You just knew this had to happen

Culture | September 21st, 2016

By Chuck Solly

rcsolly@gmail.com

It seems I have been writing a lot lately about scams. Everybody wants to cheat their neighbor. I hate that...

So of course there is this: Online scammers are now targeting those who recently upgraded to Windows 10, via fake — but highly sophisticated — Windows support sites.

For those of you who are not sure about Windows 10, it is the latest (and supposedly) the greatest operating system from Microsoft. It comes installed on new desktop and laptop computers and many of my geek friends have installed it on their newer machines. You can install if even if you are not a geek.

Some of these scam sites appear to be authentic Microsoft offerings, complete with the word "Microsoft" or "Windows" in their names, and with layouts, colors, typefaces, and logos that are similar to official sites.

These scam sites advertise themselves as a "Windows 10 Help Desk". When you call them they are pushy, have poor English skills and want a year's payment up front before they help you.

One poor sucker said "I foolishly paid one of them and received inadequate service: an incomplete installation of Outlook (remotely) and no transfer of my address book. But they did invite me to call them again for help!"

You should always check with a "Whois" (free) service before going to a site to buy something. You can find many free whois services with any good search engine (Google, Bing, etc.). For example, ICANN (one of the Internet's controlling bodies) has a whois page. Most major hosting services also support free whois searches. For example, if you do a "whois" on "windows10helpdesk.com" you will find it registered to:Raviprakash Naidu, Ameerpet, Hyderabad Telangana 500016 India

For Windows problems, start with https://support.microsoft.com, the official, top-level support page for everything Microsoft makes. When things go awry, start with the fix-it-yourself and automated solutions offered through official support venues such as https://support.microsoft.com, your PC maker's support site, and from trusted third-party sources.

Gentle reminder time: have you backed up your files today?

Those of you who are fairly new to computing must realize that hard drives have a finite lifetime. They wear out. You must back up files that you want to keep. There are many ways to accomplish this and I will talk about the various methods in future columns. This week it is Dropbox.com

I have been fooling around with Dropbox for the last month or so and I am very happy with their system. Dropbox.com is a storage site for your files in the “Cloud”. They have three plans: Basic, Pro, and Business. The Basic plan allows 2GB of storage, the Pro plan allows 1000 GB of storage and the Business allows as much as you need for up to 5 users. I upload a folder at a time, usually one that contains many files and folders. That folder resides on my computer as well as in Dropbox. If I choose to edit a file in that folder, Dropbox automatically uploads the new version to the cloud (Dropbox.com). The Basic plan is free and the Pro plan is $8.25 per month and the Business plan is $12.50 per month.

There are many options for cloud storage.

RECENTLY IN

Recently in: