Ransomware - Fake "Government" Threats Demanding Money for "Crimes"

I’m still hearing reports of these types of incidents on a regular basis. Two neighbors had it happen and I just got a call from my mother’s coworker, so even after a year of widespread occurrences, it’s still coming up anew.

Here’s a great link that describes the topic of “ransomeware” from BleepingComputer. The image below is an example of what an infected system looks like, but recognize that there are many variations and various types of fixes required. You should also know that this has finally hit Mac OS X, although it’s a little less severe since the operating system protects the user from the more nasty types of damage that one of these things can cause.

How to know if you’re dealing with ransomware:

1. Government threat of prosecution - the government doesn’t threaten to prosecute, they simply act and prosecute, especially for the crimes mentioned on most of these infections. If you were actually suspected of these things, you would probably already be in cuffs.
2. The accusations - child pornography and exploitation of minors for sexual purposes are hardly light issues. Again, if someone in the federal government thought you were making child pornography, you’d be in cuffs (where you deserve to be) and hopefully rotting away in a jail away from the rest of us. The reason such a serious charge is listed is to scare you - into acting on the next point.
3. Money demands - the feds do take a ton of our money in fees and taxes, but they don’t ask for you to wire cash via MoneyPak.

According to http://www.malwareremovalguides.info/your-computer-has-been-locked-ransomware-removal-instructions/ there are several paid programs that can remove this type of infection, but in the past I removed it with a little bit of hard work and time at no cost for software. The benefit of buying an application to protect your computer is that you can prevent this from happening again. The downside is, you have another layer of software running on your computer and slowing it down.

Overall, it is important to remember that Windows, even as late as Windows 7 (I have little experience with Windows 8, so I can’t comment on this aspect of it), is poorly designed and full of security holes that Microsoft does not seem to have on the agenda for a patch. The design of the Windows platform is so complex (and hasn’t been rewritten from the ground up in

Here is a good, simple manual guide to removing this latest iteration of the “your computer has been locked” virus/trojan: http://guides.yoosecurity.com/remove-mandiant-usa-cyber-security-virus/

Good luck!

How to Opt Out of AT&T's Proposed User Data Harvesting and Reselling

You may have heard about the recent preview of a change to AT&T’s privacy policy that would allow them to sell your data (location, browser history, calling frequency, etc) to marketing firms. This link has the updated privacy policy.

Luckily, you can opt out. Simply login to your AT&T wireless account at this link and check the boxes for any number(s) that you do not want them to sell your data from (in any form, aggregated or not). It takes seconds to login and do, so if this matters to you, opt out now!

Cool Tool - Username/Brand Availability Checker

This is cool - check your username/brand availability on social networking (and other) sites all from one page!

http://tools.weburlopener.com/username-availability-check/chksocial.php

FYI, there are a ton of great resources for your business use of the internet on this same website and I’ll be covering many of them in detail in future posts!

eBaying for Fun and Profit - Today I Learned a Lesson!

I’ve been getting into eBay lately. You know, buying stuff I don’t need, that sorta thing. It’s not as bad as the late 90s/early 2000s when everyone in my field was making six figures and bidding on auctions was more like gambling than shopping. You’d bid on things just to “win” them back in those days. Of course, everybody had stock options at one dotcom or another and tons of people were potential (or literal) paper millionaires. Stupidity! LOL!

Today I use eBay a lot differently. First of all, eBay has changed. The ability to find almost anything on eBay even exceeds Amazon in some areas (like so-called “smart drugs” from the Far East or random parts for cars). The pricing and quality options for many items is wide, giving you the ability to pick up a mint copy of an old magazine or just a well-worn one. Need luxury shoes? Buy Prada from Italy for 20%-30% less than the same styles at a luxury store in the USA. Many manufacturers and retailers, especially in the electronics industry, have eBay stores. Some use the name you are familiar with, like Apple, while others use a totally different name so as not to cause confusion for pricing differences.

This post is about a lesson I learned today. I’ve been selling old items online, a variety of computer and electronic music gear, and doing really well with it. However, I sold an X-Arcade Trackball and discovered a real risk when selling online. You need to make sure you understand the size of a box needed and the amount of bubble wrap or packing to go in that box, and that’s not mentioning the cost of shipping. Bulky boxes cost a lot more to ship than the standard shapes and sizes, regardless of weight.

With that said, my net was about $20 for the X-Arcade Trackball. My only consolation is that I know the device is going to a good home where it will get new life and regular usage.

☺

Coding Help - Nacodes.com

I get asked (pretty often): “How did you learn to do what you do with computers?”

Unfortunately, I don’t have an easy answer. I’m 42, and I started writing code at about 8 - by the time the IBM-PC (with the original 4.77 hz 8088 CPU) came out, I was writing assembly language and pretty well versed on looking at a problem and intuitively finding a solution. Similarly, I picked up SQL between 1998-2002 on the job implementing software deployments - first for a hotel chain/property management company and later for dot com clients putting CRM solutions in place. I can’t explain how the stuff in my brain got there or point to a single resource (well, actually, after the fact I found a great resource - I’ll share it below).

That doesn’t mean you can pick up skills easily too. As pointed out in my blog about low-cost (and free) online education resources, there are plenty of semi-format training programs. I’ve recently been going through the Web Fundamentals course track on Codecademy just to brush up on my skills -- I’m launching my business website again so I can more easily provide ebooks and other solutions to clients rather than relying solely on word of mouth referrals.

Another great learning experience is to simply find examples of what you want to do and learn by doing. That is what the fine contributors over at Nacodes.com do for web design.

Here are some recent posts on the site:

Mobile-Friendly And Responsive Expanding Search Bar
39 Powerful CSS Tools And Generators
Nifty Modal Window Effects
jQuery Plugin Adds Handy Tooltips To Your Images
OAuth Login for Facebook, Google and More

As mentioned above, I did find a great resource for my particular area of greatest expertise: database architecture and enterprise reporting/analytics. An author named Joe Celko really does a fine job of explaining the difference between databases and traditional linear programming. In the programming classes most younger people have had in high school or college, programs were written in a linear fashion to act on input or data one item at a time. Joe boils down the reasons why for databases, and particularly those using SQL (structured query language), this is insane.

You see, SQL is designed to act on data in sets. For example, in a traditional program, we might search through a list of students to find which ones had a certain GPA (or above), then add them to a list or output to the screen or a report. This would be a loop of some sort and at least a chunk of code. The same thing in SQL could be done with one line, as we’d simply ask the database to give us all of the students based on a certain criteria in one step. While you might think the database server is simply recreating the steps of the loop on the server, saving us coding time, the truth is far more complex than that. SQL is optimized to act on sets and doesn’t have to approach the issue linearly.

Let me put it another way: if you or your business use any database software and anything you do takes more than a to pull up a screen or more than a few minutes for a report, your SQL is not optimized. I’ve taken reports that took literally 12 or more hours to run and with a handful of code changes (less than 200 characters of code, maybe 3 or 4 lines impacted), made those reports run in a few minutes.

You can get books by Joe Celko at Amazon.

I suggest starting with Joe Celko's Thinking in Sets: Auxiliary, Temporal, and Virtual Tables in SQL (The Morgan Kaufmann Series in Data Management Systems)

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