Rick's Daily Tips

How to find out who’s behind that 800 number that keeps calling you

Posted on January 7, 2014

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Like most people, I don’t like answering phone calls from numbers which have no caller ID info attached, and the anonymous calls I dislike the most are the ones from toll free numbers.

Personal experience has shown that the majority of calls from anonymous 800 numbers and their ilk are from people that it would probably be wise to avoid (i.e. scammers and shysters).

And trust me, there are a lot of scammers and miscreants out there. [Read more…]

How to remove an email account from the Gmail app on a Nexus 10

Posted on January 6, 2014

nexus-10 Several people have asked me how to delete an email account from the Gmail app on a Nexus 10 tablet, so I thought it might be a good idea to put the answer in a tip. I hope some of you find it useful.

This is actually a relatively easy task to complete, but as with many things Android, it isn’t so easy if you don’t know how to go about it.

Follow these steps to remove an email account from the Nexus 10 Gmail app: [Read more…]

Did you click an ad on Yahoo last week? If so, your PC just might be infected with malware.

Posted on January 6, 2014

Malware seems to be attacking our computers from every direction these days, but we still tend to take the security of the world’s most trafficked websites as a given. As it turns out, that could be a huge mistake.

According to online security firm Fox IT, hundreds of thousands of visitors to the massive network of Yahoo websites on or around January 3 were served ads that redirected their browsers to websites containing malware. Once on a computer, the malware exploits security holes in the JAVA framework that’s installed on the PC. [Read more…]

Q&A: Why is Windows Update stalling at 35% on the reboot?

Posted on January 4, 2014

Question from Brenda G: Hi Rick. I desperately need your help! I have an Acer Aspire AS5733Z-4477 laptop running Windows 7 Home Premium. I’ve never had a problem with it installing Windows Updates before, but this time it won’t finish installing them.

What happens is the updates will install within Windows, then it tells me to reboot the computer. It then tries to finish installing the updates during the reboot, but it always gets stuck at 35% and just sits there. How can I get it to finish the process and boot on up into Windows?

Rick’s answer: [Read more…]

How to use your iPhone’s flash as a flashlight without a third-party app

Posted on January 3, 2014

Thanks to a new feature in iOS 7, iPhone users can now turn on the camera’s flash and use it as a flashlight without having to install a third-party app.

In my opinion, this is a feature that should have been included in the operating system of every smart phone for years.

There are several flashlight apps available for the iPhone, but now we don’t have to use them on phones running iOS 7.

It’s easy to turn on the new Flashlight feature. Here’s how: [Read more…]