Here are some basic yet essential tips to protect yourself against ransomware such as Wannacry. I’m sure it won’t be the last piece of ‘ransom’ malware to be released.

Wannacry was a nasty piece of malware that surfaced a few weeks ago, and was covered extensively by the media due to the problems it created for regular windows users. The ransomware had infected over 10 000 organizations and 200 000 individuals over 150 countries so it was quite widespread.

A researcher accidentally stopped the spread of the ransomware by registering a domain that served as a kill switch for the malicious code (a very interesting read if you have time).

When infected, your computer would display the message below, which effectively hold your computer at ransom until you paid an amount (in Bitcoin). You would then supposedly be provided with a key to ‘unlock’ your computer and have access to your files again. There was much discussion as to whether the key was actually provided after payment.

As always, prevention is always better than a cure. Below I’ve listed some of the best tips to help protect you against such nasties. Whilst these tips are not a 100% guarantee, they WILL greatly reduce the likelihood of an infection such as Wannacry and other malware.

1. Make sure your computer has installed all important and security updates. For Wannacry, see here for the Microsoft security update, OR download directly from the Microsoft update catalog.
2. Check that your antivirus (AV) definitions are up to date. AV software is pretty much useless if not kept up to date.
3. In addition to at AV software, install a good anti-malware program such as MalwareBytes .  There is a free version available but for a small annual fee, the premium version is well worth it!
4. Always keep at least one backup of your critical files such as documents and photos. This step deserves a post by itself, but I cannot stress how important backups are. I personally use Crashplan but at the very least copy your critical files regularly to an external hard drive.

For further detail and guidance, check out this article from Microsoft Technet.

Or leave a message below. Did you get affected? How did you get your computer back to normal?

With the recent release of the new Apple Mac, there seems to be much discussion of USB type C interfaces, mainly because Apple removed all the USB, HDMI and SD interfaces and left only one USB Type-C port!

WTH? Yep, well OK, if they want to use other devices they will need adaptors and more expense – but that is another story.

So what is USB Type-C and what does it look like?

Quick answer – look at the below pic to get a comparison with the types of interfaces that you are probably familiar with already.

So you understand the terminology, this latest USB technology is called USB 3.1, and the connector is called ‘Type-C’. You’ll probably almost always read the combined technology to be USB Type-C (including in this article).

So…. what is that good about this new interface?

Power
USB Type-C can provide 20V / 5A of power, compared just 5V / 1.8A for USB 3.0. That’s over 11x more wattage (100W vs 9W). This extra power is more than enough to power a laptop, or charge multiple devices like iPhone/iPads/iWhatever at once.

Speed
Pretty impressive here. Up to 10Gps as opposed to 5Gps with USB3.0, and 20X faster then USB2.0 (which only ran up to 480Mbps).

Compatibility
The good thing here is the Type-C is backwards compatible with all previous versions of USB, however you wont get the full Type-C speed of you USB1 or 2 device.

Is it good?
Yeah it is, and it seems like it will be the future of USB given the size and performance of the interface. Also it seems to be more sturdy/strong. I think you’ll see it in a lot more devices including smartphones.

Do any of your current devices use USB type-C? Leave a comment below.

Certainly not IT related, but you will use the phonetic alphabet in the IT world  – strange but true.

The Phonetic Alphabet  is a system of phonetic notation devised by linguists to accurately and uniquely represent each of the wide variety of sounds (phones or phonemes) used in spoken human language. Ideal for spelling/giving details over the phone without error.

Unfortunately I can never remember it, so I need to keep referring back to it.

Do what I did, print it out and tape it to your monitor.

Here’s a download link to the info below (right click, and select ‘save as’):

There has been much written about Windows 10 and how it forces users to upgrade  from Windows 7/8 even if they don’t want to. How do you stop it? Luckily there are a few ways, 2 of which are shown in this post.

If you’re like me, you love Windows 7 (or maybe even 8), and have not intention of upgrading. Too bad Microsoft won’t help you there. The new Windows 10 is forcibly being installed on your system now, and you don’t get an option to decline the operation. Help in the name of third party software is here though, and  I’ll show you a couple of ways to stop this upgrade.

Note: this site take no responsibility for any issues that may be caused by using the methods shown below. Please ensure your files are all backed up before making changes to your OS.

The first one is called GWX Control Panel, and is a small (2.4M) standalone program (or even installer if you wish). Some of the features GWX has are:

• The Disable ‘Get Windows 10’ App feature removes Microsoft’s “Get Windows 10” nagware app from your notification area.
• The Prevent Windows 10 Upgrades feature checks for system settings that leave you vulnerable to unwanted Windows 10 upgrades and gives you the ability to fix them.
• The Prevent Windows 10 Upgrades feature also restores your Windows Update control panel to its normal behaviour if it gets hijacked by Windows 10 advertisements or installers.
• The Delete Windows 10 Download Folders feature locates and deletes hidden Windows 10 installer files that Microsoft secretly downloads to your computer.
• The Delete Windows 10 Programs feature easily deletes hard-to-remove program files that are known to prepare your computer for Windows 10 upgrades.

It is important to note that GWX does not interfere with any ‘normal’ windows features such as Windows update or OneDrive which is good.

Another way to stop the forced W10 upgrade  is a smaller pieces of software called Never 10 . This is only 85K in size and is probably easier than GWX above.

Working a little different to GWX control panel, Never10 does NOT prevent the installation of Windows updates, including the infamous Get Windows 10 (GWX) update KB3035583.  Never10 simply employs Microsoft’s documented and sanctioned configuration settings to instruct it NOT to change the installed version of Windows. It does not install any software of it’s own to achieve the result.

What do you think about not having a choice whether you want to upgrade or not? Leave a comment below.

So you’re had your Pi for a while and see there are a couple of different models out there. Which model do I have? A or B? Hang on…. there’s a few more than that 🙂

Found a great visual break up of every model Pi that there is. So it will be easy to tell what you have or what to look for if you are after a particular model.

Check it out below: