Tips

Chrome Windows 10 Notifications – Here’s how to make them stop

Posted on by claritech
More frequently, I've logged into user computers and notice that their right side Windows 10 notification bar is inundated with notifications. A common complaint is that they don't know how they got there, they are incredibly annoying, and they don't know how to get rid of them. The origin of these annoying notifications is usually by visiting a site with Chrome. Other brow...
Read More

It’s coming from inside the house!

Posted on by claritech
Even if you've never seen (or heard of) the 1979 horror classic, When a Stranger Calls, you likely have heard the iconic line, "the call is coming from inside the house". This line evokes instant fear in the recipient and is the same fear used in a classic email scam. Fake emails have been around for at least three decades. Even today, it is easy to spoof someone's ema...
Read More

Gone Phishing

Posted on by claritech
Today I witnessed first hand a new threat that has successfully infiltrated a friend of mine: a DocuSign phishing email. Hackers have stolen the customer email database of DocuSign, the company that allows companies to electronically sign documents. These criminals are now sending phishing emails that look exactly like the real DocuSign ones, but they try to trick you in one...
Read More

Ransomware Alert – What you should know

Posted on by claritech
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY: Yet unknown cyber criminals have taken an NSA zero-day threat and weaponized a ransomware strain so that it replicates across networks without user intervention. There is a 2-month old Microsoft patch that urgently needs to be applied if you have not done that already. For older obsolete systems, such as Windows XP, the patch was just realized this weekend...
Read More

Laptop Buyers Guide – April 2017

Posted on by claritech
  I often get asked, "What laptop should I buy?".  In response to that, I wrote a quick and dirty buyers guide that I've emailed out to a few individuals. For choosing a laptop, here's my general criteria: Models My bias tends to be with Dell. Dell Latitudes and XPS models have worked well for me in the past. Lately, however, I've had bad experiences with the...
Read More

It’s 2009, do you know where your data is?

Posted on by claritech
  In this post I want to talk a little about our data.  By our data I mean any information that is unique to us: files we've created that can contain personal or important information that we may want to keep private and/or that we want to have backed up.  Examples include your email files, your photos, tax files, resume, letters, school papers, even your MP3 files. One of th...
Read More

The Trouble with Untrusted Sites

Posted on by claritech
  It seems that rogue web sites will always be a part of our daily lives.  You run into them most often when searching for a particular topic and click on one of the listed sites from your search:  suddenly your browser takes on a life of its own, spawning additional browsers and taking you places you'd rather not go.  More often than not, these sites will start a fake antivir...
Read More

PayPal and two-factor authentication

Posted on by claritech
I've been a huge proponent of two-factor (something you know and something you have/are) authentication for several years now.  I understand that nothing is 100% secure, but I haven't seen anything better come along.  I'd like to see more services provide this type of authentication option.  PayPal has a feature called Security Key that allows you to add two-factor authenticat...
Read More