We all get spam.
That might be the most obvious statement I’ve ever made here. 
Unfortunately, it’s true, and seemingly truer every day.
I decided to use a piece of spam I got to show you how to identify spam.
There’s a relatively new scam called consent phishing or OAuth phishing that can result in account takeover and loss. While it seems you would be protected by traditional account security like passwords and two-factor authentication, this can still happen.
The good news is that it relies on your lack of attention, which is something in your control.
Let’s look at what to pay attention to.
This might fall into the category of “everyone knows that”, when, in fact, everyone does not know it. As a result, they’re missing out on some convenient and powerful techniques.
This is about several ways of selecting text.
I’ll also explain what selecting means.
There is a wide variety of opinions on registry cleaners and PC cleaning tools. Many people believe they’re valuable, important tools to keep your system running smoothly.
I strongly disagree. Most of the time, they’re so much snake oil.
I frequently recommend you purchase an external hard drive for your backups. Backing up regularly to an external drive is probably the single most important step in an overall backup strategy.
The inevitable question is, “What external drive should I buy?”
The problem, of course, is that the answer keeps changing. Technology evolves, and as a result, so does my recommendation.
Let me give you a few guidelines, and then a few current (as of this writing) picks.
Every so often, it’s time to replace one trusty but tired workhorse with a newer model. But leading up to that, there might be opportunities to repair or upgrade instead.
As you can imagine, there’s no single answer to this question. It depends on everything from your budget to the age of your computer to how you use it and your future plans.
Since I have no way of giving you a clear “repair or replace” answer for your specific situation, I’ll review what you should consider as you decide. I’ll also review the process that led me to replace one of my computers some years ago.
One of the themes here at Ask Leo! for the last 23 years has been account loss and account recovery. Or, rather, attempted recovery. Recovery can fail; you can lose an account permanently.
One of the most common complaints I hear is along the lines of “I know the account is mine; why won’t they just let me back in?”
Oh, I wish it were that simple.
CHKDSK has been around longer than Windows. This utility has changed dramatically for new environments and new disk formats, but in some ways, it’s pretty much the same old disk-checking utility we’ve used since the days of MS-DOS.
Regardless of its age or origins, CHKDSK is an important tool for disk maintenance and, in some cases, recovery from a variety of disk-related issues.
Let’s run CHKDSK.
No, you should not. Not if it’s your passion, anyway.
Here’s the thing. We’ve been in similar situations before. Don’t believe me? The title of this article is only one word different from another article I wrote: Does All This Talk of Outsourcing Mean I Should Choose a Different Career?
I wrote that article just over twenty years ago.
Everything old is new again.
A recent episode of the Random But Memorable podcast, “Another Masked Vigilante Fear with Karen Renaud”, discussed what keeps people from using password managers. The podcast’s guest had published an article in The Wall Street Journal called “What Keeps People From Using Password Managers?”
The article came down to three specific reasons.
I want to address them.
We often talk about how to keep our passwords secure (most commonly by using a password vault or manager).
But how do websites do it? We trust them to keep our passwords secure from hacking and exposure. How do they do that?
It turns out to be deceptively simple…
…when it’s done correctly.
Some time ago, I was feeling reflective. This led to a discussion with a visiting friend about what their young son could expect over the course of his lifetime.
I started looking back to look forward. It turns out I have a lot to look back on.
Assuming you mean you get 300 spam emails a day, I agree that’s a fair amount. Between my various email accounts, I suspect I probably get about the same.
The question is not how to stop spam. Ultimately, there’s no way for you and me to do that.
The question is how to deal with it when you get it so it’s a minor annoyance rather than an overwhelming chore, and how to avoid it — or at least minimize it — in the first place.
The other day, I got a call from my bank. They wanted to talk to me about a suspicious transaction.
They said it was my bank, but was it? It certainly started with the hallmark of a scam.
So, here’s what I did.
The a/b/g/n are all different variations of the 802.11 Wi-Fi protocol. Which one gets used is mostly out of your control. On the other hand, there are definitely steps that can improve your Wi-Fi performance at home.
And we’ll also touch on one of my pet peeves: ISPs marketing themselves as having “the fastest Wi-Fi”, which has nothing to do with the service we pay them for every month.
It’s a common instruction: reformat your hard disk.
It’s also something we take for granted. Everyone knows how to reformat a disk, right?
Nope. Let’s not make that assumption.
Let me show you four different ways to reformat a disk.
I get it. In those articles, I went into some implementation details that, in all honesty, most people probably don’t care to know about. They ended up distracting from the important stuff.
Fair enough. Let’s see if I can simplify things further and use this opportunity to address some common questions and concerns.
I know how you feel. I also have sensitive information on my laptop.
I can handle losing the laptop, but thinking about the data in the wrong hands… well… that would be bad.
I’ve used different solutions over the years, and they all share one thing in common: encryption.
This was a comment on my Facebook fan page in response to a tip I’d posted. Apparently, the feature I was discussing either hadn’t yet been made available in the commenter’s account, or they couldn’t find it. As a result, I was the one at fault for trying to be helpful.
Now, I get this kind of thing from time to time. On my website, abusive questions are ignored and inappropriate comments deleted. On YouTube, I can’t really keep up, but I try to do the same.
The poster of this comment apparently thought twice about leaving it up. Shortly after I replied, “A personal attack? Wow”, his comment disappeared.
But it got me thinking. Is the internet turning people into jerks?
Change your password right now. If the notice came via email, do not click any links in that email.
Then come back here to understand why.
There are two legitimate scenarios that could be at play here: one very serious, and one not as serious but still important. And, of course, there are scams, which are also important to sidestep.
Many years ago, I received a panic-stricken email from an individual whose account had been hacked. He had lost all access. His panic stemmed from the fact that, for whatever reason, the account held the only copy of his master’s thesis.
It was gone, and there was no hope of recovery.1
Hopefully, you’re not keeping something as important as a master’s thesis only in your online email account. That’s wrong on many levels. But I’m sure there are things in your account you never want to lose, such as photos, correspondence, or other things you’ve exchanged via email.
The problem is, of course, that if it’s only in your email account, it’s not backed up.
Let’s fix that. Let’s back up your email.
There are several approaches to two-factor authentication, and it can be confusing. Some are simpler, some are more convenient, and some are more secure than others.
Let’s compare the various ways two-factor authentication, or 2FA, can be implemented.
As longtime readers know, I get a lot of reports of Hotmail account theft and compromise. As Hotmail has transitioned to Outlook.com, so too have the questions. As Microsoft makes Microsoft accounts nearly mandatory for Windows installations, the number of these accounts has ballooned.
Every day, there are reports of everything from simple password loss to email being sent “From” your email address to attempts to scam your contacts.
Depending on exactly what’s happened, the available remedies may be simple, difficult, or completely impossible; your account and everything in it may be lost forever.
I’ll review the various scenarios and direct you to more detailed articles on Ask Leo! that cover the options for each.
That’s a conglomeration of many questions and problem reports I’ve received over the years. The pace picked up when Windows 10 was released.
Windows Update has a reputation for occasionally causing working systems to fail. The good news is, it’s almost always a tiny percentage of machines affected. The bad news is, that’s no solace if you’re affected.
I absolutely sympathize. I can understand why you’d be skittish about ever taking an update again.
And yet, you should.