Spring is finally here, and not a moment too soon! I'm happy to let you all know that I had my first vaccine shot in March, and will have my second this week. By the end of the month I will be considered fully vaccinated, and have no issue with house calls at all.

Scammers continue to be very active, and I have been seeing a lot of fake receipts, the topic of my first article. Next, a "spring cleaning" for Mac owners. And finally, my first ever guest article, about looking good on a Zoom call.

Please stay well, and enjoy the longer days and warmer weather!

Regards,

Julie Marto

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

P.S. Need a quick fix? I can often remote into your system and fix your problem the same day you call!
Fake Receipts
This month's scam alert regards fake receipts, of which I have been seeing plenty. I see two main strains - a fake renewal from "Geek Squad", "McAfee", "Windows Defender", or some other legitimate sounding antivirus firm; or an email from "PayPal" or "Apple" alerting you that your order is in process for some large amount for a new iPhone or game.
These emails look reasonably legit, and they all have a link to click on or a number to call for "customer service" if you don't wish to renew, or want to cancel the order. You may not be sure if you have a security subscription, or you certainly know you didn't buy a new iPhone, so your first impulse is to click on the link or call the number to straighten things out

Whatever you do, don't follow your impulse - that is what the scammer is counting on. If you actually contact them, they will initiate some sort of a script to con you out of your money, most likely by falsely offering you a refund and "overpaying you", requiring you to reimburse them for the "excess refund". They also might download malware onto your system if you click on their link, or convince you to allow them to log onto your system to "uninstall" their non-existent security software.

What should you do? Absolutely nothing - if you see an emailed receipt you don't recognize in your inbox, just delete it and ignore it. The worst thing that can possibly happen is that you will see a charge you don't recognize on your next credit card statement, and you can dispute that with your credit card company. If you don't want to wait, call your credit card company directly, using the number on the back of the card, or log onto your credit card account, and check for unauthorized charges.

The most important takeaway here is that you should NEVER, under any circumstances, click on the links or call the numbers in an emailed receipt. These receipts are designed to make you reach out to the scammers, so that they can begin their job. If you receive an emailed receipt you are unsure about, forward it to me and I will be happy to let you know if you should follow up with the company or not.
Making Space on a Mac
I have heard a few horror stories lately of MacBooks that become unbootable when a MacOS Big Sur upgrade started and the drive didn't have enough free space to complete the process. Although Apple has fixed the issue, it is still important to understand how to check for, and create, free space on your Mac. In general, you want to keep your ratio of unused space to at least 20% of your total disk space, but you need a minimum of 35GB of free space to upgrade your MacOS to Big Sur, so if you have less than that you need to take action.
Most MacBook Air and MacBook Pro systems ship with small SSD's, typically 256GB but some as small as 128GB. If you have a lot of pictures, movies, and other files, you can easily fill that space up, and that can cause issues when it comes time to update your system. Most people think their documents and emails are taking up all the space, but the truth is that, although there might be thousands of them, each is quite small. There are other types of files to look for that can have a bigger impact.

To check whether or not you have a problem, click on the Apple menu in the top left corner, choose "About this Mac", and then click on the "storage" tab. It might take a bit of time to populate, but you will see how much space you have in total, how much space is being used, and how the used space is allocated.

An important caveat - ALWAYS make a Time Machine backup before doing major surgery on your Mac. Time Machine is one of the best features of the MacOS, as it creates a system image you can recover to if something goes wrong. If you don't have an external drive to use with Time Machine, I suggest you make purchasing one your first step. A bonus is that you can also use your Time Machine backup drive to store files you no longer need on your Mac, but are not sure you want to delete forever.

If you find yourself needing to find space on your Mac, here are the types of files I would remove first:

IOS files - these are backups of iPhones, iPads, and iPods. They can be quite old, and not of any current value, especially if you are currently backing up your devices to iCloud. I would recommend deleting any older than a few months.

Downloaded movies and TV shows - Do you have 6 seasons of Gray's Anatomy on your system? Movies and TV shows purchased through iTunes can always be downloaded again if you wish to watch them - there is no need to keep old copies in your library.

iPhoto Migrated Library - several years ago, Apple switched from using iPhoto to using the Photos app. When your system was updated to use Photos, your iPhoto library was duplicated and then migrated to be a Photos library. Apple left the old iPhoto library on your system, and it might even have then been copied onto a new system when you replaced the old one. These iPhoto libraries can be safely deleted, but just to be on the safe side, I always recommend copying the old iPhoto library to your external drive before deleting it.

Downloaded DMG files - when you install a program on a Mac, it first downloads the program, then expands it and puts it into the Applications folder. DMG files can take up a lot of space, and will be found in your Downloads folder. You can safely delete every one.

Empty the trash - The final step in any clean up is to empty the trash. If you have deleted a lot of items, emptying the trash can take a long time, so don't be surprised if it takes a while!

Sometimes, no matter what you do, you can't find the root cause of the space issue, or you can't create enough space to upgrade your Mac to the latest operating system. If that's the case, please schedule a time to drop your Mac off with me, and I will do some investigation and deep cleaning.
Look Better on Zoom
This month, for the first time ever, I'm publishing an article submitted by a client. David Temple, who many of you know as the head of the Medfield Historical Society, would like to offer you some tips on how to look better in a Zoom meeting.

Thank you, David!
After a year of Zoom meetings, I'm surprised at how many people don't look good on Zoom. Look critically at yourself - and everything else in the picture. 

  • Is your face more or less centered? Or, like so many people, is your face taking up a sliver of the bottom, with the wall and ceiling taking up most of the space?

  • Is your face well lit? Or is half of it in shadows? If there's a window behind you, and it's daytime, your computer's camera will adjust to the brightness of the light coming through window, and your face will be way too dark, so draw the shades. Also, turn off all lights behind you and in the ceiling.

  • If you can get natural daylight in front of you, great! Otherwise, put a light about eye level in front of you, slightly off to one side. A $25 ring light with adjustable color and brightness is a very good investment.

  • When you're speaking, don't let the background distract the listener from your message. Have a soft-focus background that's medium to dark if you're white; medium to light if you're Black. You don't want viewers to be distracted trying to read the titles of books on your shelves, for example.

  • Raise up your laptop so the camera lens is at your eye level or higher. If the lens is too low, you'll be looking down on viewers - and also, you may be showing your extra wrinkles and chins.