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Scam alert: Beware the ‘There’s an issue with your bank account’ text message scam.

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As you probably know, scammers love using phishing emails to trick people into handing over their personal information and the login info for their online accounts.

Well, now they’re targeting potential victims via their cell phones too.

There’s a major text message phishing scam going on right now that’s snagging a lot of victims because it’s so easy to fall for.

The scammers are taking advantage of the fact that everyone is shopping at the moment, which of course results in a lot of unusual activity with their bank accounts.

The wording of the fraudulent text messages varies a bit, but the scam always works something like this:  [Read more…]

Q&A: Do SSDs need to be defragmented?

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Question from Roger T.:  Rick, I followed your advice and replaced the hard drive in my laptop with a solid state drive (SSD).

I’m absolutely blown away by how much faster the laptop boots up and how much faster my programs load.

I do have one question though. I read in a Yahoo Answers forum that SSDs don’t get fragmented and they never need to be defragged. Is that true?

Rick’s answer:   [Read more…]

Scam alert: Are you being spied on via your own webcam?

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The ingenuity of hackers, thieves and other miscreants is unlimited it seems.

Every day they come up with new ways to scam, hack and break into computers in order to steal bank account and credit card numbers, photos, addresses, phone numbers and other pieces of sensitive information.

One of their most devious tricks is hacking into people’s computers and spying on them via their own webcams.

It’s happening a lot right now, and the vast majority of the victims are completely unaware that they’re being spied on until someone tells them that photos and/or videos of them are being spread all over the web.  [Read more…]

How to make sure your Amazon purchases are always awesome

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Note: The links in this post are affiliate links.

If you do a lot of shopping online, you no doubt order a “dud” every now and then.

After all, marketers literally make their livings designing websites, ads and product descriptions that make every item they sell appear to be the best product ever built.

Well, if you shop on Amazon, there’s a very easy way to ensure that virtually all of your purchases are great ones…

The secret to this magic is always checking the Amazon Best Sellers lists! [Read more…]

Q&A: What’s the quickest way to delete browser cookies?

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Question from Mark:  What is the quickest way to delete browser cookies? Thank you.

Rick’s answer:  Mark, this is easily the shortest and most concise question I have ever received, and my answer is almost as short:

With your preferred web browser active on the screen, simply press the Ctrl+Shift+Del key combination and your browser will immediately display a window or tab from which you can quickly delete the stored cookies or any other browsing history data.  [Read more…]

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