Tag: IT Help

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How to ensure you never lose access to your email accounts.

Every few weeks, I get a call from someone that can’t access their email address and they don’t know what to do. In most cases, I can help them gain control of their account by using their phone, other email account or information in the emails they have sent to others. This can be a long process and sometimes this just won’t work, and you might lose access for good.

When you rely on your email for communication with friends and family, and to receive your bills and other correspondence from companies it is very important that you can always access this account. For most people this isn’t a concern because they use a password manager and have their account tied to other email addresses and also their cell phone.

If you don’t have your email connected to another email account and your cell phone, you might want to consider doing this. I know some people believe this is just another way for Google or Microsoft or whoever your email supplier is to gather more information on you but there is also a very good reason to accept these connected accounts.

When you have email through your internet supplier like Comcast or CenturyLink, you have an account number with this company, and you pay a monthly fee to them for your internet. Since you have this type of relationship with them, they will gladly help you reset your email account password if you lose track of it. The phone call to make this happen might take an hour or more, but it is possible to do.

When you have a free email account you really do not have a relationship with the company and they do not offer any type of customer service to you. So, if you cannot access your account, you can get completely locked out unless you have other ways to verify your ownership of the email account. This ownership is proven by accounts that are linked to the original account. They may be other accounts that you own or a friend or family members’ account.

It is also very important to make sure this information is always up to date. If you no longer have the phone number or email account listed as your backup information you need to change this information now. Also, if you used your landline make sure the account recovery can call the number and not just send a text message.

I know keeping up with all of this stuff can be a hassle, but not keeping up with this stuff could cause a lot more pain later if you lose access to your email. I have helped many people with this, and it sometimes takes a couple hours to fix it if we can. Save yourself time and money by adding/updating your alternate information on your email accounts. If you are not sure how to do it, I can help. It is a little different for each email provider.

Here is a video about alternate information:

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Ink Subscription Plans

Here is a question that I get often. Should I do the ink plan when I buy a new printer? If you are not familiar, most printer manufacturers now offer a plan to keep you supplied with their ink. They will monitor your printer and automatically send new cartridges when your current cartridges are running low. They typically charge you an amount monthly like $3, or something similar to cover the cost based on your usage. 

This can be helpful since you can actually budget your ink usage and not have to shell out close to $100 when your ink finally runs out. It is also nice not to have to worry about ink and it just shows up at your door. But there are a few things to consider before you actually go down this road.

 Once you sign up for these plans, you CAN’T just go to the store and purchase ink if your supply doesn’t arrive in time or if you get a defective cartridge. You can only use the ink that they supply. I had a customer that had this happen. His current cartridges dried up because he hadn’t printed anything in a while, so he decided to just run to the store and buy some ink. His printer would not accept the store-bought ink even though it was made by the printer manufacturer. He had to wait for his shipment from the manufacturer.

You must keep your printer connected to the internet to use the ink plans. If you disconnect from the internet and use the USB connection your printer will not work.

If you cancel your plan, the cartridges you currently have will not work. You have to go to the store and buy ink. All ink plan cartridges belong to the manufacturer and the empties must be returned to them.

There are a lot of pros and a lot of cons to these plans. If you do a lot of printing, you should buy a laser printer. The cartridges for laser printers last a lot longer so you will run out less often and you should have plenty of time to purchase more when your printer notifies you that the cartridges are low.

Another newer option is the “tank” printers that don’t use cartridges. Instead, they have a tank for each color ink, and you just fill the tanks from ink bottles which are a lot less expensive. This seems like an efficient way to do this. I have seen a few instances where the tank gets clogged and this can be a hard thing to fix, but this is not a common problem. 

If you need a new printer and just have questions about what brand or what type of printer to buy, call me and we can discuss it. There is no single answer. It depends on your needs and your usage.

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Desktop Dos and Don’ts

I have talked a lot about how to keep your laptop running great, but I haven’t spent much time talking about things to keep your desktop running smoothly. Here is a list of items to consider when placing and working with your desktop. I recently did a video about this.

One of the most important considerations for desktop longevity is the location of your desktop. Many desks come with a cabinet for your tower, so you don’t have to look at all of the wires that are connected to it. If you have a cabinet like this in your desk, make sure it has some openings for air flow. Even though desktops usually have a lot of room inside the tower they can still get very hot and start to damage the components. There are fans in the tower to move air and keep the computer cool but if it is sitting in a closed cabinet that air has nowhere to go.

Some people have their computer tower sitting next to their desk. This solves the airflow issue but opens you up to other possible issues. Make sure it isn’t sitting in direct sunlight all day. This can also cause overheating.

 Make sure your computer tower is not right under an open window. If it rains the computer could short out due to the moisture. Being right below a house plant can also be a problem if the water leaks out of the plant.

Regardless of where you keep it, make sure the area is free of dust and dirt. This is especially important if you have pets that shed. The holes in the computer tower are there for airflow and your computer could overheat if they get clogged. Inspect the tower occasionally for excess dirt in the airflow holes. If the holes look clogged up you should disconnect everything from the computer, take it outside and use a can of air to clean it up. You can even take the cover off and blow out the inside. As always, I am more than happy to help with this if you don’t feel comfortable doing this yourself. Doing this every few months can keep your desktop computer running smoothly for years.

Lastly, make sure that regardless of where it is located that it is plugged into a surge protected power strip. This is one of the biggest issues with computers. If there is a power surge due to lightning your computer could be destroyed if there isn’t a surge protector in the way.

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Is My Internet Down?

How can you tell what is really going on with your internet? Is it the router? Is it just your computer? I get these questions a lot, so I decided to break down exactly what you need to do to get the answers and get your internet working again.

Is it your Router? – To determine this, you need to do some homework before your internet goes down. Whether you have a modem/router that was supplied by your internet service provider (ISP), or you purchased your own equipment, it is important to know what it looks like when it is working correctly so you can easily know when it isn’t working.

When your equipment is working correctly, look at the lights and maybe even write down what lights are lit up and what color they are or even take a picture with your cell phone. With this information, you can easily look at your equipment and know that there is a problem because the one light on your Comcast router is orange instead of white for instance.

This is the first question I ask when someone calls with internet issues. What lights are lit up and what color are they? If the lights look different, your first step is to restart your equipment. This is usually done by pulling the power cord out and then plugging it back in. Just know that it will take a few minutes to completely boot back up, just like your computer. Many times, this will fix the issue. If the lights are still not correct, now is the time to contact your ISP for help.

Is it just my computer? – If you check your router and it seems like it is working properly after a restart, it might be a problem with your computer. If you have other devices connected to the internet, are they working properly? This is the easiest way to tell if it is a computer problem. Maybe your computer just lost its connection to the internet. 

Here are the icons that show internet connectivity. Look in the bottom right corner on the taskbar:

Descriptive graphic of internet signal icons

Based on this picture, if you should be on wifi and you are not, just reconnect it. If you should have an ethernet connection, check both ends of the cable. Many times, these simple things will solve your problem. If it still won’t work, call me and I will help you troubleshoot further.

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Does Unsubscribe Really Do Anything and Should I Use It?

I get these questions a lot and my answer is always the same. It depends on the actual email. I know this isn’t the straightforward answer people are looking for, but it is the best answer. Here are a few situations and whether or not to use the unsubscribe button.

If you are receiving multiple emails from a real company, and by that, I mean the email address matches the company name (the email says it is from Target and the email ends with @target.com) then you can use the unsubscribe button and hopefully within a couple days you will no longer receive email from this company. According to The New York Times: “Marketers have 10 business days to honor your unsubscribe request. After that, it’s a violation of the CAN-SPAM Act for a sender to continue emailing you. If the emails keep coming, you’re well within your rights to mark them as spam using your email client’s built-in Spam button.”

If you know the email is not from a real company, meaning the email address does not match the company name, you should not click on the unsubscribe button. When you receive an email that is a phishing scam or some other type of scam there is no point in clicking on unsubscribe. Here are the reasons that you do not want to click unsubscribe in a scam email.

  1. Many scam emails come from stolen email accounts. Since they keep stealing new email accounts, unsubscribe will have no effect. It is a waste of time.
  2. Many times, the unsubscribe link will be the same link as any other link in the email. Clicking on it could cause damage to your computer or install malware. I suggest you never click any link in an email that could possibly be a scam.
  3. By clicking on a link in a scam email you are letting the scammers know that your email is a valid email, and you can end up on even more lists.
  4. Scammers don’t follow the rules.

How do you stop scammers from sending you email? You really can’t stop them if they have your email address, but you can reduce the number of scams that hit your inbox. Always mark scams as “junk” or “spam.” These filters learn over time what you don’t want to see and eventually most of the scams will go there instead of your inbox. This can also cause the email address they use to be flagged and blacklisted. This can slow them down but since they usually steal accounts or make fake accounts this will not stop them.

So, if your inbox keeps filling up with emails that you don’t want, you can unsubscribe to a couple real emails per day and your inbox will eventually look cleaner. You can also mark the scams as spam/junk and over time your inbox will receive less of those emails also.

If you are not sure if an email is real or not. Contact me and I can teach you how to tell the real from the fakes. I have also made a few videos about this, check out this playlist:

Watch the Whole Playlist

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How Scammers Can Use Your Email Rules, sometimes called Filters, Against You.

This is something that I have seen many times. A scammer will somehow get access to your email and then they can send emails from your account without you even being aware of it. In fact, they hide it from you. They can carry on conversations with others right from your email and you will never see it.

First let me explain what rules are in email accounts. These are instructions to help you manage your email. You can set up a rule for instance, to move any email from “John” to the folder “John.” These rules can be very helpful if you receive a lot of email and there are some that you need for future references but don’t necessarily need to see them when they arrive. I always get an emailed receipt when I buy anything from my computer supplier. I don’t need to look at these emails, I just need them for documentation if I am ever audited. So, I set up a rule that anytime I receive an email from Micro Center those emails will be moved to my Micro Center folder.

Scammers can do the same thing in your email. They can send an email to your employee that says “Please pay this invoice” in the subject line. In this email they will tell you to follow this link and pay this invoice for them. They can set up a rule that says any email that has “Please pay this invoice” in the subject line, delete the email. They can go into the trash and keep corresponding with your employee about this and you will never know about it.
This is a basic description of how they do it, but you get the idea about how they can steal from companies by using this tactic.

So, how can you protect yourself from this type of scam that has cost many companies a lot of money? The first thing is to make sure your email password is complex and not similar to other passwords that you have and use 2 factor authentication. If you can keep the scammers out of your email you don’t even have to worry about this.

But it is still a good idea to check your rules occasionally to make sure there are not any new rules that can be used against you. I had a customer that was one of the recipients along with others in their company on an email from one of their customers. Suddenly she was not receiving these emails any longer while everyone else was still getting them and they could see that she was listed as a recipient in the emails.

We verified that there was no issue with her email, she was receiving emails from everyone else except this one person. Then we checked her rules in Outlook on her computer and finally logged in online to her email and checked the rules there. When we checked online there were some new rules set up that she was not aware of and didn’t set up.

The scammers were using her account to try to divert payments to another bank. Luckily, we caught it, and no money was sent to the wrong bank. We then deleted these rules, changed her email password, and forced a sign out on all devices. We also made sure there were no rules in anybody else’s email account in the company and we instituted 2 factor authentication to ensure their email accounts remain safe.

If you are familiar with email rules, you should immediately check to ensure there are no extra rules in your email accounts. If you do not know anything about rules and don’t know how to check for fake rules, here is a video where I walk through how to view your rules in Outlook, Outlook online, and Gmail, most other web-based email accounts work similar to these. Check with the company that supplies your email or contact me.

If you would like to receive the Email Scambusters Monthly Report, sign up at the link below. It is a two-step process. Sign up and then click the payment link. The cost is $49.99 per year which is less than one cup of coffee per month. If you need more information give me a call.

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Which box is my router and what are those other boxes in my IT room?

I get questions like this a lot. Usually when someone calls me because their internet is down or there is some other problem with the systems in their small business. When this happens, I try to explain what their router might look like, and I ask for a description of the other boxes so I can help them solve their problem over the phone.

When my regular customers call me with these types of issues, I can easily tell them to restart this or that box. The reason for this is that I usually label all boxes in their IT room the first time I am there. This is a big help regardless of who calls me from that company.

Many times, these issues happen when the “boss” is not there and so they instruct their employees to call me for assistance. Since everything is labeled, I can quickly diagnose the issue with their help. This can save the company a lot of down time and money since I can help them fix their issue remotely instead of having to go on site.

I have even had customers send me pictures so I can tell them what the boxes are. This works sometimes, but I might need to know what the wires are connected to and how they are connected so dealing with this before there is an issue is very important.

If you have a business and you don’t know what every box in your IT room does, let me know and I will explain each to you and even label them so you will be ahead of the issue next time the internet goes down. I can also help homeowners with this, but they usually don’t have as many boxes, so it is usually easier to diagnose things.

Many times, when people move into a brand-new home, they will find that it is partially wired for internet connections in some rooms. The wires might be in the basement and connected to each bedroom and even the kitchen and living room. The problem is that they don’t know what they need to get all of these wires connected to their router. This is also something that I can help with. I can even label each connection so they will know in the future which wire connects to which room in the house.

This is something I really don’t talk about much, but it is an important service that I offer. If you need this type of help let me know.