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Welcome to this week's edition of the Computer Kindergarten Newsletter.
Today is Sunday, October 26, 2008
Trick or Treat! It’s Halloween! Have a happy and safe one!!
In this Issue:
Special Feature: Avoiding Scams: Work-At-Home Job Offers
Tips & Tricks: Keyboard Shortcuts
Featured Computer Term: What is Twitter?
This Week's Topic: Are Deleted Files Really Gone?
Websites of Interest: Happy Halloween !; All Saints Day; Crash Test; World Taxi Meter
To our readers:
We’ve gotten thousands of emails from people thanking us for our articles on scams and hoaxes and how we have helped save them from being victimized. We appreciate your thanks and are glad we can help. We wish we had the time to answer each email.
Here at Sharper Training Solutions, one of the things we are very dedicated to is educating all of our friends as to the identity theft and computer dangers that can be out there. We’ve found that some of these scams can be pretty clever and can easily fool even the most suspicious of us! Because of that, we encourage you to pass on our newsletter articles to your friends and family to educate them as well.
And don’t forget, you can always email us with any questions or issues you may encounter.
Stay safe out there !
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Special Feature: Avoiding Scams: Work-At-Home Job Offers
Question: You perform an invaluable service by educating people, and especially senior citizens like me, about scams. I have been seeing offers for work at home jobs. That would be nice for me in these expensive times. But some sound like they could be scams. Could you provide info on this?
Answer:
Here is the perfect article for you from our favorite scam avoidance website, scambusters.org:
Ads offering work-at-home opportunities can be found everywhere from Internet employment websites to neighborhood telephone poles.
This might seem like the perfect solution for retirees who want to bring in some extra dollars. But, there's a catch -- most of these work-at-home opportunities are scams cleverly designed to leave you with less money than when you began.
Among the most common work-at-home scams...
Stuffing Envelopes
Lure: Earn big bucks for folding papers and sticking them into envelopes, usually more than $1 per envelope.
Trap: You will be asked to pay for your supplies or training. You'll typically receive only worthless instructions suggesting that you con others into applying for envelope-stuffing jobs.
Reality: Bulk mailers use machines to stuff envelopes.
Medical Billing or Insurance Claims Processing
Lure: You can make big money processing medical paperwork.
Trap: You will be asked to pay hundreds of dollars for the software and training required.
Reality: The majority of medical offices process their own bills or outsource to large companies. Very few hire individuals.
Assembling Crafts or Sewing Together Clothing
Lure: Are you good with your hands? Then these companies claim to have a career for you. They will send you unassembled parts and instructions, and you assemble them and send them back.
Trap: The company will ask you to pay a deposit up front because it needs assurance that you will do the work and return the assembled goods. When you send in your completed products, most or all will be rejected as not meeting specifications, and the company will keep your deposit.
Email Processing
Lure: Earn big bucks by receiving email sent to the customer service websites of major companies, then forwarding these messages to the proper departments. For a fee, you can receive a list of companies anxious to hire you.
Trap: This list will be worthless, perhaps just companies pulled at random from the Yellow Pages.
Reality: Businesses usually do not hire individuals to work at home processing email.
Payment Processing For International Companies
Lure: A company with clients around the globe needs a US representative to handle incoming checks. You will receive checks from overseas, deposit them in your account, take a small cut as your fee, then send your own check for the remainder to your foreign employer.
Trap: The checks you receive will bounce. By the time your bank informs you that there is a problem, the check you wrote will have cleared, and your "employer" will have disappeared.
Some work-at-home scams can be applied to virtually any work-at- home occupation. Be suspicious if you are told...
"We overpaid you with your first check. Please send the extra money back." Your new employer "accidentally" sent you more than you were owed and asks you to send back a check for the excess. Sometime after you send this check, your bank tells you that the original paycheck bounced. Your "job" was a ruse to get you to send the "overpayment" check.
"You got the job! We just need your Social Security number so we can pay you." It is perfectly reasonable for an employer to ask for a prospective employee's Social Security number. Scammers take advantage of this by posting legitimate-sounding job offers on career websites, then stealing applicants' identities. Do not provide your Social Security number until you have thoroughly researched the employer and are confident that the company and job opportunity are real.
To avoid becoming a victim of work-at-home scams...
Ignore work-at-home job opportunities that arrive unsolicited via email. Legitimate jobs are not advertised by spam.
Avoid offers that promise big profits without asking for specific skills or experience.
If someone trying to sell you on a business opportunity swears that there are dozens of potential clients in your region anxious to work with you, insist on speaking with at least two or three of them. If no names are forthcoming and/or these "prospects" don't confirm their interest, move on.
Be skeptical whenever money heads in the wrong direction. Legitimate employers pay employees -- they do not charge potential employees for training materials or interview fees. It is reasonable for a company to charge a fee if it is going to help set you up in your own independent business, but be cautious of these offers, too.
Likewise, avoid any job that requires you to deposit checks or send checks from your own account.
Do a Web search to research any company. A legitimate company should have a professional-looking website (though this is no guarantee of legitimacy). You should be able to locate the company's phone number and address, not just a post office box.
The company website should not be the only place that the company's name turns up on the Web. Skim the mentions of the company that your search uncovers. Do any of them say the company is a scam? Also, check with the Better Business Bureau.
http://www.bbb.org
Check the employer's email address. Legitimate corporate email addresses usually end with the company name, not the name of a free Web-based email service. Example: The email address rwjohnson@xyxcorp.com is more likely to be legitimate than is rwjohnson18259@yahoo.net.
Consider how you would hire employees for this job, and how much you would pay, if you were the employer. If an offer made to you seems too good to be true, walk away.
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Tips & Tricks: Keyboard Shortcuts
Keyboard shortcuts are combinations of keys that will perform a task. They usually replace a mouse action. Keyboard shortcuts are convenient if your hands are on the keyboard; you do not have to reach over for the mouse.
Keyboard shortcuts are usually comprised of a combination of a letter, number key or other key and a modifier key (Alt, Shift, Ctrl or the Windows key). Hold down the modifier key with one hand and press the letter or number with the other hand.
Alt and Tab. Hold down the Alt key and press and hold down the Tab key. You will see a display of all your open windows. Press the left or right Arrow keys to move to the Window you want to bring to the front. Release all keys; that window will be up front.
Ctrl and Escape. Hold down the Ctrl key and press and release the Escape key (Esc). The Start menu will open.
F1. Press the F1 key and Help will open.
Ctrl and Z. Hold down the Ctrl key and press and release the z key. This will undo your last command.
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Featured Computer Term: What is Twitter?
Question: My grandkids are always talking about twitter. I don’t get what they’re saying. What is Twitter?
Answer:
Twitter is a combination of blogging, instant messaging and chatting.
(Visit our newsletter archives to learn more about blogging:
http://computerkindergarten.com/html/031906.html
)
Twitter is a free, web service that allows you to send updates (called Tweets) about what you are doing at the time, or any other information you want to tell your friends and family. Twitter accounts can be set up so that Tweets sent from friends and family can come right into your account, your email, or even your cell phone.
Twitter is monumentally popular with kids and the “computer geek” crowd, but can be very useful for people who like to keep up with the activities of their family members and friends.
Here is a great article from Paul Gil at about.com:
http://webtrends.about.com/od/socialnetworking/a/what-is-twitter.htm
Micro-blogging is defined as a quick update usually containing a very limited number of characters. It is a popular features of social networks like Facebook where you can update your status, but it has become best known because of Twitter.
In essence, micro-blogging is for people who want a blog but don't want to blog. A personal blog can keep people informed on what is going on in your life, but not everyone wants to spend an hour crafting a beautiful post about the vibrant colors seen on a butterfly spotted in the front time. Sometimes, you just want to say "went shopping for a new car but didn't find anything" or "watched Dancing With the Stars and Warren Sapp sure can dance."
That's where Twitter comes into the picture. It's a great place for keeping people informed on what you are up to without the need to spend a lot of time crafting an entire post on the subject. You just say what's up and leave it at that.
Twitter is Social Messaging
While Twitter may have started as a micro-blogging service, it is grown into much more than simply a tool to type in quick status updates. I often describe Twitter as a cross between blogging and instant messaging, but even that doesn't do it justice.
Twitter is social messaging. With the ability to follow people and have followers, and the ability to have interact with Twitter on your cell phone, Twitter has become the perfect social messaging tool. Whether you are out on the town and want to coordinate with a group of people as to what hot spot to hit next, or keeping people informed of developments at a company-sponsored event, Twitter is a great tool for quickly communicating a message to a group of people.
Twitter is News Reporting
Turn on CNN, Fox News or any other news-reporting service and you'll likely see a news ticker streaming across the bottom of the television set. In a digital world that is relying on the Internet more and more for news, that streaming ticker is Twitter.
Outdoor festivals like the South-by-Southwest festival in Austin, TX and major events like the E3 conference have shown what a great resource Twitter can be for quickly reporting news to a huge group of people. Faster and more immediate than a blog, Twitter has been embraced by the "new media" of the blogosphere and has slowly won acceptance among traditional media outlets.
Twitter is Social Media Marketing
Twitter has become a favorite target for social media marketing. This new form of getting the message out has been used effectively by Barak Obama during his Presidential campaign, and is used by everyone from magazines to movie stars as a quick way to connect with an audience.
With utilities like Twitterfeed, it is easy to convert an RSS feed into Twitter updates. This makes it easy to use Twitter as a form of social media marketing.
What is Twitter?
This brings us back to the original question. What is Twitter? It is many different things to many different people. It can be used by a family to keep in touch, or a company to coordinate business, or the media to keep people informed or a writer to build up a fan base.
Twitter is micro-blogging. It is social messaging. It is an event coordinator, a business tool, a news reporting service and a marketing utility.
Is there a computer term or phrase that you'd like to see an explanation of? Email it to info@computerkindergarten.com and we'll put the term and its definition in an upcoming newsletter.
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Today's Topic: Are Deleted Files Really Gone?
Question: Is it true when you delete a file it may not really be gone? I am getting a new computer and a few people have told me to be careful disposing of my old computer; that my files may still be on my computer, even though I deleted them. I am afraid now that someone could get my old computer and find my files.
Answer:
Old files may still be on your computer, even though you deleted them.
When you delete a file, the computer recognizes the file’s location as available space. The file, however, is still there. And the file will remain there, until Windows saves another file at that location. You cannot tell Windows to save a file at the location, and it is not possible to tell when, and if, a file was saved there or not.
It is possible that you will delete a file and the next file you save will be saved in that location. That means the deleted file is gone for good. But, it is also possible that you deleted a file years ago, and it is still on your computer because that location was never used.
This system poses a problem when computers are disposed off. There are programs out there that can find all deleted files on a computers hard drive. While programs like this can be put to good use, for example, helping someone who inadvertently deleted an important file, generally speaking, anyone who uses one of these programs on disposed of computers is up to no good.
To delete files permanently, there are utility programs called Shredders. There are different kinds and the one you choose would be based on how much deleting you will be doing. Here are the current top three shredding programs (based on reviews by cnet.com and pcworld.com):
ShredIt (Free Trial)
http://www.mireth.com/shredit.html
Wipe & Delete (Free Trial)
http://www.aevita.com/file/delete/
File Shredder (Free)
http://www.fileshredder.org/
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Websites of Interest:
Happy Halloween !
History, pumpkin carving, recipes, costume ideas, safety tips and lots of fun graphics can be found on the Halloween page on our website.
http://computerkindergarten.com/html/halloween.html
All Saints Day
All Saint's Day is on the first Sunday in November. Learn more at this website.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/All_Saints_Day
Crash Test
Thinking about buying a new car? This website has information on safety, crash test results by vehicle, buying tips, insurance, warranties, and so much more.
http://www.crashtest.com
WorldTaxiMeter
Great for travelers, at this site you can calculate the cost of a taxi ride in a number of top cities worldwide.
http://www.worldtaximeter.com/
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