Tip of the Week: Disable Macros to avoid a virus!

Some Excel and Word documents contain extra code that can give the document more functions and/or features. This is a good thing unless the functions and features are virus laden. These types of viruses are called Macro Viruses and are on the rise again in recent months. This tip is for anyone who receives a document in Excel (.xls) or Word (.doc) format via an untrusted source that just 'has' to open the document.  Simply hold down the Control (Ctrl) key on your keyboard while opening the file in Microsoft Word or Excel and Macros are disabled!  Keep in mind that some features of the document may not work, however, you will be protected if the document happens to contain on of the macro nasties!

For other time-saving shortcuts, see Microsoft's website.

Headwhack of the Week: File Associations - why won't the attachment open?

A file extension is nothing more than the last characters after the period in the name of a file. For a detailed explanation, examples, and a method of setting your system so that it shows file extensions please this site.

Geek Speak of the Week: Pharming

Pharming (pronounced farming) is a cracker's attack aiming to redirect a website's traffic to another, bogus website. Pharming can be conducted either by changing the hosts file on a victim’s computer or by exploitation of a vulnerability in DNS servers (computers responsible for resolving Internet names into their real addresses) software.