Friday, September 30, 2016

ROADRUNNER, TIME WARNER AND WINDOWS LIVE MAIL

ROADRUNNER, TIME WARNER AND WINDOWS LIVE MAIL

If you're having trouble with Time Warner's email through Windows Live Mail, you're not alone. It's NOT YOUR COMPUTER, please stop messing with things.
There are several things going on, none of which have anything to do with you or your computer. And no, you have no control.
  1. Windows Live Mail (WLM) is no longer supported by Microsoft, which gives email providers a great excuse to push you to web mail. Web mail is far easier for them to support, though most of us hate it. For now, you can call Time Warner for help, you can wait for your email to work (and it probably will, eventually), or you can go to the web mail portal to use your Time Warner (RoadRunner) email. There are many ways to get to Time Warner's web mail. You can use this link: https://webmail.roadrunner.com/or you can get there from Time Warner's Home Page (click Mail).
  2. Time Warner is in the middle of a big changeover to Spectrum. The network is glitchy right now. Sometimes email works and web pages don't; sometimes searches won't work but Facebook sort of does. This too, shall pass. Go outside and enjoy the Fall while you can. The Internet will be back soon.
  3. Eventually you're going to have to find another way to manage your email. You can continue to use the web portal (see #1 above), or use Thunderbird, or Microsoft Office's Outlook, or you can pull your TWC email through Gmail - which works for me.

More news as it develops - stay tuned.

Thursday, September 29, 2016

FLASHING LIGHTS AND SIRENS AND TALKING HEADS - OH, MY!

So you're happily scrolling through your email or Facebook and suddenly flashing lights, loud sirens and maybe some talking heads start coming out of your computer. Then a message pops up telling you of the devastation that's befallen your computer and instructing you to contact some official-looking support company for immediate help. What now?
Shut off your computer. Hold the power button in for about 10 seconds and it will go off, I promise you. DO NOT CALL ANY NUMBER THAT POPS UP ON YOUR COMPUTER SCREEN. It's a scam - it's a scam - it's a scam, all day - every day.
Many of us are tripping across the scam triggers lately, and some call the number because:
  1. We're scared
  2. We want to believe someone wants to help us
  3. We want instant gratification, and calling someone we trust would take too long.
  4. We think we'll get it fixed cheaper 

If this happens to you, don't panic. Shut off the computer, then contact someone you trust. I have talked with at least a dozen people about this already this week and have charged none of them to tell them how to handle it. If I need to connect to your computer to clean it out, that's a different matter.
If you want to clean it out yourself, go to Nick Francesco's excellent step-by-step instructions here: http://securitytango.com/windows.php. Or, at least update and run CCleaner, AdwCleaner, SuperAntiSpyware and Malwarebytes, removing anything they find.
Or contact me and I'll help you. Cathy Contant 315-573-4905
Please help your friends and family - tell them not to call numbers that pop up on their computer screens and not to give out any personal information to unknown callers. You'll be helping all of us.