"This Girl will Never Forget to Turn Her Webcam off Again" and other Facebook spam

It seems that every day, I check my personal Facebook page and see at least one friend or family member posting a link to possible Internet porn. Just today, a distant relative old enough to be my mother posted a webcam voyeur video complete with a screenshot of female anatomy, and I don't mean an arm. Did these friends or family members suddenly get really uninhibited?

Nope, it's spam caused by questionable apps on Facebook. It looks like this (blurred for sensitive viewers):




Everybody loves Facebook apps. I play Scramble pretty frequently to pass the time and Farmville's user base is growing every day. But spammers, malware writers and any number of other Internet baddies can also write apps. Friends pass apps around indiscriminately, allowing these applications full access to their personal information and even granting posting rights, clicking that ALLOW button without a second thought in their quest to "send a hug," support a cause, or some other well-intentioned action.

Then the app uses the rights you have handed over to post porn spam to your profile as you. Your friends see you posting a link to provocative video called "This Girl will Never Forget to Turn Her Webcam off Again," "Girl's Father Walks in on Her," or something like that and believes it's actually you posting it. Their guard lowered, they click the link and get all matter of malware, viruses, etc.

Everybody needs to be more careful with apps. When a friend sends an application request, really think about it. Do you really NEED another "send a heart" or "hugs" application to clutter your feed? While you're at it, now's a good time to clean up your applications. To do so:

In the upper-right corner, click "Account," then click on "Privacy Settings"

Under "Apps and websites," click the "Edit Your settings" link.

Next to the "Apps you use" list, click "Edit Settings"

Find any apps that sound questionable, and ALL apps you really don't need, and click the X on the far right next to each app. This is the "Remove" button.

While you're removing apps, here's one to add: search for "Defensio Social Web Security" on Facebook. It's a Facebook app created by Websense, one of the big names in web security. It will prevent spam from going up on your wall, guard your profile from questionable apps, and more.

Thanks for reading, good luck deleting apps, and be safe!

#hashtag horrors! Tweets not showing up?

If a Tweet falls in the forest...

I just had a discussion about Twitter that led me to do some research into how their hashtag mechanism works. The whole thing came about when my friend (and sometimes client) joined into a discussion but, upon searching the discussion, couldn't see her Tweets. The post was properly formatted, with a space before and after the hashtag mention, but nothing.

I logged in, checked the discussion, and i could see it just fine.

After doing some online research, it turns out that Twitter over-promises and underdelivers on the hashtag feature.

I found this great post that goes in depth about a similar situation. A Twitter rep told the writer:

Due to current resource constraints, not every Tweet can be indexed in Twitter Search at the moment.
...

While I’m not able to force your Tweets to appear in search, your followers should still receive all of your updates and we will still deliver your @replies to other users.

I can interpret this as such: Twitter "indexes" its Tweets, scouring them for hashtag mentions. When it finds a Tweet with a hashtag, it inserts it into the corresponding hashtag discussion. Twitter simply lacks the resources to index every single Tweet. Do they lack the resources to index in almost real time, or do they lack the resources to index altogether? Will the hashtag Tweet show up eventually, or not at all?

In both questions, I'm assuming the latter. Yes, you'll see Tweets in discussions tagged as "one minute ago." So consider this, one minute ago, 30 Tweets were made with that hashtag. You're seeing the lucky Tweet that got indexed. The other 29? You'll see them if you're an active follower of any of those Twitter members, but that's it.

I know this is a First World Problem, but Twitter should at least be more up front with its users instead of promoting a feature whose functionality is hit or miss at best.

Anyway, use the link up there on the right to follow me on Twitter.

If you can!

Thanks!

McAfee Total Protection means "keep the user off the Internet"

The subtitle for this post should probably be: "when the cure is worse than the disease."

I had a client engagement earlier this week with a customer who had installed McAfee Total Protection. Apparently McAfee takes the "Total Protection" part seriously, since the application's overzealous firewall killed his Internet connection. Maybe the McAfee folks saw the film "Wargames" too many times, took the adage "the only way to win this game is to not play" to heart and decided the best way to keep customers virus- and malware-free is to keep them offline completely.

It gets worse.

Before he called me for help, the client spent a few days working with his ISP, who replaced his modem (didn't help). Then he worked with McAfee's technicians over the phone. The McAfee call center employeess technicians walked him through uninstalling their apps and claimed all was well.

He called me because he still couldn't get online.

Checking Add/Remove Programs (now known as the less-negative-sounding "Programs and Features" in Windows 7 because who would want to "remove" programs?), nothing by McAfee was listed. Which was funny, since a glance at his Services showed three McAfee services, including firewall, running. Checkign MSCONFIG, it was also plain to see that McAfee apps were still in startup as well.

It gets worse.

Each of the McAfee services had their Stop, Start and Restart buttons greyed out (unselectable) and the Service startup options were also greyed out. Launching Services specifically as admin didn't help, either. Running "net stop service name" from the command prompt returned an "access denied" error. Unchecking the apps and services in MSCONFIG to ensure they wiouldn't start at reboot also didn't work. As soon as I clicked "Apply," the checkboxes returned! Trying all this in Safe Mode didn't help, nor did trying to simply stop these services from Task Manager.

Wow.

So in this customer's case, McAfee Total Protection "protected" him from the Internet completely by killing his connection AND protected him from himself by taking away any ability to stop the application from running. This is like taking the tires off someone's car instead of installing seatbelts.

To be fair, these difficulties may have been caused by the outsourced call center guys Trained McAfee Specialists who somehow uninstalled the program without really uninstalling it.

The client told me he had already tried System Restore and that didn't help either.

Amazing.

In the end, my only option would have been to take the client's computer back with me, do a lot of research, possibly hack away at the registry (if McAfee Super Total Extreme Protection would have let me), all at $60 per hour. The client elected to put the problem back at McAfee's feet and call them with my findings, which was fine with me.

He called me later that night to let me know that he spent two hours on the phone with the McAfee guys who, after a fair amount of arguing, had him download a special cleanup app to another computer (one he COULD get online with), put it on a thumb drive and install it on the broken computer. Running this app finally removed the firewall and other apps McAfee left behind.

I told him "when you need a separate program from the manufacturer to remove it, THAT is a bad piece of software."

All things considered, he'd probably rather get malware then go through that again.

I just had to share. My next blog post will be more about AV/Malware solutions, some good ones you should check out and some bad ones to avoid at all costs (I bet you already know one). Thanks for reading and please check out my site, right here.

Be safe!

Our lives and our changing technology

Alternate Solutions

I did some work for a client last night who is setting up a seasonal storefront (May - August) and needed Internet and telephone access. It really got me thinking about non-traditional methods of setting up web access, since, in the client's case, calling Verizon for DSL and phone for 3 months would not be a great option. So here, in no particular order, are a few ways to get web connections in different ways.

Broadband hotspots like the Verizon Mifi 4510 are a good way to get Internet access for you and a few friends anywhere or, as in the case of my client, temporary access. Like aircards, a wireless hotspot is a subscription service that will run you around $50 per month and speed depends on coverage in your area. Though designed with business travelers in mind who may need access in short bursts (the unit is rechargeable and charges may only last 2-6 hours), it can be used with AC power plugged in for as long as you need to. It's a decent alternative, especially when you just need a short-term web solution. Beware, though: service providers may cap the monthly data limit, so don't rely on these for huge data transfers and don't run Windows Update when connected to a wireless hotspot.

If you have broadband in your house but would rather have a wired connection a room where there currently is none, an "ethernet over power" solution like the NetGear's powerline series is a great alternative. Simply plug one unit into the electrical outlet by your home's router/hub, run an ethernet cable to it, and then plug the other unit into a power outlet anywhere you need wired connection speeds. Voila! Instant ethernet jack with your network signals being sent over your home power lines. This is an extendable solution as well. I use one of these in my home for the Xbox instead of using wireless and bought another jack when I got a network Blu-Ray player.

These are two different solutions for connecting to the Internet or your home network that are outside of the standard methods you'd normally consider. There are many more out there just like these that go beyond the typical models, so check around! Thanks a lot for reading!

Some quick updates

We've been working on some new things and haven't had a chance to blog in a bit, so here are a few quick things:

We're redesigning our site to make things simpler and, hopefully, more pleasing to the eyes and easy to digest. It should be online when you read this or shortly after that. No later than May 5, we do know that! Thanks for checking it out.

User Friendly is sponsoring the Mount Airy 5K-9 Mutt Run, where dogs and their human pets can run a challenging and fun course and raise money to benefit the Mount Airy Dog Park, located at Watkins Park (where User Friendly staff can frequently be seen running the path). You and your pooch can sign up for the event right here!

We're on Twitter and Facebook, so check us out there. You can never have enough friends!

Thanks, and we'll see you soon!

A question of price

As you might know, I started User Friendly Computer Services late last year, so I'm definitely still ironing out the kinks.  One thing I'm still working on, I'm not ashamed to say, is pricing.  Maybe you, the possible future user of our services, can give some input.

Doing some online research, I see that Geek Squad charges 170-300 just to perform a cleanup/diagnostic.  That's really high to me.  I usually like to charge 50-60 per hour, one hour minimum, and go from there.  If we're nearing the one hour mark, I'll give you an estimate of how long it should take and how long it'll cost.

Are customers put off by this kind of vagueness?  That's the feedback I'd like if you don't mind.  One one hand, I don't want to scare my customers off with a big up-front estimate or huge fixed price.  I mean, $300 is well on the road to "just buy a new computer" land.  But I'm thinking maybe people don't like to hear "50 bucks to look it over, do some light cleanup, diagnose issues, and we can go from there."

So what do you think?

I'm considering publishing a price list on my site advertising some basic computer and networking services with fixed prices.  Would you find that helpful?  Would that be more desirable than calling for an estimate?

Most importantly, would you be more inclined to give me business if you knew the exact price up front?  :)


I really do value feedback from customers and potential customers, so please let me know what you think.  You can add a comment at the bottom of this blog post, or email me directly to let me know what you think, if you don't mind.

Thanks again.