Computer Support Blog

Have you ever received one of those emails from a loved one with a link to an e-card that they have generated for you? Well cyber crooks are now trying to take advantage of you in this way as well.

Currently there is an spam email out there that appears to come from a secret admirer in an attempt to obtain your identity and personal information. Thousands of people’s logons, credit card numbers, and online banking details must have already been collected.

The attack encourages you to click a link in an email that takes you to a site to “collect” your e-card. The actual website that you are taken to installs a key logger on your system. A key logger is a program that transparently logs all your keyboard strokes and sends the information to a central database on the internet somewhere, or just locally on your machine. Obviously the person that has configured the log can then collect all your computer usage and passwords and use them as though they where you.

Windows users who have installed the MS06-014 patch, released in May, are not vulnerable to this. So please make sure you have installed all your critical windows updates via the windows update link on your start menu. Or you may have them set to be installed automatically my recommended advise.

This type of cyber crime is referred to as “phishing”. I would also recommend that you search Google for Spam and phishing and try to get a better appreciation of these types of threats. Always treat email as a potential threat to obtain information about you or that it may contain some sort of damaging attack at your computer.

Matthew Aylard - CSA

For someone to move from being a basic/casual user of IT to being competent, this requires IT skills which take you beyond traditional technical training to training that is designed with your work environment in mind.

During recent IT workshops in Milton Keynes, London and in the North-West of England, aimed at helping to support the effective IT use of people using computers at work, we notice that the following features and services of Office and Windows are underutilised or are frustrating to the user - basic Keyboard shortcuts, to avoid using the mouse; lack of awareness of shortcuts in Outlook - for example, for managing emails and appointments and insufficient familiarity with styles and templates in Word to save time formatting documents which are regularly used. Read the rest of this entry »

A lot of time and money these days is invested in protecting your business from SPAM by your IT support people and it is good news to hear the the LAW is getting more pro active in dealing with the people that create it.

The federal trade commission has just shut down four illegal Internet spam operations.

They were ordered to pay £200,000 GBP.

The law is finally changing and been used against companies like this now. They were sending e-mail that offered the opportunity to “date lonely wives” and that violated nearly every provision of the Can-Spam Act, the FTC said in a statement on Thursday.

There has been a new flaw discovered in Internet Explorer Versions 5.01, all 6 versions and Excel which could allow someone to hijack a Windows PC. The flaw is due to an ActiveX control related to Multimedia Features and can be exploited by visiting a rigged website. The issue is deemed to be “critical” and although Microsoft have recently issued some security updates it does not cover this flaw. They generally release security updates for their products every month and how to us this vulnerability was exposed just after these updates, which is no coincidence. There are no known sites yet using this flaw to take control and data from your windows machines. Microsoft is not aware of any attacks that attempt to exploit the new IE vulnerability at this time, it said.  So remember to be very careful opening unsolicited attachments from both known and unknown sources or links to unknown website that we can not protect you from. Hopefully patches will be released soon. Remember its not because Microsoft products are badly made, just that people know if they find a “hole” in Microsoft product that “hackers” can take advantage of, they will be playing to a larger audience. If Open Office was as widely used then there would be more vulnerabilities discovered with that products as well.  People/ Organisations who discover these vulnerabilities and expose them to the Internet before allowing Microsoft to make amendments are the real problem and like to cause chaos.  

It is important that you take action and take more care about opening email attachments or visit strange websites. If it sounds suspicious it most likely is.