Wednesday, September 21, 2005

Alert: New Phishing Emails Threat

BREAKING NEWS: Analysts Find New Microsft Office 12 a Waste of Money

There is an email floating around out there with the above provocative title. It's a phishing email scam. The content is written as if it's a news story but it's not. It's written by a man whom Microsoft ticked off when they successfully prosecuted him for spamming. Obviously he's back in business and this time the target of his flames is Microsoft itself. He's also after your credit card numbers, email address and other personal information.

There are two clues that this email is a scam:

1. The email is from you and to you. This means that the real addressing is hidden.
2. The link in the email is to the web address news.com.com. Anytime you see a file or address with a double extension (that's the .com part) you know something is wrong. This is an illegal addressing format and would fail. It doesn't because like the email address used to deliver the mail to you in the first place, it's spoofed. The real address that it's taking you to is hidden.

As usualy beware of email, especially if you didn't ask to recieve it and it's trying to sell you something. In this case it's trying to sell you hatred and everyone loves to hate the big M. Please tell everyone in your office to be careful.

Amy Babinchak
Harbor Computer Services

Tuesday, September 13, 2005

Home from Mothership Redmond

...and I have a cold. Of course it isn't too surprising since I spent the last 5 days suffering jet lag with 600 other people from around the world. Further the conference day started a 7:00am and lasted until 9:00pm at which the time the parties began. Needless to say I've come home needing some rest.

My brain is full of new ideas. As these things roll out into action you might start to feel like the characters in a Dilbert cartoon. I'll be meeting with each of you create a plan to try to avoid this. I've always been concerned about security but after this conference I'm down right frightened and I'm going to start to insist that we get more serious about locking down the computers inside the network. Up to this point my focus has been the firewall and backing up data but it's time to take it to the next level. Fortunately you already own all of the tools needed so it'll be just a matter of implementing them.

The real reason that I went to the conference though was to learn how to better run my business. Some drastic changes are needed here too. Documentation and accountability are the new buzz words here at the office. We also need to reach a balancing point between on-site service and remote service. While remote service has the benefit of providing faster support and saving us from drowning in fuel costs, we run the risk of loosing touch with you. I'll be looking for business mentors to help me suceed in finding that balance and some of those people will be you. After all if it doesn't make sense to you, then it doesn't make sense period.

During one of the sessions the speaker said, when a large business stubs its toe they say ouch but when a small business stubs its toe it dies. As soon as I made the decision to grow the business I had this sense of impending doom. So now is the time to make the changes necessary for continued growth without stubbing our toes. Furtunately the resources were at the conferences that should let us do just that.

Thursday, September 08, 2005

Instant Messaging

In the previous blog post I noted that I was a dinosaur. Well no more! I've joined the IM crowd. I've signed up using my usual email address into Windows Messaging. You can now instant message me at amy@harborcomputerservices.net. If you haven't used the Windows Messaging IM client before you'll find it down by the time on your computer. It looks like a claymation figure and will walk you through creating your IM connection.

As a side bonus, remote computer assistance sessions can be launched from within Windows Messenger. Theoretically this means that you can IM me with a problem. I can offer assistance from with Windows Messenger to you, you accept and now I can see your computers' desktop and take care of the issue.

The only snag in this whole thing it that you can only IM me if I'm sitting at my computer or my laptop. Fortunately the IM client will let you know if I'm there or not before you try to message me.