Your daily dose of practical, easy to follow tech tips!
It seems like much of this past week was spent answering various questions about Facebook, so I thought I would pass along a few links to some of the posts I referred to in my responses.
Probably the most common Facebook question that I receive is how to prevent one’s account from getting hacked. And the answer is it all boils down to security.
With that in mind, here are five things you can do to make your Facebook account as secure as possible: [Read more…]
As you probably know, modern day malware comes in many forms.
Some varieties, such as adware, are often merely annoying.
But more malicious forms of malware can actually wreck your Windows installation and help hackers steal your identity and/or your valuable financial information.
A high-quality anti-virus program such as Avast can help keep your computer free of malware, but a special class of malware known as rootkits often goes undetected by regular virus scans.
Rootkits load into your computer’s memory before Windows even boots up, and that makes them especially difficult to find. [Read more…]
Question from Keith: Hi Rick. I’m having a computer problem that I hope you can help me fix.
I have a Dell desktop computer that’s running Windows 10 Home.
This machine has 8GB of RAM which seems like it should be plenty, but I’ve started getting frequent “Low Memory” warnings.
When I open the Task Manager I see that there are over two dozen Chrome processes running, and every one of them is using a big chunk of of RAM.
Even if I only have a couple of Chrome tabs open I still see a bunch of Chrome processes eating up lots of RAM! Is this normal? If not, what can I do to fix it?
Rick’s answer: [Read more…]
Note: The links in this post are affiliate links.
Viruses, trojans and other malware infections are spreading like wildfire these days.
And as you probably know, all of those nasties can allow identity thieves and scammers to steal your info without you even knowing about it.
There are a number of excellent anti-malware programs out there that can rid your computer of most of these exploits, but some infections are so insidious that they won’t even allow Windows to boot up.
And even when Windows somehow manages to boot up, the malware that has taken control of your computer will often prevent your anti-virus program from loading into memory or running correctly. [Read more…]
Do you have family photos or videos on your phone that you’d rather not share with just anyone who happens to pick up your phone?
Do you hate it when you let someone borrow your phone and they decide to take a peek at your photos before handing it back to you?
Or perhaps you worry about your phone getting lost or stolen, resulting in a total stranger gaining access to your personal images?
If so, there’s a great free Android app called Vaulty will let you put some or all of your photos and videos into a password-protected “vault”.
That way you can loan your phone to a friend (or even a stranger) without having to worry about them snooping around and seeing your private family snapshots and videos. [Read more…]