I recently received a distressing email from Barbara, Broadway, VA, about being hacked.  Her email started like this, "Yesterday I got up, turned on my computer, and found that my Gmail had been hacked…"  Once they had her email address it allowed them to gain control of her Facebook account too.

Her passwords were not accepted and her alternate Gmail address had been changed to one that she didn’t own.  (Gmail and other online email apps use an alternate to contact you in case something detrimental happens on their site and they need to get a hold of you.  I have never had the need for one yet.)  The hacker had also gone on to delete her address book and all of her contacts in it. 

Of course, all of her email was deleted…or so she thought.  She found later, after communicating with Gmail that all of her Sent mail had been put into her Junk folder, so at least she still had those.  They had forward all of her incoming emails to another account of theirs.  If your Gmail account is hacked you may want to read this and check a few account settings http://bit.ly/9u1CZi.

Why do we get hacked?  As Barbara later discovered it was not someone local who got into her accounts.  They were hacked by someone or some organization in Nigeria.  The bad guys are usually hoping to get your bank account numbers, charge card info, etc.  They also may want to run scams on your friends, making them think you are excited about something the hacker can make money on.  The reasons are endless.

Barbara has not been the only one in the area to be hacked, so do not think it can’t happen to you.  Please take preventative action online or you may have some headaches.

At this time there isn’t any way to stay absolutely "unhackable" but there are things you can do to help prevent it.  First and foremost, make your passwords hard for others to get.  Make sure they are at least eight characters long.  Use upper case, lower case and symbols in your passwords.  Absolutely do not use the same password on all of your accounts.  If you do, when they get one, they get them all and your info is theirs!  Change your passwords several times a year.  If you don’t use an account, close it down.

I have over 194 different password protected sites I keep up.  Yes, I have a super-human photographic memory.  I remember each and every password for each individual site.  NOT! More about that in the near future.

Tags: Email, facebook, Gmail, hack, hacked, hijacked

Last week we talked about the top online email programs.  Today I will discuss the top two I have heard about from readers and others in the area.

Although, Yahoo! Mail was listed as number one around the world, those I have heard from put Gmail and Windows Live Mail as their favorites.  Mine is not a very scientific poll since I used emails from you all and asked people I work with.  Keep in mind, the majority of my coworkers are geeks which could be skewing the results. 

Windows Live Mail (WLM from here on out) has two different address formats.  In 1996 there was Hotmail.com.  Then in 2005 Microsoft decided to revamp the name and add more functionality so Live Mail was born. Therefore, if you have an older account you have a "hotmail.com" address, while the newer members have "live.com" as their address.  Being the geek tester that I am, I have one of each but rarely use either.

With Gmail everyone has the same domain in their address.  They are all formatted as, name@gmail.com.  Gmail started in 2004 by invitation only and then went public for everyone in 2007. 

WLM  will very shortly (maybe by the time you read this) be expanding storage on the site to 25GB.  They will allow this for email and all other types of files with their "Live Sky Drive" app.  Gmail started out with 1 GB of storage and continues to expand daily.  It is now at approximately 7.5 GB.  The issue I have with Gmail is that the storage is not contained in one location.

As stated above Gmail provides an ever increasing 7.5 GB of storage for email only.  Google’s Picasa Web Albums offers 1 GB of storage for photos and videos only. Google Docs gives you 1 GB for everything else; all of your docs, spreadsheets, presentations etc.  You should know this free storage is not transferable from one product or application to another.  My belief is that Google will be merging them together sooner or later. It will most likely be sooner, once Microsoft finishes rolling out their 25 GB.

Both WLM and Gmail offer calendars, address books and more online.  One very important factor is that it is all free.  Of course, both offer upgrades in storage size for a charge.  The basics should be more than enough for the average user.

After doing a review of the two I found that even though I exclusively use Gmail; Live Mail has a lot to offer.  Of course, there is Google Voice but more on that another time.

Tags: applications, Email, Gmail, live mail, microsoft, online, yahoo

I get a lot of questions about online email programs.  I hear: Which one is safest?  Which one is best?  Which one has the better features?  Etcetera, etcetera.  I have to say that I believe a lot of those questions can best be answered by each individual.  You may have to try out several if you don’t use one as your main email program now.

I prowled around the net looking for the most popular programs and found the following as of May, 2010.  At that time, the most popular email websites according to “Email Marketing Reports” were Yahoo! Mail, Windows Live Hotmail, Gmail and AOL Mail.  This data is based on US Internet usage and is in descending order of popularity. First of all I wonder who does not have an email account by now.  However, I am sure new users hit the net every day.  Toward the end of 2009 there were a reported 1.4 Billion active email accounts in the world.  That works out to about one for every five people on earth.  So there are still many out there that have none.

Many users have multiple email accounts.  For instance, I have one specifically for this column.  I have another one for friends and family, an extra for online purchases and a final one acts as a “throwaway” account.  The last one is used when I have to sign up on a site for something and I know that it will create more spam.  I use it for what I need and then check it every week or so and delete all of the junk mail.

In some respects I realize that I am not that much different from other geeks.  I imagine that in reality less than 1/5 people have email accounts.  As an example, my wife, a non-geek, has two email accounts – one for personal use and the other for work.  I would imagine that is more the norm.

As for me I have tried them all.  However, some I haven’t looked at in years.  In the past I have  used all of the top four and still have those accounts active.  I know they are because I checked them this week.  Over the long haul I have chosen to go with Gmail.com as my main online email provider.  They have other extras I really appreciate although Windows Live mail is looking good.  Maybe we will look at that next week.

Let me know which online email services you use and like best.

Tags: aol, Email, Gmail, windows live, yahoo

I received many emails asking me more about Firefox Add-ons after last week’s column.  So today we are going to look at a few more.  Keep those emails coming since I want to write about what interests you!

If you have any questions about basic Firefox Add-ons you need to read last week’s column about "Invisible Hand" and "Tabloc" online at the DNR or at the DoubleClicks.info site.   

"Forecastbar Enhanced" is another helpful add-on.  It allows you to set your location, via zip code, to get your local weather forecasts.  The forecasts are from Accuweather.com.  Other than the current weather forecasts, radar images, etc., you can display it in different locations in FF.  I keep mine in the status bar at the bottom of the Firefox window, which is the default.  You can also set it up to show forecasts for several days in the future. 

The next one I would like to share with you is called, "FoxTab".  "FoxTab" will allow you to set the sites you most often visit.  It will allow you to add any site to your top site "list" and quickly go to it at another time.  It enables a screen preview of "My Top Sites" in several great GUIs (Graphical User Interfaces) which you can pick from.  Not only is it useful, it also looks good.  Once you bring your top site window up by clicking a button on your toolbar, you click on the site you want to go to and it pops right up.  Yes, this is like your favorites but in a slick new format.

The last one I will mention today is for you Gmail users.  It is called, "Gmail Manager".  This add-on allows you to set your Gmail account to be visible in your status bar, showing your unread emails.  By clicking on the account it will open your Gmail account in Firefox as if you had logged into Gmail.com yourself.  Then you can deal with your emails as you normally would.  It is set to a default of checking for new emails every 15 minutes but you can adjust that, along with other settings in the options for this add-on.  It will also allow you to keep track of multiple Gmail accounts at the same time.  Of course, that is for you geeks who, like me have more than one Gmail account.

Have fun trying these out and remember they are all free.  If you don’t like them you can easily uninstall them. 

Let me know if you would like to see some more next week…I have about 20 add-ons that I use in Firefox.

Tags: accuweather, add-in, add-on, Firefox, Forecast, foxtab, Gmail, GUI, mozilla, radar, tabloc, weather

From Monday’s call about how to remove Buzz from Gmail, I received another resolution from a listener.  (Sorry I deleted the email and can’t remember show sent it…but you know who you are.)

I told the caller to first log into Gmail:

1. Click Settings.  
2. Go to the Labels link.
3. Click the hide link, see below.

That’s it, now go back to your Gmail inbox and that’s all.

The listener who emailed me later in the day suggested that you could just remove Google Buzz, like this:

1. Log into Gmail
2. From the main screen look at the bottom and click the Turn off Buzz link.
3. That’s it…
4. However, I have read that Google may tie this in to other Gmail features so that when you cut Buzz of you could loose other functionality…which hasn’t happened at the time of this post. 
   (See the before and after pics below.)

Personally I prefer, at this moment in time, to hide the link as described in the first instructions above.  But you can pick and use your own.

Also, either one can be turned back on or unhidden so you can try them both…just make sure if you Turn it off first you Turn it back on before you try to hide it.  If Buzz is off it will not appear in the links to be able to be hidden.

Tags: Buzz, Gmail, google, Jim Britt, Q&A, talk radio, WSVA