Victoria Computer Club

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Presented by George Bowden at Ask the Experts,  November 22, 2022

Black Friday Deals and Scams

Alan Perry gave a great presentation to the Victoria Computer Club on November 17th on “Staying Safe Online” on Windows and on Apple Products.  The second part of his presentation was 10 Tech Gift Ideas.  See links below

On Sunday, November 20th, he will be presenting a free workshop on “Staying Safe Online” at 2pm, at the Sidney and North Saanich Library branch at 10091 Resthaven Drive in Sidney.  No registration needed. Continue reading →

When you load up your friend’s computer with your favourite operating system, you may not be doing them any favours.  You may love Linux Fedora for instance, but unless you are going to live forever to support your friend, consider what help is available in the community.  Here is a graph of the popularity of Linux distributions… and Fedora is way down on the list.  And linux is less than 3% of desktops to start, so multiply 0.03 times 0.002 and you get about 1 in 10,000 computers running Fedora…  Now start expecting community support, based on those numbers. Good luck.

To access the slides for the presentation, “The Battle For Your Identity” click here.

Part 1 was presented Sept 6th,  in slides 1 to 21.

Part 2 was presented to club members Sept 20th, with a shortened review of part 1

Recently I have had two instances of people sending me money via etransfer, but sending it to the wrong email address, which I have no access to.   It is very easy to enter a wrong email address when setting up a payee.   If the recipient account has direct deposit set up, it is easy to tick the checkbox acknowledging that this is a direct deposit account that needs no secret pass phrase.  And it is a common error to send a second email to the same recipient with the secret pass phrase, even though there are several warnings to use an alternate channel, like a phone call, for this.

So be careful sending money via etransfer that you cannot afford to lose.  And be extra careful when sending to a recipient with direct deposit.

Here are a couple of articles about the problem.

Warning about losing money with e-Transfer after two people make same mistake

Interac’s E-Transfer Auto-Deposit Creates More Problems than it Solves

Members of the Victoria Computer Club are still getting hacked, and identities stolen, usually by callers who say there is some urgent problem that needs fixing.

When your computer or phone  is hacked, all your accounts and identities are at risk of being stolen. A complete wipe and reinstall will be required, losing all data, and changing all passwords and pin numbers.  Credit cards and bank accounts may be at risk. To reduce the risk before getting hacked, use the following instructions.

You must be the initiator of any interaction with a service provider.  When instead, a service provider phones or emails you first, never use a contact link or phone number provided in the conversation.  Instead, get the company name and department, and hang up.  Then refer to past paper letters mailed to you  to get the real service phone number or website. 

Do not click on a link in an email from a service provider.  Find the service provider’s home web page by typing the service provider’s name into the address bar.  If you search for a service, e.g. computer repair, type the company name back into the address bar.

Let unknown phone numbers go to voice mail.

On your main email account, password manager, and financial accounts, enable multi-factor authentication that requires your smartphone to be nearby.

Here are the links to Ricks slides on

• editing videos
• sharing the videos on YouTube

Part 1 of “Migrating away from Me@shaw.ca” was presented March 1, 2020
Click here for the slides. 

Some points George wants to reinforce…
It is generally agreed best to separate your Internet Service Provider (of wifi or internet pipes) from your email service provider, which runs over those pipes.

In the presentation I wrongly searched for emails forwarded from Shaw by typing from:gtbowden@shaw.ca .  I should have typed to:”gtbowden@shaw.ca” including quotes. Those emails still being sent to my shaw account are shown as “to gtbowden” .
Those emails being sent directly to my gmail account are shown as “to me” .

Part 2 , on email clients like Windows Mail, Microsoft Office Outlook, and Thunderbird will be presented March 15th.

Victoria Computer Club Executive 2022

President Dorothy Cushway	Vice-President George Bowden	Treasurer Ed Prior	Secretary Anita Fownes
Membership Scott Dyer	Member at large Murray Strome	Training Vacant