PC Repair, Training, Networking & Security: Molnar Home Computing: Tech Tips

It’s Tax Season – Watch for Phishing and Malware

Tax season is a busy time for individuals and businesses – and cybercriminals, hard at work with new phishing scams and malware. The number of legitimate users online and the nature of online tax preparation make this an important time of year for the morally challenged. Preparing taxes involves financial information along with valuable PII (Personally Identifiable Information): this increases the potential profitability of malware and phishing campaigns. By no means should this stop you from preparing your tax returns online! Instead, practice extra vigilance to protect your devices and sensitive information. In this article, we’ll go over the [...]

2023-04-05T10:20:11-04:00By Charles|

Internet Explorer 11: Compatibility View

Internet Explorer 11 Compatibility View: The Talk If you run Internet Explorer on Windows 7, you may recently have noticed that some of the web pages you visit don't look quite the same. Worse, you may have discovered that some of your favorites don't work the same as they used to, just don't look right or at times don't work at all. This is due to a recent Windows 7 update provided by Microsoft: Internet Explorer 11, also known as IE 11. Fortunately there is a solution: compatibility view. From the Wikipedia article: "A compatibility mode [in [...]

2017-09-09T13:15:44-04:00By Charles|

Finding MAC Addresses: Consoles, PCs & More

Finding MAC Addresses: The Talk In the first part of this three part series, we discussed MAC (Media Access Control) addresses. We learned that computers are full of address information. We learned that the MAC address can be thought of as the hardware address of a computer, gaming console, phone or tablet. In fact, just about every device that can communicate on a network has a MAC address. We learned that a MAC address consists of twelve characters (hexadecimal numbers) from 0 to 9 and A to F. These twelve characters are represented as six pairs. Each pair is traditionally [...]

2017-09-06T21:06:18-04:00By Charles|

MAC Address: It Isn’t 1 Infinite Loop, Cupertino

MAC Addresses: The Talk Computer systems are full of addresses. Some of them look like regular numbers to the human eye (192.168.1.1) and some of them look a little more complex (2bb1:db8:85a3::8a2e:fa53:7b3c). There are others less complex ( 7255: F13B) but still just as meaningless to the average eye. Our computer systems need these addresses for the same reason humans need addresses: to find things. We use addresses daily to find work, home, friends' houses and school. Having a street name and a number associated with a city and zip code helps us find our way. We also use addresses within the [...]

2013-08-23T11:10:16-04:00By Charles|

Comcast Internet Down: You’re Not Alone: How to Talk to Tech Support

If you're a Comcast customer and come home to find yourself without Internet, you're not alone. Quite a few customers have learned that they have Comcast Internet down on this lovely day. According to the Comcast statements, an inventory audit was recently performed which resulted in some customers' equipment being deleted from their databases. Since Comcast secures their networks in part by assigning a device (one very specific cable modem) to a port (a very specific address), if yours isn't on file you can't connect - even though all the lights on your cable modem, wireless access points and other [...]

2017-09-09T15:08:05-04:00By Charles|

Home PC Security Primer: Don’t Be an Alien!

A Venn diagram that pretty well sums up something that plagues many technicians. Problems are not always related to PC security. Everyone with a computer has heard of at least one of these network and PC security terms by now: viruses, spyware, phishing, scareware and spam. What are they? What do they do? Who creates them? Why? The last two questions can be difficult to answer: perpetrators range from pranksters with odd senses of humor to thrill seekers who just want to crack existing PC security mechanisms to criminals looking to extort or steal money. The first [...]

2017-09-09T15:05:31-04:00By Charles|

21 Windows Shortcuts You Should Know

Did you ever watch one of "those people" at a computer? You know the ones I mean. Those annoying ones who seem like they were born for computers. It can be in applications they know and love, or more annoyingly, in applications that they're using for the very first time. These people sit there, flying through screens, barely touching the mouse and things are still happening. Even worse? They mean for these things to happen. I'm one of those people and I'll tell you a secret. We know shortcuts. Specifically, we know Windows shortcuts. I'll get relatively descriptive with each of these Windows [...]

2017-09-09T14:59:22-04:00By Charles|