When you’re on the road,while almost every hotel/motel offers free wifi, but it’s almost always non-secured. In other words, everything you type – all your passwords, bank information, personal email and credit card information is available for the bad guys to capture. Even when it is secured with a password, you never know how long the password has been in effect and if it’s really secure.

Here’s one solution, which has gotten some great reviews. LogMeIn.com is a site which offer FREE VPN connection to your home computer. You first create an account with LogMeIn and then as long as your computer is plugged in and on, you can access it securely over the internet. You install LogMeIn on your home computer and then you can access it via the internet from any other computer when you’re on the road. I did notice that you have to change the “View” settings to see your home screen legibly, but that’s easy to do. You also need to make sure your computer doesn’t turn off after a period of time.(Usually you right click on the desktop and change your settings.) The LogMeIn installation fixed that problem for me automatically. They will also send you an email to activate your account. You will also need to remember your name and password from your home computer to login.

They will try and sell you a PRO version for $70/year, but the Free version may be all you need.

Note – Here’s what Steve Gibson of Security Now says about LogMeIn.Search for “LogMeIn.”

- Shift Click – To open up a second version of any program in the taskbar, just hold down the Shift key and then click the icon on the task bar. I find this useful when I want to open two instances of Windows Explorer and want to drag files/folders from one drive to another.

- Show Desktop – this icon from Win XP has been moved over to the far right end past the date and time. Just click on the button to clear the desktop or again show everything.

- Ctrl Click – Cycles through the pages of a group in the taskbar.

The general rule of computing is that no matter how large your hard drive is, it will eventually fill up and tell you that it’s out of space. While you can certainly add a new larger hard drive, another option might be cleaning up your old hard drive and get rid of all those giganto files. The problem is how do you “easily” find those large files and folders?

WinDirStat.info is one highly recommended program to do just that.
It may take a while to scan your drives, but when you check back, it will give you a visual picture of what is taking up all that space. Then you can move or delete those files and folders to give yourself more breathing room.

I was in the local Best Buy lustfully looking at the new Windows 7 laptops and overheard a conversation about antivirus programs.  The sales associate was trying to encourage the new computer buyer to get the extended anti-virus program so that she would be covered for the next three years. I wanted to butt in and say, “Don’t do it. Microsoft has a free anti-virus program available to download.

Microsoft Security Essentials is highly rated and FREE.

The one thing I don’t like about it is that it seems to run and take up lots of resources when I first start the computer. MSMPENG.EXE is the file that I find running under my processes and taking up 50% of my resources.  Here’s a link which discusses this problem (click here)

Note – this is such a hassle on my XP machine, that I got rid of it and went back to AVG Free 8.5
My Windows 7 machine seems to be fine with MSE.

If you use and share Google Documents – this is a new feature they just started.

In the past one could share individual documents with one or people, but now you can share entire folders.

While vacations are great and thumb drives are great, security goes out the window for many people who haul around their laptop or thumb drive on vacations. If either gets lost or stolen, there’s a good chance the “bad guys” will have access to all your accounts, passwords and banking information.

I’ve found a nice solution by creating an encrypted area on my thumb drive and putting all my sensitive data into that area. How you do it is a bit complicated but not that bad. Here’s a site which explains the process step by step. (click here)

To use the thumb drive, you just plug it into your computer and you will get a popup – choose “Start TrueCrypt Background Task” then OK.
- choose a drive letter – like Z:
- Select File – choose the encrypted file o nthe thrumb drive.
- Select Mount
- Type in your password.
- Exit

I just came across a situation where I wanted to delete one of my Facebook entries. Here’s how to do it.

From the main page click on Profiles.

Then choose Wall.

Now when you hover over an entry, it gives you a “remove” option.

If you’re ever on vacation and are using someone elses computer, it’s always a bit of a pain since you don’t have your computers bookmarks handy. You try to remember all those URL’s, but it’s no use. iKeepBookmarks is one solution. (Thanks to Bev for this tip.)

Your first setup a free account and then import your passwords. While they don’t mention importing Firefox bookmarks, I did it without any problem. Now you’ll have your bookmarks handy no matter where you go or which computer you use.

Cookies are one way advertisers watch you and collect data on which sites you visit. If you’d like to limit their tracking abilities in Firefox 3.5 , here’s what to do.

Tools – Options – Privacy – Use Custom Settings for History – You can accept cookies and third party cookies, BUT check the box which says – Keep Until I close Firefox.

This way any cookies which do make it onto your computer are deleted when Firefox closes.

While we generally know that most of the sites we regularly visit are safe, what about sites which we have never visited before?

Google has a nifty tool to let you check out a site BEFORE you start browsing its pages.

Just enter the URL below, but instead of NBC.com, enter the web page you want a report on.

http://google.com/safebrowsing/diagnostic?site=nbc.com