tinsleyNET IT Services Consultant

Is your home router living a secret double life as a botnet DDoS server? The number of private home routers being duped into living a secret life as part of a botnet or in serving up malicious DNS results to it's users has seen a surge in the latter half of 2016. It's thought that the majority of traffic in the DDoS attack on various gaming servers in Christmas 2015 was generated from home routers that had been compromised.

Buyer Beware! You can't escape from the adverts. The American Thanksgiving sales day has been ported over into the UK as a promise of great deals for Christmas shoppers, many taking to online outlets to beat the queues. Retailers such as Amazon, John Lewis and Argos are predicting a record breaking weekend for their online sales. But as with any event that gets users eager to snap up deals online, the criminals are lurking just around the corner ready to take exploit any unsuspecting shoppers.

65% Of '4G' enabled Android phones could be at risk. QuadRooter - What it's all about? A vulnerability had been identified in one of the Qualcomm LTE chipsets used in many modern Android phones. The chipsets primary purpose is to provide access to the LTE network (often called 4G) and the Qualcomm chipsets make up about 65% of the market according to CheckPoint [ http://blog.checkpoint.com/2016/08/07/quadrooter/ ]

Summertime Giveaway! As the UK is basking in the summer heatwave, we've got our hottest giveaway to date!

Home and Office Internet Connectivity If you're using your home phone line for internet connection, it's likely that you're connected to an ADSL line (Asymmetric DSL)  but there are other variants of DSL that may be available in your area, with VDSL currently being rolled out across the UK offering much higher upload and download speeds.

SAGE Data Service Since version v21 for SAGE Accounts (SAGE Line 50) the ability to host a company file from an network shared folder was removed. Well, not exactly removed, but a BIG restriction was put on the ability to keep your datafiles where you want them.

HP Smart Powerbank We've got 2 of these HP Powerbank chargers up for grabs in our competition, see below for details!

"Man accidentally 'deletes his entire company' with one line of bad code" OK, It's going to turn into one of those urban myths that unsuspecting journalists or well-meaning facebook friends post from time to time, but behind the PR there is a serious note or warning. [ The Story , The Truth ]

UK Cybercrime is increasing  A recent report on Internet Security and cybercrime has shown that UK users are among the most targeted in the world, with both home users and businesses being attacked daily, and over half a billion personal records stolen in 2015.

2-Step Verification Scam With more users realising the security benifits of 2-step authentication, the criminals are coming up with new ways to break into your account.

Keeping the hoax callers busy... It's Monday morning, about 10am and I get a call on my land line. The lady explains that her name is Shirley and she's calling from Microsoft about a security issue on my computer.

BBC : Spike in ransomware spam A form of ransomware known as Locky has been cited as the cause in a sudden huge spike in infected emails spreading the file-locking malware. In the BBC News article (10/03/2016, Link Below) it was suggested that Locky is already the second most prevalent form of ransomware despite only being released two weeks ago,

Outlook Error 0x08004010F Outlook Error 0x08004010F relates to a problem while sending emails, the account could be either IMAP or POP but using SMTP to send the outgoing email. The problem is in the PST/OST file used for processing the SMTP outward bound mail. It's often a result of moving the PST files from their default locations, but other profile issues can cause this error too. (Note, it can also occur while synchronizing OAB for exchange users) POP For POP users, the workaround is to create a new dummy PST file and temporarily set it as the default INBOX, then revert the settings back to the original file IMAP For IMAP users, you can't change the INBOX folder so here are some other options: Create a new profile and set as default. This is the official Microsoft line and works, but can be a massive pain if you have multiple accounts and lots of specific configurations set up, like I do. Use SCANPST to check the outgoing PST file - might be something that the

Safer Internet Day We're supporting the Safer Internet Day again this year, giving tips throughout the day on how to use help make the internet more safe. Follow our posts on popular social media sites, by searching for the #SID2016 and #ShareAHeart hashtags, or find out more about the Safer Internet Day on their website http://www.saferinternet.org.uk/ From the SID Checklists, here's some tips on using Twitter: What Is Twitter? Twitter started life in 2006 primarily based around SMS text messaging as a way to post status updates to friends. It quickly got noticed and boomed into the Twitter that we see today, with most tweeters using mobile apps or the twitter website to access the service. Twitter is limited to 140 characters per tweet, it's a lot like going back to the early day's of mobile phones when sms/text messaging was first used. The debate on the effect this has on the languages is ongoing, but it does mean that each and every tweet is short