In recent months, I’ve noticed a growing trend in virus removal. Parents are actually having their children (either teenagers or adult offspring living at home) pay for it. About half the time I have a virus removal job; the parents blame the infection on the kids and let me know that the cost of the job will ultimately be paid for by the kids.

I think this makes perfect sense. Having been a computer tech for a number of years, I can usually look at a computer and tell you approximately how old the children in the house are by the software and viruses on the computer.

Whether the parents are helping the children learn about responsibility and consequences or the parents just want to save their own hard-earned money in these difficult financial times, I don’t know. But this is a growing trend and I completely support it. Hopefully, by learning this lesson financially, the children will learn about computer safety and that visiting certain types of websites is going to mess up their computer and cost them money.

***EDIT*** That being said, I know that there are parents that blame their mistakes on the children. Trust me, I don’t care who caused the problem or where the problem came from. I believe it is my job to fix the PCs, not place blame.  ***END***

Way to go Parents!

Tim

If you found this post to be informative, consider following Biden PC on Twitter.

Biden PC is a Computer Networking Company and we now offer Online Computer Support.

As everyone is having a difficult time in this recession, Biden PC has lowered its prices on all computer networking and repair. Going from $100 per hour, our new lower prices are as follows:

Businesses: $85.00 per hour
Residences: $75.00 per hour
Remote Support: $15.00 per 1/4 hour

Tim

Biden PC is a Computer Network Consulting Company.

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Lately I’ve been quite involved with Twitter. If you haven’t been to twitter.com, I would definitely recommend taking a look.

Here is how Twitter works. Let’s say that you’re interested in preventing and removing computer viruses, like I am. You could do a search for “virus”, “viruses” or even “computer virus”. Then you would find people who are tweeting about viruses. Once you find them, you can follow them and every time they post a message, you’ll see it. In turn, when they see you following them, they might follow you and get your tweets.

On Twitter, you have the ability to send short messages (the technical term is “MicroBlogging”) to everyone who follows you. You gain followers by tweeting (posting your comments) and following other people who interest you. If you want to send a message to someone, put a @ symbol in front of their name like @BidenPC. If you want to send a direct message (other people can’t see it) Put a D and a space then their name. That looks like D BidenPC. The catch is that to send a Direct Message you have to be following them and they have to be following you. Got it?

If you want to see how it works, go to twitter.com and create your own account. Then go to tweetdeck.com and download their Twitter interface. It’s great! And finally, go to Biden PC and follow me on Twitter.

Tim

Biden PC is a Computer Network Consulting Company.

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Microsoft just released 2 “High Priority” updates to help protect your online safety.

Yesterday a “Zero Day” vulnerability was discovered that allows malicious and hijacked websites to steal passwords that you have saved in Microsoft Internet Explorer. All versions of explorer are affected and should be upgraded and updated.

To update your system,

1. Open Internet Explorer (ironic, isn’t it?) and go to:
   http://www.update.microsoft.com.
2. Click on “Express”.

This will update your system with all necessary updates including the 2 new ones that came out today.

Keep yourself safe online. Keep your computer updated.

Happy Computing,

Tim

Biden PC is a Computer Network Consulting Company.

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Are You Waiting for Windows 7? So was I. But then I read the blog of an someone who has seen it and she (The SBS Diva) has his to say…

“Okay Bill sweetie I realize that you need to put a stake in Windows Vista because if you breathe the word Vista around some users they immediately go into a technology meltdown and refuse to acknowledge that they’ve been dealing with change around computers for the last 20 years, but saying that it’s not a service pack is stretching it.  As is pointed out in this post, Windows 2008 R2 is calling it what it is.  An R2 minor refresh.  Okay so it’s a bit like the Home and Garden decorating shows where you bring in the experts to redecorate the place but it’s the same house.”

“Granted the UAC now has a scrolly bar where you can throttle down the alerts.  And the gadget bar is undocked.  But this isn’t like the change from NT to 2000, nor from 2000 to XP.  It’s still Vista but fixed up and with a new name so that the marketing guys can start over and fix what they screwed up from before.”

“Be careful what you set as expectations as already I’ve had questions regarding if Windows 7 is so different if they should wait for this as they need a new computer.  My answer is no, don’t wait.  Vista sp1 is out.  Beta of sp2 is now out.  And Windows 7 is merely rearranging the furniture and throwing down a new area rug.  It’s not a remodel job.”

I don’t usually do beta releases but I think I might when I actually get it. I really am curious about Windows 7 but now I’m not as hopeful. I DO want to see if they placed the networking features in more logical places. I hate computer networking in Vista.

Happy Computing,

Tim

Biden PC is a Computer Network Consulting Company.

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Two researchers from the Technical University of Darmstadt, Germany, have discovered a method of bypassing the WiFi Protected Access (WPA) encryption used by many wireless routers.

The exploit takes advantage of a weakness on networks that use WPA with TKIP (Temporal Key Integrity Protocol, a security algorithm based on key switching that is used to strengthen the WPA encryption) by circumventing the algorithm that encrypts the Wi-Fi data packets. Researchers Erik Tews and Martin Beck, who are members of the ethical hacking group known as Aircrack-ng, have not only discovered how to bypass WPA, they’ve also created a tool to do so. They plan to release the tool at the PacSec conference next week in Tokyo, Japan, Aircrack-ng member Rick Farina confirmed to PC Magazine on Friday.

…

Because the exploit is specific, users simply need to change the WPA encryption to work with AES or change it to the much more hardened WPA2. If your router doesn’t support WPA2, the best course of action is to shorten the timing of the TKIP in the routers, so that keys are refreshed every two minutes or less. The fast refresh makes it harder but not impossible for hackers to gain access. The best course of action, however, is to buy a new router that supports WPA2.

View the entire post HERE.

Happy Computing,

Tim

Biden PC is a Computer Network Consulting Company.

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Happy All Saints Day everyone! I pray that everyone had a safe and sugar filled time last night.

Just in case you’re not familiar with All Saints Day, here is a little primer, courtesy of our friends over at Wikipedia.  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/All_Saints_Day

Tim

Hello,

Today I am thrilled to announce that Biden PC has moved. We are still a home-based business and now we are actually located in a house instead of an apartment. Thank you to everyone who helped make this dream our reality!

Our new address is:

544 Chester Place
Pomona, CA 91768

As of today, October 27th, please direct all correspondence to our new address.

Happy Computing,

Tim

Biden PC is a Computer Network Consulting Company.

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This is great news!!! Microsoft and Washington State Sue Scareware Creators. Everyone has seen these things either on our own computers or a friend’s computer. They say things like “Your Computer is Infected” and then tell you to purchase their software to fix the problem. I call this ExtortionWare because they are extorting money from you by telling you that they will fix the problem that they caused. I am glad to see that there is finally a movement against these criminals!

They are suing the company that makes Registry Cleaner XP as well as suing to discover the names of the companies that create Antivirus 2009, Malwarecore, WinDefender, WinSpywareProtect and XPDefender. I can add a few more to the list that they should be suing but no one has asked for my input.

Tim Biden is currently conducting a test of different freeware and commercial spyware blockers. Go see how the tests are coming out!

For more information, see Brian Krebs’ Security Fix blog.

Happy Computing,
Tim

Biden PC is a Computer Network Consulting Company.

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Biden PC has just become a reseller for Avira Anti Virus Protection Software. They make the Antivir line of products including the popular free version that is available at www.free-av.com.

Why did we choose Avira over the more well-known security vendors such as Norton (Symantec) and McAfee? If you check out the results of the latest Anti Virus Software Shootout, you will see that Avira has a greater catch and remove rating than either Norton (Symantec) or McAfee. They also have good built-in spyware blockers. Not only has Avira done well in this test but also for all of the recent tests (almost 2 years), they have consistently placed in the superior range in fighting viruses.

I can say with all honesty that I trust Avira Antivir because I have used it on my own computers for about a year with great results. And when computers with Norton (Symantec) or McAfee on them get viruses, I scan them with Avira Antivir and it removes the viruses.

Happy Computing,
Tim

Biden PC is a Computer Network Consulting Company.

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