La Piazza

Posted by Ana

Just for fun!! Tech Support for Dad by Tom Smith

It had been a long ass work week, it had been a long ass day, I was hoping I could just go home and sleep the night away, But the message waiting for me was the worst a man could know: “Hi there, son, could you call me back? My computer’s running slow.” There are bamboo shoots and water torture, German blondes named Gert, Films with Adam Sandler and lots of other things that hurt, But it’s not my job or girlfriend that finally drove me mad, I’ve been on the phone long-distance doing tech support for Dad.

It took seven tries to get him to the Start menu and Run, He had Bonzi Buddy, Comet Cursor, and Quicktime 3.1. I said I’d try to find out if his firewall had been breached, Turned out he’d bought this Compaq before Clinton was impeached.

Service packs and driver updates, he needs every single thing, And he gets online by dial-up, so he might be done by spring, But he trusts that I can fix it, his beloved college grad, Never mind it was in Russian, now I’m tech support for Dad.

After thirty seven reboots and a dozen clean installs My room is trashed, my plants are dead, and there’s green slime on the walls But his ‘puter’s running smoothly, I can finally get away, When he says, “Oh, son, one more thing — how do you sell stuff on eBay?”

Here’s a pox on all programmers puttin’ crapware on your shelves, May you have to teach your programs to your dads by phone yourselves, There’s the Normandy Invasion, and the Siege of Leningrad, And the special hell filling in for Dell as tech support for Dad.

Now I’ve built him a computer, nothing can get in or out, The firewall’s adamantium, and the drives are sealed with grout, And if this one starts to run slow, well, that’s just too damn bad, ‘Cause I’d rather shave my eyeballs than do tech support for Dad. Tech support for Dad. Tech support for Dad. 

Hang on, son — your mom wants to know how to set up a web page.”

Posted by Blanca Carton October 13, 2009

Twitter, Facebook and MySpace are highly popular social networks. Unfortunately, there are always hackers who try to exploit the success of these networks for financial gain. Such is the case of Twitter, which has become an easy target for hackers to distribute spam.

How can you protect against spam in Twitter?

• Disable the “followback auto” option. This way, you will be able to choose the people you want to follow.
• Do not access all the links you receive. Make sure you know who you are following. 
• Follow the spam profile in Twitter: http://twitter.com/spam. You can find good tips here. For example, according to a recent post,  “If you gave your login and password info to TwitViewer, we strongly suggest you change your password now. Thank you!”
• Install a complete security solution on the computer, preferably with an antivirus, firewall and phishing filter module.

If you follow these tips you will be protected against spam.

What type of spam could I have received?

The most common types are:

• Trending Subjects Spam: This spam searches for popular subjects (e.g. Michael Jackson’s new movie, store discounts, etc.) to publish similar tweets with malicious URLs.
• Tweet spam: This type of message comes from one user following another. Consequently, all the attached followers can see the tweet.
• Direct Message: This direct message comes from a follower. Therefore only the recipient can see it.

Don’t forget to follow us in Twitter @PandaTechSup and visit us at our New Tech Support Forum !!

Blanca Carton -  eknowledge Department

Posted by Nerea

Can you be certain you are not INVOLUNTARILY sharing your WIFI network with your neighbors? How can you be sure that your Internet activity is not being monitored when you use a wireless network? Any user within 100 meters is a potential intruder –whether intentional or unintentional- . With wireless networks, information is sent through radio waves, and as they are simply in the air, it is impossible to prevent anyone within a radius of 100 meters capturing the data transmitted.

As you cannot prevent the information being viewed by other people, it must therefore be protected through encryption protocols. At present, the WEP, WPA and WPA2 protocols are used. Although encryption is necessary, it is not enough to prevent unwanted access to your network. There are free programs on the market which are easy-to-use and available to anyone who wants to decrypt connection passwords. Similarly, there is also software that detects any users connected to your network.

Here are a few tips to prevent WiFi intruders or any opportunists that want to hook up to the Internet for free:

1. WPA password (they have been proved to be much better than WEP passwords, as they take 30 minutes to decrypt!).
2. Disabled DHCP (this way it will take intruders longer to discover the type of network).
3. Enable the Firewall module of your antivirus. Install the firewall and update the antivirus, the operating system and the programs.
4. Limit the number of connections to the Router/AP (e.g. if you have one computer why allow two? When necessary, you can extend the range).
5. Administration of the Router/AP (it should only be managed through the network and not via WiFi. This way, you will also prevent them from changing the settings).
6. Disconnect the WIFI router when you are not using it.