Dear Geek,

I use a USB drive that I use to bring files to and from work. I used a co-worker’s Mac, and it told me to “eject” the drive. Do I have to do that on a PC too? Is this a Mac only thing? What does it do?

Sincerely,
Macs R Confusing

Dear Mac-aroni and cheese

This is a PC issue as well, not just a Mac thing. Usually when you copy files to or from your removable device, it will notify you when it is done. Many people know that if you remove a USB or external hard drive before an action is finished, there is a big chance that your files could become corrupted. But many people do not know that even if the drive isn’t actively being written to, you could still corrupt the data. Computers actually wait to perform actions until it has a number of requests to fulfill, and then it fulfills them all at once. This process is called write caching. When you hit the eject button it flushes the cache to make sure that all the pending actions have been preformed, ensuring that your files are safe to remove.

You can “eject” external hard drives and USB on a PC as well. In the system tray (lower bottom right hand corner), there should be an option to “safely remove hardware”. This is the windows version of eject.

To sum up, to avoid or reduce the possibility of corrupted files, it is always better to eject your drive.

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Dear geek,

I have noticed that posts and messages are being sent from my Facebook page, but I am not the one writing them. They sound like those silly spam emails, but Facebook accounts can’t get hacked- can they?

Sincerely,
Sleep  Facebook-er.

Dear Facebooker,

If it’s on the internet, it can get hacked. When Facebook accounts are hacked, they are usually used to send spam messages and send viruses. The first thing you need to do is change your password. This can be done by logging into your account directly at the facebook.com website, and by your name in the top right-hand corner, there will be a button that looks almost like a gear. When you click on this, the settings option will show up. Click on that, and the general options will show up, including the password. Change your password to something significantly different.

If the Facebook hacker has changed your password, you will be unable to access your account. On the homepage where you log in, there will be an option to have your password sent to your email account. Once the password is sent to your email account, log on right away and change your password to something different.

Another option is to check the Facebook secured page at: http://www.facebook.com/help/hacked

This also gives you some other options through the Facebook website as well.

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Dear Geek,
I recently received an email from a company I do business with saying that there has been an email breach, and my name and email address may have been stolen. What does this mean? Am I going to get scammed out of my millions (or hundreds) of dollars?
Sincerely,
Save my hundreds

Dear hundred-aire

With any kind of business we are doing online, even if it is just signing up for future emails from a company, your information is stored in some way.

When you are doing something such as banking, or making a purchase, it is important to know if you are on a secure server. To find that out, you look at the IP address, or the website address in your browser. If you are on a secure server, where you will usually see “http://”, you will instead see “https://”. The “s” is just a simple way of showing you that the information you are entering, such as your credit card number, is on a secure server, and it is safe to business on that site. If you do not see an “s” in the IP address when making a purchase, you are putting your information at risk.

If you did business on an unsecured server, and you received this email, you may want to call or visit a bank to make sure that your credit card information was not taken. Check over any kind of transactions, and change your credit card number- just to be safe.

When entering an email address onto a site, you aren’t putting yourself into as much risk as when you are entering in a credit card number. With just an email address and a name, a hacker will most likely use this information to send out highly targeted phishing emails, in hopes of getting more information, like your credit card number. If you have a ridiculously easy to guess password for your email address, they may then use your email address to send email attacks to your contacts and others.

In a case where the hacker has gotten your name and email through hacking a company website, they can then use that to send official looking emails that look like they are coming from that site. They then hope that because a user has done business with this site already, they will be more willing to give more information that could end up with the users money or information, in their pocket.

It is important to watch what you are clicking on in an email, and what a company is asking of you. You should always be careful when you are putting information on a website, such as a credit card number. If a company email looks “off”, or you’ve never heard of the company before, don’t click on anything. This can save you some headaches, and potentially money, in the end.

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Dear Geek,

I understand the risk of staying with Microsoft XP, but I still don’t know. All of my office computers are XP and no one seems to be in a big hurry to change over the operating systems. I like Microsoft XP. Plus, the switch from XP is expensive. Why can’t I just keep my virus scans going and keep XP?

Sincerely,
Can we keep it? Please?

Dear risk-taker,

I really have to stress that the newer viruses, or even just the newer versions will not be recognized because many antivirus programs are not going to be supporting Microsoft XP at all. Many hackers are waiting for Microsoft XP support to end, so that they can send out new viruses, getting them past any kind of protection, so they can take over any kind of information.

Businesses are going to be a big target in these attacks. On a personal computer, hackers know that they can get one, maybe two credit cards, or other kinds of information. On a work computer, they have access to many client files, which can include credit cards, social insurance numbers or other financial information.

You may already know about the laws regarding the protection of client information, but if you don’t, here’s a brief description of it. Protect it. If there’s information on physical paper, lock it up. If it’s computer based, you need to protect it in any way possible. If any important client information is lost, there can be some pretty heavy fines, not to mention the loss of clients and business, as well as your reputation.

Imagine you got the phone call: your business, which you have worked years to establish, has had its financial information stolen, and has lost all of the money it has accumulated. This is because of another business which didn’t protect your information. Would you stop business with this company, knowing that their lack of security was the reason for your company’s downfall? Would you tell your friends to watch out for the business with the lack of security?

Keeping an unsupported operating system is the equivalent of putting your financial information, and your client information in a safe and giving your safe code out to everyone who passes your business on the street. You can hope that no one will try to get your information, and it might not happen right away, but eventually, someone is going to see if the code works.

Yes, it’s expensive to make the switch from XP, but the cost of not making the switch is potentially much, much greater.

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Dear geek,

Every time I type up a company document, there is one word that Microsoft Word just does not like. For whatever reason, Word just does not think that this word exists and constantly tries to correct my word. I have triple checked the spelling, and I know it is right. This has been annoying me for months, and I have begun to take it out on my cats. Help me!

Sincerely,
SAVE MITTENS!

Dear Kitty,

Once in a while, Microsoft has an issue realizing that some words are actually words, and it tends to think that it is the only thing that can ever be correct about anything, ever. There is a pretty simple solution to make Microsoft realize that, yes, for once that isn’t a typo.

First, you want to open Microsoft Word, if you do not already have it open. If you have a newer version of Microsoft word, click on the “Review Tab”. There will be a “Spelling and Grammar” option, which when you click it, it will run through the document, and review everything you have written. When it comes across your “misspelled” word, it will give you a few options of words it thinks you meant to use, as well as the options to ignore once, ignore all, and add to the dictionary. Once you add this word to the dictionary, it will no longer continue to tell you that you need to change the word because it doesn’t exist. In Microsoft’s mind, you just made up a new word, and it now accepts that!

If you have an older version, when the word gets underlined, right click on it. It should give you a few options for words that “exist”, as well as the options to ignore, or add to dictionary. When you add it to the dictionary, it will now accept that your word is, in fact a word!

Here at Technology by Design, we are all for helping the kitties.

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For all those Mac users that are feeling smug and safe…there are viruses, etc for Mac.  However, because of the fact that more people have PCs, most viruses are targeted towards PCs rather than Macs.

Got a question?  Email it to:   geek@tbyd.ca.

Got Cyber-Bugs?

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For Cyber-Extermination!