Cactus TurboNet Newsletter 9/1/06

  Secure your wireless

I talk to people every day who have no idea (or say they have no idea) that connecting to their neighbor’s unsecured wireless router is illegal.  The man I talked to today said he thought the signals in his neighborhood came from unsecured ISP’s!  This kind of theft of service is very, very common, and you need to protect yourself against it.

I also talk to people every week about why their high-speed Internet has slowed down.  In many cases it’s because one of the computers in their home has become infected with a virus or has a peer-to-peer file-sharing program (like Ares, LimeWire, BitTorrent, etc.)  These programs or infections take up the lion’s share of any pipe to the Internet – no matter how big the pipe is.   A surprising number of times, though, the infected computer is not in the victim’s home, but is a neighbor’s computer, stealing their Internet service.  So the family that’s paying for the Internet gets 5% of the bandwidth and the neighbor’s infected computer gets the other 95%.  To make matters worse, the freeloading infected computer is more likely to infect the victim’s computers with viruses because it’s on their home or office network.

If you have a wireless router in your home or office, be sure to install WEP, WPA or some other security system to keep unwanted freeloaders out.  These security protocols are built into the wireless routers and instructions are in the manual or at the manufacturer’s website.  Don’t be a victim.

  Tips and Tricks

When using Outlook Express for more than one email address, how do you tell who a particular message was sent to?  Answer:  Go to the View menu in Outlook Express and click on Columns.  Put a check in the box for Account.  Then you might have to widen your inbox window to see it, but the name of the recipient will appear at the right of the message header.

  Oldies

Looking for a new computer?  Cactus has been building PC’s for over twenty years.  We know how to do it right.  Go to www.CactusComputer.com and click the link to “Price a Computer”.

Need a cable?  Card?  Keyboard?  Check Cactus prices and availability right from the Internet.  Go to www.CactusComputer.com (or www.TurboNet.com – it’s the same spot) and click the link to “Inventory Search”.

Check local movie listings for dates, times and reviews.  Go to http://www.TurboNet.com and click on “Movie Listings”. 

Place a free classified ad or check the ads for something you need.  www.PalouseAds.com, or at www.TurboNet.com, click the link on the left to Classified Ads.   There were over 1500 unique ads from this region placed in August, and it was viewed over 26,000 times.