The Computer Tutor

Recently, Facebook has been overrun with all kinds of warnings about hackers and viruses. I’ve gotten numerous direct Facebook messages from friends, alerting me of these problems and encouraging me to forward the same message to all of my contacts. I won’t be doing that.

Here are a couple that I’ve received recently –

This reminds me of the old days when people would get these “alerts” by email, with the instructions to forward them to everyone in their email contact list. And believe it or not, this stuff still actually remains in email circulation, even though it seems to have died down some. But I might have a skewed perception of this, since whenever I get one I immediately reply with the request to never send me those things.

In addition to Anwar Jitou and Jayden K. Smith, other names that you might see in these warning messages are Tanner Dwyer, Christopher Butterfield, Stefania Colac, Alejando Spiljner and Bobby Roberts.

What you might notice is that all of these messages contain 3 common elements:

Oh, and they have one other thing in common: THEY ARE ALL HOAXES.

None of these things have any shred of truth or reality. You can’t get “hacked” by accepting a friend request. You can’t get “hacked” by one of your friends accepting a friend request from a hacker.

Here’s another one that’s still making the rounds:

You’ve probably seen some Facebook users copy and paste this as a post to “protect” their online pictures. Complete hogwash.

Maybe you’ve seen this one, where Facebook is now charging fees to users in order to retain privacy:

I repeat: THESE ARE ALL FALSE.

So what should you do if you get a message like this?

Do not forward it, like it, love it or share it. Do not copy and paste it as a post. Do not send it as a message to any of your friends. Just delete it.

If you want, you can send a message to the person that posted it and link to this blog post. Then at least they will know that what they are sending out is 100% false. People do this with good intentions, so most would probably not post this stuff if they already knew it was completely made up. They just don’t know.

“But Scott, what if I get one that is actually true?”

You won’t. But if it makes you feel better, just do a Google search on one of those “hacker” names and the word “hoax” and see what comes up.

What you will see are dozens – maybe hundreds – of blog posts and articles and news reports, all telling you that it’s just a stupid hoax. Then you can go back to Facebook and delete it. But you can save some time, because this requires no research. Just delete it.

Chrome is great even if you just leave it alone and use it with the default settings. But I like to customize and “tweak” it a few different ways to make it even better.

Basically what I’m describing here today is the process I go through when I’m setting up Chrome on a client’s computer they’ve just purchased, or on a laptop that I’ll have available for sale.

The following steps involve going in to the Chrome Settings. To get to that area, you need to click the 3 little dots in the top right area of the Chrome window (see below). That will give you a menu, and in that menu you can click on “Settings”.

1. Set Chrome as the default browser. In a new computer, Windows 10 REALLY wants you to use their Edge browser to view websites. So if you don’t change anything, Edge will be the default browser. In Windows 7 or 8, the default is Internet Explorer. We don’t want that; we want Chrome. So go into Settings , scroll down to the “Default browser” section and click on “Make Default”:

For Windows 7 or 8, that’s just about all you have to do. For Windows 10, it will take you to a “Default Programs” page in the Windows settings, and you have to choose Chrome from a list. They’ll pop up a message about how great Edge is to talk you out of it, but you just click on “Switch anyway” and it’s done.

2. Set your home page tabs. When Chrome opens, you can have it open just one tab to whatever website you want (such as just the plain Google search page, or Facebook, or something else). Or, you can have it open a bunch of tabs with a different website in each one. For me, I have about a half-dozen tabs open each time I open Chrome (these are websites I visit regularly).

So the first thing you do is open up whatever websites you want, one in each tab. You just need to get Chrome set with those websites. Then click to the Settings area, and scroll down to the “On Startup” section, and click on “Open a specific page or set of pages”, then click on “Use Current Pages”.

Now close Chrome and open it again, and you’ll see all of your tabs are right there, and they’ll be there like that every time you open Chrome.

3. Set your default search engine to Google, and get rid of the others. Of course, since Chrome is a Google product, the default search should be Google already. So just go to Settings and scroll down to the “Search Engine” section. Make sure Google is the one displayed like this:

Then click on the “Manage Search Engines” arrow and you’ll see a list of the “other” search engines that are available (like below). Click on the 3 dots out at the right side of each one, and choose to remove them one by one (except for Google, of course).

Why Google even includes those other search engines, I don’t know (especially junk like Ask).

4. Set up your ad blocker. I wrote a whole blog post about this recently. The ad blocker I use and recommend is uBlock Origin. If you open Chrome and do a Google search for “ublock origin” it will be the first thing that comes up. Just click it and follow the instructions for installing it as an extension in Chrome. It’s the best thing in the world for blocking ads on almost any website you visit.

For my own computer, the other extension that I definitely install is LastPass. This is the program that stores all of my passwords for me. This means that I can use really long, random passwords – and LastPass actually creates them for me as well. I don’t set up LastPass on the laptops that I sell because you have to have a LastPass account (which is free). But I definitely recommend it.

5. Display the bookmarks toolbar. For websites I check on regularly, I like the convenience of having them right at the top of my Chrome window, ready for me to click at any time. To do that, you have to tell Chrome to display that toolbar all the time. To do that, just hold down Ctrl and Shift, and tap the letter “b” (for bookmarks). You’ll see the toolbar show up right under the address bar in Chrome. And you can drag any website address there you want, and it will always show up there for quick, easy access.

These are the things I do as part of my routine when setting up Chrome. But of course, there are LOTS more ways you can customize it. There are thousands of Chrome extensions that do all kinds of cool things (in fact, I’ll probably do a blog post about the best Chrome extensions at some point – if you have a great one, let me know about it).

Microsoft Office is a group of programs, including Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook and others. Most of the time these programs work fine, but occasionally they can misbehave. What a lot of people don’t know is that there’s a quick fix you should try before you call your computer tech for a repair.

The programs in Microsoft Office are large and complex. Most people, including myself, use just a very few features out of all that are available. I might use MS Word to write a letter to the Safety Harbor city commission, or document a recipe, or print the customer intake sheet that I fill out when someone brings me a computer to repair. Nothing fancy.

But there’s a lot going on behind the scenes with any of the Office programs – and that means there’s also a lot that can go wrong.

Maybe Outlook decides it won’t send a new email you just created. Or your new PowerPoint presentation won’t run when you tell it to. Or a formula isn’t working right in an Excel spreadsheet.

What do you do when that happens? For a lot of people, that’s when I get a phone call. Usually I can remote in and figure out what’s going on and get it fixed.

But before you spend money on a software repair, there’s something you can try on your own. It’s very simple, and in a surprising number of cases, it takes care of the problem very quickly (and no, I’m not talking about restarting the computer – although it can’t hurt to try that too).

Microsoft Office has a built-in “self repair” function that most people have never tried. So when an Office program starts acting up, do this:

1. Go to Control Panel, to the “Programs and Features” section. In Windows 10 you can just click Search and type “uninstall” and click on that item in the menu that comes up.

2. In the list of programs, find Microsoft Office:

3. Do a right-click on Office, and in the little menu, choose “Change”:

4. Now a new window opens, giving you the option for a Quick Repair or an Online Repair. I usually try the Quick Repair first and see if it does the trick. If the problem persists, go back through this same process and choose Online Repair. Click the Repair button.

5. You’ll get another window reminding you that you can’t use the program while it’s being repaired. So click “Repair” again:

6. If you have any Office programs open at the time, you’ll get the notice that they need to be closed:

7. You’ll get a little progress window that you can watch for the brief time that it takes to run. When I ran this it took less than 30 seconds to finish. Your mileage may vary.

8. And before you have time to get bored, it’s done:

That’s how easy this is. These screenshot images are from my own computer which is running Office365, but the process is very similar even for earlier versions of Office.

Windows 10 has been out for almost 2 years now. If you’re still running Windows 7 or Windows 8.1, is it time for you to upgrade? Maybe.

A little background first. If you’ve been reading this blog or listening to my podcast for the past couple of years or longer, you know that I did not take kindly to Microsoft’s rollout of Windows 10 back in the summer of 2015. They were forcing the “free upgrade” on Windows 7 or 8 users, even if people specifically opted to NOT take it. And many of those that ended up with Windows 10 had all kinds of problems with it. It was a nightmare, and Microsoft lost a lot of credibility with their users because of it. During that first year, I voiced my disgust with Microsoft and Windows 10 loudly and often to my readers and listeners.

As a result, many of those that follow me online are still using Windows 7. And I still get the question sometimes, “Should I upgrade to Windows 10 now? Is it safe?”. This is especially compounded by the fact that my OWN computer now is running Windows 10. But that came about rather unexpectedly. My previous computer died and its replacement happened to be running Windows 10. I didn’t intentionally just do the upgrade.

Should you upgrade now?

If you’re using Windows 7 – you probably don’t need to yet – but there are some disclaimers. Frankly, there’s nothing wrong with Windows 7. It works great. So if your computer is working okay (and the hard drive has been tested and is not showing signs of failure), you can stick with Windows 7 for now. But keep in mind, sometime in the next couple of years, you’ll need to start thinking about either upgrading your computer to Windows 10, or replacing that computer (and the new computer would have Windows 10).

Windows 7 will be supported until January 2020, but you DON’T want to wait until December 2019 to start thinking about this. There’s no big hurry at the moment, but get it done before the rush.

If you’re using Windows 8.1 – you probably should upgrade – but there are some disclaimers here too. This is not because Windows 10 is so great, but rather because Windows 8 or 8.1 is just so awful. It was a goof-up by Microsoft. They screwed up the whole Start button and Start menu, making Windows confusing and difficult to navigate. Of course, if you’re used to using it and it’s no big deal, then don’t worry about upgrading right away. But in my opinion, Windows 10 is working well enough that you would probably like it better than the crummy design of Windows 8.1.

Windows 8.1 will be supported until January 2023 so you’ve got lots of time to make that decision. But for me, I’d much rather be using Windows 10.

And, it’s not like the upgrade is perfect either. Windows 10 still has issues, and not all of them are just bugs in the software – some are built right in to the operating system intentionally by Microsoft. Some of the things I don’t like:

That might seem like a lot of bad features, but in reality most can be reconfigured and avoided, either with a third-party program or by a setting in Windows 10 itself. And these things are nothing compared to the problems I saw when Windows 10 was first introduced – printers stopped working, peripheral items like keyboards, mice and optical drives weren’t compatible, etc. Those things are pretty much taken care of now, unless your printer is really old. You can check your printer’s manufacturer website to make sure it will work with Windows 10.

So the bottom line is this: If you’re using Windows 7 and everything is working fine, you don’t need to upgrade to Windows 10 – yet. If you’re using Windows 8.1, you can upgrade to get a version of Windows that’s easier to use. And if you buy a new PC now, it’s going to come with Windows 10 anyway (including some of those bad “features” I listed), but it can be customized and it’s a lot better than it used to be.

Now that most people have smart phones, and we all have a high-resolution camera with us at all times, there are new ways to use them popping up all the time. What we’re talking about today is a great example of that. Who would have thought that your cell phone could actually save someone’s life – but it’s true.

What we’re talking about here is human trafficking. This is something that’s easy to not really think about much because most of us don’t see it happening. But it is definitely happening, and most likely it’s going on right there wherever you live.

Some numbers:

It’s easy for law enforcement to go undercover and find the online and underground forums and websites where these kids are being advertised. They can see pictures of the child. And they can also see the hotel room where the pictures were taken. But that’s not enough – what’s needed is a database of pictures of hotel rooms all around the country (or world).

That’s where you come in. This is a good example of crowdsourcing.

Millions of people are traveling and staying in hotel rooms every day. What if everyone just snapped a few pictures of their hotel room, then uploaded those pictures to a common location? Then, when cops see a child being advertised, they can use their computers to compare that picture with the database of pictures already stored, and possibly find out exactly where that child is.

This is now happening! It’s been made possible through a smartphone app called Traffickcam. The website is https://traffickcam.com/ but you can get the app directly from the Google Play Store or the Apple Store. It’s free of course.

Once you have the app on your phone, you use it to take a few pictures of your room every time you stay in a hotel. Those pictures are automatically uploaded to the database, so that authorities can use it to find these young people being trafficked.

When I first heard about this, I was questioning in my mind whether it could actually be useful. I mean, my work doesn’t usually require me to do overnight travel so I’m usually in my own bed here in Safety Harbor each night. But I have been in a bunch of hotels, and in my mind the rooms all kind of look the same. You know – you walk in, bathroom is immediately to your right or left, then the closet, then the room with the bed, and the window on the far wall with the AC/heater unit under it. How would you differentiate among tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands of rooms?

But they are different. Especially when you take 4 pictures of each room, including different angles of the main room, and the bathroom. There are lots of points of comparison that a computer program can run through very quickly, and hopefully come up with a match that can lead cops to where the trafficking picture was taken.

Currently, the Traffickcam database has 157,616 hotels in its database, and there are over 1.6 million photos. And it’s still relatively new – it was only introduced a year ago. There are about 85,000 iPhone users, and 35,000 Android users. That’s such a small percentage of smartphone users – which means there’s a whole lot more potential for this to be really effective! So get the app on your phone, and then tell your friends and family to use it as well, whenever they travel.

And don’t waste your pictures – if your hotel room pictures include any people, they’ll be rejected for use in the database.

Think about when your internet connection isn’t working properly. Maybe you’re getting a “Page cannot be found” error, or your computer can’t find the wifi signal, or perhaps websites are just loading reeeaaallly slowly. If you call your internet provider, what’s the first thing they’ll tell you to do? Restart your modem and router. But even better than that – have your modem and router restarted automatically for you, every single day.

Sometimes my clients will call me when their internet is not doing what it’s supposed to do. Here in Safety Harbor, we have a few good options for high-speed internet, so we can get kind of spoiled with that super fast connection so when it slows down or something goes wrong, I get a phone call.

My advice for this is the same thing the actual internet service would say – restart the modem and/or router. In many cases, that solves the problem and the connection is nice and fast again.

So it makes sense to restart your modem and router every day – proactively – to just avoid having to do it when the speed or the connection drops. But who wants to do that manually? Modems and routers aren’t always located in the most convenient places. In some cases, you have to get on the floor or behind a desk just to access it. Then you’ll have to unplug it, wait a while, and plug it back in. Pain in the butt! And even if you do have easy access, you won’t do it every day. And that’s the whole point – the daily reset is the key to getting the benefit from this.

No worries! Now you can have it happen automatically for you. You don’t have to unplug and re-plug. You don’t even have to remember it!

All of this is done through a little device that just plugs into your wall outlet. It’s called a NetReset and you can get it at Amazon here: http://amzn.to/2rWqAjn

It’s pretty simple. This is what the front looks like:

And this is the back:

This is the NetReset plugged into the wall, and of course Lilly (one of my two Yorkies) has to inspect it:

Using this thing is really simple. You plug it into the wall, and then you plug your modem in one side, and your router in the other side. I use this here in my office in Safety Harbor every day. In my case, my modem and router are all in one unit, so I only need to use one of the outlets.

Then there’s the little display at the top with the small white buttons. You use the “Clock” button and then Hours/Minutes to set the current time. You use the “Prog” button and then Hours/Minutes to set the time of day you want your modem/router to be shut down and then restarted. I set mine for 4 am since no one in our house would be using the internet at that time. Since the internet will be cut off briefly while the reset is happening, you want to make sure it happens at a time that’s convenient. For most people, that’s sometime in the middle of the night.

A daily 4 am reset does cut the internet off but only for a few minutes, so it should have no effect at all on any antivirus updates or Windows Updates. The GOOD effect is that your modem and router will start each day fresh, and ready to deliver all the goodness of the internet to you all day!

When you order yours from Amazon here (http://amzn.to/2rWqAjn) Amazon pays me a small commission, which helps support this blog and my podcast. Of course, I only recommend things I use and approve of personally. If you get one, I’d love to hear what you think of it.

Recently I got some reports from people that something weird was happening on their Windows computer. Every so often a window would appear on the screen and then immediately disappear. It would happen so quickly there was no chance of seeing any words or error message – it would just flash on then disappear. Then I noticed it also happening on my screen. What is this weird thing that’s happening to our computers?

Honestly, when I first heard about it, I kind of assumed it was virus or at least some type of malware. But it was too coincidental that all of these people were having this same issue. And even though I would never say anyone is 100% “immune” to a computer infection, I would be very surprised if I got one because I am so aware of them and my computer is so well-protected.

Turns out, we can thank Microsoft for this one.

This is happening as a function of Microsoft Office. There is a computer task related to Office, called “OfficeBackgroundTaskHandlerRegistration”. None of us really need to know what this thing does from a technical standpoint, but it’s basic job is to update “relevant Office data”. And it does this every hour pretty consistently, as long as an Office program (such as Word, Excel, Outlook, etc.) is running.

The fact that the window flashes on the screen every time it runs, then disappears immediately, is just a bug in the software. Eventually it will be fixed with a regular Office update.

In the meantime, here’s how to prevent it from happening:

1. Open Task Scheduler. In most cases, to do this you can just click the Microsoft logo in the bottom left corner of the screen, and in the search field type Task Scheduler, then click on it when it shows up in the menu above.

2. In the next window, click the little “greater than” sign next to “Task Scheduler Library”:

3. When you do that, it will expand. Now click the same thing next to “Microsoft”, then click to highlight “Office”. You should now see a window that looks like this:

4. You will see that list in the middle has an entry called “OfficeBackgroundTaskHandlerRegistration”. Do a right-click on that and choose “Properties”. Now you should see this window:

5. Right in the middle of that window, you see that there’s a button called “Change User or Group”. Click that. In the next window, in the white area, type the word “SYSTEM” and click OK:

6. Then click OK again to close the remaining window, and click the X in the top right corner to close the Task Scheduler window.

That’s it! No more mystery flashing window.

If you’re on Facebook, you’ve probably seen this happen. You suddenly get a friend request from someone you’ve already been friends with for a long time. What’s the best thing to do in this situation?

First off, I want to say up front that when this happens, it is not a “hack”. I put that phrase in the title of this blog post and in the graphic above mainly so that people would have an idea of what I’m talking about. That’s because whenever I see this happen on Facebook, the thing that happens most is that other friends will post a message on the victim’s Facebook profile: “I just got a friend request from you. Your Facebook has been hacked!” And of course that is followed up by all the well-meaning but misguided suggestions that the person should immediately change their passwords and check for viruses.

In reality, no Facebook account has been hacked or compromised at all. All that has happened is that a scammer decided to create a new Facebook account using your friend’s name and your friend’s profile picture. That way, at first glance, it does actually look like your friend’s Facebook profile.

Then the next step for the scammer is to send out friend requests from the fake profile to all of the people that are actual Facebook friends with that person already. The scammer knows that a bunch of people will know immediately that it’s fake. But he also knows that there will be some people that say “Hmm, a friend request from Bob. I thought I was already friends with him. Oh well, *ACCEPT*” There might be only 5% or 10% that just automatically accept the fake friend request. But if someone has 500 friends, that’s 25 to 50 people that get suckered in. These are the people that typically click on just about anything. We all know people like this.

So what’s the end game here for the scammer? What do they hope to achieve by tricking all these people into becoming friends with a fake profile? There are actually a lot of different strategies here. The key element here, however, is trust. If the “Fake Bob” account sends these people a direct message, as far as they’re concerned, they are communicating with the ACTUAL Bob. So maybe Fake Bob tells all his “friends” about this great website where you can get new iPads for $10 (scam) or maybe he pleads for his “friends” to wire money for a short term emergency loan (also a scam). The point is, the “friend” is more likely to go along with it since there is already some trust between the two people on Facebook, and maybe even in real life.

Usually when I get a fake friend request, I go to the fake profile to see who has already fallen for it and just accepted the friend request without checking it out. Usually there are a few people already listed there as “friends”. This is the proof that it’s really easy to trick people on Facebook. Almost effortless.

So what should you do when you see this happen? Obviously you don’t want to just join the crowd and post on your friend’s profile “Hey, your Facebook got hacked!” since that does no one any good. Fortunately, Facebook has created a pretty simple process that allows you to report the problem, have Facebook check it, and get the fake profile taken down very quickly.

Here’s how to handle a fake Facebook friend request:

1. Go to the fake friend request, and click on the name:

2. This takes you to the fake profile page (the profile created by the scammer). Click the 3 dots, and in the drop-down menu, choose “Report”:

3. This will bring up the beginning of a multi-part form that allows you to tell Facebook what’s going on so that they can check it out. First thing to check is “Report this profile”:

4. Next window, check “They’re pretending to be me or someone I know”:

5. Next window, check “Someone I know”:

6. Next window, click on “Submit to Facebook for review”:

7. Facebook will then ask you to tell them which friend’s profile is being faked. You can start typing in the name and then just choose from the option listed:

8. At this point you’re pretty much done. The next screen will give you a few other options but really all you have to do is click “Done”:

9. Within a short time (usually a few minutes), you’ll get this notification from Facebook:

That’s just automated but at least it confirms that they received your submission.

And that’s really all you need to do. Facebook will check it out (and it’s possible that other friends have reported the same fake profile). What usually surprises me now is how quickly Facebook deletes the fake profile page. I usually go back to the fake profile and check on it every so often (and I usually see new friends being added each time). Sometimes I’ve seen a fake profile removed within just a few minutes of reporting it. Sometimes it takes longer but I don’t think I’ve ever seen it take more than an hour. Facebook has this process pretty much automated on their end and they are very serious about getting these scammers taken down.

Does this stop the scammers? No. They know the fake profile will be taken down eventually. They’re just hoping it stays up long enough to get a scam going. And in reality, they most likely have software that just creates hundreds or thousands of these fake accounts around the clock. But at least you did your part to help your friend out and get the fake account deleted quickly.

Should you notify your friend that this has happened? It’s up to you. I usually don’t bother with it. In many cases the fake profile is removed before the friend (or any of their friends) even knew what was happening, so there’s really no point getting people agitated about something they really don’t need to be concerned over.

I recently got this voice mail from one of my podcast listeners:

“Hi, my name is Bridget and I’m calling from Oregon and I appreciate your show so much. I do love my computer, but there is one thing I just don’t understand. But first – let me admit, I am over 50 (haha). What I don’t understand is Flash. I’ve been warned to remove Flash completely but then I go to websites that say you have to have Flash. Should I have this? Thank you Scott, tell me what to do.”

Thanks Bridget! You’re definitely not the only one asking this question and getting mixed messages.

Flash has been around a long time. In the early days, the websites that displayed video content did all of that by using the Flash technology. But then as it became increasingly popular, it also became more of a target for hackers. Unfortunately, Flash is not all that safe. New security problems are found all the time. So many websites are doing away with using it, in favor of safer ways of displaying video. Even YouTube used to use Flash to show their videos, and now they use a different technology called HTML5.

However, some sites do still display content using Flash. So that’s the problem – I could make a kind of all-encompassing statement like “Flash is not safe! Never use it again!” but I would immediately get feedback from people because the websites they go to regularly still rely on Flash to some degree. I’m talking highly-trafficked websites like CNN, Huffington Post, Fox News, Starbucks, etc.

But I also can’t in good conscience just tell everyone “Flash is fine, use it all you want, don’t worry about it” because then there would be people whose computers get compromised because their Flash player is outdated and not secure. Even if you keep it as updated as possible, sometimes the updates are released a while after a security flaw is discovered.

With that in mind, my recommendation is this: disable Flash in your web browser(s) unless you actually need it based on particular websites you visit. You could disable Flash as a sort of “trial run” to see if you can get by without it. I’m sure a lot of people wouldn’t even miss it, and your computer is safer if you don’t have it.

How to disable Flash in your browser:

(and of course I’m talking primarily about Chrome and Firefox since those are the two best and most popular browsers – in my opinion)

To disable Flash in Firefox:

First, click the Settings icon (the 3 horizontal lines in the top right), then click the Add-ons button:

On the left side of the next screen, click on the “Plugins” link, and you’ll see that one of the listings is “Shockwave Flash”:

In the drop-down menu next to Shockwave Flash, choose “Ask to Activate”

Now, if you come across Flash content in websites, Firefox will notify you and you can decide if you want to view the Flash content or not. Only allow it if you trust the website and you need to see that content.

To disable Flash in Google Chrome:

Click the Settings icon in the top right (the 3 vertical dots), then in the drop-down menu choose “Settings”:

On the next screen, scroll to the bottom and click on “Show advanced settings”

Now go down to the section called “Privacy” and click on the “Content Settings” button:

A new window opens, and now you scroll down to the section called “Flash” and choose “Ask first before allowing sites to run Flash”. Then click “Done” to close that window.

And here’s another important tip: If you happen to land on a website and it immediately pops up a warning that says “In order to view this content, you need to update your Flash player (recommended)” or something similar, don’t follow the instructions given by that pop-up. Don’t click “OK” or “Update” or whatever it wants you to click on. These are mostly fake warnings, designed to get you to click and download bad stuff to your computer.

If you feel you need to get an updated version of Adobe Flash, get it straight from the Adobe.com website (and be sure to uncheck the pre-selected boxes during the process, because Adobe also tries to sneak junk into your computer).

After last week’s post about the website with the large volume of ads that would have normally been eliminated by my ad-blockers, I got some inquiries asking what software I use to avoid seeing any website advertisements.

For me, there are 3 basic reasons to use an ad-blocker:

To handle all of these issues, I use a popular ad-blocker called uBlock Origin. It’s free. I use it in conjunction with both Firefox and Chrome, since those are the two browsers I use most often (mostly Chrome). uBlock Origin works as a browser extension.

When I set up a new PC, part of the configuration is to include uBlock Origin in those two browsers. When it’s running in Chrome or Firefox, you’ll see this little icon up in the toolbar:

To get it for Firefox, open Firefox and go to:

Then click on “Add to Firefox” then click on “Install”. You’ll get the notification that it has been added to Firefox.

To get it for Chrome, open Chrome and go to:

Then click on “Add to Chrome” and confirm that you want to add it as an extension. You’ll get a notification that it has been added to Chrome.

If you use the Microsoft Edge browser you can also get the uBlock Origin app from the Microsoft Store. I don’t like Edge at all and therefore don’t use it, so I can’t really comment first hand on how well uBlock Origin works with it.

To show you the difference this little extension makes, here’s a website that I use frequently to get a piece of software that checks hard drive health. This first image is with NO ad-blocker. Those 3 display ads take up much of the screen, not to mention they have the fake “Download” button to mislead you into clicking on the ad:

And here’s the same website with uBlock Origin running and blocking the ads:

Really makes the website more user-friendly and easier to look at without all the junk ads cluttering up the page, don’t you think?

Originally, I was using an ad-blocker called AdBlock Plus. It works okay, but the default settings don’t block ALL the ads on each website. AdBlock Plus is configured initially to allow ads to be displayed if they aren’t seen as “annoying”. So if you want to actually block all the ads, you have to go in and change the settings to tell it to do that. Since I set up ad-blocking on multiple computers each day, I got tired of doing that. uBlock Origin works great right out of the box.

No ad-blocker is 100% effective so even with uBlock Origin running you might see the occasional ad. But if you really want to see the difference, use it for a while and then go use a friend’s computer to view a few websites like MSN or Yahoo. You’ll wonder how you ever put up with that garbage for so long!