MAC Update, Virus Check, SkyDrive, SMB 150 Award

A few short updates for you:

MAC Users: A flood of new viruses is coming down the pipe to MAC users. Long exempt from hackers because there was simply not enough money it in, finally enough MACs are in use that the magic critical mass has been reached and hackers have turned their attention to exploiting them. Recently a JAVA hack infected over 600,000 MACs that were not running the most current updates. Please be sure to install all available updated, especially JAVA and Adobe updates as released and you need to be running anti-virus software. Our favorite anti-virus for MACs is Sophos. If you need to purchase it, let your IT person know and we’ll get if for you.

Home Computer Virus Check: The FBI has been redirecting traffic from computers infected with the DNSChanger virus for a long time now. DNSChanger redirects your computer browser to look-alike websites designed to fool you into thinking that you really are on Amazon or your bank website. It then collects the information you put into your account. The FBI was redirecting you back to the real site to thwart the hack but all of that is coming to an end July 9th. They have now shutdown the hacker network and so the FBI is ready to shutdown their fix for it. But this means that if your Home PC is infected after July 9th you won’t be able to get to any Internet sites. To check and see if you are infected you need to go to http://dns-ok.us/ If the background is green you’re in the clear. If it’s not green give us a call and we’ll help you clean it up.

SkyDrive: SkyDrive users need to login and accept a free upgrade in order to keep the 25GB of FREE storage space they have enjoyed from Microsoft. Please go to https://skydrive.live.com/ and accept the upgrade to keep your 25GB. If you do not, then you will be reduced to only 7GB. This is a limited time customer loyalty offer. All new SkyDrive accounts will only get 7GB with additional space available for purchase. Since Windows Phone, iPhone and Windows 8 are all integrated with Microsoft’s Live it’s becoming increasing important.

SMB 150: On Tuesday Amy was named to the SMB 150 Channel Influencers List. She joins a group of esteemed colleagues who were chosen during a two-phase voting process. In the initial stage, channel community members voted on 400 nominees. Following the community vote, a panel of industry experts evaluated each nominee based on a pre-established rubric. The community vote accounted for 40% of each nominee's overall rating, with the expert panel's decision contributing the remaining 60%. This award is sponsored by SMBNation, SMBTN and Blackberry. Amy will be receiving a Blackberry Playbook and has been invited to the awards dinner and ceremony in Los Angeles.