Happy New Year! I hope you all had a wonderful holiday season, and are looking forward to great things in 2023!

The SOTM for January explains those emails you get from friends, asking if you have an Amazon account. Next, I've seen quite a few catastrophic hard drive failures lately, so here is what to look for. And finally, did you install a shopping toolbar over the holidays? It might be a good idea to uninstall it.

Stay warm and stay well!

Regards,

Julie Marto

508-359-8176
508-333-8176 (cell)

P.S. Need help setting up your new tech? Call me for an at-home visit or a drop off system migration!
SOTM: Do You Use Amazon?
I see so many scam and hack attempts that I have added a feature to my newsletter called Scam of the Month. In these articles, I hope to explain common scams, how to avoid them, and what to do if you fall for one.

This month I explain what's going on when your friend's email has been hacked, and scammers use their email address to approach you.
Signs of the scam - You get a short email from a friend, maybe a close one, maybe an acquaintance you are rarely in touch with, asking for a favor, or if you use Amazon. If you know how to check, it's definitely from their real email address. There usually isn't much more information in the email, and your first impulse is to respond and ask them what's up.

What's going on - Your friend's email has been hacked, most likely through a credential stealing phishing scam. The most common email addresses I see hacked this way are Comcast and AOL/Verizon accounts, because those two email providers don't require two factor authentication to log in, and have such a poor implementation of it that many people leave it turned off. That means that if a scammer gets an AOL or Comcast password, that's all they need to log into the account and use it.

What the scammer is trying to do - the scammer hopes that, by using your friend's real email address, they can engage you in a conversation, convince you that you are talking to your friend, and trick you into giving them money. Their most common scam is to claim that their Amazon account, or credit card, has been locked for some reason, and ask you to buy them a gift card for a family member's birthday or baby shower. There are variations on this theme, but mostly the amount is relatively small ($200 or so) and seems more or less reasonable.

Have you been hacked? - No - your friend has been hacked, but you have not. Your best defense is to simply ignore the email, but, of course, you can contact your friend and let them know that you have been approached. However, whatever you do, do NOT contact them via the hacked email address. And, of course, don't respond to the scam email. Your best bet is to call your friend, let them know they have been hacked, and advise them to immediately change their email password and contact a tech support professional to clean up the account.

What else can happen - Often the scammer will create a fake, lookalike email address, mimicking your friend's real account. For example, if your friend's email address is jimsmith123@aol.com, they will create jimsmith123@outlook.com. They will also steal your friend's contact list from the original account. Then, they will use the fake email account, and the stolen contact list, to attempt other scams on you and your friend's other contacts once they have been kicked out of the original account. So, watch out for lookalike email addresses asking you for favors.

Remember, If you get an unexpected email from a friend asking if you use Amazon, or if you can do them a favor, you should pick up the phone and call them, rather than answering the email. Think of it as a good opportunity to catch up! And, if they are local, you might want to give them my name, so I can help them clean up the hack.
Diagnosing a Failing Hard drive
Hard Drive Exposed
Of all the hardware issues I see, the most common and potentially catastrophic is a hard drive failure. The hard drive is where all the data and programs on your computer are stored - think of it as your computer's closet space. If it fails, you run the risk of losing all your personal information, like documents, pictures, and tax records. It is, of course, best practice to keep your system backed up at all times. But, even if your system is not backed up, if you can recognize the symptoms of a failing drive, I can often take action to recover the files before it's too late.
Spinning Drive - Most of the failed hard drives that I see are traditional spinning drives, the technology that has been the standard for many years. These drives are similar to record players, with encased spinning platters that store programs and data, and a read/write arm that moves over the surface of the drive to access it. Just like old record players, a scratch on the platter, caused by a manufacturing flaw, a sudden power outage, or even just wear and tear due to long term use, can cause damage. Eventually, that damage will spread, and, over the course of time, the drive can fail completely. The good news is, these drives often give you plenty of warning that there is a problem, and, if caught early, all data can often be recovered.

The symptoms of a failing drive are subtle but clear. The most common complaint is that the system is very slow - that's because the read/write head is having difficulty accessing data on the failing parts of the drive. Another complaint is frequent crashes, or "blue screens of death". These happen because parts of the operating system, or the program you are running, can't be read properly. And yet another serious warning sign is a system which won't boot into the operating system. Often that's the point at which I am called, but truthfully, a slow, balky system that frequently crashes is a big red flag, and should be addressed promptly.

Solid State Drives - unlike spinning drive technology, solid state drives are all electronic. Unfortunately, that means many failures happen without any warning at all. Think of these as more like a lightbulb than a record player - rather than a skipping record that alerts you to an issue, the lightbulb simply won't turn on. Thus, it is even more important to keep a solid state drive backed up than a spinning drive.

With no mechanical parts to wear out, solid state drives are more reliable than spinning drives, so failures happen less frequently. However, when they do happen, they are often catastrophic, usually resulting in a failure of the computer to boot. This might be accompanied by an error message stating that the drive is experiencing a problem, or a message that no boot disk can be found. Sometimes I am able to recover the data on the drive, but often I am unable to. For many reasons, I much prefer solid state drives to spinning drives, but it truly is imperative to keep them backed up, as data recovery from them is much more difficult than from spinning drives.

Checking drive health - many computers come with built in tools to check the health of your drive. On Macs, you can go to Disk Utility and run First Aid. Keep in mind that most recent Mac models don't have replaceable drives, so keeping your data backed up on those systems is key. Fortunately, Apple provides an excellent back up program, Time Machine, which I highly recommend. If you are not currently backing up your Mac with Time Machine, call me and I can help you set it up. Because of design decisions by Apple, if you experience a drive failure on an out of warranty Mac system, it's often just most cost effective to buy a new computer.

For PC's, you can start by running chkdsk in Windows, which scans for errors on the drive. Dell, HP and Lenovo systems come with built-in diagnostics partitions where you can run more in-depth tests. On Dell systems, pressing F12 at boot will get you to the diagnostics partition. On most HP and Lenovo systems, it's F2.

If any test reports an issue, or you are experiencing any of the symptoms of a failing drive, you should take action as soon as possible - If you have a Mac, make sure your system is properly backed up. The built in First Aid program can fix many issues (by isolating failing sectors) but, if your system is pretty old, you should plan to replace it sooner rather than later.

Unlike Macs, on most PCs I can easily replace a failing drive with a new one. If diagnosed early enough, I can "clone" the old drive, copying all your programs and settings, and return your system exactly as it was before. If the drive is too damaged to clone, I can usually install a new drive with a fresh copy of Windows, and migrate your data and settings. In the worst case scenario, I will install a new drive with a fresh copy of Windows, but none of your personal data or settings - the unfortunate result of a complete drive failure with no backup. So, keep an eye on your computer - if you feel it's balky and unresponsive, make sure you give me a call.
Shopping Toolbars
Browser toolbars are small programs added to your browser (Chrome, Edge, Safari, or Firefox) that are meant to assist you when surfing the web. Some are very helpful, like uBlock Origin, my favorite ad blocker, or the Adobe Chrome extension, which opens PDFs in Adobe Reader inside the browser.

Some are clearly malicious, like a lot of "search" toolbars, and I remove those immediately. Most of the time, when people complain about virus infections and pop-ups, it's a result of malicious browser toolbars.
And then there are the shopping toolbars. These toolbars, from Rakuten, Honey, and Capital One, are meant to assist you when shopping online, by searching for lower prices and coupon codes, and generating automatic cash back. These are actually reputable toolbars, but I still generally recommend they be removed from your browser. Although they can potentially save you money, I find they tend to slow down your browsing. More importantly, there are potential privacy concerns, as they track your movement on the web, and have access to all your browsing and shopping habits.

In general it's best to have as few toolbars as possible, and it's my opinion that shopping toolbars are not necessary. Unless they are really providing a lot of value for you, I would recommend uninstalling them using the following procedures:

Chrome - Click on the three dots in the upper right. Choose "more tools", then "extensions". Click on "remove" next to the extension

Firefox - Click on the three bars in the upper right, then "Add-ons and themes". Click on "Extensions" on the left, then on the three dots next to the extension name. Click on "remove"

Edge - Click on the three dots in the upper right, then "Extensions". Click on "Manage Extensions", then click on "remove" under the extension name

Safari - Click on "Safari" on the top menu, then choose "settings". Click on the "extensions" tab, and choose "uninstall" next to the extension