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

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

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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On one of my other blogs, I am testing spyware blockers. I have collected an entire list of “infected websites” and after going through quite a few pages (probably more than 50) I am noticing a theme… They all want you to download a file of some sort. So here is my recomendation and the theme of this post.

Unless you specifically trust the website that you are at, don’t download anything!!!

Keeping yourself and your computer safe online is a bit more complicated than that but just following that one rule will go miles in keeping your computer clean and safe. By reducing the number of virus and spyware infestations you have you will save yourself money on repairs and how often you have to buy a new computer.

Spyware Blockers are a legitimate and sometimes necessary product but they can’t help you if you circumvent them by downloading every Java or ActiveX plugin that you are given.You have to use your head when you’re online. A spyware blocking program will help to keep you safe but you also have to use common sense.

To quote a few cliches, “An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure” and “Don’t believe everything you read”. Scamming websites abound and you are their target. They don’t discriminate which is why you have to.

Happy and Safe Computing,

Tim

Biden PC is a Computer Network Consulting Company.

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Has your Internet Explorer 7 lost its top menu bar? This just happened to me when I was using a Microsoft website. The Microsoft website was the reason that I was using Internet Explorer 7 but that is a different talk show.

I was trying to do something (a keystroke) and I completely lost the bar at the top of my IE window. So after much playing around with all the key combinations in the areas where my fingers were, I finally found the culprit. It was the Windows Logo Key and F11.

Go ahead and try it. Hold the Windows Logo Keyand press F11 then let go of both. See?!?! Now do it again and the menu bar comes back. Cool huh?

I hope this helps you when it happens to you.

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

Happy Computing.
Tim

Biden PC is a Computer Network Consulting Company.

Mozilla Firefox gives you many more options on how to deal with cookies than Microsoft Internet Explorer does. You have the options of:

• Accepting all cookies
• Not accepting 3rd party cookies
• choosing on a site by site basis which cookies to accept.

You also have options as to how long to keep the cookies that you do accept.

• Keep them until they expire
• Keep them until you close Firefox.

ITCSNY points out a few reasons why we should be more careful with the cookies that we accept.

So here are some easy instructions (for Windows Users) to change your default Cookie rules.

1. Go to the”Tools” menu and choose “Options”.
2. Click under the “Privacy” tab at the top of the window and look under the “Cookies” section.
3. Choose your settings then click “OK”.

Cookies can be very helpful so I don’t delete them all but I do recommend AT LEAST removing the check mark from “Accept third-party cookies”. I also choose “Ask me every time” under “Keep Until” just so that I can actually see who is requesting the cookies.

Remember, cookies help you log into websites and some absolutely require cookies so I don’t recommend blocking them all, but you should at least learn about who is giving them to you.

Happy Computing,
Tim

Biden PC is a Computer Network Consulting Company.

Since everyone wants more business, it pays to be on the first page of Google, Yahoo, and MSN. Website rankings and their placements are always changing which is why we must perform SEO. SEO stands for Search Engine Optimization.

I’ve been learning quite a bit about SEO in recent weeks and I would like to share just the basics with you.

1. The wording on your page is extremely important, especially the H1 and Title tags.
2. Inbound links are are also extremely important. Not only how many you have but also what the anchor text (the text you click on that takes you to the link) says. For example, if your link anchor text says “Biden PC“, that will only get you SEO credit for the term “Biden PC”. That means, to find you, your prospective client must type in “Biden PC”. Instead, if your anchor text says “Computer Networking” (which gets a lot more searches per month) you will now be found under that term. The more that you get with specific anchor text, the better off you will be.
3. Who links to you is also extremely important. If you have a page that has a Google Page Rank of 1, you don’t get a lot of SEO credit for that. If a site with a Google Page Rank of 3 or 5 links to you, that carries more weight. But even better, if a site with a Google Page Rank of 6 to 10 links to you, that carries a whole lot more weight.

This is why I am enrolled to be listed with Total Blog Directory under their Tech Support Blog Directory section. It has a page Rank of 3 (which is higher than my page rank of 1) and that will help me to get a higher Google Page Rank.

For more on SEO, check out Hubspot’s Website Grader and their SEO Blog.

Happy computing,
Tim

Biden PC is a Computer Network Consulting Company.