The Computer Tutor

If you’re looking to buy something from an individual, one of the best places to find a bargain is on Craigslist. But what if you want to shop on Craigslist outside of your local area? You have another option!

I have made a LOT of purchases over the years on Craigslist (craigslist.org). It was the original online classified ads site, and it’s still going strong (even though there are some other good options such as OfferUp and Facebook Marketplace).

If you’re looking for something like a lawnmower, a used car, a bedroom set, a bike – Craigslist will have lots of listings. These are things that are common enough that you can almost always find someone selling it within 5-10 miles of where you live. If you don’t mind shopping around for a bit, you can get a bargain. For some items, I do a search on Craigslist using my criteria (location, price, etc) and then I save that search and set an alert. So when something that matches is listed, I get an email within 20-30 minutes of when it goes live, so I have often been the first call on an item and gotten a deal just by being quick.

But what about if you’re searching for something that’s not quite as common? Maybe you’re a collector of first edition books. Or perhaps you’re shopping for a particular model Rolex watch. Yes, you might find what you’re looking for within a 20-mile radius of where you live, but your chances are much better if you expand your geographic area much farther than that – like the entire country.

But Craigslist itself doesn’t offer that option. You can pick and choose other cities to do your search one at a time, but that could get very tedious. Instead, there is another site that allows you to do this.

It’s called Search Tempest – SearchTempest.com.

Right there on the home page, you just enter the item you want to find, the category, your local zip code, and the farthest distance the search should include.

So let’s say I’m looking for a John Grisham first edition book. I enter the relevant information:

And when I click the Search button, it shows me what’s available. And guess what – there’s a first edition John Grisham book available for just $5. And it’s at the other end of the country, in the Sacramento, California area. I certainly never would have found that just searching the traditional way on Craigslist.

Of course, at this point, it’s up to me to contact the seller and explain that I’m not in their local area. Usually when you list something for sale on Craigslist, you either get local calls from prospective buyers, or you get emails from scammers. So this seller might be a bit hesitant when my email says I’m in Florida and I want to purchase that book. Most likely, I would need to send the money first, and I would need to cover the cost of shipping.

In addition to showing you what’s available on Craigslist, you’ll also see the search results for your item in eBay. You could do that directly in eBay obviously, but it’s definitely convenient being able to do both in one place.

And if you want to try out another universal Craigslist search engine, check All Craigslist Search (https://AllCraigslistSearch.com). I haven’t tried that one yet but it looks like it would work as well.

With some recent updates, you might see a new icon on your screen – the icon for Microsoft Edge. What do you do with it?

In case you didn’t know, Microsoft Edge is the web browser that comes with Windows 10. Microsoft doesn’t want you to use Chrome or Firefox (the high-quality web browsers) – they want you to use their crappy browser, Edge. That’s why, sometimes after a Windows Update, you might find that your default browser has been changed to Edge.

Here’s an interesting bit of information.

When you get a new Windows computer, the default web browser is set to be Microsoft Edge. So if you don’t do anything, that’s the program you’ll be using to view websites. So you’d think, since Edge is the default, that a lot of computers would still have it as their web browser. Often in situations like this, people are just lazy and don’t bother to change a program, they just go with what is already there because it’s convenient.

But not in this case. As I write this, roughly 70% of computer users around the world have their default web browser set to be Google Chrome. Only 7% are using Edge.

What does that tell us? It tells us that Edge is so awful, one of the first things people do when they get a new computer is download and install Google Chrome, and set that as their default browser. The vast majority of people do that, so that they don’t have to use Edge. Installing Chrome is definitely one of the things I do every time I set up a new computer – I put Chrome on there, and set it up with ad blockers so you don’t have to see all the junky ads when you visit websites. Chrome has all kinds of great extensions and ways you can customize it for the way you want to work and how you want to view websites.

But here’s what I want to tell you today. With a recent update, you might see the Microsoft Edge icon as a new icon on your desktop screen. You might also see it down at the bottom of your screen, on the taskbar. It looks like this:

Microsoft Edge icon

In fact, you might even see a full size window filling your screen, telling you to download the new Edge:

If you see that full size screen, just close it with the X in the top right corner.

If you see the Edge icon at the bottom of your screen on the taskbar, do a RIGHT click on it, and choose “Unpin from taskbar”.

If you see the Edge icon as a new icon on your desktop screen, do a RIGHT click on it, and choose Delete.

If you find that Microsoft has changed your default browser from Chrome (or Firefox) to Edge, you can just change it back:

By doing these things, you aren’t actually removing Edge from your computer. You can’t really do that easily, since it’s part of Windows 10. But these steps will at least move it out of sight so you don’t accidentally click on it.

And don’t be surprised if you have to do these things again after another Windows Update.

If you’re on Facebook, you’ve most likely seen the posts talking about the Jayco RV company having a promotion and offering to give away a free RV to some lucky winner. Well… I have some bad news for you.

The Facebook post that you see was most likely shared by one of your friends. And they shared it because they saw one of their other friends share it. It’s crazy how fast these things blow up.

The original post reads like this:

With a lot of people out of work and Covid-19 keeping them out of work, we know money is tighter more now than ever! So by 9 pm Thursday, someone who shares and also comments will be the new owner of this Jayco Embark 2020 RV, paid off and ready to drive away, keys in hand!

And of course it’s accompanied by some beautiful pictures of the $150k RV, which of course is designed to make everyone salivate and really, really want to be the winner. So the eager “contestants” do as instructed, and click the Like button, and make a really creative comment like “I’d love to have this” and click the Share button.

The sad thing is, they have only accomplished two things. They have cluttered their friends’ Facebook news feed with (yet another) hoax, and they’ve told all their friends that they’re kind of gullible for believing this is actually real.

Jayco is not giving away an RV. There is no contest or drawing. Don’t comment and don’t share it. If anything, tell the person who shared it that they should delete it.

This has become so common, and so many people have shared it in order to win, that the Jayco RV company had to actually come out with a statement explaining that it was all fake. This is what they posted on their company Facebook page:

So what’s the point of this? Why would someone create a fake Facebook page about giving away an RV?

Well, the scammers usually have one of these plans in mind:

First, they might get thousands or hundreds of thousands of Likes and Shares. That means that the content that gets posted on that Facebook page will get seen by a lot of those people. So they’ll eventually change it from the RV giveaway to something else, like a spammy product they want to sell. The “RV Giveaway” might change to “Get free quote on your auto insurance!”. And since it cost them nothing to get all of these followers, it’s free advertising.

Second, they might just build up the Facebook page with a lot of likes and follows, and then just sell the page on the black market. Any Facebook page that has a high number of followers has value, so it is something that certain people will pay for.

So when you see something like this, know that it’s just a scam. Don’t help the scammers! Click the 3 dots at the top, then click on “Report page”. Hopefully Facebook will agree that it’s just a hoax and take it down quickly.

Did you know that the Windows 10 Start menu is re-sizable? It’s really easy to do too.

Microsoft seems to be obsessed with making the Windows 10 Start Menu be so large that it takes up much of the desktop screen. Of course, it doesn’t help that they fill it by default with a bunch of junk like XBox games and Candy Crush and Bing News. But we can fix all of that.

There are actually a couple of ways you can configure it so that the Windows 10 Start Menu takes up less space on your screen.

First, you can get rid of all the tiles they stick in there. This is one of the things I do as standard procedure when I’m setting up a new computer – either a computer that a client has just purchased new, or a laptop that I’m setting up for resale. None of those tiles are needed, so I get rid of all of them. All you have to do is right click on each tile individually, and in the little menu that comes up, click on “Unpin from Start”. And that tile is gone. When you’re done, open the Start Menu again and you’ll see that all that’s there is the scrollable list of all your apps and programs. Much cleaner.

The second thing you can do is physically re-size the Start Menu. You’re able to actually make it taller or shorter, as well as wider or thinner.

To do this, just click the Start button so that the Start Menu appears on the screen. Then put your cursor at the top edge of the Start Menu. You’ll see that the cursor changes to an up-arrow and down-arrow icon, and when it’s like that, you can click and drag the top edge of the Start Menu up or down. Just move it to where you like it and let go. You can do the same thing with the right edge of the Start Menu – just click and drag left or right and make it the size you prefer.

For me, I like for the Start Menu to be as small and inconspicuous as possible. But that’s just my personal preference. You can set yours to look the way you want. And I’ll bet if you show your friends this Start Menu resizing trick, it’s probably something they didn’t even know was possible.

Quick tip today – big Windows Update is coming, so be ready for it by backing up your computer.

This update was actually released a few months ago, and is referred to by two names:

Even though it is called both names, it’s the same update. Some Windows 10 computers have already received it, but many have not.

Here’s how to check to see if your computer has already received it:

This will open a new window which will show your version number for Windows 10:

If you already have the update, it will say Version 2004. The version just prior to that is 1909. The one before that is 1903.

What to do:

If your computer is at version 1903 or earlier, I recommend that you get updated to at least version 1909 (it’s quite stable).

If your computer is running version 2004 and not showing any problems, that’s good.

If your computer is running version 1909, you don’t need to get the newest update yet – but it’s coming. You need to be ready for it.

In some cases, the newest big Windows Update can cause problems for Windows 10 computers. So you need to have a full system image backup in place, so you are ready in case your computer gets stuck in an endless loop during a Windows update.

The program I use for this update is called Macrium Reflect. It’s free for personal use, and it works great. I have quite a few clients who have avoided losing data after a hard drive crash, because they had this backup. It’s a bit complex to set up initially, but once it’s in place, doing a backup is super simple. You just plug in the backup drive at night, and unplug it in the morning. It’s an incredibly easy thing to do, in order to avoid the huge headache that comes with losing all of your important files and folders.

So my challenge to you today is this: get your backup in place. If you need help with this, I can do the whole thing remotely. So you don’t have to have anyone come in to your home or office, and you don’t have to bring your computer anywhere.

AND – if you are one of my many clients who already has Macrium Reflect set up to do that overnight backup – when was the last time you did it? I do mine every single night, because it’s just easier to be in that habit. Do your backup tonight, and don’t worry about what a Windows Update might do to your computer.

If you read this blog or listen to my podcast regularly, you should probably by now be pretty good at spotting a scam. Or at least being suspicious enough to investigate further. But what if the scammer shows that he has your actual password?

This is one that I get calls about pretty regularly. Many of my long-term clients and readers of this blog or listeners to the podcast can catch when a scam is fairly obvious, but this one makes them think twice. Or in some cases, they believe that the message that they received is actually true (it isn’t).

Here’s the email that usually gets sent (for this example, we’ll assume that the recipient of the email has used the word “pineapple89” as one of their passwords, either in the past or currently):

From: [email protected]

Your password is pineapple89. I know a lot more things about you than that.

How?

I placed a malware on the porn website and guess what, you visited this website to have fun (you know what I mean). While you were watching the video, your web browser acted as an RDP (Remote Desktop) and a keylogger, which provided me access to your display screen and webcam. Right after that, my software gathered all your contacts from your Messenger, Facebook account, and email account.

What exactly did I do?

I made a split-screen video. The first part recorded the video you were viewing (you’ve got an exceptional taste haha), and the next part recorded your webcam (Yep! It’s you doing nasty things!).

What should you do?

Well, I believe $4900 is a fair price for our little secret. You’ll make the payment via Bitcoin to the below address (if you don’t know this, search “how to buy Bitcoin” in Google).

Bitcoin Address:

gb399Hi492hEN7Gvq99jum4WMt4956PcG

Important: You have 24 hours to make the payment. (I have a unique pixel within this email message, and right now I know that you have read this email). If I don’t get the payment, I will send your video to all of your contacts, including relatives, co-workers, and so forth. Nonetheless, if I do get paid, I will erase the video immediately. If you want evidence, reply with “Yes!” and I will send your video recording to your five friends. This is a non-negotiable offer, so don’t waste my time and yours by replying to this email.

Some observations about that email message:

First, if you suspected this was a scam, what would be the first thing you would want? Proof that they have this alleged video. So they knock down that objection right in the message. You want evidence, ok – we’ll send the video to five of your friends. Of course the victim does not want that to happen.

Second, payment is requested to be made by Bitcoin. This way, the scammers can get the money and still remain anonymous.

Third, what is the real kicker that makes some recipients think it might be real? The fact that the scammer has the actual, legitimate password that the recipient has used in the past, or might still be using on some accounts currently. How is that possible?

You’ve probably heard of the massive data breaches, like the ones that happened at Target, or the multiple times Yahoo! has gotten hacked into. There are lots of other companies that have had this happen.

When the hackers get this data, they are holding in their hands a large database of customer information. In a lot of cases, each record includes the email address for the customer, as well as the password connected with that email address. This information is sold on the black market to scammers.

So the scammers have that list of email addresses, most of which are still actively being used. And they have a password that was also used for that account, whether it was with Yahoo! or whatever the online account was.

And the scammers know one very important fact: many people use the same password for all of their accounts.

So they know that when they send out that email to hundreds or thousands of people, a LOT of those recipients are going to see that password right there, and think, “Oh no – this must be for real”. But of course there is no video, and the whole thing is a bluff.

Many people will read it and ignore it, but if the scammer sends out 1000 of those emails, and just 1/100th of a percent of the recipients fall for it and pay, that’s still a $4900 payday. And if 2 or 3 of those pay, that’s a ridiculous payoff.

What should you do if you get one of these scam emails?

The one thing you should do right away is to change your password for any accounts that still have that password. One of the things scammers are known to do is to try that email and password to log in to bank accounts, Paypal accounts, email accounts, anything that could potentially have value for them. So change that password and never use it again, anywhere.

And more fundamentally – don’t use the same password on more than one account. If you use a password (or a slight variation of that same password), it’s likely you’ll regret it some day.

https://www.welivesecurity.com/2020/04/30/new-sextortion-scam-claims-know-your-password/

Want to avoid getting into trouble with your computer? Here are some things you DON’T want to do.

Don’t have Chrome (or any browser) store your passwords. Yes, it makes it really easy to access all your website accounts. But it’s also really dangerous, because if your computer ever got hacked into, or lost, or stolen, all of your passwords are right there in plain text.

Don’t use the backup software that came with your portable or external hard drive. Every company that makes hard drives also offers backup software – Western Digital, Seagate, Toshiba, etc. None of those programs are as reliable as Macrium Reflect, the one I use and recommend (I’ve installed and configured it on hundreds of computers).

Don’t talk to scammers when they call you. If someone calls and says they’re with Microsoft, just hang up immediately. It might be tempting to explain that you know it’s a scam, but these guys are clever. They know that the longer you stay on the phone, the more likely they are to actually convince you that they ARE Microsoft tech support. Just hang up.

Don’t call a tech support number that pops up on your screen along with some kind of error message or alert. Especially if that pop-up is accompanied by a robotic voice telling you about this terrible problem with your computer. And the message always includes the warning to NOT TURN OFF OR RESTART THE COMPUTER. If that happens, don’t call the phone number. Just restart the computer.

Don’t open email attachments. That’s my policy. The only exception is when I get an email with an attachment, and I’m already expecting that email, and I already know what the attachment is. Otherwise, it just gets deleted. It’s kind of amazing, but one of the primary ways to deliver a virus to a computer these is still by sending an email with an attached file that contains a virus.

Don’t search Google for a tech support phone number. The scammers have made LOTS of websites that are designed to look like “Dell Tech Support” or “HP Printer Tech Support”, and they design those websites to come up in the search results in Google. When you call them, they are of course happy to “help” you – but you’re talking to a scammer, not Dell or HP.

Don’t do your online banking while connected to a public wifi. This is pretty much common sense, but people still do it. In fact, don’t connect to anything that involves personal or private information when you’re at Starbucks or McDonalds or any other public wifi provider. It’s not secure.

Don’t re-use the same password (or a slight variation of it) on multiple accounts. The hackers know that most people do this, and they know that it makes their job much easier. All they have to do is get into ONE of your accounts – and now they have the password for ALL of your accounts. Yes, it’s inconvenient to have a different password for every account, but only if you’re trying to remember all of them. You don’t have to though – just use LastPass. That’s what I use. I can set it up for you remotely if you want.

What other computer “don’ts” do you follow?

If you have never visited Reddit, you are missing out on one of the biggest and most popular sites on the internet. Today we’ll talk about a few of the unknown corners of that world.

What is Reddit?

Basically, it’s a social media site. But this is no Facebook. One big way it’s different is that most people don’t use their real name on Reddit like they do on Facebook. So the relative anonymity creates a “freer” environment for discussion. And of course, that can be good or bad.

Another difference is how you vote on things. In Facebook, you can click  the “Like” for something you like, but there’s no “Dislike” button (even though people have wanted one for a long time). On Reddit, every post and comment has an up arrow and a down arrow, and you can express your opinion just by clicking one of them.

The best way to figure out what Reddit’s all about is to just go there: Reddit.com. You can browse without having an account, but you will need an account in order to post something or to give an upvote or downvote.

Reddit is made up of thousands of discussion groups, and each one has it’s own topic or theme. There are probably around 150,000 of these now, and each one is called a subreddit. There are subreddits for almost any topic you can think of. Some of the more popular ones are r/funny (each post is something humorous), r/pics (interesting pictures), or r/politics (anything related to the US government).

Something fun is that anyone with an account can create their own subreddit. So, as you can imagine on a social site with over 300 million users, there are some very unusual and niche groups. I even have a subreddit for my other podcast (r/WhatWasThatLike).

As you explore Reddit, you’ll come across some very interesting and unusual subreddits. Here are a few that even veteran Redditors aren’t usually aware of:

r/HostileArchitecture

It was constructed that way deliberately. If that ledge stuck out maybe 18 inches, you could sit there for a long time. But that business doesn’t want people sitting out there all day. A lot of times, this kind of thing is created with the plan for keeping homeless people away. Flat surfaces are constructed at an angle so that no one can sleep there. In some cases, jagged edges or large bumps are built into the cement to make it uncomfortable.

An example of this would be this bench, in Arlington, Virginia. The armrest in the middle is there so that no one can lie prone on the bench:

In the Hostile Architecture subreddit, anyone that sees something like this can take a picture and submit it. And there’s a LOT of this – it’s just something that most people don’t really think about.

r/FormerPizzaHuts

But what about when a Pizza Hut restaurant closes, and another restaurant, or even another totally different type of business, moves in? The design of the roof usually stays the same, so no matter what business currently occupies the building, everyone knows that it was formerly a Pizza Hut.

In this subreddit, everyone submits pictures of former Pizza Huts that are now a different business.

Like this one – formerly Pizza Hut, now Domino’s:

r/UpliftingNews/

Here are a few examples of things recently posted in this subreddit:

Teenager saves the life of a 74-year old woman – this elderly lady was home alone, and fell in her garage. She broke her femur and was unable to get up. She managed to open the garage door with a broom, and yelled for help for a while. A 16 year old girl who lives nearby saw the woman’s dog running loose, and brought it back home. That’s when she found the lady and called for an ambulance. Since then the two have become good friends.

Florida’s highway welcome centers will once again offer orange juice – When I was a kid living in Ohio, we would sometimes drive to Florida for vacation. One of the things we would always do is stop at the Welcome Center when we crossed the Florida state line, to get that complimentary cup of orange juice. Last year (2019) that program was ended due to budget cuts. But now, the Florida Citrus Commission just approved a $250k contract to start offering that free orange juice again.

There’s good news happening all over the place, but we just don’t usually hear about it. Now you know where to find it!

Do you use Reddit? Do you know about any unusual or little-known subreddits that people would be interested in? Let us know about them in the comments!

Today I’ll show you the absolute quickest way to get to all of your important files on your Windows computer.

You might already know that you can click on the little “file folder” icon at the bottom of the screen to open Windows File Explorer. It looks like this:

That opens a window (File Explorer) that shows some of your personal folders such as Documents, Pictures, etc. But it doesn’t show ALL of your personal files and folders. So how do you see all of them?

It’s easy to do this:

What you see next is your user profile folder. This displays ALL of the files and folders in your Windows user profile.

A couple of things to note:

If you order anything online (and don’t we all?) you definitely should be using this Chrome extension. It will save you money.

I’ll tell you this up front – I don’t usually get involved with this kind of thing. In many cases – actually I would say in MOST cases – if you get something that pops up asking you to install it and promising to save you money on all your purchases, it’s just junk. When you install it, you’re likely to get all kinds of bad stuff added to your computer, and you definitely won’t be saving any money.

But this one is different.

I had heard about Honey before, but never really paid much attention to it. But not too long ago, I was buying something online and the total came to around $300, and added to that was sales tax and about $30 shipping cost. I don’t know what made me think of it, but before I completed the checkout process, I thought, “I wonder if Honey can save me any money on this.”

So I went to the Honey website (joinhoney.com) and searched on the name of the item I was about to purchase. And I was surprised to find that Honey came up with a promo code for me to try. So I copied that promo code, and went back to the checkout screen where I was about to make that purchase, and entered it in the “Promo code” box and hit “Apply”.

And that quick little experiment gave me a 10% discount on that purchase! So I saved $30, which in effect means I got free shipping. And it never would have happened if I had not given Honey a shot to see if it really works. That’s when I became a believer.

I’ve used Honey since then and saved money on other purchases as well. And the best thing is, it’s free. You don’t have to join any silly “shopping club” or get a paid membership on the website, or anything.

If you want to try it out, you can use the Honey website like I did my first time using it. But it’s a whole lot easier to just get the extension and have it running in Chrome all the time. You can get the Chrome extension here. I think there’s one for Firefox as well, and probably some other browsers.

Once you have the extension installed, if you look up at the top of Chrome in the right corner, you should see the little Honey “h” icon up there. It looks like this:

Then, whenever you are shopping for something online, and about to check out, you can click that icon and it will search the internet for any promo codes that are available for whatever you’re about to buy. It only takes a couple of seconds. With that extension always there, you can be confident that you’re getting the best price possible on your online purchases.

And Honey also works whenever you buy anything on Amazon too! I have not yet tried it on take-out orders for restaurants, but I think it would work for that.

If you are a Honey user, or just became one after reading this, let me know what your experience has been. How much money have you saved?