customers it is either AVG or Microsoft Security Essentials. These are free programs and are for home use. As such, you never need to supply them with any details for payment, as none is necceasary. If an unfamiliar program asks for payment to update your virus protection or tells you that you have virus's, IGNORE IT, it is fake!
Only upgade programs from the program itself. Most programs these days automatically upgrade themselves or will give you a 'pop-up' to let you know there is an update available. Also, you can normally check for updates by looking under 'help' in the menu bar. Any email letting you know that there is an update available is most likely a scam to steal your details.
Always use legitimate software. Installing illegitimate software not only opens you up to potential law suits, but it can also leave room for confusion for 'phishing' scams to take advantage of. Microsoft will never call or email you to request that you validate or upgrade your product. These companies have no legitimate way to obtain your email address or phone number from their software, so they will never be able to contact you in this manner.
If in doubt, call us! Our staff are always willing and ready to assist you in your queries. We'd much rather perform a remote check of your system to stop the problem from happening, than to have to perform a costly and time consuming clean and recover of your computer / data. Remember, prevention is always better than a cure.
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Windows 7 Service Pack 1 - What's new?
For the computer layman who wants to know what's new in Windows 7 SP1 the quick answer is "not much". Despite it being a large update (~500MB - 900MB), it's mostly just a collection of security and stability updates, with some slight bug fixes thrown in (such as improved HDMI audio stability). For people running Windows Server 2008 R2 (the Server equivilant of Windows 7) on the other hand, the service pack includes some pretty significant new features. The most notable amongst them is the introduction of Dynamic RAM to Hyper-V, which can greatly increase the resources available to you virtual machines. For a full list of changes, the official document can be download here
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Is your data Safe???
Whether you currently backup or not, the new Backoff offsite backup software brings corporate backup technology to the home
and office. Unless you actually transport your backup media away from your computer's location your data is not much safer.
It will probably be affected by the same problems that destroy data on a computer in the first place. For example, flood damage will
surely destroy the data on your computer and the backup device right next to it. Backoff protects your data by automatically sending
it via the internet to a remote location. Your data is obviously password protected first so no one else, not even Backoff themselves,
can read it. If something then happens to your computer, your data is securely stored interstate. That's safely out of harms way.
And retrieving the data is just a couple of clicks away.
You can watch an animation of how Backoff works here. For pricing and more information
go to www.backoff.com.au or call Restart on 03 9528 4200.
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