IT Solutions Site Ltd Blog

OMG You Will Hate Rihanna After Watching This Video!’ Scam Spreading on Facebook

IT Solutions Site Ltd — Tue, 24 Jan 2012 12:51:36 +0000

A new scam is frolicking about Facebook, this time inviting users to view a video that will supposedly instill hatred for popular pop artist, Rihanna.There are already a few variations of the spam message with different URLs being advertised, but you’ll know the scam when you see it.

Please beware that this is a fake message that is being spread across the social network. When users click on the scam link, they are taken to a fake page, which appears like Facebook and contains a video player. Clicking on the play button will not load the video, but will ask you to share the video link with your friends on Facebook.

Sometimes it may result in downloading malware programs or other malicious files, which could possibly harm your computer. These files are programmed in a way to steal your personal and confidential information without your knowledge.

If anyone requires any help or support please don’t hesitate to contact IT Solutions Site Ltd

We also recommend Vipre Anti-Virus to keep you safe from this kind of threat and can be found here.

Regards

IT Solutions Site Support Team

Amazon Gift Card Survey Scam Hits Facebook

IT Solutions Site Ltd — Thu, 19 Jan 2012 22:37:21 +0000

Amazon seems to be the company for internet scammers, who have now launched a new survey scam using the online retailer’s name.

One Free Amazon.com Gift Card (limited time only)
amazonfree-giftcard.blogspot.com
Amazon is currently giving away gift cards to all facebook users. Click here to get one! http://

The scam offers a “free” Amazon.com gift card to anyone that’s willing to share the scam with their peers and post a comment on the page to help the scammer build credibility for the offer.

Of course, scammers are never satisfied with a measly share & comment!

Once you’ve completed step 1 and 2 on the initial landing page, you’re redirected to another website that starts off slow by asking for your zip code.

The cybercriminals behind this scam don’t benefit profit from their little setup until you complete 13 “reward offers” and convince three friends to repeat your mistakes.

According to the terms & conditions that make up for about a third of the page, “Completion of reward offers most often requires a purchase or filing a credit application and being accepted for a financial product such as a credit card or consumer loan. “

And to no surprise, “Failure to submit accurate registration information will result in loss of eligibility.”

How to deal with the Amazon Gift Card Scam

If you’ve shared this scam:

Remove the link from your Facebook wall by clicking the ‘x’ in the top right corner.
Remove the history of your comment on the scam page from your Facebook wall.
Warn your Facebook friends & family not to share this scam or complete any of the “reward offers” associated with it.

If you catch one of your Facebook friends sharing this scam:

Let them know that it’s a scam and recommend that they follow the steps outlined above.

In addition to this new Facebook survey scam, cybercriminals are also using Amazon’s brand in numerous spam campaigns that contain malicious file attachments, attempt to steal financial information, or link the recipients to dangerous websites that deliver malware.

If anyone requires any help or support with a virus please don’t hesitate to contact IT Solutions Site Ltd

We also recommend Vipre anti-virus details can be found here

Regards

IT Solutions Site Support Team

FreeNAS 8 review

IT Solutions Site Ltd — Thu, 19 Jan 2012 19:08:45 +0000

FreeNAS is a popular FreeBSD-based operating system for network-attached storage (NAS). Thanks to the easy-to-use web interface, you don’t have to know anything about the FreeBSD base under the hood to share your files.

FreeNAS home

FreeNAS supports sharing your files using FTP, NFS, CIFS (Samba), AFP, rsync, iSCSI, and so on, and it also offers software RAID (0,1,5). With many advanced features, including Oracle’s ZFS file system, it’s the perfect companion to store files for your Linux, MAC OS or Windows desktop computers in one central place. FreeNAS has very low system requirements, as it needs only 128 MB of RAM. This makes it attractive to blow the dust off an old Pentium 2 or 3 PC, put a couple of hard drives in it and make it a NAS. Of course, for high performance the machine still needs enough RAM and CPU horsepower, especially if you want to use ZFS, which needs a minimum of 4 GB RAM to offer some decent performance. We will continue to use our FreeNAS sever in our office enviroment.

The FreeNAS installer is bare-bones, but it gets the job done. Essentially, you only have to select the medium where FreeNAS will be installed. Note that FreeNAS needs a full disk for its own, so you can’t store any data on this disk. Therefore, it’s recommended to use a small disk (such as a USB stick or a CompactFlash device) for the operating system and add bigger disks to store your data. Installation is extremely quick, and after FreeNAS has booted for the first time, it shows you a simple menu in the console to set up your network configuration if this hasn’t already happened automatically. If the machine has been assigned an IP address (as you’re probably using DHCP on your home network), it also shows you the URL to access the web interface. Log in into this web interface with the username admin and the password freenas.

The web interface gives access to a whole load of information and settings. By default, you’re seeing tabs for system information, settings and some usage graphs. By clicking on the icons at the top or on the left, other tabs will be opened. The configuration settings give access to some really advanced features. For instance, the network settings even allow VLANs and link aggregation, and the iSCSI part in the settings is extremely comprehensive, allowing FreeNAS to act like a storage area network (SAN). All this can be done with a few clicks.

The central part of the FreeNAS configuration can be found in the Storage tab. The focus is on ZFS features, but you can still create UFS volumes if you don’t need the advanced features of ZFS or if your hardware is underpowered. If you select more than one disk when creating a new volume, FreeNAS automatically asks you if you want to group them as a mirror or a stripe. After this, you can replicate your ZFS datasets to a remote system, you can manually create snapshots of your data, and you can even schedule automatic periodic snapshot tasks, so you can always restore a previous version of a file.

FreeNAS 8 is a complete re-write of FreeNAS: the previous release was 0.7, which was based on FreeBSD 7.2 but had an architecture that was not flexible and modular enough to add new features. When the core developer announced that this led him to abandoning FreeNAS, the company iXsystems stepped in and announced it would take on FreeNAS development and give it the long-awaited re-write. This finally makes FreeNAS 8 a future-proof NAS operating system, based on FreeBSD 8. However, in the short-term this has some disadvantages, and you can see this clearly in this release: some functionality that was present in the previous FreeNAS release, such as iTunes/DAAP, BitTorrent and UPnP, has been taken out, and they will later be added as plug-ins in the FreeNAS 8.1 release. Also, it’s currently not possible to upgrade a FreeNAS 0.7 installation to the latest release, but the 8.1 release will get a migration utility that imports configuration settings and data volumes.

iXsystems has turned FreeNAS 8 into a modern, modular and future-proof NAS operating system. The new web interface is really easy-to-use without hiding the advanced features. Unfortunately some features didn’t make it through the re-write, but they are promised to reappear in FreeNAS 8.1. All in all, this makes FreeNAS currently the most advanced NAS operating system.

Cold Calls – Fake Tech Support Virus Scams UK

IT Solutions Site Ltd — Wed, 18 Jan 2012 22:55:20 +0000

There has been a marked rise in computer users reporting cold calling scams relating to tech support. Most of the calls say they are from windows support or technical support and that your computer has a virus, any call telling you there is a virus, unless it is from an IT support company you have had dealings with, is potentially a scam.

A lot of the calls originate from India but often they will try to convince you they are a UK company, often located in Birmingham, London, Manchester or Banbury. Advice to consumers is to either hang up, record the call to be passed on to fraud agencies or demand to be removed from their database and discontinue the call. At no point should consumers enter into discussion with these scammers or give out any personal details or computer IP addresses nor follow there direction to any website or remote access tools.

The scam works by telling consumers they have had a report from your computer that it has a virus and would like them to check for a list of files to confirm this, the list that comes up may well look convincing but really they are usually windows prefetch or temp files The scammers then ask consumers to install their remote control software onto the computer – for this there is a charge. At this point the scammers appear to run a few commands before announcing the system is very infected, even that it may crash within 5 minutes unlkess their software is purchased.

If anyone would like any help or support please don’t hesitate to contact IT Solutions Site Ltd www.it-solutions-site.co.uk

To report this issue please contact action fraud www.actionfraud.org.uk

For full virus protection we recommend Vipre anti-virus details can be found here

Regards

IT Solutions Site Support Team

Facebook filth flood – Fawkes Virus to blame?

IT Solutions Site Ltd — Tue, 15 Nov 2011 19:58:19 +0000

The newsfeeds of numerous Facebook users have become flooded with filth – specifically violent and pornographic images – as the result of an attack against the social network over the last day or so.

Objectionable content such as photoshopped images of celebrities such as Justin Bieber in sexual situations, violent pictures and depictions of an abused dog have appeared on the social network. Victims confronted by these images have taken to Twitter to vent express their outrage, as is the local custom. Read more on The Register..

Phone scammers target PC users with phony virus reports

IT Solutions Site Ltd — Fri, 04 Nov 2011 12:21:41 +0000

Online con artists are targeting PC users worldwide in a brazen scam. It starts with a phone call from a “tech support specialist” who warns that your computer is infected with a virus. To fix things, all you have to do is give the caller remote access to your PC. Here’s what happens next. Read more about this story on ZD Net

Teach Parents Tech – IT Solutions Site Ltd

IT Solutions Site Ltd — Sun, 23 Oct 2011 15:44:40 +0000

Do your parents need tech help with there computer? you can now get 12 Month Computer Maintenance Support direct from our website for just £5.75 p/month for a 1 year plan per computer.
Why have the 12 month maintenance support?

We will schedule Monthly health checks and make sure your computer is covered against threats and malicious software
All support via remote technician.

Call us anytime in 12 months for help and advice regarding your computer FREE
Get your Tech Support Plan Today! www.it-solutions-site.co.uk/support.html

We also do laptop and computer repairs contact us today as we are always happy to help.
Need an upgrade? contact us today!

Kind Regards

IT Solutions Site Support Team

FREE Android tablet with our computer support plan

IT Solutions Site Ltd — Wed, 19 Oct 2011 14:09:39 +0000

We are giving away a FREE 8″ Android tablet when you sign up for our consumer support plan. Our yearly support plan gives you peace of mind 365 day’s a year our support team is on call 24/7 to provide you online computer technical support over the phone via email or to use remote support if you’re online. Our yearly service also entitles you to a monthly health check via remote session where we will ensure your system is running at optimum performance.

Please see our website for further details: www.it-solutions-site.co.uk/support.html

Regards

IT Solutions Site Support Team

Skype Security and Safety Tips for beginners

IT Solutions Site Ltd — Sun, 09 Oct 2011 15:38:15 +0000

We have seen how to setup and use Skype to make FREE calls. Once you have set it up, before you start using it, there are a few precautions you need to take in order to stay safe online while using Skype.

The Internet can be a dangerous place and one must be very careful while interacting with the person at the other end. There used to be a time when people advised that we needed to tell our kids to be careful when on the net, but well, things are different. Kids are smart these days! Nevertheless it would be a good idea to caution you kids as well as you grand-parents about the need to take a few precautions when on Skype

Here are a few Security and Safety Tips for Skype.

First and foremost choose and use a strong and unique password for your Skype account.
Make sure that your Windows operating system, Skype and security software is up-to-date, always.
Always authenticate the identity of the person at the other end; especially before discussing private or confidential details, such as your home address or sensitive work data.
Always make sure you trust the website or person at the other end before giving out sensitive information like you personal details. Again take care before giving out your credit card information to any websites which may claim to be reselling Skype products.
To harden your security, you can update your preferences by opening Skype and clicking Tools > Options > Privacy. Here you can set your preferences for receiving communications.
Your Skype profile acts as your calling card to millions of other people on Skype. So make sure you know what you want to give out there. Your email address is of course not given out but is securely stored by Skype. But the public parts of your Skype profile can be seen by everyone else on Skype. So do not put details here that you do not want everyone to see.
Beware of fake emails, calls, etc. These could be simple phishing instances. Best to stay away from such contacts to avoid online fraud, spam, viruses and phishing attempts.
While using Skype at work, it might be agood idea to have a list of known Skype Names for all colleagues.
Whenever you log in to your Skype My Account page, please make sure that you use the secure URL : https://secure.skype.com.

EU approves Microsoft – Skype deal

IT Solutions Site Ltd — Sat, 08 Oct 2011 14:20:37 +0000

Microsoft has won approval from European regulators to buy the internet phone service Skype for $8.5 billion.

Microsoft already had been cleared by U.S. antitrust regulators to complete its deal to buy Skype Global. So the EU approval seems like a pretty good bet.

The Commission considers that there are no competition concerns in this growing market where numerous players, including Google, are present.

“This is an important milestone, as we’ve now received clearance from both the United States and the European Union,” Brad Smith, Microsoft’s general council, said in a statement. “We look forward to completing soon the final steps needed to close the acquisition.”

Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer has pledged that, under Microsoft, Skype would continue to support Google’s Android and Apple’s Mac OS X platforms.

Microsoft is buying the European-based internet calling service from an investor group led by Silver Lake that included eBay Inc.