On Spot Techs

By Eric Geier (Our Founder & Owner)

Originally published by Cox Media Group on 1/10/22

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Here are four things to consider doing to help you have a better computer experience:

 

Get a checkup and tune-up every year: Even if you aren’t having any apparent issues, I strongly suggest having a computer tech check your computer every year and do some general cleaning and tune-up tasks. This can help catch any issues before they become a real problem, such as a hard drive starting to die or slowness due to junk buildup. This helps safeguard your files, documents and photos. Plus, it can also better help protect you from hackers, viruses and phishing attempts that could impact your credit and financial accounts.

Setup automatic backups: Though tech pros like us can sometimes recover your data after a computer crash or virus, there are certainly times when we cannot, or you have to send your drive off to a clean-room recovery lab for thousands of dollars.

If you have photos, documents and other files you don’t want to lose, you should back them up.

One way to back up your files is to buy an external hard drive or a USB flash drive that offers enough storage space.

You can then use the features built into Windows, the hard drive or other backup software to automatically copy your personal files or entire computer onto the external hard drive every so often, maybe once per week, per day or with every file change.

Although backing up your files to a separate hard or flash drive—as just discussed—will keep them safe if your computer crashes, it may not provide protection against bad viruses, theft or disasters.

If you get a bad virus and the backup drive is plugged into the computer, the virus could also wipe out the backup drive. Or someone could break in and steal your computer and the backup drive or a tornado or fire could destroy everything. For protection against these situations, consider backing up online.

You can see my recommendations of security and backup solutions at www. onspottechs.com/recommendations.

Disable browser notifications: A newer technology supported by some browsers (such as Chrome, Firefox and Edge) allow websites to send you notifications at any point even if you aren’t on their website. Typically, you don’t need these notifications and are often misused to send you Ads and junk alerts.

The first time you visit a website that’s trying to send you notifications, you will be prompted to allow or block them. Be careful; only allow those notifications on websites you really want to alert you of something. You should periodically also check the allowed notifications in your browser’s settings to remove or block those you don’t want bothering you. The process to do this varies between the browsers, so I suggest looking up how to do it on the web or contact a computer tech if you’re not comfortable doing it yourself.

Buy Malwarebytes Antimalware: Most anti-virus software won’t stop what is typically referred to as potentially unwanted programs.

These PUPs are not true viruses, but are typically considered scams or junk that average computer users are tricked into downloading.

They can seem like viruses at times, too, giving you pop-ups and making it hard to close them. To help remove any PUPs you have now and to stop any that try to come, I suggest buying the premium edition of Malwarebytes Antimalware (https:// www.malwarebytes.com). It’s relatively inexpensive when compared to other antiviruses and protects you well from viruses and just plain junk you don’t want on your computer.

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