Normally, I don’t talk about sports, but today, I found some really cool technology during the half time show of the Super Bowl.

If you saw it, you would have seen the UFO looking stage that The Who played on. It had some really cool LED effects going on with programmable arrows, “glitter” effects, different colors, and a all kinds of neat stuff.

My hat’s off to the guys and girls that put that show together. That took a lot of technical work to get all that to function like it did. I’ll post some picturs later if you didn’t see it.

Yes, I know, it’s not computer repair related, but it was pretty neat stuff.
Justin

PS: We’re STILL open…

You may not have noticed it this weekend, except those on the website around 8:30PM on Saturday, but we did some house cleaning.

With my Voodoo Chicken Magic L33t H4×0R skillz (ok, maybe not), I moved the site from a static page, to something a little more dynamic to allow updates to the site to happen a little easier. While I broke the blog in the process, it’s fixed – it was only “broke” for about 10 minutes.

So, with that said, you, Google, and the rest of the world, should be seeing Protocol16 just as you normally do. If you have problems with a file, please feel free to report it and we’ll take care of it rather quickly.
Justin

So, with the advent of all the video floating around the web, there is a new scam floating around as well. It specifically attempts to attack Flash, which is installed on roughly 90% of all the home computers online. As the screen shot points out, the attacking website may get you to “Fix” or install a plugin to get the video to work. Sneaky stuff.

Why am I hitting on the whole Spyware/Virus issue lately? Because this is the number one thing we’re seeing right now. More specifically: Fake Antivirus software that attempts to get your credit card information, shows you Pornography, etc.

As always, if you have questions, please let us know.
Justin

There is a new type of infection happening that even has some of the best anti-virus companies stumped. Recently, it was found that Virus and Malware writers are getting more sneaky on how they infect you.

They are specifically targeting Google users. Recently, it was found that you could get infected simply by looking through Google Images. On top of this, other sites only infect you if you come from Google. This means, if you type the web address directly, you don’t get infected.

Very sneaky stuff indeed. This makes it harder to clean the infection, as the website owner usually goes directly to the website to check the problem directly.

Be careful out there, it’s getting more dangerous.
Justin

I was in Best Buy the other night returning some merchandise and ran across the Geek Squad trying to fix one of their customer’s problems. The poor Geek Squad tech was plugging and unplugging a drive, refreshing My Computer and the drive wouldn’t show up. To a professional technician, this is a 1-minute fix. Unfortunately, this technician couldn’t seem to fix it and his Geek Squad screen wasn’t telling him all the details.

In more detail, you plug in a USB hard drive, Windows states that it found the hardware, installs the software and you get a “It’s ready to use”, but when you go into My Computer, it doesn’t show up.

Well, here’s a secret for all of you that have this problem:
Right Click on “My Computer”, select “Manage”. Go to the Disk Management section and you’ll see a disk that’s there, that is the size that you just plugged in, but no drive letter. (Disclaimer, this next part: Use at your own risk as there is potential for loss of data if done wrong) Right click on the drive, choose “Format” and go through the prompts (choose NTFS). Within a minute, your drive will be in My Computer, as it should be. Again, use the above at your own risk, because you could wipe a perfectly valid hard drive…

Why does this happen?
Every once in awhile, a hard drive makes it out of a manufacturers facility without being pre-formatted for you. It happens, on occasion for some odd reason. Another valid reason is that the hard drive was replaced at some point, either by someone else, or by the manufacturer and it wasn’t reformatted as it should have been.

If you haven’t done so, this is a second reminder that Microsoft released an “out of band” update for Internet Explorer. Yesterday, it appeared that it was for Internet Explorer 6 only, but it turned into an update for Internet Explorer 6 through 8 by yesterday evening.

If you are receiving a notification to update Windows this morning, do so to plug a nasty little security hole.

Out of band updates are done when security holes are so “large”, but Microsoft feels that an update needs to be release ASAP, instead of their normal Tuesday release cycle.

Microsoft is releasing an out of band update today to patch security holes in Internet Explorer. After the recent Google China incident, Microsoft discovered that sneaky code inside office documents could attack IE and cause problems.

This out of band update should be released around 10am PST “or as close to it as possible”, according to Microsoft.

While home users should get update alerts tomorrow morning, businesses will want to patch their systems as soon as possible, after testing the update, of course.
Justin

It didn’t take long, but the scammers have already started spamming for Haitian relief. I actually received my first scam for Haitian relief last night and while it looked legitimate, it wasn’t. I also received another spam early this morning that was legitimate – how do you tell the difference?

It’s hard to tell the difference, but there is one thing to keep in mind. Stay away from any email that lists web addresses to go to. Many of these sites can be built to look like the real thing, complete with credit card processing, in under 2 hours. Stay away from mobile phone texting numbers that you don’t know about as well. Texting the wrong number can cost much more than you realize, and the amount doesn’t go to a good cause.

Here are legitimate donation sites and numbers to text to: (This is, by no means, a full list)

Red Cross: http://www.redcross.org/ – Red “Donate” button on top right.

Doctors without Borders: http://doctorswithoutborders.org/ – Red “Donate” button on top right.

CARE: http://www.care.org/ – “Donate Now” button in middle of page.

UNICEF: http://www.unicef.org/ - Yellow “Haiti Earthquake Donate Now” on right of page.

$10 Donation for Wireless Subscribers: text ” HAITI ” to 90999 to make a $10 donation that is billed to your cell phone. 100% of all money donated will be passed on to the Red Cross.

$5 Donation for Wireless Subscribers: text ” YELE ” to 501501 to make a $5 donation that is billed to your cell phone. Campaign run by Wyclef Jean and Yele Haiti.

To see who is donating (larger businesses) and their amounts, visit the Huffington Post’s Relief Round Up page.

Again, this post is completely meant to protect you, your credit and your donations. If something doesn’t look right, it just may very well be a scam. If you have any questions, please let us know.
Justin

[Edit: As of 17Jan10, CNN has put together a story on this topic as well, complete with FBI commentary.]

Hot on the heels of Best Buy’s “Pre-Optimization” service, which any user can do themselves, Best Buy has decided to release a new program. We’ll call it “More Trialware!” That’s right, Best Buy seems to think that users want even more trialware on their computers, and now they’re getting paid by the software companies to do it to you. All you have to do is buy an HP or Dell and click a few icons, install a program or two and Best Buy makes money.

They still have to take that new computer out of the box, load software on it before you even buy it, then try to put everything back in the box correctly – something they couldn’t seem to do correctly a week ago.

I’ll give you all a secret. If you want to “pre-optimize” your computer, download and install a program called Crap Cleaner and run it before doing anything else to that brand new laptop or desktop. There are a lot of other things to do as well, but that is be best place to start. After that, customize your computer to how YOU want it, and you’re already better off.

You read that right! Businesses throughout Portland and other areas need to watch out about their licensing. The downturn is hurting everyone and let me tell you, everyone is trying to find out how to keep that money coming in.

An article hit the internet the other day out of Europe, but it’s a very good news item for anyone that will read it. It basically states that everyone needs to be careful about their licenses because a lot of software companies are starting to turn into the “dirty cops that sit at the bottom of the hill, behind a bush, simply to generate revenue.” Most of you don’t know, but during the installation process of almost any piece of software you install, you open yourself up (ie: agree) to be audited. Even Microsoft audits companies on occasion, and they are so serious about it, they PUBLISH who they audit to partners to keep us all in line. On top of that, you don’t even need to agree to be audited as Copyright Law plays into software piracy.

Now, is a Software Audit really that serious? YES!!!

There is a reason Software Audits are called “Software Raids”. Businesses generally receive 1 to 2 weeks notice, at most, of an upcoming software audit. Imagine having to look at every single program on every computer and determine if you’re licensed or not. Then, after you find out how many programs you’re illegally using, you find out just how hot that water can get(“illegal” is a general use term here as you’re required to show purchase receipts. Software keys, boxes, etc are “suspect” because YOU may not have bought them, legally, etc…). Auditors don’t come in and just look through your computer, they use automated tools that search your computer for software, but they also tend to focus on just the programs they know about. Tell them a little too much info and your investigation will get larger. Also, the fact that you’re being audited means something to other companies, so expect to have other companies knock on your door as well.

Think it won’t happen to you? Think again. There are several companies that perform software audits for various businesses and they pay rewards to people that report you and your business. That means that if you’ve ever fired any employees, or have any that just really don’t like working for you, the prospect of making money can be too great. Rewards are paid out when there is a a successful audit and the amount depends on how much you’re fined.

Software licenses are governed by contracts with vendors, and by U.S. Copyright law. You as an individual and your company may both be at risk for civil and criminal penalties for software license violations. Fines for corporations can reach $150,000 for each illegally installed copy of software. As an individual, you could be criminally prosecuted, fined up to $250,000 and even face jail time — up to five years.

Here’s another article you should read concerning software audits/raids. It explains how they happen and what you should do. I’ve worked with a guy that was at two different companies that got audited and he even stated that the people that show up are lawyers that act as sales guys. Because of how audits work, Protocol16 will actually recommend that you speak with a lawyer about your situation before contacting any company about a software audit. There is an Client/Attorney confidentiality law out there that may help you during your audit. Bringing in a company, such as us, will not legally help you and we may find more things wrong as well.

This entire situation is one of many reasons that Protocol16 always recommends that business customers setup Standard User Accounts on all employee computers. It’s hard to tell what each employee may have installed without you knowing. You could have illegal software or even MP3’s on your computers and network – bad news.

Now that I may have scared some of you, I won’t leave you hanging. There are ways to protect yourself and your business. Mostly, just taking an interest in what you and your employees install can make the biggest dent. I’ve mentioned that you shouldn’t install products such as the free version of antivirus packages, such as AVG, before and this is where those decisions count. If you have more computers and users than you know what to do with, there are self auditing tools out there that can help you as well. One great program is Microsoft SAM. This program will allow you to audit up to 150 computers, which classifies as a smaller”large” business. This product will help most businesses to get a handle on their issues. Don’t put it off until it’s too late!

As always, let us know if you have any questions.
Justin