benkaminski.com

…Stay off the internet!!! Seriously, it has just about come to that. It doesn’t matter where you go on the net, viruses are everywhere. Some more serious than others but all are equally annoying and intrusive. Or, you could always buy a Mac, but we’ll assume that you don’t want to do that.

Yet I always get asked the same question: “How did I get the virus?” and simply put it boils down to this… “were you on the internet?”.

Years ago, it used to only be certain sites or emails that would contain viral entities and most of the time they were pretty easy to spot, but now, they’re everywhere. Your favorite social networking sites, searching Google, online shopping, checking email, it matters not. The mere fact that you are connected to a network makes you susceptible to viruses. And they keep getting more sneaky with their tactics.

While the exact date of the official launch of the internet is debatable, it has been around and open to the public for at least 20 years, and there have been viruses all along. This huge speed-bump on the information super-highway keeps getting bigger and bigger and more and more users are falling victim to computer crashes and or total meltdowns due to virus programmers and hackers. This trend will continue on and on for years to come and as long as software is written, viruses will exist and thrive. So… get used to it.

Now, as I battle viruses all of the time (on computers other than my own of course), I see the same things happening. The same files being infected and basically the same tactics used for years. So, as usage of the world wide web continues to grow, more and more people will succumb to the throes of an infected computer often times causing costly repairs, loss of important files, exploitation of your personal information, and spy-ware that watches your browsing habits and reports back to someone, somewhere. I have even seen people throwing away brand new computers because they THINK all is lost.

I would like to share with you some basic things that you can do to avoid many causes of viruses and spy-ware. Some of these things my seem very simple to you, some may not. It’s a matter of thinking before you act, rather than going through the motions. Knowing what to trust and what not to.

Virus Delivery:
One of the first things I would like to discuss is virus delivery methods. Viruses don’t just magically appear on your computer. You have to allow it access. One thing is certain concerning virus delivery, viruses are programs and they have to be launched in order to work. In other words, you have to open the program (which can basically exist in any file format available) in order for it to begin its viral processes. One of the first things I ask clients with infections is: Did you download anything or open any email attachments that caused this to happen? Most of the time I get a “I don’t know or don’t remember” response. This to me, is due to the fact that just about everything you do on a computer and on the web has to do with opening and closing programs. It is such a routine procedure that most viruses catch you off guard by seeming routine. They trick you into opening them or downloading them by posing as a normal process or something enticing (ie: you just won 5 million dollars). And you, the end user, going through your routine processes almost out of habit just click away and allow these nasty bugs to access, embed, and destroy. Some of these newer viruses posing as “anti-virus” programs are the biggest culprits of infection I have seen as of late. I have seen some that replicate windows warning messages and seem like they are coming from a legitimate source. Nine times out of ten the end user accepts the “free scan” or “virus removal tool” that begins the infection process. Always keep in mind that you have to start a virus, so be alert of every item you click on because you might be one click away from infection. Anyhow, on to what you can do.

Pop-Up Ads:
First of all, never click on any pop-up ad… ever. Pop-up ads are annoying and intrusive and generally fall under the shady tactics category with me. In my own opinion, no professional website that is in good standing with the community would try to entice users with pop-up ads. But it can get even more confusing when the reputable website is in fact infected itself. Then what? Well, like I said before, these programs need you to activate them by clicking on them, and that is why I never click on a pop up ad. I either click the red “x” and close the window, or on Windows based machines you can push “ALT + F4″ to close the open dialogue box.

If you find yourself trapped in a barrage of continuous pop-ups, simply shut down your browser or restart your computer. The virus is trying to force itself upon you, don’t let it. Keeping in mind that this applies to pop-up ads only. Most advertisements are legitimate and click-worthy, but any that force themselves on you are not.

Staying on topic, lets say that a similar situation is happening on your desktop and not just the internet. You are getting pop-up messages warning you that your computer is infected and that you need to download a program to fix the issue. Don’t believe these messages! They are once again attempting to dupe you into submission. I always check for things like grammatical errors and misspellings. These are almost a dead giveaway of an attacker. I have seen viruses disguised as Windows Security Center and how I knew it was a virus was simply based on the bad grammar used in the warning messages. This should be a red-flag for any computer user. Generally, any legitimate programmer will take the time to ensure that every aspect of the program is correct, even down to spelling and grammar, so be on the lookout for this.

Social networking sites:
We all love them, but most of us don’t realize who is getting our information besides our “friends”. Social networking sites are the viral breeding ground of the future if you will. Most if not all social sites allow “apps” or applications to be installed or accessed via your profile. Now, once again I am not saying that all applications are viral, but if you want to remain on the safe side, don’t use them… at all! When I sign up for social networking websites, I usually only provide the bare minimum informational requirements as any information on your profile is search-able via search engines like Google and Yahoo!. Once I am in, the first thing I do is block application access to my account and adjust my privacy settings to make sure my information is at least somewhat protected. These seemingly harmless applications access your personal data in your profile to help direct advertisements and marketing towards a targeted demographic. Any of the surveys, community apps, and others you allow access to, you are essentially allowing the application to access all of your data that is stored in the social website in your profile. Some of these apps are designed just to do so, or to hijack your password and in turn use your profile to spam others. As well, social networking viruses can be tricky too. They can disguise themselves as messages from friends enticing you to click on a link or download a program. This is where you have to exercise good judgment. But to be absolutely safe, don’t click on any of the links contained in a message you think might be suspect. Pay close attention to the subject title of the message and once again, the grammar and spelling. Would your friend send you a message like this? Keeping in mind that opening the infected email or message generally doesn’t make you infected. It’s clicking on the link contained within or downloading the attachment that it came with. Once again, allowing viruses access by activating or launching them. In short, social networking sites: don’t allow apps, and beware of suspect messages even from friends! Taking these steps can help prevent the spread of social networking viruses.

Browsing or surfing the net:
Let’s think about things from a virus programmers point of view. How could a virus programmer spread his virus to the most people possible? Most likely by placing their viruses on websites that come up for common search terms. One of the most common search terms I find to produce a lot of viral results is the word “free”. Let’s say you’re looking for a free mp3 player or even free fonts for your computer. You browse through a few sites and don’t find what you’re looking for. You click on the next in a sequence of search engine results only to be presented with a onslaught of pop up windows. Most people end up engaging these pop-ups by trying to close them only to have them re-appear immediately, usually in a different place because eventually you will accidentally click on “OK”. So, what to do when presented with this situation? See above paragraph… no, I’ll say it again. First, attempt to close your web browser by right-clicking on it at the bottom of the screen where the program is docked and choosing quit or exit. Or press CTRL + F4 to force the open windows closed. If this fails, try pressing CTRL + ALT + DEL to bring up the task manager and end the process that way, and if that doesn’t work restart your computer… even if that means performing a dreaded “hard-reboot” by holding in the power button on the CPU until the system shuts down automatically. As often as “hard-reboots” are frowned upon, they have saved many a computer from being infected in my experience. You can nip viruses in the bud, but you have to know when they are attacking and when they have already embedded themselves.

E-Mail Viruses:
Finally, I’d like to touch on e-mail viruses. These are in my opinion the easiest to avoid. Simply put, don’t open ANY e-mails from people you don’t know. It’s really that simple. Ponder this, your e-mail address is almost like a cell phone number, it is unlisted in any phone book or online directory. Why or better yet how would someone get your email address unless you gave it to them? Viruses gather them from spam collected by any virus designed to collect email addresses, then they attack you by trying to get you to click on a link or download an attachment. Once again, using the same sneaky, enticing tactics. But, e-mail viruses fall under a similar umbrella as the social networking ones where you can get viruses from people you DO in fact know. But, if you know the red flags to look for (bad grammar, bad spelling) and ask yourself why would your friend whom has never sent you an attachment or link before all of a sudden start? You may be able to avoid infection.

Staying alert is key in being able to identify online viruses. If you use some of the simple judgment calls mentioned above, you can help prevent the spread of viruses and become more aware of how and when they attack.

Prevention:
One of the best possible things that you can do to help prevent the spread of viruses is keep your computer up to date. Meaning, don’t ignore those update windows. There is a reason that software is updated, usually due to bug-fixes and security flaws. When Windows prompts you that updates are ready to install, don’t ignore this! I can’t stress this enough. So many times I encounter out-of-date software that 9 out of 10 times had it been up to date, the issue wouldn’t have occurred in the first place. So, when your anti-virus software, Windows, Java, and other programs indicate that you need to update them, do it. Immediately.

One last thing. Well, your saying… I have anti-virus programs, I don’t have to worry about viruses. You couldn’t be more wrong. Here is the harsh reality, the virus programmers are always one step ahead of the anti-virus programmers. Here is why, an anti virus program can not search for a virus that has not been detected by them. Meaning that when virus programmers release viruses into the internet, unless they call the police on themselves first, computers have to become infected before anti-virus software can start to define and attack the bug. Meaning that hundreds upon thousands may be infected before a resolution is concocted by the anti-virus software programmers. This is why I do not buy into anti-virus programs. There are plenty of good FREE anti-virus solutions for Windows users. I recommend AVG FREE Edition and Windows Defender. These programs cost you nothing and provide the same protection as ones that you would pay for. If you could call it protection in the first place. Either way, don’t waste your money buying expensive anti-virus software because you think you will be more protected than others. You’d be surprised how many PC’s end up in my office that have the latest and greatest anti-virus software installed yet still managed to get infected.

Hopefully you can learn from my experiences, be safe and learn to recognize threats before they can infect your computer.

I had a client in town for the last few days. He has one of those Google Android (or Droid) phones and here I am thinking that the Iphone is the best out there. I am finding that some of the most convenient features of the Droid phone can not be found for the Iphone. At least on a non “jailbroken” Iphone. I will not “jailbreak” my iphone because I don’t want to void the warranty among other reasons, but I am seriously considering it now that I’m realizing that the best apps out there are not available on a factory Iphone.

One of his apps is the ability to speak a contact name and have it instantly dial the said contacts phone number, as well, he can speak “navigate to: wherever” and Google maps will navigate him to his location. Now I have found similar apps for the Iphone but all of them require some button pushing which to me defeats the point of the speech to text conversion. And now, with the release of Google Voice and Apple’s decision to not support or carry it in the app store, it leaves one wondering who is the technological leader in cell phones these days?

So, as I am searching the Iphone app store for similar apps for the Iphone, I stumble across VERY FEW, much to my surprise. And the ones offered only translate your speech to an email via a voice recording. One of which actually sends the recipient a audio file via email, the other will transcribe your voice recording, but still requires at least 6 to 8 button taps to achieve the intent. In that amount of time, I could have sent a brief text reply! Either way, this is not what I am after. I want the ability to receive a text on my phone, tap a little microphone button, and have it translated into text and automatically sent to the recipient.

Some old school people have said on various forums that this would defeat the point of a text message, but I wholeheartedly disagree. An app such as the one that I am dreaming of is not only possible, but currently exists. If the Google Droid phone can translate your voice to text to enter into search queries and Google Maps, why has apple not jumped on this? The fact that it is technically not a text message at that point is a mute point to me. Text messaging is not a direct conversation, you have the ability to control the conversation or reply or choose not to as you wish. Being on the road a lot as I am, this would make it a ton easier to reply to important text messages while on the road with minimal safety risk.

So, the question that I am posing is: Why is this technology not available for the Iphone? I think this technology should be available to any cellular device period. For safety purposes alone. If I am totally missing something here and this technology is available for the Iphone, someone please point me in the right direction and at the same time point me to their marketing department for failing to have a successful advertising campaign on such incredible technology.

Being a consultant, I often encounter issues with shopping cart software not functioning properly. Usually a call to support or some code tweaking will resolve the issue rather quickly. Never in my professional life have I seen such a debacle as I have with the aplus.net and pinnacle cart software.

I am posting this blog to inform anyone interested in using aplus.net or pinnacle cart that they should seriously think twice before committing to a company like this.

The issue begins as a client of mine is having problems with Google Checkout not functioning properly on his web-store. He has many open tickets with aplus.net but none of them have been resolved. Some have been open for weeks with no resolution. So, I begin to think that something must be up with this. I get access to the back-end of the cart and start digging around for answers.

I check and re check settings that are claimed to work through this setup with aplus.net. All of the syntax is good, everything checks out but Google Checkout refuses to work. More specifically, it will not calculate shipping on the fly as it is supposed to.

I log into the client’s Google Checkout account to see what I could find on that end. Well, of course Google being the wealth of information that it is, easily directed me to the problem. The problem was the aplus.net server that the client’s site was hosted on was timing out while sending requests to Google Cart. This makes sense to me. Google provides a 3 second window for cart information transfers for security reasons and the aplus.net server is not communicating fast enough with Google Checkout. Excellent, a quick call to aplus.net support should solve this quickly as I have the exact error that is causing this issue.

Not the case at all. After dealing with aplus.net’s so called “technical support” for a few hours and being passed up to a tier two associate the best they could offer me was to submit another support ticket. (Am I not on the phone with support currently? Do they submit the ticket to themselves?).

So, this is beginning to get ridiculous as I begin to feel that no one at aplus.net cares about my client’s store or his business. All they can do is submit another ticket. Well, how many tickets does it take to get a problem solved? They have no answer to this. Every time I call “technical support”, the only answer I can get from aplus.net is “we will have to submit a ticket for you” and once again, that begs the question… am I not on the phone with support? They are trying to get me off the phone because they have no answer to my query.

So, that being the first issue, I figured I would move on to some more issues that my client is having with the site other than the Google Checkout errors. One of which is W3C compliance for xhtml and CSS. I proceed to bounce the site address off of the W3C validation website and get a list of all errors, all of which are easily fixable. So my next step in bringing the site up to code is to fix the errors on the pages themselves. I FTP into the server, locate the page, open it in my favorite text editor (TextMate) and am shocked at the results. Nothing but encrypted garbage! Are you kidding me? I can’t even do something as simple and important as fix html errors on the website to bring it to compliance standards? That’s just ridiculous.

So, I browse over to aplus.net and decide to live chat with a support agent. This is what I got:

You are now chatting with Julia
Julia: Hello, thank you for contacting Technical Support. Please wait one moment while I retrieve your account information.
Julia: Can you please specify your account number and domain name?
BEn: myclientssite.com
Julia: One moment
BEn: I am trying to edit php files to bring the website up to w3c complaiance standards. When I go to edit a php page, all of the information is encrypted.
Julia: Please specify account number
BEn: my cart license? Where do I find my account number?
Julia: We found it.
Julia: I will invite James to assist you
Julia: One sec
BEn: thank you
James has joined the conversation.
Julia has left the conversation.
BEn: hello James
James: Please verify the main account password
BEn: *****************
James: How can I help?
BEn: I am trying to edit php files to bring the website up to w3c compliance standards. When I go to edit a php page, all of the information is encrypted.
BEn: I need to be able to see lines of code
James: Which file specifically?
BEn: /cart/index.php
BEn: I am getting a list of errors on the w3c validator site, but when I attempt to edit the php page, there are a few lines of php at the top, but the rest of the page is encrypted
BEn: I can copy and past what I see if it would help
James: (here James proceeds to paste a few lines of code which I won’t paste here because it will mess up my w3c validation… either way, we all know what code looks like)
James: That is what I see.
James: The rest is encrypted.
BEn: exactly
BEn: and when the validation shows errors on line 115…. well, those lines are all encrypted
James: I am not sure about this. Let me ask a lead. One moment
BEn: thanks
James: Ok, I have your answer.
BEn: ok
James: The only way you get the source files is contacting Pinnacle Cart directly and asking them for their source code.
BEn: that’s ridiculous
James: We don’t have that information either.
BEn: wow… this is extremely disappointing
James: That was directly from my supervisor.
BEn: so… basically you’re telling me that you can’t help me?
James: Correct. Only Pinnacle Cart.
James: can provide the source code.
BEn: I don’t remember signing up for pinnacle cart
BEn: I thought I just signed up with A plus
James: That is the cart that you are using .
BEn: that you guys set up for me correct?
BEn: since this is all on your server?
James: It is a 3rd party application which is offered in the control panel. But we will not provide the source code.
James: Only Pinnacle Cart
BEn: I know, but what I am saying is that I had no choice in the cart software that you provide as a part of your service
BEn: and you can’t provide support for a service that you provide?
BEn: or a service that your clients are forced to use?
James: You can use any 3rd party software. We just won’t provide the support for it.
BEn: Yes, but I don’t recall choosing a cart service. It was set up by aplus
BEn: nor do I recall the option to chose my own cart service
BEn: Just tell me… did I choose this cart service or was it provided by aplus?
James: We don’t “force” any one to use the carts. The carts offered in the control panel are Pinnacle Cart and OS Commerce.
BEn: so…. if I switched to OS commerce, I would be able to edit pages?
James: You can also use your own cart.
James: Checking.
BEn: my own cart? What am I paying for here?
James: Os Commerce is open source.
BEn: can i switch carts in the control panel
BEn: and will it affect any of my current settings?
James: You can install OS Commerce from the control panel. However it’s not a “switch” you have to reupload to the new cart.
BEn: which means a DB dump and restore?
James: You would have to rebuild the cart. This is because the tables are not compatible.
BEn: Wow… I have worked with a lot of different e commerce solutions and have never encountered problems like this. I know it’s not you’re fault James, but this is absolutely
frustrating
BEn: I guess I’ll contact pinnacle
BEn: thanks

That’s supposed to be “technical support”? So, did I contact Pinnacle? NO… I started shopping around for other solutions for my client as I am extremely dissatisfied with aplus.net’s reaction to anything so far. Why do they make you choose from two shopping cart programs, neither of which they provide ANY support for? I have to contact them directly? Is this for real? A company that provides good customer service and technical support would handle this themselves and not pass it off on a PAYING CUSTOMER!

So, let’s re-cap. I have a so-called aplus.net “shopping cart” that advertises it’s compatibility with Google Checkout, and it’s not working. I have a web store that out of the box is not W3C standards compliant and can not fix it due to their encryption of php pages. So, basically my client is stuck paying for a sub-par, partially working web-store provided by aplus.net and pinnacle cart. Isn’t that what everyone wants? A partially working website? Am I missing something here?

Next item in the battle with aplus.net, I get a call from my client telling me that his customers are reporting to him that his shopping cart is down totally! So, now we’ve gone from bad to worse. I log onto the website and try to check my cart… 404 not found! Are you kidding me? Is this another joke? Nope… it is not. This is real life in aplus.net land.

As you can probably imagine, my head is spinning by now. I am baffled by this company and am starting to question the legitimacy of aplus.net all together.

So, yet another call to support. Same run-around, same brainless answers, same “I don’t care” attitude from the “technical support” department and the answer I got? You guessed it: “We will have to submit another ticket for you sir”. At this point I become fed up and proceed to ask the technician (used very lightly) for a corporate phone number so I can get to the bottom of this once and for all.

He provides it without question, I hang up and call immediately. I am greeted by a human which is a surprise and explain my situation. She immediately forwards me to someone that could help me. Much to my chagrin, I am once again face to face (or phone to phone) with someone who cares NOT! I explain my situation again, I must have explained this at least 10 times today. The man on the other end listens, I express my discontent and tell him that this is costing my client money. I speak in paragraphs of detailed explanation to him, pause at the end awaiting a reply and I get silence. I say “hello” and he confirms that he is still on the line with me. I begin to explain in further detail since he obviously has no answers for me, I felt he should know exactly how I was feeling at that point. He then decides to go on the defensive and tell me that I am not letting him speak in turn (me, the customer). Fair enough, I pause and tell him to continue.

Can you believe what he told me? He would have to submit another support ticket!

That was it. I was done. I have spoken with my client and we are coming up with an action plan to move forward with another shopping cart alternative.

I can not believe that a company can exist and succeed in this economy providing service like this. I would not recommend this company to anyone.

So, once again the bottom line is that the store is currently not working at all. I need to get this up and running so my client can start selling product again. I log into the cart admin panel and start digging around. I notice that the url for the 404 error on the cart page is not routing correctly. It is skipping over a directory. Ah, bells are ringing. I go back to the cart control panel and go to shopping cart options and find that the url entered for the store was missing a backslash “/”. Added the backslash to the url, hit save… store is back up!

aplus.net support couldn’t figure this out? They couldn’t even check for me. All they can do is “open another support ticket”.

So, buyer BEWARE with aplus.net
If you are satisfied with a partially working program that doesn’t live up to it’s own expectations, frustrating phone calls to support only to be left with “we need to submit another ticket” then this is the program for you.

If you would like a shopping cart solution that actually works the way it’s supposed to, I would stay as far away from aplus.net and pinnacle as possible.

I took this shot last night while testing out a new camera. This image features Ben Savage and Zach Householder of the band WhiteChapel. Feel free to use this as your desktop image. Even though it is at a high resolution (1920×1200), as long as your aspect ratio is 16:9 this image will look great on any size wide-screen desktop.

This image was taken in my living room. Dark lighting and a relic ancient Egyptian cat alongside my couch made for a decent pic. Like all of my desktop images, all I ask is for comments. Feel free to use them as you wish.