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If you have an e-mail address, you probably also have at least one 'forwarding friend' to e-mail every joke, urban myth, and karma-building novelty message in circulation. If you don't have a forwarding friend, chances are, you are the forwarding ... friend. Don't get me wrong -- there's no shame in forwarding jokes, stories, and other bits of textual entertainment. There are, however, 3 Golden Email Etiquette Rules one must follow when forwarding messages, and they are: Remove all '>' or '|' tags before sending the message. They make jokes hard to read and they bloat the message size, making ... (view more)

Infopackets Reader Madelaine M. writes: " Lately, when I am trying to connect to the Internet, I get a message saying, 'Brute Force Server Error'. When I click the window, the error message disappears. I use Norton Anti-virus 2002 and Spy Sweeper to ... scan my system for viruses and Spyware. What else should I do to avoid this problem?" My response: I can say that I have never heard of this error message before. I did some research using Google, but wasn't able to come up with anything conclusive. However, what I did find is that the term "Brute Force" refers to a form of ... (view more)

Infopackets Reader Gaye B. writes: " Dear Dennis, I'm a newbie on the computer, and I have a big problem with popup advertisements. When I first got my PC, I let a friend use it to surf the web (unsupervised). Since that day, my computer has been ... infested with despicable ads appearing on the screen. What can I do to stop this from happening? " My response: The first thing you should do is tell your friend to mind where he surfs because it has caused you and your PC a lot of trouble! The next thing you should do is download some software that can remove / block popup advertisements ... (view more)

If told you that 9 out of 10 PC's are infected with some form of Spyware, would you be concerned? According to Webroot Software, you should be! In general, Spyware is software which records information about you or your computer usage -- without ... your knowledge -- and then relays this information to a third party (quite often, for marketing purposes). Spyware has the ability to trace your every keystroke, and may record things such as passwords, credit card numbers, email addresses, and other personal information. All of this makes Spyware a serious threat to privacy and the protection of your ... (view more)

... Continued . Reminder: What is Adware and Spyware? Spyware is software which silently records a users' Internet activity, and then reports the data to a central computer (which is also connected to the Internet). After data is collected from ... millions of online users, statistical forecasts are made for the purpose of targeted online marketing (IE: which search engine queries are used, buying habits based on pages visited, etc). On the other hand, Adware is software which sends advertisements (usually PopUps) to your computer -- even if you're not connected to the Internet. Quite often, ... (view more)

Infopackets Reader Lavandran R. write s: " Dear Dennis, I have a program called Bargain Buddy installed on my computer, and I don't know where it came from! I'm not sure, but I think it's Spyware. When I tried to uninstall it, it refuses to ... uninstall and gives me error messages saying that I should make sure that the disk isn't full (which it isn't). It also asked me to make sure that the disk is not write protected and to make sure that the program is not actively in use. I'm confused! " My Response: Personally, I'd like to take Bargain Buddy and his cousin Bonzi Buddy and shoot ... (view more)

There is a nasty worm (virus) making its way through the Kazaa file sharing network . On Friday, a friend called me up and told me that his "C drive" was full and that he couldn't do anything with his computer. So, I hopped in my car, drove over to ... his place, and cleaned up some temporary files on his system. I freed up about 400 meg or so on his C drive. Satisfied with the results, I went home. The next day, he called me back with the same problem. Oddly enough, he said the computer was left untouched since I left his house the previous night. So what happened to all the space I ... (view more)