Daddy Bob

DADDY BOB'S COMPUTER Q & A

 

September 17, 2006

Q. I got an email saying " A 2nd email address had been added to your PayPal account.  If you do not agree with this change, click here."  I did not click, but went directly to my PayPal account and saw nothing changed. What this all about?

A. You have just experienced something called "phishing", pronounced fishing. (Check my information on Computer Security). These are bogus messages sent to try to trick you to clicking on the link, which takes you to a site that looks like the official PayPal site. These guys are real good, and the site really does look legit. It then asks you to enter your username and password. The phisher has now just tricked you into giving him your PayPal username and password.

These schemes are used to gather your personal information to bank sites, Internet providers, and many other accounts. They are nothing new, and many, many people are gullible enough to actually believe them.

You should never click on a link in a unsolicited email, especially if it looks suspicious. Rather, type in the address in your browser, go to the for sure site, and see if the message is legit.

Most times if you just place your mouse over the link, then look in the lower left corner of the screen you will see the actual address where the link will take you.

Usually, that is enough to alert you that something is wrong. In your case, had you done that, you would not have seen https://www.paypal.com  as you should have had it been legit, but something much different and considerable longer.

NOTE: In Internet Explorer V7, now in its RC-1 release, phishing sites are automatically flagged and you are warned that the site is not legit. IE-7 will soon be released and will probably be included in the monthly Microsoft security updates. IE-7 is a little different from IE6, but it is much better, way more secure, and after a little use, you will like it.

Q. In many programs, when I search for an asterisk (*) or a question mark (?), the search doesn't return what I am expecting. What am I doing wrong?

A. The characters (*) and (?) are called wildcards in most search programs, and in most operating systems. The (*) can be used to substitute for any number of characters from 0 up, and the (?) for any one character. So, if you were to search for * or ? by themselves everything would match so everything would be returned.

e.g. If you were to search for ca?e you could get words like care, cage, cape, etc. If you were to search for ca*e, you would also get words like carriage,  cache, cable, etc. So how does one search for the actual * and ? characters?

Add a tilde (~) to your search. A search for ~* will find all the asterisks, and a search for ~? will find all the question marks. So now, how would one search for the tilde (~)itself? Well, the tilde (~) is also a wildcard in its own right, so all you do is add another ~ to it, like ~~, and the search would return all the tilde's ~ found.

Q. I have emptied my Internet Explorer cache using the Control Panel's Internet Options, and yet when I check the size of this folder in Explorer, it has lots of stuff still in it. What causes this?

This problem can occur for several reasons. (1) The content on a Web page is only partially downloaded. e.g. if you click Stop while a page is still being opened. (2) If you navigate to another page before a page is completely downloaded. (3) Some of the files in the Temporary Internet Files folder are hidden, used by other processes, or otherwise protected files.

There is a solution and a workaround to rectify this problem, albeit it a little involved. You will need to move your Temporary Internet Files folder to another location, delete the old folder, and then (if you want to) move your Temporary Internet Files folder back to the original location. Here is how to do that:

1. In either My Computer or Windows Explorer, create a new folder.

2. In Internet Explorer, click Internet Options on the Tools menu.

3. On the General tab, click Settings under Temporary Internet Files.

4. In the Settings dialog box, click Move Folder under Temporary Internet Files
    folder.

5. Click the folder that you created in step 1, and then click OK.

6.  If you are prompted to log off, click Yes, and then log on to Windows again. If you are not prompted to log off, click OK to close all of the dialog boxes.

7. In either My Computer or Windows Explorer, delete the old Temporary Internet Files folder, and then create a new folder in the same location with the same name.

8. Repeat steps two through six again, but in step five, click to select the new folder that you created in step seven.

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