Sunday, September 16, 2012

The Value of Social Media Campaigns - ROI


Many businesses consider replacing their marketing department with social media experts.  But as with anything, social media is not 'a pill to fix' marketing. Social media has value if configured properly and maintained in exacting ways for any business.
Since there are sites that sell Facebook Likes, this represents that less ethical social media marketing houses may subject their clients to these likes for the sake of performance auditing.
For instance, if you have been hired to run a social media campaign for a business, it may be a significant measure of work to see how well that campaign is going by the amount of Like that have been generated. Your company may be ethical, but competition that is trying to 'win your accounts' is actually secretly buying Likes to apply to their campaigns, in order to show how well their campaign approach is for a particular client.
Additional benefit may be had through these purchases through search engine optimization, Facebook popularity inside of Facebook and potentially vendors like Apple who are trying to integrate with social media in their hardware products.

Since Likes can now be purchased en mass, through numerous websites, it may be wise to evaluate social media companies to explain HOW they justify success in social media campaigns. Using return on investment (ROI) modeling that truly represents revenue.

Money is better spent, more times than not, discovering your current market and your future markets.

Thursday, September 13, 2012

Great Examples of Phishing - At Cornell University

Cornell University Information Technologies Website has a great resource of documented Phishing examples. Please consider clicking on the link and seeing the kinds of exploits that are used to get people to click on or reply to bogus email events.

To view any of these examples in detail, please visit the Cornell University link at the beginning of this post.

These are some examples of phishing emails seen on campus. Do NOT assume a suspect email is safe, just because it is not listed here. There are many variants of each, and new ones are being sent out each day. When in doubt, consult with your IT support staff or the IT Service Desk.

    FW: Chase Bank - Online System Upgrade (9/7/2012)
    Pay your Fedex invoice online (9/6/2012)
    WEBMAIL ADMIN*Quota Limit Exceeded (9/5/2012)
    Your account has been temporarily limited. ID K5008204 (9/1/2012)
    New e-card for you. (8/31/2012)
    for {your_name} (8/29/2012)
    Intuit/Quickbooks (8/28/2012)
    ACCOUNT ADMINISTRATOR (8/25/2012)
    Your Apple ID password has been reset (8/22/2012)
    PHISHING ALERT (8/22/2012)
    RE: Case# 7924236 (8/21/2012)
    Rejected Federal Tax transfer (8/21/2012)
    Your receipt #162013403684048 (8/15/2012)
    Wire Transfer Confirmation (FED REFERENCE 26963QE679) (8/14/2012)
    Bank of America Alert: Your Online Statement Is Ready (8/14/2012)
    Your friend sent you an e-card. (8/13/2012)
    Photos (8/13/2012)
    Your Citi Credit Card Statement (8/13/2012)
    Bank of America Alert: Online Banking Account Suspended? (8/10/2012)
    Microsoft Security Update (8/10/2012)
    You package has been delivered (8/10/2012)
    Schwab Report (8/8/2012)
    LinkedIn Reminder (8/7/2012)
    Welcome to Paypal - Choose your way to pay (8/6/2012)
    ADP Security Management Update (8/2/2012)
    Fwd: Wire Transfer Confirmation (... (8/1/2012)
    Re-Validation of Webmail Account (7/31/2012)
    Message From Micorosoft Helpdesk: Do This Now (7/30/2012)
    password expiration warning (7/26/2012)
    ADP Security Management Update (7/25/2012)
    Order N64950 (7/25/2012)
    ADP Generated Message: First Notice - Digital Certificate Expiration (7/25/2012)
    Fwd: Your Photos (7/25/2012)
    American Express Alert - Personal Security Key Reset (7/23/2012)
    Properties for Sale. (7/23/2012)
    Your Ebay confirmation of your transaction through Paypal. (7/23/2012)
    Your Sprint bill is now available online (7/16/2012)
    Message From I.T Helpdesk Expert (7/16/2012)
    We have received your payroll processing request. (7/16/2012)
    New incoming Intuit payments. (7/16/2012)
    An Issue of Billing... (7/13/2012)
    You have new UPS invoices (7/11/2012)
    You have received a new payment through the Intuit network. (7/10/2012)
    ADP Generated Message: First Notice - Digital Certificate Expiration (7/9/2012)
    USPS postage labels order confirmation. (7/6/2012)
    Your Receipt and Itinerary (7/6/2012)

Monday, September 10, 2012

ChromeBook Series - How To Try Chrome Apps

Here is a quick beginner review video on how to check out Apps in the Google Chrome store.


Sunday, September 9, 2012

QuickBooks Online Will Require Browser Upgrades

Blog post from Intuit, for all Quick Books Online subscribers:
Small heads up for Firefox or Chrome users As we roll out changes to QuickBooks Online in the future, we may use some new HTML5 features like IndexedDB, History, AppCache, WebStorage, GeoLocation etc. We may also look at copy/paste from outside applications into QBO. Few of them will make browsers like Firefox or Chrome ask for extra permissions. It’s your choice to accept or ignore them and in either case your regular usage of QuickBooks Online will be unaffected. However accepting / allowing such features may just help enhance your browsing experience. Such notifications only come up once, till you eventually clear your browser’s cache / cookies / site preferences, which causes a reset. So you can always reset your browser preferences any time in case you want to change your choice. One such page using couple of the above mentioned technologies is our new Sales Receipt page (http://blog.qbo.intuit.com/2012/03/04/new-transaction-page-design-part-2/)

In Firefox 10 on the mac you will see the permission request notification as shown in the image below. Other versions on other platforms might look a bit different visually.

For Chrome users, you can just grab the Chrome Web Store app if you haven’t already done so. This will automatically add the necessary permissions (without the app, the notifications may come as a yellow bar on top). After installing that app, in the future you may notice the QuickBooks Online app shortcut greyed out on your Chrome’s New Tab page as shown below and Chrome should prompt for you to accept some permissions. Click re-enable to get it working again.

ChromeBook Series - Getting Started with Chrome App Store

While this video discusses advantages to BUILDING Chrome Browser Apps, it also reviews what Apps are, how to access them and their advantages. Even for the basic user, this is a helpful review of what this is all about. Thanks to Arne Roomann-Kurrik  for explaining this in detail.

Saturday, September 8, 2012

Chromebook - How to Physically Care for Your New Chromebook

ChromeBook Series - Important Apps NexusFree

This ChromeBook series is presented to help users who are trying to move to the Google cloud as a means of computing.

The Google Drive product is essentially the total Google offering of their cloud services. Previously Google was offering Google Docs, Google Music, Picasa for the Web, etc. Today they are combining all of this into something called Google Drive.  Google Docs are their own formats, but you can import Microsoft Word and Excel documents into it, and you can spit them out as a file or email them as an attachment in GMail in the Microsoft Word, PDF Rich Text Format (RTF) formats.

The Google Developers posted the YouTube channel reviewed NexusFree which is a means for editing Microsoft Office, over using OpenOffice, or to help people who use Google Drive


Chromebooks are excellent, secure and lower cost machines that can be used as alternatives to legacy, traditional workstation PCs within the Microsoft Small Business Server Active Directory environments, especially those within small business environments.

Menlo Technology has been promoting the advantages and value for cloud computing in the Enterprise, to reduce IT costs, security concerns and overall business operations.

Friday, August 31, 2012

Firefox 15 PDF Viewing or Why Adobe and Mozilla Update so much...

Mozilla just released Firefox 15. Your machines may update themselves to this the next time you start your computer or browser.  The initial v15 release has turned off viewing PDF's inside the browser. A well respected blogger over at Groovy Post wrote up an illustrated guide to help fix this.

Groovy Post recently explained how to enable this feature.

Many machines will request updates for Adobe Reader and Foxit Reader, but if you haven't seen these requests on your machine for a while, run these updates now.

Update Adobe
When you do so you will have to close Firefox and Internet explorer as well as all instances of the PDF software.
The best update option is to open the reader and pull down Help from the top, and choose Update. In this case, it will ask you to close Firefox as well as the Main Adobe Reader window.  Adobe it will automatically reach out and look for the proper update.

Update Foxit Reader
In Firefox, go to this website and at the bottom of the page in yellow, download the latest version of their software. NOTE: BE SURE to UNCHECK the Chrome Browser / Ask Toolbar update.


The reasoning for this flurry of Firefox updates - as well as the constant Adobe Flash and Reader update requests - is  the entire hacking cyber-crime world has figured out ways to take advantage of machines that are not updated. These criminals attempt to get into your machine before you update them. This doesn't happen in a matter of months or weeks, but minutes.  As soon as the hacking community discovers a way to break an older version of these software, they distribute these infections through any way possible. SPAM emails, Facebook photos viewing, Google search results, email attachments from people that we know. 

These hackers are now motivated by gigantic profits.
Read the first paragraph of any of these articles to realize how bad this is:
Forbes Russia's Million Dollar Hacker
Blog Infosecisland Russian Cybercrime: Not Just A Localized Threat
SC Magazine's Russian Cyber Crime Market More Organized, Lucrative
Ars Technica Russian National Charged with $1.4Million Hacking Scam

It may be impossible to get a full grasp of everything that is happening in the computer security industry, but a quick glimpse explains that it is very powerful and requires careful consideration of all information maintained on your computer - from daily active security to total secure cloud system backups.  

Friday, August 24, 2012

Updates – Enterprise Style “International Technology Upgrade Week”

We posted this over at the Wordpress blog, but wanted to make sure everyone could check it out.
Server and desktop upgrades were a slow going part of the ancient past. (Ancient meaning three years ago.) Today, without the process of constant upgrading and patching, an enterprise could immediately fall prey to endless infections, which in turn leads to identification theft, intellectual property theft, and the potential for the complete demise of a business, let alone a simple deadline.
To underscore the importance of these updates, Adobe, Skype and others banded together earlier this year to express the importance of these regular updates.
Linda Summers at Skype blog posted this article explaining how infrequently people upgrade their machines. This study is just as important for enterprise environments as it is for a person use policy.






Infographic by
Skype

Adobe Bloggers also wrote a specific blog post about International Technology Upgrade Week and the findings of this study. The blog post explains:
Earlier today, Skype—joined by Norton by Symantec and TomTom—kicked off “International Technology Upgrade Week,” a global initiative to encourage consumers to regularly download and install software updates. We’d like to chime in and express our support for this important initiative. Keeping software up-to-date is probably the single-most important advice we can give to users—consumers and businesses alike.
In preparation for International Technology Upgrade Week, Skype commissioned a survey of American, British and German consumers, which revealed the following findings:
  • 40 percent of adults don’t always update software on their computers when initially prompted to do so.
  • Approximately one quarter of those surveyed said they don’t clearly understand what software updates do, and an equal percentage don’t understand the benefits of updating.
  • While 75 percent of adults receive update notifications from their software, more than half admitted that they needed to see a prompt between two and five times before downloading and installing the update.
Also wanted to mention the Norton Blog posting concerning the event as well. Marian Merritt posted in their community forums this article, and mention this warning:
Or consider Norton security software as another example; it simply can’t do its job defending you against the newest threats or latest viruses unless you allow the automatic updating feature to do its work. In fact, helping you keep your software up-to-date is such a big deal at Norton that starting this fall, our engineers have figured out how to make it all happen in the background, silently, and without having to restart your computer for new features to take effect. Keeping you safe with the latest protection is priority #1!

Monday, August 6, 2012

Messages are stuck in the Outbox

When Outlook 2010 email gets stuck in the Outbox...
by Diane Poremsky


Messages are stuck in the Outbox

Applies to Microsoft Outlook 2010, Outlook 2007, Outlook 2003 and below
There are several reasons why Microsoft Outlook won't send mail and before you can fix the problem, you need to identify the cause.
Possibly the most common cause is the message is too large to send because you added a huge attachment to a message. If this is the problem, see Delete large messages from the Outbox if you can't delete the stuck message. Instructions for Outlook 2011 for Mac are at Delete Messages Stuck in Outlook 2011 Outbox.
If you don't see a message in your outbox but Outlook is trying to send something, see Hidden Stuck Messages. It's most likely a read receipt that won't send.
If the message is not too large to send, other possible causes include:
  1. An add-in that marks items read if you view the Outbox
  2. Wrong password or not authenticating properly with the mail server
  3. Outlook or the mail server is offline
  4. No default email account is set
  5. Using a program that accesses pst or ost data, such as Desktop Search, Lync, etc
  6. An antispam or antivirus scanner is scanning outgoing mail

Troubleshooting

First, check the Send/Receive progress dialog for error codes. Browse to Tools, Send/Receive, Send/Receive settings, Show progress and click on the error tab. The error will resemble this, with a different error number and possibly a better explanation than "unknown error"
Task ' – Sending' reported error (0×80040119) : 'Unknown Error 0×80040119
See What does this error mean? for the reasons for some of the error codes. (If you need the text of the error code, you can select any error and use Ctrl+C to copy it.)

An add-in marks items read if you view the Outbox

Symptom: you look at the mail in the Outbox and it's not bolded.
Quick Fix: Stop looking in the Outbox.
See Outlook: After viewing the Outbox, e-mail won't send for applications that cause messages in the Outbox to be marked as read.

Wrong or bad password, or not authenticating properly with the mail server

Verify your password works by logging into your account using web access.
Check your account settings:
  1. Go to Tools menu (Outlook 2007) or File tab (Outlook 2010) then Account Settings, Email.
  2. Double click on the account then click More Settings.
  3. Check your settings on the Outgoing server tab. Many email providers now require a password to send email. If you aren't sure, enabling authentication before sending usually doesn't cause problems, but you should verify the proper settings with your email provider.
  4. Do not enable SPA unless your mail server requires it.
  5. Verify the port number is correct on the More Settings, Advanced tab. Many email providers use port 587 for SMTP.
In Outlook 2003 and older, go to Tools, E-mail accounts, View or Change existing accounts. Double click on the account and click More Settings, then select the Advanced tab.

Outlook or the mail server is offline

Is Outlook online? The online status is in the Status bar.
Is the mail server online? Outlook's status bar may say 'Trying to Connect' if the mail server is down.

No default email account is set

Symptoms include being able to reply but not send new mail.
This may happen when you use a preconfigured script provided by the mail server administrator to set up your account.
In Outlook 2010, go to File, Account Settings, Email. Is an set as default?
In Outlook 007, you'll check for a default account in Tools, Account Settings, Email. In Outlook 2003 and older, go to Tools, E-mail accounts, View or Change existing accounts. Verify an account is set as default.

Using a program that accesses the .pst or .ost data

Symptom: Mail sends at first, then hangs in mailbox
Send and Receive error code is: Task ' – Sending' reported error (0×80040119) : 'Unknown Error 0×80040119.
Solutions include:
Restarting Outlook (after verifying it closed completely in Task manager) may allow the mail to send.
Otherwise:
Reboot and disable the problem program before starting Outlook.
If it continues to cause problems (such as sending works for awhile after restarting Outlook, then stops), uninstall the software.

An antispam or antivirus scanner is scanning outgoing mail

Norton and AVG antispam plugins are known to cause problems, but there are others. Any antivirus that uses an Outlook addin can cause issues with your email.
Solution: Disable Email scanning in the software.
It may help to the timeout (in your email account's More Settings, Advanced tab.) Otherwise, check your antispam or antivirus program's website for an update or possible workarounds. Note that we do not recommend scanning email for viruses as any virus will be picked up if you try to open an infected message (which you know not to do :)).
If none of the above are the cause and the account settings look okay, turn on SMTP logging.
To turn on logging in Outlook 2010, go to File, Options, Advanced. Enable Troubleshooting logging is near the bottom, in the Other section. I n Outlook 2007 and Outlook 2003, go to Tools, Options, Other, Advanced and add a check to the box beside Enable Logging (troubleshooting).
Because logging can cause Outlook to be unstable, initiate a send and receive and once you've reproduced the error, disable logging. The log files are stored in your temp folder. Type %temp% in the address bar of Windows Explorer and press Enter to open the Temp folder. The log files will have the extension .log and may be in an Outlook Logging subfolder.
How to enable transport logging in Outlook (MSKB)

Saturday, August 4, 2012

Using Outlook 2010's Junk Filter with Multiple Accounts

If you use Outlook 2010, and run more than one account through it, the junk mail filter will have to learn what is junk and what is not for each individual account. This is not a Global Filter.

Slipstick - a great Outlook support resource site wrote something up about this.

Using Outlook 2010's Junk Filter with Multiple Accounts

...Outlook 2010's Junk Email filter options are individual, not global settings. Rather than applying one setting to all accounts, you can set different options for each email account in your profile. While its easier to change the settings when you deliver each account to a different data file, the settings are per account, not per data file, so you can change the settings.
When you use multiple accounts delivered to separate data files, the Junk Email options dialog shows the junk mail settings for the account whose folders you are in.
Second account delivered to pst
When more than one account is delivered to a data file, you'll need to open a message received by the account and click the Junk button to see the Junk Email Options.
Second-account-one-pst

Thursday, March 22, 2012

Password Policies and DNS Changer

When people were originally concerned about buying products on line, there was already a technology in place called SSL to ensure secure transmission of credit card and personal information. It basically is a third party source that hands out something called security certificates. This means that a certificate was purchased by the online store, from one a a few trusted providers, to ensure a secure transmission of credit card information.
This was used by most online web stores and any site that was built well, and requested your private information. Web browsers enhanced their functionality by showing a pad lock open or closed, as well as showing at the address bar a special color for secure sites.
These certificates are maintained by something called a trust. Recently due to rough times, one such trust authority had lost control of their business and allowed a company to make 155 certificates that had untrustworthy intentions. Without getting any more technical, something happened in security that was never supposed to happen. A certificate authority (CA) was hijacked.
In response to this, various people have tried to explain how to tell if a security certificate is real or not.
Righard Zwienenberg wrote a great blog post at the eset security blog called "Password management for non-obvious accounts"

Firefox has an addon Certificate Patrol that will check certificate quality FOR YOU, or if the certificates you are using are actually real or fake.

Mixed with this threat is a recent problem that seems to be flying under the security software RADAR called DNSChanger, responsible for redirecting your computer web surfing to sites that are not correct. This is coming from a Trojan that can infect a computer in one second and hijack it for the purposes of SPAM distribution, to infect other machines and steal your personal information. Symantec has a walk through to repair this. Also it was written about in another security government blog, US-CERT. explaining that federal authorities are actually shutting down ISP's that have not fixed this problem.

Thursday, March 15, 2012

Cookies - It only takes one site to cause problems

This is the first frame of the video produced by Stephen Cobb. Please visit the blog post directly by clicking below, on his blog post title.

As marketing firms figure out more ways to use cookies to learn about how web surfing habits and possibly make it difficult for you to get any work done during the day, it is highly recommended to consider ways to block or remove cookies regularly.
There are settings in every browser that let you block different types of cookies and remove all cookies upon closing the browser. Unfortunately, these settings have to be adjusted manually.
A great example of how cookies jump on your machine is in the video at the eset security blog post by Stephen Cobb called "Cookie stuffing, cookie jackers, rip-off Victoria's Secret giftcard seekers"

His blog post also describes the modern jargon of what some of these cookie terms mean:

Cookie stuffing is an abuse of affiliate marketing cookies intended to mark a visit to a website that an affiliate has initiated, and for which that affiliate will get paid if the consumer performs pre-defined tasks, like requesting more information. The cookie stuffer acts as an affiliate and places cookies on a consumer's computer even if the consumer has not been brought to the site by the stuffer, later getting paid for consumer actions.
Click-jacking can be narrowly defined as deceiving a user into clicking on things they did not intend to click on, or clicks which lead to pages or actions other than those the user expected when clicking. This is part of the broader category of fraud known as click-fraud.

Stephen put together this great 4 minute video to show how using the Internet (in this example Google Image search) for researching free giftcards and coupons can lead the unsuspected shopper to a web site that will quickly fill a machine with web cookies. These cookies will monitor and track your web surfing habits.  If you adjust your browser to remove all cookies when you close your browser, this can help. But it may be the most prudent policy to not look at websites that you do not know, have never heard about or can't recognize, regardless of the supposed deal behind the 'research', like a housing auction that offers $100 homes.

Note: this is NOT the fault of Google. In fact, Google tries to recognize and shut down these sites as much as possible, but they are created at a very fast rate with always newer methods to avoid Google's detection. Making Google completely responsible for this is like blaming on a Road Commission for allowing convicts with a car to use a road once they robbed a bank.

Thursday, March 1, 2012


Mozilla Firefox has a wonderful plugin or Addon gallery that allows anyone to have additionally functionality to surfing the web. Often this is used for notifiers for Twitter, Blog Subscriptions, Yahoo! Answers, Yahoo! Mail or GMail Inbox

There are security specific Addon's for Firefox that help protect people from exposing their login information when logging into bank sites, social media or webmail like https-everywhere (see more details here).
Google's Chrome browser also has something called Extensions that do the same thing as Mozilla Addons, but for Chrome.

Internet Explorer has been trying to offer these technologies in their newer browsers, but have been lacking in their overall security features. Recently Microsoft introduced InPrivate Filtering which is a type of protection against known bad websites. It allows you to build your own lists of sites that you want to block or allow when using Internet Explorer. This was a great leap in security for Microsoft browsers and as of today, if you use Internet Explorer 7 or 8, you can download pre-built lists (like the one offered by John Delizo) tthat can be imported directly into the browser under Tools -  Manage Addons.
Microsoft recently released Internet Explorer 9, and with it has changed the technology to block or allow web sites. They are trying to get closer to the design of Mozilla's famous blocking Addon called AdBlock Plus. If your machine is running windows XP Professional, this does not apply. For all machines Windows Vista or Windows 7 (or Windows 8) , you can no longer use Internet Explorer 8 InPrivate filtering to import block lists, but you can use a method more similar to Firefox called TPL lists. TPL lists are well described in the website PrivacyChoice. They also include a great FAQ about their list and the overall technologies.
(Credit: thanks for lifehacker for the image!)

Wednesday, February 29, 2012

Intuit Quickbooks Online Moving to HTML5 features

For clients who have moved to the Intuit Quickbooks Online edition, they have just announced an upgrade to their system to allow for better performance. Because they are upgrading the features to help performance, you WILL want to clear your browser cookies and cache and then login to Quickbooks online edition again.  Please take note of their recent blog post instructions:

Small heads up for Firefox or Chrome users

As we roll out changes to QuickBooks Online in the future, we may use some new HTML5 features like IndexedDBHistoryAppCacheWebStorageGeoLocation etc. Few of them will make browsers like Firefox or Chrome ask for extra permissions. It’s your choice to accept or ignore them and in either case your regular usage of QuickBooks Online will be unaffected. However accepting / allowing such features may just help enhance your browsing experience. Such notifications only come up once, till you eventually clear your browser’s cache / cookies / site preferences, which causes a reset. So you can always reset your browser preferences any time in case you want to change your choice.
In Firefox 10 on the mac you will see the permission request notification as shown in the image below. Other versions on other platforms might look a bit different visually.

For Chrome users, you can just grab the Chrome Web Store app if you haven’t already done so. This will automatically add the necessary permissions (without the app, the notifications may come as a yellow bar on top). After installing that app, in the future you may notice the QuickBooks Online app shortcut greyed out on your Chrome’s New Tab page as shown below and Chrome should prompt for you to accept some permissions. Accept or just click on the greyed out app and re-enable it, bringing it’s color back.