Back in my day when we want to buy software we had to go to a ‘brick-and-mortar’ store to purchase a physical copy of the software on floppy disks; then lug it back home and spend the rest of the day installing said software. Around 30-years ago Microsoft released C/C++ Compiler version 7.0 which holds the record for Microsoft’s ‘biggest’ (in terms of both size and weight) software release. The retail presentation box (yes the software and paper manuals were inside a box on the retailer’s shelf) which came in around 40 to 44 pounds and almost 2-feet tall contained:…
2022
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You’ve heard the expression ‘There Ain’t No Such Thing as a Free Lunch!’, well the same can also apply to Microsoft Office. Seems this scam so far is only in the UK, but not to stay it won’t be expanded into the US or our scammers here will start copying this scam. People in the UK are getting a package in the mail unsolicited which contains a ‘free’ Microsoft Office Professional Plus (retail $150 USD (£119.99)) on an engraved USB flash drive. There is also legitimate looking activation key sticker on the packaging. “If it sounds too good to be true…”…
As I had mentioned in the Tech Support and Refund Scams post, many of these scams start with an email claiming to be from e legitimate company. This morning I had several emails from ‘Billing Team’ in my junk folder. Here is one of them below (click the image for full-size). Note: the formatting including highlights is how the email appeared and were not added by me). Besides ending up in my junk folder there were several things I noticed within a few seconds to indicate this was fake and a scam: The return address was ‘Billing Team’ from a gmail.com…
Today I am going to cover something a little different, yet still tech related. This from the ‘dark or evil’ side of tech, the ‘Tech Support’ and ‘Refund’ or ‘Gift Card’ Scams. Both of these while having a different ‘hook’ end the same, hours later the victim is handing over large sums of money (sometimes their entire savings) to the scammer and the scammer has complete access to their computer and/or phone. You may have heard about these and even wondered how they work and for that matter why do people fall for them. At the end of this post…
There has been a lot of news recently involving two of the three big US Wireless (cellular phone) providers, AT&T and Verizon in regards to fully activating their 5G networks and impact on commercial aircrafts worldwide. First off a little background on ‘5G’. 5G or fifth generation is the newest technology standard for broadband cellular networks. It was introduced as a standard in July 2016 with deployment beginning in 2019 and full implementation planned by AT&T and Verizon for early December 2021. Speeds are up to 100 times faster than that of the previous generation (4G,) with a maximum speed…
Ever wondered why hyperlinks are blue? Well, probably not…but still it is a fascinating read and trip down memory lane (at least for us older folks). Why Are Hyperlinks Blue | The Mozilla Blog Why we need to revisit the origin of blue hyperlink While musing over my recently published article, Why are hyperlinks blue, I was left feeling a bit blue Read more from blog.mozilla.org