Ask Steve

Some of you may be wondering about the dates on some of these posts.  Some of them predate blog technology so why are they dated that way?

Over the last 15 or more years I have been answering internet and computer technology questions.  Wherever possible I have copy and pasted the question and the response from the email or it came from.  Many of these questions I get almost every day.  As best as is possible I have posted the 1st time I can find this question was asked of me to as the intial date for the posting.  I continuously pour over the old questions and answers, usually because they are asked again and make updates to any answer listed here as needed to insure that the answer is current, up to date and accurate for where we are today.

What this means to you is that rather then the old posts being out of date they are in fact the ones that are asked the most and the MOST up to date.  So rest assured dear reader, I know that the internet is an ever changing universe and that you do not wish to know what was but rather what IS.  As long as the internet has users there will be questions, as long as there are questions I will keep studying, and helping and providing you with the answer you need today for today.  

I got a call from my mom the other day and she said to me, “I get so much spam I can not even find an email when I get it and they are so aweful I am afraid to even open my email for fear of what might be there next”.  Do you ever feel like spam has taken over your email account?  Have you found yourself writing letters again just to avoid your email?  If you have you are not alone.  But what can be done?  Yes you could opt to turn your computer into a boar anchor but before trying that maybe try this first:

1.  Contact your ISP and ask if they use a spam filter service for their server and if not ask them what it would take for them to - OR change ISPs

2.  Register for a spam filter of you own like http://www.anrdoezrs.net/click-2397796-10374897” target=”_top”>Cloudmark Desktop

3.  Find a friend who has a gmail account and ask them for an invite.  Gmail has a pretty good filter and you can check your existing email through them.

4.  Or last but not least increase the security settings on your email program and/or make sure that spam filtering is on

And before it upsets you too much go to your home mail box and see how many letters you received today address to resident or occupant

When you search Google for any word often you will see two columns of information.  These listing come from two seperate places.  The main results which make up the left hand column are the results that Google has found from the stored information on the words you are searching.  The right hand column are ads that have been purchased.  Google does require these ads to still be relevant to the word(s) you searched.  However, unlike the main search results where the listing are in order of their relevance to your search, the order the ads appear is based on how much the person is willing to pay for the ad.  Each time one of these links are clicked on the company that has purchased the ad pays a small amount for this click.  These links can be very good resources especially when you are looking for the best place to buy a particular item.  On the other hand if you are looking for information, particularly free information, you will most of the time have better results from the main search results

While Google sents out programs called bots to search the web and save information about the sites it finds.  Whereas Yahoo does things a little differently.  Yahoo is technically a human interaction index rather then a search engine.  If you want your web site on Yahoo you must submit your site for review.  Then a person at Yahoo actually takes a look at the content and the web site to insure that what you say the site contains it indeed does.  They also want to determine whether or not the information contained on the site adds “value” to the web.  Yahoo actually deserves credit for wanting to have valuable, reliable content years before Google even existed.  As you can guess the downside to this is the vast number of web site that need to be reviewed and catalogued.  Though this is a daunting task Yahoo continues to provide quality content results to your search.

The “pop-up” is perhaps one of the smartest, and most annoying, features ever created for the internet.  A pop-up allows another webpage to open up The problem is that some smart person figured out that they could make the new page pop-up without asking you and could basically show you anything they wanted.  EEK!!   Don’t let that worry you though there are settings on your computer as well as programs you can install that will allow you to be in control of whether a web site and pop something up and you.  Though you may find that using Firefox or another such browser is the sultions perhaps the easiest of all of these is to simply download Google’s version of Internet Explorer and just like that most all of your pop-up troubles will go away

As time goes by you will probably feel like your computer is getting slower and slower.  The truth is that it probably is!  one of the best things you can to do speed up your computer performance is to go to the of the browser and under TOOLS click on OPTIONS and in the general tab click the button that says delete history.  Depending on how long ago (or if ) you have done this it may take a few seconds.  While you are there you may also want to change the setting for saving the history to something like 10 days.  This will delete you history, cookies and temporary files which in many cases will speed things up for you greatly.

The second simpe solution is undered your Programs in a directory called System tools you can click on a program called “disck clean-up” this will scan your computer (it WILL take a while) and then show you a bunch of programs you can delete, by default there will be nothing reccommended that will cause you any trouble and you can easily delete these items.

Many times just those 2 simple things can create a computer speed that is noticebaly different.  You can always run a virus scan program, pop-up and/or adware program or even if you know how run a disk defragment to even further fix your performance.

When you look at the name of a web site you notice they end in something like .com.  Have you ever wondered what these stand for? Though these days they are not as strictly adhered to there is still some basic though behind these extensions.

.COM is typically designed for commercial use - though these days common might be a better word

.NET was originally set up for network services like ISP’s, however often they are also used by people who want a name but the .com is taken

.ORG is for non-profit organizations.  This one is still mostly still held to

.GOV is strictly held for governmental agency websites

Every country has a 2 digit code like .US some countries have released their extension to the general public for those wanting domain name that are already taken

There are several other extentions including .NAME and .INFO which were mostly created to expand the base of available names. 

One word of caution if you are looking at the other extensions; some of the more popular names have been registered with a different extension have been done so with malicious intent so please be careful.

Protecting your personal information is important.  Most new computers these days have many features built right in to protect your information from being stolen.  However, the internet probably handles your personal information and protects it better then perhaps anywhere else you would ever share your information.  Think about it this way; how many times have you gone to a restaurant for the first time, met a waiter or waitress for the first time, and then after maybe an hour you hand this person, you have never met prior to this, your credit card which they then take to a separate area or even room.  We all do this with not so much as a second thought.   Passing information on the internet is more secure then if you were to go to the credit card terminal yourself and rang up your own purchase.  Look at my post How internet security works for more information.

Some times when you click on a link you will get go to a “secure” page.  Secure pages are special web pages designed for the secure transfer of sensitive information like for example your credit card information when you buy something online.  You can always double check to see if you are on a secure page by look at the lock symbol in the bottom corner

That image means that you are on a site that is guaranteed to allow the safe passage of your sensitive information.  If you remember from lesson one I stated that the internet is probably the safest place to use your credit card and the secure pages are why.  In order for the lock symbol to show up on your page there are many things that have happened to protect you.  First the ISP has to apply for a “Secure Certificate”.  A Secure Certificate is sold them from a company that specializes in verifying that the information being passed from your computer across the internet to their server is safe.  Once the web site is set up to use this certificate the lock will appear at the bottom of the page.
When you get to this web site and decide to buy something you the process of securing your transaction begins.  Your computer sends a request to the server requesting a secure channel.  The server that the web site you are buying from is on sends an identification number (certificate ID) both to you and to company that is securing the transaction.  Think of this as it telling you its special secret password that only it and the security company know.  The even better news is that before hand the web site and the security company have worked a special way of creating a unique password that applies only to you, only to this transaction and will only ever be used once.  Now that your computer has the password and the name of the security company, your computer sends to the special security number to the security company.  The security company verifies that the website you are buying from gave it the special arranged unique information in the proper format.  Then the security company verifies that you and only you are the only one that has been given this information.  Then it verifies that you are you by checking your password and your connection to the website.  After the security company has verified that the information that is being passed is being done so only between you and the web site it then tells the web sites computer and your computer a special code called 128bit Encryption that you can use to pass information back and forth to each other while you are in this secure mode.  So not only is the transaction specially checked to be sure no one is watching but even after all that for lack of a better term the 2 computers talk in a brand new language to each other the whole time they are passing the information so that IF anyone figured out how to listen all they would hear is a foreign language they don’t know.
Like any other form of security there are, of course, ways that it can be broken, however the work that is required to do so is more complex then literally any other means of credit card transaction that exists.

Though it is true your computer can become infected with a virus (which with most cases is VERY preventable), this virus is not contagious to you or any other appliance in the house. If you have multiple computers it is possible for them to pass a virus to one another but even the wiring that connects them is not infected.  Relax though, this is not as big of a deal as it may seem.

Whether you choose a paid program like Microsoft’s new Live OneCare or a free program like Avast it is a quick simple and painless process to keep all of your computers virus free.