FastSupport.com is a Scam!

Tags

Facebook, FastSupport.com, Hacker, Scam

One day I logged into my Facebook account to find it has been disabled. Someone had reported my identity as fake and as a result Facebook requested a copy of my ID to prove I was, me.

I sent them my driver’s license. Easy enough, right? Of course not. It’s Facebook we are talking here.

So about 24 hours later they write me back and ask me for more proof.

This time I sent them the first page of my latest bank statement, which included my name and address, a copy of my social security card and a copy of my health insurance card which included my date of birth, which had to match the name and date of birth on my account.

About 24 hours later they write me back, with the exact letter they sent me 24 hours prior, as if I hadn’t just sent them 3 more forms of ID. Forms of ID mind you that they asked for (they provide you a list of what kinds of additional ID they want from you).

So this time I sent them a copy of my vehicle insurance card from Progressive.

The next day I tried to Google out a number for Facebook. I found some web page that gave me a 1-800 number for Facebook tech support. Within a few seconds I was on the phone with someone who said they were Facebook tech support and I told them my problem.

They wanted to connect to my account and asked me to go to FastSupport.com. I did and they connected to my computer remotely.

He opened up Facebook and as it had said before, it said …

Thanks for providing your ID

Thanks for your patience as we work to verify this account. We’ll email you as soon as we’ve reviewed your ID.

The next thing he did was go to the command prompt and enter my email address. The thing of it is, you can’t access your gmail account from the dos command prompt. So next he ran the tree command, listing off every directly in my computer. It does nothing more than just display every directory on your drive.

He starts to talk about how someone from Las Vegas has access to my email and has hijacked my account.

Somehow magically when the tree command finished displaying all the directories on my computer he came up with a message telling me that very thing.

Funny thing is, I know just enough about computers to know that isn’t possible to get that sort of message. He would have had to type it in copy and paste it at the cmd line for it to display that message.

Long story short, to fix my poor hijacked computer, I would need to pay him $300. I asked him what this had to do with my Facebook account and he said we can’t fix that problem over the phone, even though previously he had said that’s why he wanted to connect to my computer, so that I didn’t need to upload my ids, he could verify it remotely.

No he can’t do that. But he can fix my “hacked computer” for only $300.

Long story short, don’t fall for the FastSupport.com scam. They are not the official support number for Facebook.

 

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The Truth about Xfinity Cable

Tags

Cable, Cable TV, Comcast, Xfinity On Demand

Have you ever seen those commercials advertising Xfinity cable and how great their services are? If you are like me you probably have and that means you’ve seen them rave about how you can watch any TV show or movie you want on any device.

That sounds like a great thing, right? But just how great is it really?

Yes there is an app that you can download on your phone and pull up most episodes of any TV show for the current season that you can view on TV. If for example your cable plan doesn’t include BBC America, then you won’t be able to watch any shows from BBC America on your phone or iPad.

I missed the last few episodes of the popular Fox TV show called Lucifer so I decided to download the Xfinity app for my phone and watch one of the missed episodes.

If you were to catch it on TV, it will span 1 hour on TV but the show itself will actually only be about 52 minutes long. That means you’ll get 8 minutes of commercials. That’s usually spread out about 2 minutes long, during 4 different breaks.

You will get several of the same commercial breaks with the xfinity mobile app but even worse.

During the 52 minute long episode you will get about 6 to 10 commercial breaks during which time you’ll have to watch between 4 and 16 commercials each. Yes, you heard me right – I said 16 commercials in a row.

If that in itself wasn’t bad enough, I should point out that they aren’t different commercials, they are the same 4 or 5 commercials replayed over and over and over and over again.

Just imagine how bad it is to have to sit through the exact same United Healthcare commercial 6 times in a row.

If that wasn’t bad enough. When I went to watch the second episode of Lucifer I got about half way through. It played 4 commercials and then stopped playing. I pushed the play button and that triggered a new commercial cycle as if it didn’t realize I just sat through one. Only this time I had to sit through 16 new commercials. I finally got through it and it stopped playing again!

I finally just had to turn the app off before I threw my phone out the window.

The annoying commercials aren’t the only problem with Xfinity. They also have a horrible DVR functionality. You can only record one thing and that is the channel you are currently watching. If you change the channel while recording it will cancel the recording.

And as with all the people who tried to record the Superbowl this year learned the hard way, there is no “record show +30 minutes” feature. If a show is scheduled for say 1 to 2 pm, it will record that channel from 1 to 2 pm but that means a lot of people missed the last 5 minutes of the Superbowl – the overtime, arguably the best part of the game.

Now let’s talk about their customer service.

In addition to cable TV, I also have internet service through Xfinity. On January 11th I received a notification that I had gone over my data limit. Somehow in the previous 11 days my data usage had gone up ten times above normal.

I called tech support and they couldn’t figure it out either. They said they would escalate the ticket and get back with me within 24 hours.  Today is February 8th and I’m still waiting on them to get back with me.

Another thing I want to let you know about is their on time guarantee. They used to have a commercial, not sure if they play this one anymore but they used to advertise that you don’t have to sit around and wait for them to show up all day. They will give you an appointment or be there on time or you get a $20 credit.

In the 3 times during the last year I’ve had to have them out to my house, not a single time have they ever actually made it on time. They will make an appointment for say Monday from 2 to 5 pm. You sit around and wait and they don’t show up. They don’t call. Nothing. You have to call and file a complaint to get a new appointment and then demand the promised $20 credit.

This happened to me not once, not twice but three times now.

So next time you are thinking about getting cable TV or using Xfinity for internet service, just remember this post.

 

Do you Stash? I just started.

Tags

Investing, Investment App, Mutual Funds, Stash

The experts say that you need to start investing for retirement by the time you are 30. I’m well past 30 and haven’t saved a single dime. Isn’t that horrible?

I know I should. I’ve always mean to and sometimes I even do, or at least I try to. But life happens and it seems like every time I start to get ahead, something blows up.
Recently however, I discovered an app called Stash. They have a 30-day free trial so I decided to check it out.

Basically, it’s an investment app. You put money in your account and use that money to invest into various funds.

I intended to start out slow with $5, the minimum required to invest in a fund. However, I messed up by clicking buttons without reading and ended up with $15 instead of $5. Still, $15 wasn’t bad so I went ahead and pushed forward.

With my $15 Stash balance, I spent $5 on three different funds.

Yes, I know investing $5 in something isn’t going to make me rich. But that wasn’t really my point. I was just trying to learn how it all worked.

After two weeks, I put another $5 into my Stash account, and then invested that in another fund.

At the end of the month, I seen a small return on all my investment funds, except for one. I picked “All That Glitters” because someone once told me that investing in things like Gold and Silver during times of political turmoil was a good idea. I put $5 into my fund during the Trump and Clinton election. So far, that fund is down 2.16%. Guess that’s what I get for listening to random people about investing.

Overall though I was still ahead, making more than I invested, so I put another $5 into my Stash account. This time, instead of finding a new fund, I put it in a fund that I had previously invested in. The Raw Earth fund had the most gains so now with a $10 investment into Raw Earth, I’m happy to say that I am showing a 4.27% growth.
By investing small amounts, $5 or $10 here and there, it makes saving money easier. My sister invests 4% of her check every month into her retirement account. That’s only $250 a month, and I know I should do that too but I just don’t. I’m sorry I’m just not that responsible.

Instead I’m going to try it this way. I’ll put $5 in every time I have a little bit of money. During the first 30 days of using this app that turned out to be $30.

By the way, you can find the Stash app in iTunes. It’s free to use for the first 30 days and then after that it cost $1 per month.

If you don’t know anything about investing, don’t worry. They make it easy.

• Step 1: Deposit some money into your Stash Account
• Step 2: Tell it something you like. ie: Movies, Jewelry, The Environment (You have a long list to pick from)
• Step 3: Invest the money you put into your Stash account in one of the suggested funds.
• Step 4: Wait and watch your money grow.

You won’t get rich overnight but it’s nice seeing that $5 you put in turn into $5.10 and then $5.43 and then eventually who knows how much.

This isn’t really meant for short term earnings. It’s about the long haul. Put some money in today, invest it and forget about it. Over time that $5 will grow. It will one day become $10 or maybe even more.

The point is, that you do something. Nobody ever really has a lot of spare money lying around but you have to try and saving money and investing in your future with a mobile app like Stash makes it a lot less painful.

If you put just a tiny bit of money in your Stash account every time you can, it will start to add up over time.

Update: In the end I used the app for 90 days, which ended up costing me $2 since my first 30 days were free. I ended up making a 1.46% return on my total investment. Since I actually made more than I spent I call it a win but even better, it actually forced me to save money that I wouldn’t have otherwise done.

Fiverr is now Sixerr

Tags

Fiverr

Well not really, but they should be because recently they started adding $1 for every transaction as a “processing fee”.

So now when you go to Fiverr to buy a simple $5 gig, you’ll actually have to pay $6.

I still use the site, but I’m also far more selective when hiring someone. I almost never hire someone to do anything for me unless they are from the US or the UK. Just far to much scams or problems otherwise.

Still, for the US and UK guys, you can find some good deals.

 

Do you Fiverr?

Tags

$5, Fiverr, Fraud, Scam

Years ago I wrote an article about Fiverr. Since it’s almost 3 years I thought it would be a good time to revisit the subject matter. Fiverr has grown tremendously in that time, but have things gotten any better?

Well, yes and no.

Nowadays the site has far more to offer in terms of services starting at $5. If you can think about it, you can probably find it at Fiverr.

There’s a guy from China who will draw adorable little pictures of your pets.

A guy Germany will translate your English into German.

There honestly is so much I could go on for days just listing all the crazy things you can find on Fiverr.

There are really a lot of great things about the site. But there is still a dark side. The more popular the site becomes, the worse the fraud seems to be.

Some things aren’t really so bad – as long as you pay attention.

Like the guys who claim they will provide SEO for your website for $5. But once you read the fine print you see they actually don’t provide any real work on your website. For your $5 they simply provide you a report about what is bad about your site. Basically they run your domain through some automated script who kicks back a basic report suggesting things you need to do to improve your SEO.

The thing of it is, you already know your SEO sucks. Which is why you wanted to hire someone to fix it in the first place. Why pay someone to tell you what you already know? LOL

But if you take your time and read the job description fully you should be able to catch things like that. I would say that more than 40% of all jobs on Fiverr are like this. The headlines will be very misleading and when you actually read the description you find out it’s not really quite that.

But what about other not so obvious fraud?

That unfortunately is quite common as well.

Here are some things you can look for to avoid ….

The Fake Tweet

If anyone offers to tweet anything for you because they have a TON of followers you are probably getting spammed because unless they are well known chances are they bought their followers so they are all fake. So in other words you are paying $5 to tweet to a bunch of fake people.

The Pre-Written Story

This one is rare but it does come up.  Basically someone offers to sell you a pre-written story they have of some kind. It can be any genre and typically they charge either $5 for the whole story (if it’s short) or $5 per chapter for longer ones.

You can pretty much better that the story in question is something they stole from some website. Once you get the story and start Googling random sentences from it, you’ll quickly see how you got screwed. If this happens to you remember you have only 3 days to file a fraud report with Fiverr and get your money back. Anything longer than that and you’ll find Fiverr won’t help you because they’ve already paid the guy and the guy in question took off with the money.

Social Media Fans and Friends

You want more followers on Facebook, Twitter or Instagram? At Fiverr some of the sellers promise you just that and they will even promise them to be real and permanent. As great as the offer sounds, you’ll almost always find that every single follower you buy will go away over the next few weeks or months. So say you buy 1,000 new Facebook likes. You’ll get them, of course – they want to be paid. But within the next 6 weeks you’ll find that most of those likes you paid for magically disappeared. Long story short – Fiverr isn’t a great place to buy social media fans and followers.

 The Fake Book Editor

You write something great but it needs to be edited. You go to Fiverr and hire a professional – or so you think. Editors at Fiverr typically charge $5 for 500 to 1,500 words. It sounds like a good deal but in the end, it’s almost never worth it. You submit your story and get it back only to find that they did a half ass job. Sure they catch about half of the edits but more often than not, your Fiverr editor isn’t going to provide you with all the edits your book needs to be published.

If you happen to fall victim to anything shady at Fiverr just remember to immediately contact Fiverr customer service. Don’t wait because there is only a short and I mean very short time (usually 3 days) that they can do anything about it.

Fiverr can be a great resource for those who are careful, take their time and are willing to quickly act when they find out they are a victim of fraud.

The Rolodex Password System

Tags

Identity Theft, Internet Security, Password, Rolodex, Safe Passwords

How often do you change the passwords to the various websites you use online? There is your WordPress password, your Amazon password, your email password, your banking password, your router password, the password you use for Facebook and the countless other sites.

It can be a daunting task to keep up with everything and even worse, your are expected to not only use a unique password for every single site you use online but also change them at least once every 6 months.

How in the world can any one person keep up with so many passwords? Because I do a lot online I have hundreds that I have to keep track of, but even an average person has quite the list. When I helped my mother setup her system she ended up having 29 different passwords she needed to keep track. So what did she do? She just used the same password on every site. Security tells us that is a big mistake and a nightmare waiting to happen.

If  Wal-Mart gets hacked and you use the same password at every other site that you did at Wal-Mart they now have your password to everything.

So what can you do?

Well don’t worry, I actually have a solution for you that will make your life so much easier!

Yes that is a picture of an old school rolodex and no I haven’t lost my mind. It turns out that these old school phone books are absolutely perfect for keeping track of all of your passwords.

File everything alphabetically by the site name in question. For example if you bank at Chase bank, then file your log in details under (C) for Chase and you file your log in details for your Amazon account under (A) for Amazon.

Could it get any easier than that?

Now that you have a way to easily keep track of all of your passwords it is important that you start using secure and different passwords for every single site.

A good password does not use any person’s name or any word in the dictionary. It also uses a combination of letters and numbers and includes at least one capital letter. Some people even suggest using an unusual character like the @ or #.

So instead of using the password iloveyou123 you could change it up a bit and make it  Iluvy@U312.

Okay maybe not the best password but it uses but upper and lower case letters, numbers and an unusual character.

My mother was a fan of using the password cowboys as she is a big fan of the Dallas Cowboys. Not anymore, thank goodness, now that I’ve taught her the rolodex system …. But how could we change that to make it more secure? C#wbyZ288

The great thing about using a rolodex to file away your passwords is that now you can use just crazy completely random passwords which are far more secure. Because if you forget what it is, you can easily just reference the card filed away alphabetically in your rolodex.

What’s an amazing password?

Well there is no password that is perfect. But the longest ones are always best. Length is always better than complexity. The longer your password is, the harder it will be for a person to hack.

So a great password will be as long as they allow you to make it. I sometimes use 16 characters in my passwords. Here is a sample random but still quite secure password. Notice it uses all the things experts tell us is great about a password – it’s long, and complex. It doesn’t include any name, place or thing and no words from the dictionary. It includes both upper and lower case letters, numbers and unusual symbols.

1XiL092@#bvt.387r

Now the hard part is remembering you need to change your password for every site you use at least once every 6 months. I know that can be annoying but honestly it’s the only way to truly be sure you are safe.

How I fixed my Windows 8.1 permissions problem

Tags

5 TB External HD, Advanced Sharing, Folder Permissions, User Permissions, Windows 8.1

The topics on this blog are about as random as it gets from cat to computers and everything in between. Today we are going to talk about technology, specifically a permission problem I ran into and had a bugger of a time fixing.

I have two computers – one is a Windows 7 computer, while the other runs on Windows 8.1.

After only four years of service, my Windows 7 computer gave out. It just stopped working one day. I was told it was probably the power supply but it turns out that wasn’t the case and after wasting $50 on a new power supply, I learn it’s probably the mother board.

Luckily I had my second computer. The problem was, I wanted all the data from my old computer but my hard drive on my Window 8.1 computer just wasn’t big enough.  So I went shopping on Amazon and found myself a nice little 5 TB external hard drive for only $129. It was such a great deal that after I got it in the mail I decided to go back and buy another one but the price had already shot up to almost $160.

So I opened up my old computer, took out the first hard drive and installed it on the 2nd computer. I plugged in the external hard drive I had purchased from Amazon and just drug all the files from the internal drive to my new hard drive.

The whole process took about 21 hours from 1 TB of data to transfer. Next I removed that internal hard drive and plugged in my 2nd hard drive from my old computer and repeated the process. Only this time I noticed that all the files didn’t transfer, specifically the Users Folder and My Google Drive folder. I couldn’t even get in to view what was in that folder, it kept denying me permission.

Of course the first thing I did was Google it. None of the 5 suggestions I found worked for me. I wasn’t sure what I was going to do so I decided to try something else out on my own and it worked, which is why I am now sharing this method with you, in case you run into the problem as well.

1. Right click on the folder in question that is giving you problems
2. Click properties and then select the securities tab. On that page you should notice one or two people with permissions here, you and “everyone”. At the very least, you should have you – as in your log in name. If your windows 8.1 username is not listed there, then you have the same problem I have.
3. Click the sharing tab and then click the Advanced button — This will bring up a screen that says something about selecting users or groups.
4. Click advance. Now select the OBJECT TYPES button. Un-check everything there except USERS – then click okay.
5. Now on that same screen click FIND NOW. In my case 4 potential users came up, Administrator, Guest, HomeGroupUser$ and my actual Windows 8.1 log in username and email.
6. Select your Windows 8.1 log in username and then click okay. It will take you to another screen listing your name in the box. Now click okay again.
7. On the next screen make sure you ALLOW yourself permissions for all three (check all three allow boxes) for Full Control, Change, and Red. Then click OK.
8. Now click OK again on the next screen, this confirms you want to save all you have previously done. Now click close and you now have granted yourself permission to access and do whatever you want with that particular folder.

Update – Here is something unrelated to the permissions problem – just something I noticed about the 5 TB external hard drive I mentioned in the article. As I said in the above story I purchased it for $129. When I was writing this story it went up in price to like $159. The other day I noticed it was back down to $139 and today it’s listed at $154. So if you are going to buy this thing, I would wait a few days until you can catch it at the lower price. Apparently it goes up and down in price every day. I have no idea why it would do something like that but every single day I have looked it has been listed at a different price.

Some Internet Etiquette

Tags

Email, Etiquette, Facebook, Online Etiquette, Social media, Social network, Twitter

Don’t lose your head on reading negative comments and snap off an awful post. Once the send button is clicked, there’s no way to recall from the web. Later you could understand your nasty comment was groundless, but you may do nothing about it.

Be careful when adding friends. You’re able to safely add the ones, you know. For the rest, add those whose profile matters to you.

Don’t paste pics of others, without their permission. Even your pics should be decent. Remember that social networking sites are your Net presence, so build your report.

Don’t post links of adult sites or any other illegal web sites. Likewise don’t upload videos and pics which are lewd.

Always give the complete and right profile. Profiles inform others of you and so don’t misdirect them. Supply common background data along with your likes and dislikes.

Don’t spread evil rumor.

Smearing other people on social networking sites is likewise bad manners. Everyone you’re connected to may read what you post, so stay away from writing atrocious remarks about others.

Don’t junk e-mail. People get irritated when they receive spam. Spamming is likewise in bad taste.

Don’t keep on asking people to add you as a friend.

To be efficient, update often and participate. Post daily and comment on others posts.

Smiles may be utilized to denote a tone. However, use it meagerly. Similarly, don’t use all capitals in your message posts. Utilizing all capitals is the online version of screaming.

If someone posts you a comment, reply.

The less abbreviation you practice the better it is. Utilize only those abbreviations that are reasonably common, as you will not be there to explain.

Be as brief as possible and to the point. People neither do have the time nor the patience to read page long ramblings.

In case of any arguments, focus on the issues rather than the individuals involved.

Keep an open mind. Don’t get mucked up in message wars.

 

 

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Can the Internet Spur Your Imagination?

Tags

Creative, Idea Generator, Ideas, Inspiration, Writers Block

Having writers block? Can’t think of what to write about? How about turn to the Internet. Can the internet really spur your imagination? Sure! Absolutely.

How about you try out one of those online idea generators? You may get funny and inspirational ideas for anything from advice to tech support excuses.

There are billions of ways to yield ideas and come up with new concepts for your projects. You’re able to utilize your subconscious to come up with an idea or you’re able to consult the Idea Generator (an online tool) for random affiliations.

Just Google online idea generator to find one.

Tools like these are great because they gives you combinations of terms that are commonly unrelated, but your mind will still try and affiliate them. This exercise will produce lines of thoughts that may be entirely refreshing.

Add to the 3 generated words a few keywords from your own project and you get an infinite list of inspirational sentences. Most of them will be non-sense, but they could still give you a seed for an idea. Naturally you’re able to simply utilize a dictionary for this purpose, but this tool is handier.

Lost your computer’s recovery CD? No problem!

Tags

Book Disc, Dell, Desktop Computer, Microsoft, New Hard Drive, Recovery CD, Restoration Disc, Windows XP Media Center Edition 2005

I purchased one of my computers all the way back in 2007. I don’t really use it for much but it’s great for backups. One day the hard drive was giving me trouble so I knew I needed to do a reformat. Only problem was, I couldn’t find the recovery CDs for that computer for the life of me. I wasn’t quite sure what I was going to do.

Because the computer was so old it wouldn’t even let me install the newer operating system like windows 7, so how in the world was I going to get my hands on a copy of the new discontinued Windows XP Media Center Edition 2005?

I Googled this problem and found a variety of options but for most of them I had to illegally download this or that and risk my computer with all sorts of maleware and Trojans or viruses.  Clearly that wasn’t going to work for me.

Turns out the answer was really simple.

For $25 Dell computer allowed me to order a backup copy of my recovery cd (click here to order your recovery cd from Dell).  Had my computer still been in warranty they would have mailed it to me for free but since my warranty expired in 2005 I had to pay for my restoration disc and since it only cost me $25 that works for me.

For that little amount of money I don’t have to worry about downloading a virus from some shady site and I get it in a few days.

So if you find yourself in need of reformatting your hard drive or like me, buying a totally new hard drive and don’t want to spend $100 to $300 to buy a new operating system from Miscroft or don’t want to risk getting a virus by downloading a cracked or hacked copy illegally, this is the perfect solution.