Monday, February 11, 2013 is “Clean out Your Computer Day”, so take some time over the next few weeks and clean up all the junk that has gathered on your computers over the last year.   Clean out, delete or archive programs, files and emails you know you are never going to use or reference again.

Grant-Tech has some great preventative maintenance services and solutions available to automate this process.  Give us a call (773) 675-1423 or fill out a service request to have one our customer service representatives’ setup a date and time for an onsite or remote technical support service call.

Purchase a subscription to GT Maintenance for only $35.79 a year and keep your computers in Tip-Top shape all year round.

Thought you might like this additional information relating to “Extending your computers life”.

Computers slow down as they age, and replacing old equipment can be expensive to replace every few years, one way to extend the life of your computer to perform regular monthly or quarterly preventive maintenance.

Clean and well maintained computers run faster for longer periods of time.  By optimizing performance and proactively maintaining the health of your computers you can minimize downtime.  Grant-Tech’s preventive maintenance program gives you the ability to lengthen your computers lifespan and significantly reduces problems and repairs that can happen over time.

Grant-Tech’s “Computer Preventative Maintenance Program” will

1. Professionally clean and remove all unwanted internet, recycle bin, temporary files.
2. Professionally clean and repair any registry errors, and remove those entries that are no longer used or needed.
3. Professionally clean and remove all unwanted cookies and other files that are still hanging around on your computer that you don’t need and will never use again.
4. and a ton more…

Congrats to our client – Ranalli’s of Andersonville (http://www.ranallispizza.com/) on the very nice plug they received from Deborah Norville of Inside Edition and Windy City Live – Channel 7 (WLS-TV) this morning.  http://windycitylive.com/episodes/Deborah-Norville-from-Inside-Edition/8532853

Watch the clips ending where they surprise Deborah with her favorite Panzerotti from Ranalli’s of Andersonville.

We love ROA’s food too!!!

Here is what I received and wanted to pass along to you:

Security Advisory: Fake DHL Emails Distribute New Trojan
Started at 12/07/2011 02:29 PM ET

We have identified a potential threat to your email users in the form of a new spam campaign that masquerades as a shipping notification from DHL. Currently, none of the major anti-virus providers are capable of catching and quarantining this message. As such, this scam has the potential to be successful and can have serious consequences.

We have manually updated our virus definitions to stop future incoming messages and are working with our providers to ensure protection against this virus. However, you users may already have messages in their inbox. Therefore, we recommend that you take the following action:

• Notify all your email users about this threat

• Caution your users not to open any attachments from DHL or any unknown sender

• Be aware that this is a rapidly-changing virus. Even if your anti-virus provider lists it as covered, you may still be at risk.

More details about this threat are provided in this email. We will update our customers when we feel this is no longer a threat. If you have any questions, please contact Support.

Thank you,

More information about this threat: The messages have their “From” field spoofed to appear as originating from an DHL email address. The subject is “DHL Tracking Number ########” (where # stands for a random letter or digit) and unlike most spam, the content of these emails is relatively well-spelled.

The message, signed by DHL Delivery Services, reads: “Hello! The courier company was not able to deliver your parcel by your address. You may pickup the parcel at our post office personally. The shipping label is attached to this email. Please print this label to get this package at our post office. The attached archives are called DHL_INVOICE23.zip and contain a trojan installer.

“The file in the ZIP archive uses a double file extension in the form of DHL_INVOICE_23.xls______________<plenty of underscores>______.exe,” the Avira researchers explain. This naming scheme as well as the file Excel document icon, have the purpose of deceiving the users into believing that they are actually opening a document. The series of underscores pushes the .exe extension out of the view when the archive file is opened in an unpacking program. At the same time the .exe part will not be visible in Windows Explorer either, since file extensions are hidden by default.

Here is a link to the DHL website about the virus as well, in case you have an interest. http://www.dhl.com/en/about_us/new_virus.html

The Chicago Tribune posted an article from CNNMoney the other day titled, “Microsoft: PC viruses are mostly your fault” posted October 12, 2011.  After seeing the title of the article I thought, come on Microsoft how can you say that?  But after reading it in more detail, I kind of agree.

If you read my previous blog post, Never, Never, Ever…. posted on September 6, 2011, how cyber attackers are trying to get us to provide them with personal information you would kind of agree as well, however it is not always our fault.  If software companies created software that had secure development code and no security holes, we would not have to worry about these attackers.

However, we do need to be more careful about what emails we read and open and what websites we visit.  If you do not know the sender or if you are not familiar with the website I would would not open it, respond to it or click on it, period.

So I guess I agree with Microsoft to an extent, but I also feel that it might be a combination of both our faults.  What do you think?  Let me know your thoughts and observations relating to the Chicago Tribune Article or this blog post by replying below.

Never, never, ever reply to an email asking for personal information.

We had several calls in the last few weeks from our Home and Office clients concerning emails they are receiving from what looks like their email service provider and is presented in a professional and official manner. What they don’t realize is that these emails are actually SPAM or FISHING emails and not officially from the email provider.

Please remember to never, never, ever provide anyone through an email or online, any personal information, such as social security numbers, usernames, passwords, etc.  The only time you should provide this type of information is when you initiate the contact first.

If you have doubts and the emails just don’t look right, you are likely right, just delete the emails, or report them as SPAM to your email provider.

If it was official, they will call you on the phone or send something in the regular mail, where you can then verify who they are before providing this type of information.

by filling out the short form below, hit submit and get your copy in pdf format. It includes “Tips and Tricks” you can do on your own to keep your computer in “Tip-Top” shape.

I read an article today in the Sun-Times (click here to read the article in the Sun-Times) how a neighbor used his other neighbors Wi-Fi Internet connection to downloaded unlawful materials from that Internet. It was all done unbeknownst to the owner of the wireless Internet service, and the FBI came and arrested the owner of the wireless internet service…he had no idea it was going on.   Wi-Fi security is a must if you have a wireless network or are thinking of installing one.

If you looked at the list of wireless networks available from your home or work computer, you would probably see two or three with no security enabled, meaning anyway can connect and use them.  Anyone walking down the street with a smartphone or someone in a car who happens to have a laptop, or a neighbor sitting in the house next door.

Without a secure wireless network someone could use your network to access the Internet and download files, or surf the World Wide Web, or if they had the knowledge and skills, they could even access your personal information and files on your work or home computer(s).

Grant-Tech will never install a wireless network that does not include security and authentication.  However, based on my experience, unless the customer specifically requests security setup when one of the large Internet service providers installs your service it usually isn’t active or configured.

Be sure to check your own Wi-Fi network, and make sure security is enabled.  If you don’t know how, gives us a call at 773-675-1423 and we would be happy to walk you through the process to check for FREE.

The first is a solution called Project.Net, its the only detailed and comprehensive open-source project and portfolio management solution that has a great end user interface and some fantastic functionality.  Project.Net gives you the ability to manage projects across several business units with separate resource pools, blogs, discussion forums, documents, forms and workflows. You can even import and export Microsoft Project files into Project.Net.  The tool gives a some nice gantt charts and work-plan management tools and it also has a great time keeping function where project resources can report time against tasks.  It is a completely web enabled solution so the user doesn’t have to install any software on the local computer and it works in the three most popular web browsers (Safari, Mozilla -Firefox and Microsoft Explorer).

The second is a solution called SugarCRM, its the only detailed and comprehensive open-source customer relationship management (CRM) solution that has a great end user interface and functionality as well.

We have experience in implementing both solutions, so if your in the market for a free project management or customer relationship management solution that have a great deal of functionality or just want to learn more about them.  Give us a call at 773.675.1423 and talk with a customer service rep.

To see Project.Net, visit:
http://www.project.net/

To see SugarCRM, visit:

http://www.sugarcrm.com/crm/

In a way she is right, however there is no reason why the basic computer user can’t learn some of the ways they could keep there computers running in tip top shape.  All it takes is some time and practice.  I hear that it takes someone three times to actually remember how to do something (I guess it all depends on what the something is).  In any case take some time to download our Computer Tips and Tricks – Hot Sheet today and if you run into any problems don’t hesitate to give us a call.

Download Tips and Tricks Here