The IT Difference

Are you tired of all the phone and email scams that infiltrate your day on a daily basis? Here are a few quick tips to help you out:
1) Microsoft, or any other company, are not going to reach out to your phone/email to tell you that there is a problem with your computer!
2) Your grandchild, Nephew, Niece is not over seas and in deep trouble. Especially if they say that they are your favorite.
3) If your computer is blaring loud sound(s) saying you are compromised, just turn off your computer normally or hold down the power button for 8 seconds and leave it off for 1 minute.

These are all just some simple signs that it is a scam.

NEVER give your Credit Card over the Internet to a person that made you click on a link either.

Just some simple guides lines from Rich from Ridgefield your local IT professional to help you stay safe.

Through the years the computer world has stated that you must have anti-virus (AV) software on your computer and if you don't, you will get infected! This is a true statement for approx. 90% of the computer users. Before I go on, Yes Mac's do get infected, it is not just a Windows thing.

Not all AV software is created equally. Microsoft, McAfee, Norton, Webroot etc. are very common versions and found on many personal systems. Which is the best and how much should I pay for protection? Very common question. If best means most popular, then anyone of the above would win. If best means protection and least intrusive on your system then some of the above should NOT be on your short list! Surprised?

For us, best means protection that was verified by a 3rd Party and tested against other systems for detection, speed, and lack of false positives. What do you want protecting your system a popular name or one that gets the job done?

Top AV software which you should be looking at are (according to the 12/22 test results): Bitdefender Internet Security, Avast One Essential, AVG Internet Security, Avira Internet Security, Norton 360. To see the full list you can go to https://www.av-test.org/en/antivirus/home-windows/ and for MAC https://www.av-test.org/en/antivirus/home-macos/

Pricing you should not pay more than $10/license!!!

PASSWORD GAME TIME:

Sports teams are a part of many peoples lives around the globe. So much so that they found themselves in our password lists. What is very interesting is that in English speaking countries the most popular sport was .... the NBA! They held 3 of the top 4 spots. European football (soccer) came in 5th!!!!🤯

What do you think the top 2 NBA teams were on out list?

GAME TIME Password Answer from Friday:

What is the most popular name used in our 15 Billion pool of compromised passwords world wide? By the way, this was most used in comparison to all other catagories.

3) Anna (6.5 Million)
2) Alex (7.1 Million)
1) Eva (7.16 Million)

So there you have it, Eva and Alex is the top two most popular names used in password. Two at the bottom of the list is Darcie and Darcey.