Keeping your information secure from prying eyes.
Has your Mac suddenly become slow or started having trouble doing the usual daily tasks? If so, you might have some accidentally installed app that isn’t helpful to your Mac. Not all of these apps are malicious, but for the sake of simplicity, I’ll call them malware here. Malware behavior ranges anywhere from giving annoying pop … Read more
Are you having problems accessing your Gmail account from Apple Mail or Microsoft Outlook? Over the past 6 months I’ve encountered a number of clients who have had problems reliably accessing their Gmail account via these apps. Here’s a list of symptoms my clients experienced and how I fixed the problems.
Read moreIs your web browser acting oddly all of the sudden? Do funny windows pop-up showing you ads? Do your Google searches look weird? If so, you might have inadvertently installed some adware on your Mac. Over the past 6 months, I’ve seen a rash of Macs infected with adware. Adware is software that makes ads … Read more
If Sophos detects that your Mac has a virus-infected file on it, here are instructions on how to use the Quarantine Manager to get rid of the infection. Previously, I’ve endorsed the use of an anti-virus application and specifically recommend Sophos or ClamXav.
Read moreSophos is a great anti-virus application for Mac users. Sophos is free for home users and quite affordable for business users. Sophos updates itself daily and scans every file that you download or open.
Read moreAre you retiring an older Mac that has a mechanical, spinning hard drive, but a newer version of the Mac operating system, such as OS X 10.7 or higher? If so, here are instructions on how you can securely erase the Mac’s hard drive before you donate your Mac or sell it.
Read moreA few weeks ago Apple released an update which addresses the bash security vulnerability found in OS X during the last week of September 2014. The security vulnerability was nicknamed shellshock or the bash bug and reportedly affects all versions of OS X as well as many versions of Linux and Unix released over the past … Read more
I know you subscribe to my Tech Tips to get pearls of wisdom and nuggets of knowledge. Not this week. This Tech Tip is just for fun. Hope you enjoy it. I know we can all relate to this scenario. Computer: Please enter your new password. Person: cabbage
Read moreThis Tech Tip is a cautionary tale. As a general rule, I recommend that you avoid installing apps that claim to tune-up or optimize your Mac. Last week, I worked on two Macs whose performance was negatively impacted by MacKeeper, MacBooster and TuneUpMyMac. A third Mac’s web browsing had been hijacked by Conduit Search. It’s not clear … Read more
DuckDuckGo is a search engine that is much less well-known than Google, but you should check it out. As the title of this article indicates, DuckDuckGo is a privacy-friendly alternative to Google.
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