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Make Your Computer Run Great!

We all want to get the best performance out of our computers, right? Remember when you first brought yours home? Remember how wonderfully empty and uncluttered your hard drive was? Remember how much faster things seemed to before it was bogged down with lots of extra programs, internet temp junk, and various leftover files?

Well, we have a program that can help recapture your computer's youth - and more!

It's QuickClean by Mcafee and it's designed to help free up wasted disk space, find and delete unused files, completely remove unwanted programs, remove internet build up (temp files, cookies, etc), clean out old registry entries, and it even gets rid of "leftovers" from programs you've uninstalled! It was able to reclaim nearly 1 gig of HD space on our test machine! Wow!

That alone is enough to make this fantastic program a must have - but it gets even better. In addition to keeping your hard drive free from clutter, it also protects your privacy.

QuickClean can check your hard drive for spyware, delete internet history, remove items from the "most recently used" lists (like at the bottom of the File menu in Word), and more.

This program also includes an awesome file shredder utility that makes deleted files impossible to recover by a third party. You see, even when you delete a file and remove it from your recycle bin, it can still be recovered. In fact, I read an article in PC Mag a few months back that described how old data could be easily extracted from a hard drive that had been reformatted! It was some scary stuff.

With this program's file shredder, you'll never have to worry about that again. It takes the data and destroys it - permanently. Once shredded, it's gone and can't be recovered. Period.

I could go on and on about this outstanding software - it's really packed with features and I think it's something everyone can use.

Your price? Just $14.97 and US shipping is FREE! This is the current version of the software and it retails for $49.95 - so it's an incredible deal. Check it out:

http://www.worldstart.com/store/quick-clean.htm

PS - Quantities on this are very limited. This was part of a one time buyout and once these are gone, we can not get any more. If you're interested in this I urge you to get to the site ASAP.

Computers 101

Q:
I have a shortcut on my desktop I'd like to rename. How do I do it?

A:
Just right-click the shortcut and select Rename from the resulting menu. The shortcut's name will now be highlighted. Just type in the new name and you're all set.

If you want to get fancier and show off, you can single-click on the icon and hit the F2 button. This will get the name highlighted and allow you to type in the new name.

Either way, you should be all re-named.

~ Steve

Have a question for the newsletter? Submit it at the link below:
http://www.worldstart.com/submitquestion.htm

Tip of the Day

Fake PayPal Email

Do you use PayPal? If so, you need to be extremely careful. We've been seeing a lot of fraudulent e-mails that appear to be originating from PayPal, but are in fact from an unscrupulous 3rd party.

Oh, and for those who don't know, PayPal is an online payment system—a really good one too (I like it :-). They are not part of this scam, more like a victim. For more on PayPal, head to: www.paypal.com. That said, even if you're not a PayPal member, this is still something you should be aware of since it won't take long for these crooks to counterfeit other online services as a front for their scams.

Here's an experience we recently had:

A couple days ago, we received an e-mail that appeared to come from service@paypal.com. It seemed legit in every way. The subject line read "PayPal Member ID Confirmation" and the e-mail looked exactly like a PayPal e-mail. We've posted it on the site for you to have a look at:

http://www.worldstart.com/tips/email-tips/paypal-fraud-email.htm

To enhance the look of credibility, it even warned you not to provide your password to fraudulent websites and that real PayPal links always start with https://www.paypal.com. It even told you to check your browser's address bar and make sure the link is legit. Turns out it actually gave you the information you needed to avoid the scam!

Since most people wouldn't think a scam site would publicize how to avoid the scam it was, err, scamming, it really makes you think it's coming from PayPal. Clever.

In any event, they told us they were conducting "random updates" for security reasons and needed us to verify our PayPal records.

Here's how I knew this was soooo fake:

Although most of the links in the e-mail led to the real PayPal site, the link to click and update your info didn't. It looked like a real PayPal link:

https://www.paypal.com/cgi-bin/webscr/?cmd=_login-run

But when I hovered my mouse over it and checked my status bar I saw it was going to:
http://cgi27-paypal.com/cgi-bin/webscr-cmd_login-run (this site is gone now)

cgi27-paypal.com is not the same as paypal.com, so it was obvious something wasn't quite right.

When you clicked the link, it took you to a site that looked like PayPal in every respect—and right in the middle of the screen was a convenient box for your e-mail and password. How thoughtful of them.

Although I knew this was a fake, my curiosity was really getting the better of me at this point and I wanted to see exactly what info they wanted.

I figured since this really wasn't PayPal, I could enter gibberish for a username and password. Sure enough, it let me onto the next page. Even if I'd missed the fake web address, I think at this point I would have decided something was amiss. That, or I had just guessed the password for klsd9olur9@kkoprt5hs.com :-)

Come to think of it, probably a good idea to try that fake username and password thing anytime you get an e-mail asking you to log into one of your online accounts—just as a test.

Anyhow, once I "logged in" I came to a page asking for my name, address, SS#, bank account, credit cards numbers, etc, etc. It would have been very easy to accidentally give this site my info if I wasn't paying attention—it looked so official and all.

The moral of the story?

Just cuz it comes in your e-mail doesn’t make it true!!

And...

This is only one of several PayPal scams we've heard about lately. Oh, and it's not limited to PayPal either. This is starting to become more and more common and we all need to be careful.

If a company you deal with on a regular basis asks you to update your "account info", you may want to go to the company's main web site (type it in, don't follow the links in the suspect e-mail) and contact them. Just verify it's true before you surrender your SS#, bank account info, or credit card number.

By the way, if you suspect you've fallen for one of these fake PayPal scams, I would suggest you change your password immediately (like stop reading this and go—NOW!) then contact PayPal security.

Be careful out there—and don't walk down any dark digital alleys...

~ Steve

Have an original tip for the newsletter? Submit it below:
http://www.worldstart.com/writers-guidelines/index.htm

Amanda's Cool Site of the Day

Stay Safe Online

This is a site every cyber citizen needs to visit. You should start off by taking the Self Test, and find out just how secure your style is. Then I’d visit the fabulous Security tips section and read up on how to be safe online.

They also have a step-by-step beginners guide to being secure on the Internet. Not to mention other walkthrough topics. For those of you who own businesses you can even read their small business security section.

This site is very helpful and is updated frequently. I don’t know about you, but I’m book-marking it.

http://www.staysafeonline.info/

Do you have a cool, non-commercial site that you want to share?
Send it to Amanda at amanda@worldstart.com