We get these kinds of questions all of the time from computer users:
How did I get that virus?
How did I get that spyware program?
Where did that come from?

It’s easier to tell you how NOT to get these things than it is for me to tell you where they come from. They come from all over the place. All over the net and from a variety of downloads and sources.

So here is my guide on what NOT to do with your computer:
1) NEVER leave a floppy disk in your drive. Booting to an infected floppy is a sure way to infect your computer with a virus. Better yet – turn boot to floppy off in your system settings (BIOS). If you don’t know how to do this – let us know – we can help.
2) NEVER turn off your firewall or connect your machine directly to the Internet without a firewall on. Doing so puts your computer in danger of being hacked or hijacked. You might wind up having a webserver or gameserver on your machine you never planned on. Some viruses are also spread to open ports on a computer (but only a very few).
3) NEVER turn off your virus checker (and ALWAYS keep it updated). Mine is updated every day.
4) NEVER forget to run a spychecker program – like AdAware or SpyBot Search and Destroy. Do this religiously.
5) NEVER click anything while surfing the net that pops up and says, “You have spyware – click here to delete it!” Even if it looks like it is from your Windows system – Windows will never tell you this! Wait until you are completely off the net and run AdAware and SpyBot Search and Destroy just to be sure. Many of these popups only INSTALL spyware – not remove it.
6) NEVER download music from a site you don’t know and don’t install any programs from similar sites. If you aren’t sure of the site you are on – you can bet it is going to infect you with something if you download something from there.
7) NEVER accept free gifts or send anyone your bank information. If it looks too good to be true it probably is. You will never see your money again if you help out the banker from Nigeria that wants to pay you 10 million dollars to help him get the money out of the country that used to belong to a dead dignitary.
NEVER use your credit card on the net UNLESS you know who you are dealing with. PayPal – OK, Ebay – OK, IBM – OK, Visionary – OK – Joe Bob’s Surplus Store in Brooklyn – NOT OK, etc.

If you don’t know how to tell if you are on the right site or not – DON’T USE YOUR CREDIT CARD. Anyone can fake a web site – they do it all the time – Don’t fall for those emails from Bank of America or Ebay that ask you to confirm your bank account info – they are a fraud. The site might look like Bank of America, but it is NOT!

You can tell the legitimate site because it will say: http://www.bankofamerica.com or http://www.ebay.com

These are NOT legitimate sites: http://123.134.3.234/Ebay.com/Something or other

If the URL does not start with www.ebay.com or www.bankofamerica.com BEWARE. And don’t be fooled by: http://a.www.ebay.com that is not Ebay’s site that is a.com’s site. AND if you don’t know how to tell the difference – you need to come to one of our safety siminars.
9) NEVER tell anyone your personal information over Internet Chat – this goes double for younger children and teens. A recent Dateline undercover operation caught 64 men ages 20-69 trying to pick up young girls and boys – many of these got caught when they showed up at the girl’s house! Keep your children safe – many of these men posed as younger boys to get the girl to tell them her information. This was in 9 total hours online! In 9 hours they ran into 64 predators online. So will your kids. Keep them and yourselves safe.
10) NEVER EVER EVER throw your computer through the window because it is a dirty, vile thing, that is slow and leads only to pornography etc. Of course that stuff is out there, of course there are viruses, but by:
a) Keeping your virus checker and spyware detectors up to date
b) Keeping your firewalls on
c) Monitoring your children
d) And following the other rules outlined here you can freely enjoy all of the great things the Internet has to offer without worry – or with less worry than you otherwise had.

If you currently use the Google Personalized Home page, pass on by because today I’m going to tell you all about it. I had not bothered to check it out in the past, so recently I found myself curious enough to click on the”Personalized Home” link at the top right of Google.com. What I found there amazed me. From there you need to click on Personalize Your Google Home Page (or just follow my link) near the left-center of the window. Now you can tinker with your page by editing the options for each item and dragging them around to be exactly where you want them, but I would recommend clicking the “Save Page” button first. At this point, if you don’t have any kind of account with Google you will need to sign up for one. It’s free.

After you’ve done that you can customize your Google home to include easy interfaces to other Google services such as Google Mail (aka Gmail) or the Froogle smart shopper search engine. You can further enhance the page by clicking the Add Content link in the top left corner of the window. From there you are given a whole list of features you could add to your custom page. Remember, many items have their own customization options that you can edit by clicking the tiny “edit” link on their title bars. Custom content not even listed can be added as well.

My Google Personalized Home includes:

• Bible Verse of the Day
• 2 Quotes of the Day
• Word of the Day
• "How To" of the Day
• Gmail Interface
• Top News Stories
• Free TXT messaging
• Current Weather and Forecast
• Movie ratings and showtimes for my area

After you have signed in to your Google account, these items can be edited and updated and re-arranged any way you like, at any time, and they are automatically saved! Dictionary.com’s Word of the Day used to be my browser start page, but now it’s Google all the way!

Most people think the Windows key is just a keyboard shortcut to open the Start Menu. Not true. As a matter of fact the Windows key can be used in conjunction with other keys to act as a keyboard shortcut for faster access to various Windows tools.

Here are some things you can do with the Windows key

Windows key + R – opens the Start menu’s Run box
Windows key + F – opens the Start menu’s Find window
Windows key + E – opnes Explorer
Windows key + Pause/Break – opens the System Properties window
Windows key + M – minimizes all windows
Windows key + Shift + M – expands all windows
Windows key + D – switchs between minimizing all open programs and showing them all
Windows key + Tab – cycles through items on the taskbar

Then, of course,
Windows key by itself will open the Start menu

These are just a few helpful shortcuts to save a mouse click or two, enjoy.

Not all web sites have their own search feature that allows you to search only that particular web site. So what do you do? Easy. Most search engines have a nifty little feature that allows you to do a search and restrict it to only one web site. Here’s what you do:

* Go to your favorite search engine.
* Enter your search term, then enter site:www.sitename.com, where “sitename” is the name of the web site you wish to search.

Example:

Let’s say you wanted to search Visionary Enterprise’s site for instances of “web design”. Open your favorite search engine. Then type in the following:

web design site:www.visionaryweb.com

Using Google to restrict the search to www.visionaryweb.com, you find exactly what you’re looking for.

So the next time you come across a site where the webmaster thought a search feature wasn’t necessary or the one that’s there doesn’t work, you can use this trick to get around that little problem.