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Today is
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Serving southwestern
North Carolina and northeastern Georgia with information and assistance
for computer users. MUG meets on the SECOND Tuesday of the month at 7:00 PM. at the Macon County Community Facilities Building across from the Whistle Stop Mall on 441S in Franklin, NC. Visitors are always welcome to attend our meetings. |
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Next meeting: Tuesday, May 13th, 7 PM Franklin's new postmaster Avis M Davis will be with us talking about "The Post Office Online." You will be amazed at all the services and options that are now available to us. (Post office reminder: the Forever Stamps will be on sale until May 9th for 41 cents each. The rate increase goes into effect May 12th.) As a followup to Lizzz Russell's eye opening presentation on privacy at the April meeting, she has provided us with a list of links so that we may investigate the subject further. Newsletter now online... The MUG Monitor, our club's monthly newsletter edited by Rhonda Tomlinson, is now available online, here. Both the printed edition and an extra edition with additional articles are available down download in .pdf format. Supplemental information to Lee Alexander's presentation on Memory has been posted to our Muggings section, here. Program links from Rhonda Tomlinson's presentation on Simple Web Page Design can be found on our Free Stuff Internet related page. Rhonda has created a great Power Point presentation which can be found here. If you can't view Power Point presentations, she has included a link to a free viewer on her site. APCUG suggests if you haven't yet joined the ranks of people who are creating personal web sites for sharing photos, experiences, videos, and more, you may want to check out Windows Live Spaces, Microsoft's free online tool for sharing pictures, stories, contacts, and more. Setup takes only a few minutes, and you can make your space private or public, depending on your personal preference. Windows Tips and Tricks If you have already made the move to Vista, you will find useful tips and tricks here. If you have decided to stay with XP for awhile, go here for tips and tricks to be sure you are getting the most out of your XP experience. Portable PC — Carry your favorite programs, email, links and more with you on your flash drive, iPod or portable hard drive and use them on any Windows PC without leaving any personal information behind. PLEASE clean up your email practices with this good advice from Bob McGovern! HDTV Thinking about buying one? Be sure to read Lee's article on the Muggings page before you make your decision. MUG
Supports Troop CARE Package Project Quick tip: When Outlook Express gets corrupted When Outlook Express gets corrupted and won't open, try scanning your computer with the trial version of the Outlook Express tool ScanDBX. This will identify where your problems lie. At this point you can opt to purchase the repair software or rename just the message store files (.dbx) that have been identified as corrupted. Information on locating, backing up and renaming the files can be found here. Once that is done, try reopening your mail program. New Free Stuff Worth Acquiring Still trying to get a handle on SPAM? Check out K9, a well-reviewed spam filter linked from the Internet section our free stuff page. Smart Computing Magazine Offer For every five subscriptions to Smart Computing made by club members, MUG receives one free subscription to offer as door prizes. When subscribing, be sure to mention that you are a Macon Users Group member. New to Smart Computing is FREE technical support with a live person in Nebraska. Call 800-368-8304 to try it out. Recycle Your Old Ink CartridgesSaving your empty ink cartridges and dropping them off at MUG meetings means big bucks for the club treasury. The last box sent in added $120 to club coffers. Please note, cartridges must be empty, made by printer manufacturers and not previously refilled to qualify. Only the type of cartridge containing a print head is currently being accepted by the recycler. Special Interest Groups:Linux: The next meeting of the LINUX SIG is set for 7:00 p.m on April 15th at the Macon County Public Library on Siler Road. Jim Swanson is the SIG leader. Click here for SIG details. The Digital Photo SIG has stopped meeting for the present time.
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Product Reviews:
Members' reviews of software and hardware offered by vendors for evaluation can now be found here.
Virus Alerts:
Mail Server report: An email with the subject "mail server report" is circulating that contains a worm which harvests your email addresses. A hoax with a similar subject is also circulating claiming to be validated by Snopes. If you go to the Snopes site and actually read the info provided, you will realize that your hard drive is not about to be toast. Whichever message you receive, just delete it and do not clog up the internet forwarding the messages to everyone in your address book.
Trojans seem to be on the rise again plaguing a number of club members. Be leary of trusting the emails with PowerPoint presentations and links forwarded to you by others.
Rootkits
Bagle and MyDoom are now using rootkit technology to hide their presence. Check out Sysinternal's RootkitRevealer linked from our Free Stuff page and the article Rootkits Revisited on our Muggings page.
Kama Sutra worm
Delivers payload on the 3rd
Update your virus definitions and scan your systems before the third of each month to be sure you have not been infected with the Kama Sutra worm. This worm is programmed to delete a variety of common file types from your computer. A clue to infection is noticing your antivirus software no longer works.
Sober Assault
Another Sober worm attack took place on Jan 5th, the 87th anniversary of the founding of the Nazi party. Beware attachments!
Breplibot Trojan
A variant of the Breplibot Trojan is the first one identified to start using the Sony-BMG rootkit hidden on our computers as a copy-protection Device by Sony. Check out Rootkit Revealer on our free stuff page.
Zotob worm
Be sure your Windows updates are current. Windows 2000 users are especially vulnerable.
Trojan Downloader
Two new versions of this keylogger and backdoor have surfaced using the old ruse of being a message from your ISP.
Beware of links in emails:
A new version of the Mydoom worm is spreading via links in email messages. The emails purport to be from legitimate places such as PayPal.
Caution: If you suddenly notice that you cannot access Task Manager, Regedit, or MSCONFIG, you are probably infected with one or more viruses or Trojan Horses that can elude your antivirus software when doing a full system scan.
Hijackings abound!
Hijackings, where your browser becomes controlled by malware, continue to plague Internet users. A detailed club resource is located here. If you are still Hijacked after running AdAware and Spybot Search and Destroy, HijackThis can help you clean up your computer. Be advised that HijackThis shows good and necessary processes running on your computer as well as malware. Use with caution and lookup every reference with which you are unfamiliar.