Tag Archives: tips

Tip: How to Avoid Facebook and Twitter Login Scams

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Updated: 18/10/2012

I don’t use Facebook, I deleted my profile about five years ago however now and again I get some interesting spam via Twitter. Namely this tells me that someone has said something about me on Facebook, which of course is possible. However, so far all these links to content about me have been scams which aim to trick me into parting with my Twitter login details. In all cases it appears genuine, for example the URL is apps.facebook.com. Also in my case I received such links mainly from people who I was following so any forwarding link may seem genuine. However, before you do anything please check the following:

  • Does the person who has sent you the link on Twitter actually follow you? You can check this by sending them a direct message, if they don’t follow you then you cannot send a direct message. You can also look in your followers list. If they are not following you the chances are they probably won’t be tweeting you to say there is something about you on the net.
  • If you get the same message saying your are on Facebook from many people who you may not have heard of then it may be dodgy, so look out.
  • If you do click on the link then its good idea to move the mouse over the various content elements, but DO NOT enter your details or click anything. When you move the mouse pointer over say the login button or other elements what links appear at the bottom of the screen? If it is not twitter.com then it’s a fake site that is trying to trick you into parting with you details. You will get all kinds of stupid website names. Not sure where the link is displayed? Chrome and other browsers normally display the URL at the bottom of the browser window even before clicking on it. In general just don’t click on any links you find suspicious.
  • In general do not trust Apps listed even on Facebook that ask you to part with login details for other services such as Twitter unless you know from others they are trustworthy. Not sure? Then Google the App name to check it out. Facebook does not seem to have a reliable mechanism for checking apps. As I said the most recent scam I received actually ran on apps.facebook.com
  • If you start receiving lots of tweets from people you don’t know or who don’t follow you saying you are on Facebook just ignore them.
  • Enter bogus login details, if that works you know it’s a hoax.
  • Do not click on any movie files on the landing page, this as I found (too late for me) only causes problems. Chrome for example now seems to have absorbed some malware advertising app, so its messed up. Fortunately Safari still works.

There are no doubt other ways to avoid being scammed but these normally work fine for me. I managed to avoid the Twitter scam but I did accidentally clicked on one thing before I realised fully what was going on the result now is that Chrome is infected with some form of spam advertising. Therefore even if it is on Facebook do not trust it!

 Update. It seems the dodgy advertising that was infecting my blog only under Chrome was caused by some Chrome extension which was adding in banner adverts to my site. I will write more on this later….

Twitt

TIP: Linux Mint 13 Sound Problems – Fixed

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For some odd reason the sound does not always work properly on Linux Mint 13 XFCE. In my case it worked for a few weeks then stopped. It turns out this is not so much a bug but a settings issue which can be fixed quite easily. Also before going further please check that you have not muted your audio settings.

  1. Go to software manager and download “Pulse Audio Volume Control”
  2. Open it from Menu->Settings or type “pavucontol” into the command line
  3. Click on the “playback” tab and check it is at 100%; this may be higher than needed but atleast makes sure you have volume coming out.
  4. Go to the “configuration”. You should see two tabs set to profile.
  5. Set the top  ”built in audio” profile to “off”
  6. Set the lower one to “Analogue Stereo Output”
  7. Close the pulse audio volume control. You should now have sound.
  8. You may need to restart the computer if you do not yet have audio.

It is always worth checking that your computer has not set your sound output to HDMI, this can happen after you have used an HDMI monitor. Therefore always check the sound settings which you can find by clicking on the sound icon. If your sound has changed back to HDMI then you may need to go through the steps above again.

Thanks to those on the various forums where I saw similar tips to this one. Also if you find this tip also works for other versions of Linux please leave a comment below so that other users can benefit.

 

 

 

Twitt

Five Handy Mac OS X Tips

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The following tips apply to Snow Leopard but may also be useful for other versions as well. All are based on recent good and bad experience.

  • Remove Intego Antivirus. I had this for a number of years and only recently found that it was causing the computer to crash and hang on login or logout. I would rather have kept it but since removing it I have had no problems. I am in general in favour of having an Antivirus and if you must have one, place Clam XAV (which is free) on your computer but do not install this to run in the background, only when you click on the programme icon. Otherwise again it will slow everything down.
  • Remove CleanMyMac I used this until last year, I ran it perhaps twice. The result was that I had to reinstall the machine on one occasion. In general a nice idea but not perfect.
  • Ensure you have at least 15% of your drive space free, if you fall under this your Mac will start to slow down to a near death experience. If your Mac has less than 15% free its time to delete files or perhaps buy a second HD. Second USB based drives are ok, although not fast. If you go for the USB option only place files which your computer is not constantly accessing. Movies,music, pictures, word processor files are good examples.
  • Install SecondBar. Snow Leopard does officially support two displays, but only one menu bar. The result is some confusion while using second display. This handy free app will install a menu bar on the second display, thus improving usability. It’s free, and does what it says although is not perfect.
  • Check your menu bar, are you running apps you no-longer need? If so remove them as this will also slow things down and some poorly made apps may even increase stability problems.

After nearly buying a new computer I tried all of the above tips and my six year old iMac now works like a charm! Thus saving me a nice pile of cash.

I hope these five simple tips help. If you want more info here are some links, I will not give you the links to the software you should remove as well you should not be installing them anyway:)

SecondBar

Clam XAV

 

Twitt