So you have checked your anti virus program is running and up to date, your firewall is on and the machine is running like a dream.  You are ready to surf the net and if you are like me you check your emails first.  Gramps has sent you some photos and that whacky neighbour of yours has sent some hilarious stuff on getting old, where does she find them? and oh this is from a Nigerian princess, her family is being persecuted by the government and they need to leave the country fast but they have this 20 million dollar fortune that they cannot take with them, unless, you dear friend could put the money in your account and as a reward keep say 10 per cent for yourself.  Why thats 2 million dollars just for sending these poor people my bank account details, yeh right, the only money being exchanged is when all your money is siphoned off by them.  Believe it or not even though this scam has been around for years people in their thousands still fall for this or a version of it.

Another scam is an email from your bank with some message about checking your details, you click on a link and are taken to an exact mock up of the homepage you would expect to see when you log on to do online banking.  You are asked to enter your details and password and they drain your account of every penny.

Millions of people fall for this one each year even though the banks are forever saying that they will never email you for your details.

Unfortunately the unwary surfer is still at risk just by surfing, the criminals use various techniques to separate you from your hard earned cash and one of these is by placing a keylogger on your hard drive.  It is easy to do, you have probably come across adverts to download free stuff, screensavers, animated emoticons all sorts of widgets.  Well have you ever wondered why these things are free, wheres the catch?  Well the catch is that on some of these are included a nasty little virus whose job it is to record every keystroke you make and transmit the details to the criminals.  They then have access to your emails and even your bank account if you bank on line.  Running an antispyware program regularly will uncover these viruses and eliminate them.

Now I do not wish to sound like a kill joy and certainly it is not my intention to scare anyone from using the internet.  However there are things to look out for and things to avoid, it is just a case of being sensible and using common sense.  Microsoft send you security patches all the time to help you stay ahead of the criminals, make sure you are getting these and installing them,  you do not have to be paranoid but use the tools provided to keep you and your computer safe and if you are ever unsure about an email just delete it.

I will be doing follow up columns to this one soon but if you are unsure or need advice just skype me, my skype name is technocretin or send me an email to computerassistance@consultant .com.. 

. 

If you use windows xp as your operating system then you may have seen the blue screen of death.  Usually this appears when something is seriously wrong with your computer and it is your computers way of saying it is shutting down to protect itself from damage.

One of the things it will display is a STOP code, which in general will be a seqence of zeros and numbers and tells the engineer or microsoft what it is that is causing the problem, sometimes.

It may well be that once you are on this screen rebooting the computer just brings you back to the BSOD.  If this happens then my advice is do not touch anything and call an engineer or if you are lucky enough to live in and around Mayenne then call me.

Even if you get out of the BSOD on rebooting it still means there is a major problem and either you will eventually return to that screen or the whole operating system could be compromised and may need reinstalling.

Invariably the problem is due to a new piece of software, a new peripheral or as recently the case with a customer I saw on saturday, 3 particularly nasty viruses. which were dealt with and the problem cured.

This is why it is extremely important to make sure your anti virus is running and up to date, that your firewall is on and your windows updates are on and you are installing them when they are downloaded.  Also get a freebie antispyware and malware programme and run it often.