Do you know what spyware programs work best with your OS?

If you are one of the many people testing the beta release of Windows 7, you should still make sure to keep your computer safe and secure. The other day we created a list of Anti-Virus software compatible with Windows 7, and today we’ll be covering a list of compatible Spyware protection utilities.

Note: make sure to check out our screenshot walkthrough of the Windows 7 Beta if you haven’t already, as Microsoft is giving away beta keys that don’t expire until August 1st.

If you have a commercial security suite such as Norton or McAfee, then it probably includes anti-malware protection, and if you decide to run a separate anti-spyware package you should probably disable the other one. This is even mentioned in the Windows 7 Action Center screen if you install more than one.  For more information please visit the following information:

http://www.howtogeek.com/80080/list-of-spyware-protection-software-compatible-with-windows-7-2/

Yesterday I received a call from a close friend stating that her pc was acting weird and that she noticed the following alert kept popping up in her pc’s taskbar “XP Home Security 2012 Firewall Alert”.  She also stated that she could not open any applications and access the internet. All of these symptoms screamed “VIRUS or MALWARE” attack to me.  After conducting some research, I discovered that this program is a new, fake anti-virus application that is downloaded from the internet.  Thankfully, with a ton of perserverance, I was able to remove this awful program from her pc.

As a business owner, I cannot stress enough the importance of making sure that you have an Antivirus and Anti-spyware program installed on your computer—as well as making sure that your computer stays up-to date with the latest  security patches.

Here are 5 Computer Security Tips that I would like to share with you:
1.  Use an Anti-Virus and Anti-Spyware software on your computer;  Make sure to keep them up to date.
2.  Password Protect your computer—and Use Strong Passwords.  For examples of strong passwords, please visit the following link:  http://www.bargaineering.com/articles/how-to-create-a-strong-password-you-can-remember.html
3. Change your Passwords frequently.
4.  Make sure that your Firewall is turned on.
5.  Use a Firewall program on your computer.

business with 50 users or less to get all the benefits of an Office VoIP Phone system without any of the headaches that come with managing it.  For small businesses looking to cut operational costs, and wanting access to Fortune 500 phone systems without having to purchase expensive equipment, Hosted VOIP is definitley a cost effective alternative that you may want to look into.

So whats Hosted VOIP?
Hosted VOIP (Voice Over Internet Protocol) is a technology that gives us the ability to use phone services over the Internet. As a matter of fact, traditional phone lines are slowly being phased out as small, medium and large businesses are reaping the benefits of using VOIP systems. The main benefits of using VOIP are the ability to make long distance phone calls, hold conference calls, use caller ID, call forwarding and other features that traditional telephone companies normally charge for are free. Isn’t that awesome?

Business of all sizes are discovering benefits of using Hosted VOIP Telephone Systems.  7 Key Benefits of using this type of telephone system are:

1. Because a Hosted VOIP telephone systems services and features are hosted in the cloud, there’s no expensive equipment to buy
2. You will receive Unlimited local and long distance minutes on any given extension
3. You can keep an existing phone number by porting it from your current provider
4. Administrators and users configure and manage their own services through an easy-to-use Web interface
5. Cell Phone integration is included and allows you to forward calls to cell phones
6. You will receive voicemail as a .mp3 file (or “audio file”) attached to email
7. There is no contract required to sign up for Hosted VOIP Services.  You can pay month by month to use them.

If you are a small business owner that is thinking about upgrading your current phone system because it’s outdated and is interested in a Hosted VOIP Solution, you’re moving your office or because you just want to see if you can save money on your phone bill, we’d like to offer you a Free Cost-Benefit Analysis consultation to demonstrate how we might be able to help you. At no charge, we will come to your office to review your current phone system, telephone bill, future needs and business practices. Based on what we discover, we’ll provide you with one or more options for helping you to save money and get the results you want.

What To Do Now

To request your Free Cost-Benefit Analysis, do one of the following:

1. Call us direct at 1-877-884-4360
OR
2. Send an e-mail: info@lab-ratztech.com with “Free Phone Analysis” in the subject line

Are your office PCs slow, crashing and freezing up? Are you haunted by pop ups and spam? Is your PC acting so weird that you think it’s possessed? If so, these are all signs of an ill-maintained computer network that’s infected with spyware, viruses or corrupt files. If left alone, these problems could evolve into a much bigger (and more expensive) problem.

We’ll Solve The Computer Problem Of Your Choice For Free!

Since Halloween is right around the corner, we’d like to give you a free 2-hour service call as a way of introducing fast, friendly computer support services at no cost or risk to you.

Just say the word and we’ll send one of our qualified “ghost busting” technicians to your office to work on the computer problem of your choice, including:

• Diagnose slow, unstable PCs
• Scan for hidden spyware, viruses or corruptions
• Perform a quick “network tune up”
• Check your network’s firewall and security settings
• Validate the integrity and reliability of your data backups
• Discuss a project or upgrade you’re considering

Why Are We Giving Away Free Services? Some people think we are crazy for offering free services. They say, “Aren’t you scared people will just take advantage of you?” The truth is, some people might – but we know that most business owners are just honest people trying to find someone they can trust to fix and maintain their computer network.

To claim your FREE service call, go online to http://lab-ratztech.com/free-stuff/ or call us at 1-877-884-4360.

This offer expires on the witching hour (midnight) October 31st!

Offer valid only for business offices in Dallas and North Dallas Texas with 5 or more PCs.

Is e-mail communication the lifeline of your business?  Would your productivity grind to a halt if your e-mail was cut off for any time at all?  Are you tired of new hardware and software expenses and the endless maintenance needed just to keep everything up to date? If so, I’ve got some great news for you.

Cloud Based E-mail (aka “Hosted Exchange”) is often a much easier way of eliminating e-mail downtime, slow performance and annoying spam messages. Here’s how it works: Instead of purchasing and maintaining your e-mail in-house, which can be costly and time consuming, your e-mail server is hosted (and maintained) in a high-performance, high-security hosting company “in the cloud” where you can access it securely from any device or PC.

Best of all, you don’t have to make any changes in HOW you access your e-mail – your messages will simply be delivered to your inbox, phone or other device faster and with fewer issues, and it will always be synchronized and up-to-date!

Here are just a few of the advantages of cloud-based e-mail:

Synchronized access to your e-mail and calendar from anywhere. You don’t have to remote into your office PC; now you can securely access your e-mail from any device or PC.

No more software, hardware or maintenance costs. YOU don’t have to purchase the hardware and software, nor do you have to maintain the system. This is all included in a low monthly fee.

High speed, “always on” e-mail. The hosted Exchange platforms we provide to our clients are high-performance systems with multiple “fail over” backup servers, maintained and monitored like Fort Knox, which is a level of service you wouldn’t typically need for your small business. However, since you are hosting on this platform, cloud-based e-mail gives you all the benefits of a high-performance system without the costs. Your in-house network could go down and you’d STILL have access to your e-mail, contacts and calendar.

Automatic backups and archiving. What would you do if your in-house e-mail server failed and erased your messages? Or what if a disgruntled employee deleted all their e-mails? If you were hosting your Exchange, these would be non-issues since your e-mails are backed up daily and secured.

Want to know if Cloud-Based E-mail is right for you? Call us for a no obligation, no pressure “Cloud E-mail Readiness Assessment.”  We’ll show you how much it will save your company in hardware, software and support costs, and we’ll let you know if there are any hidden “gotchas” to consider for your business. If you decide to switch your e-mail to a hosted solution with us (and you are under no obligation), we’ll even waive the setup fee.

Whether you’re a start-up business or a small business looking for ways to cut costs,  setting up a virtual office may be an ideal solution for you. So…you’re not sure what a virtual office is? Well according to wikipedia, a virtual office  is a combination of off-site live communication and address services that allow users to reduce traditional office costs while maintaining business professionalism.

As a small business owner, I know all to well how important it is to try to keep overhead down as much as possible.  Here are 4 tools that can be used to help you get started with setting up your virtual office for your small business and give your business a professional look.

1.  A Virtual Office Phone and Office System

Virtual phone and office systems such as Phone.com are ideal solutions for setting up your virtual office. At a starting rate of $15.00 a month,  you can use one number to reach all of your staff members anywhere, check your voice mail messages from your email and more. Most recently, Phone.com developed a free Mobile App for Smart Phones including the Android, IPhone and Blackberry. With this application, subscribers can make and receive calls, manage messages and use call forwarding–ALL from their Android or IPhones using a Phone.Com virtual office number.  How Cool is that?

2.  A Business Domain Name

If you’re running a business- there’s nothing more professional than changing your domain name from a gmail.com or yahoo.com extension to your company domain name.  Network Solutions offers an affordable way to do this for less than $5.00 per month.

3.  Online Billing and Invoicing System

Get paid on time while making your invoices stand out in style easily using online invoicing solutions Blinksale or Billing Boss.  Blinksale offers unlimited invoicing for just $15.00 a month.  With this invoicing tool all of your invoices are sent via email to your clients to help you save money on postage. Billing Boss offers the same feature–only its FREE to use.  With both of these tools, you can accept online payments, create separate invoices for all of your clients, and setup recurring billing.

4.  Invest in a good Laptop PC

Laptop computers are mobile and portable- meaning you can run your business from wherever you are.  Here is a link to the list of the top 10 Laptop computers of 2011 that can help you with your selection: http://computers.toptenreviews.com/laptops/

So….there you have it.  My top 4 list of tools to help you get started with setting up your virtual office. If you have any questions or concerns regarding the products and solutions mentioned, please don’t hesitate to contact me–k.george@lab-ratztech.com.

How to Spot Malicous Social Media PC Threats

Social media platforms such as Facebook, Linkedin and Twitter have drastically changed the way that people communicate with one another.  Additionally, these tools have helped businesses market and promote their businesses inexpensively and have driven new business.

According to an article published by banking.com “30 billion pieces of content (e.g links, photos, notes) are shared on the social media giant Facebook each month”.

While Facebook and other social media platforms are great tools for marketing your business and keeping in touch with people – there are number of computer security risks that you should be aware of when using these tools.  Because of the huge influx of users on social media networks, cyber criminals are now focusing their dirty work on attacking them.

Just recently, I recieved a call from one of my clients stating that her computer started acting strange after she clicked on a link to a message that she recieved on Facebook. Well…to make a long story short, the link that she clicked on had a computer virus attached to it.  Thankfully, her Anti-virus program was able to catch it and prevent the virus from wreaking havoc on her pc.

So….You ask yourself.. “How Can I tell if Someone is sending a valid message to my FB inbox versus spam or a virus? I am so glad you asked…..

Here are some things to look out for that can help you spot malicious threats on social networks:
1.  Beware of messages with links inside of them
2.  Watch out for messages stating that you are in a “video” –and ask you to enter your username and password to access the video
3.  Beware of Subject Lines that contain misspelled words in them
4.  Avoid clicking on links to posts to videos on your profile from unknown sources; Most recently, the reported death of Bin Laden sparked a wave of Spammed content that was posted on Facebook. This video lured Facebook users into thinking that they would see live video of Bin Ladens death– when in fact, they would be setting their computer systems up for hackers to invade them.

The Best defense against social media security threats is to ensure that your computer has a good Anti-Virus and Anti-Spyware program installed on it.  Secondly, use caution before clicking links on these sites.  I would suggest that if you recieve a message or a link that looks suspicious, google the message, or do a search on the internet to see if you can dig up some information about the content.

Safe Networking Everybody…
– Kim George

As the old saying goes “nothing lasts forever”.  This saying most certainly applies to computer hard drives which have an average life expectancy of 3 to 5 years.   Yea, I know..that’s not a very long time at all.  Since I’ve been in the computer support business, I’ve replaced a number of hard drives.

According to an article published on Computer File Recovery, hard drive failures are the fourth leading cause of computer crashes. Most pc users aren’t aware of the warning signs of a hard-drive crash. In this blog entry, I will cover 5 of them.

Symptom #1.  The Blue Screen of Death – If your computer goes to a blue screen while you’re working on it, this is a strong indication that your computers operating system is damaged or has bad sectors.

Symptom #2.  Clicking Sound on Hard Drive – Clicking sounds on hard drives is a tale-tale sign of failure.  This usually happens when your computer has been dropped, damaged by a power surge, or is not aligned correctly

Symptom #3.  Your System Freezes or Hangs – If your system freezes and hangs when booting up, this is usually a sign that there are bad sectors on the hard drive causing it to not boot up.

Symptom #4.  Operating System Not Found Error Message – This is one of the most obvious signs of a hard drive failure.  You will get this message when your operating system files are damaged on your hard drive.

Symptom #5. Your Computer Keeps Rebooting on its Own – Sometimes this can happen when there is a hardware related problem with your pc;  Most of the times, its due to Hard Drive failure.

So..What Do I Do Now That My Hard-Drive is Failing?

The most important thing that you need to do is to have a backup and recovery solution in place to protect your data.   There are a ton of online affordable backup services that you can use to backup your data–including Crash Plan, and Mozy. The next thing you can do is to run a Hard-Drive diagnostics program..which can be found online for free.  Here is a link to a website that has a list of Hard-Drive Vendor diagnostic tools that you can use to check your hard-drive for errors and other defects: http://www.digitalalchemy.tv/2008/02/hard-drive-diagnostic-and-repair-tools.html. If you have any questions or concerns about choosing a backup and recovery solution for your business or personal use, please feel free to email me at k.george@lab-ratztech.com.

I have to admit, I’d addicted to my cell phone.  I depend on it for a number of business and personal things such as:  making phone calls, accessing my email, writing emails, keeping track of appointments, using it as an alarm clock–and most importantly for playing “Angry Birds”. (just kidding)

I’ve had my HTC Incredible Android Based OS Phone for about a year now, and I totally (heart it). There’s just so much that you can do with it and a ton of applications that can be downloaded from the Android market that can be used for business related tasks.

One of my personal favorite apps that I use on my phone to connect to the internet from my laptop PC is PDANet by June Fabrics.  This neat little tool allows you to surf the Internet –via your android phone (No, I’m not kidding). Best of all, you only have to pay a one-time fee to use the program.  Simply download the application to your Android phone and install it onto your pc, plug in your USB cable (one end from the phone the other to your pc) and Voila…you’re connected to the Internet.  PDANet is perfect for the traveling business person–or whoever needs to have access to the internet when there is no connection available.

Since I’m such a nice person, I decided to spread the love by sharing 10 of the Best Android Apps that can be used for Business with you.

#10.    Weatherbug - Stay up to date with the latest weather conditions locally or wherever you are planning to travel to for business

#9.    WordPress - Keep your blog or Website updated with this nifty tool

#8. Expenser – Can be used to stay on top of your business expenses and budget

#7.    Find My Car – Trouble finding your car after parking at a biz conference? This app will help you find your way

#6.    Tweetdeck – Integrate all of your social networking media using this App; Post status updates and other information using a single dashboard

#5. Skype Mobile - Stay in touch with friends, business colleagues, employees and others with this mobile video and voice app

#4.    Drop Box - Great app for editing, sharing or viewing  business documents and other files anywhere and anytime you need them

#3.    Google Maps Navigation - Have an appointment scheduled with a client and need directions?  Google Maps to the rescue…. Google Maps Navigation is an internet-connected GPS navigation system with voice guidance, turn by turn directions and more.  What’s even more awesome about this application is that after you arrive at your destination it will be shown in Google Street View.

#2.    Google Voice - Perfect App for business owners wanting to keep track of phone calls efficiently and with the use of one number..instead of multiple phones

#1. PDANet – I cannot begin to tell you how useful PDANet is..especially for a small business user on the go.  The PdaNet Android Tethering app is Awesome! With this app you can take advantage of 3G or Wifi Internet connection speeds to power your PC.

By Kimberly George

Every day, people use passwords to login to numerous accounts including – their computers, email accounts, online bill payment systems, accessing online banking accounts and any other account that requires a password for access.

Despite several major Security Breaches in large computer networks – such as the one at the popular blog site “The Gawker” in 2010 or most recently the security breach at the Sony Playstation Network, pc users are still not using strong passwords to secure their accounts.

The security breach at the “Gawker” exposed a ton of weak passwords. Of these passwords, the top 10 most commonly used passwords for user accounts were:

1. Password
2. 123456
3. qwerty
4. abc123
5. letmein
6. monkey
7. myspace1
8. password1
9. blink182
10. (your first name)

Talk about setting your accounts up for easy access to Hackers! Weak passwords like these will surely do just that.   Imagine what could happen to you if someone stole the passwords to your accounts?  They could take over your email account and start sending spam or viruses to the contacts in your address book or even worse steal your identity. Believe me when I tell you, I’ve worked with a number of clients that have had this happen to them.

Using strong passwords to secure your accounts can help tremendously in preventing outside intruders from gaining access to your computer and online accounts. Below are 4 Tips that can be used for Creating Strong Passwords to Secure Your Accounts:

#1. Use a combination of upper and lower cases letters, numbers, and special characters
Weak password Example: secret          Strong password Example: 1SecreT!2

#2. Do not use words found in the dictionary

#3. Make sure that your passwords are at least 7 characters long

#4. Do not use passwords that contain your name, date of birth, address or other personal information.

The suggestions above are basic steps that can be taken to create a strong password for your accounts.   For more tips on creating strong passwords, check out the following link: http://www.thegeekstuff.com/2008/06/the-ultimate-guide-for-creating-strong-passwords/.