Scareware is in the air!

It’s that time again! Everyone’s getting into the Halloween Trick or Treat spirit–including scammers using Fear to trick you to steal your personal information.

My Human has been getting a lot of calls and want’s me to let you know what tricks you should watch out for.

Big money in identity theft (sadly).

Identity theft has become such a lucrative international business, the bad guys can buy sophisticated equipment and professional call centers with operators that don’t sound like they are from a different country.

As the holidays-and tax season approaches, these bad guys target people in the U.S. over 50 years old, and the Baby Boomers.  They use “scarewords” to make people to respond without thinking. Things like “your social security number has been cancelled”, “warrant”, “charges”, “IRS audit”, “must respond now to prevent…”

Using a little common sense (to save your cents).

If you think about it and apply some common sense, what they say in those calls doesn’t make any real sense at all.

Personal finance cat columnist Michelle Singletary wrote an excellent article explaining these scams in the Washington Post that you can read in this link here.

Pass this information on to grandparents that might be a target. Halloween is for giving out candy (or sardines) to monsters, not information!

~ The Computer Cat

Mommy’s Copy Cat Honeybaked Ham

If you want to make your own Honeybaked ham for the holidays, here’s a great “copycat” ham I found on http://www.mommyskitchen.net.
Sure, I know it has nothing to do with computers (unless you use a computerized butane torch). But I know some Computer Cats out there who like to cook (and the rest of us cats like to eat ham!).

How to get rid of the gray (text on websites)

Tired of trying to read web sites that use gray text for writing?

You’re not the only one. In this edition of The Computer Cat Corner, I will show you how to get rid of your gray text and dye it back to black! Woo hoo!

If you get a call about your computer, IT’S A SCAM !

UPDATE: In addition to the scam of the bad guys calling you, there is a new type of “scareware” that’s appeared. It pops-up a message on your screen saying your computer has been infected and with a phone number for you to call them so they can “fix” your infected computer–for several hundred dollars. The rest of their scam is just like my article here. Watch out for these dirty “rats”!

Buying Your First Computer

The first thing people ask my Human when they find out she’s The Chief Geek is “I want to buy a new computer. What kind would you get?” If you’re buying your first computer or going to buy a new one for going back to school, here’s some of The Chief Geek’s tips to save you some time, money, and aggravation.

You Don’t Need To Buy Office 2007/2010 Just To Read Those Files

If you can’t read the new Microsoft Office .DOCX or .XLSX files, you don’t need to toss out your good old, reliable version of Office. Here’s how you can read those new file types for free!

CC’s Guided Tour of the Curious Blog Page, Part 3

Well it’s about time to end our tour. But before we leave, let me tell you about blog voting, sharing, tags, clouds, and blogrolls (which isn’t a sushi roll dish).

Need Bigger Words!!

Are you sick and tired of trying to read web pages with all that tiny print? Would you like to know how to make the print the right size for you? This multi-part article will help you understand why pages on the Internet are like that and what you can do to change it for the top 5 Internet browsers.