Those of you who follow me on Twitter may have spotted that I’ve recently become disheartened by Mozy.

Until very recently they’ve been a service I’ve been happy to recommend to anyone – whether the free 2Gb account (with extra ¼Gb for every four users you sign up by an affiliate link) or indeed the unlimited $4.95pm account.

However several technical support queries have made me re-evaluate my stance. To the point where I’ve “restored” almost 12Gb of data and I’m seriously considering switching to a competitor.

To me, a service is good so long as you don’t have issues – but when you do you want that issue to be treated with respect, courtesy and in the case of a technical query by people that at least appear to be able to read. OK, so not everyone gets it right first time every time. I know that. I too work in support.

However, I at least take the time to try and understand the issue with 100% clarity before making assumptions.

I also ensure I’ve fully read any call notes and checked my own in-house FAQ or database for similar or common or known issues.

Additionally I try to make an educated insight as to the users state of mind and their actual problem based on the notes – not on what I think the notes say.

Only then do I contact the client and discuss exactly what it is I think they are saying and check if it’s been lost in translation between them logging the issue and the helpdesk operator transcribing it – well then I take the time to ask pertinent questions.

My latest issue with Mozy is that I clearly stated: “In Mozy and in Windows (and yes, I did tell them several times what my precise OS version is) I have the ‘view hidden files / folders’ turned on but I can’t see a particular folder which is usually hidden by the OS“. Additionally I noted that I could right click from Windows Explorer and use the “add to Mozy Backup” option but that the files / folders selected never showed up in any backup / restore.

So the last thing I expect is for them to teach me to suck eggs and

• tell me how to turn on view hidden files / folders in Windows and
• the same for within Mozy

No, I expect them to have worked that out from my carefully worded support ticket which already included that information and much more besides.

Additionally I don’t expect them to then presume they’ve fixed my fault and close my ticket, twice. If I did that in my job I’d expect the verbal rocket I’m almost certainly going to get.

So today, sadly, I have to say I can no longer recommend Mozy.

If you use them and have no issues – then excellent. If however you end up having issues, then lets hope you are capable of fixing it yourself.

Which is what I ended up doing.

• Do you use Mozy or similar?
• Am I being too harsh?
• Am I being too lenient on them?
• Which cloud backup service do you use?

Come on, have your say as it’s only hearing from customers that make companies sit up and take notice.

What’s your church’s backup plan?

Please tell me you have one?

There are numerous options and I won’t bore you with them – but one of the newer ideas around is cloud based backup. As in you copy your data to a remote data centre and let them worry about servers, resilience, cooling and all the other headaches that come with running a data centre.

However, who says you have to trust an unknown third party with your data?

So, if you’re happy that your backup plan actually works then why not find another local(ish) church and do a deal to put a server in their data room and let them do the same in yours. Then setup your server / software to copy the data offsite and voila you have a secure, offsite backup server.

• Is this something you’d do?
• Or is my idea too radical?
• What’s your cheap, offsite & secure solution?

Identity or ID fraud is huge.

Here are some facts to make you think ….

90% of users never check all their transactions on their bank or credit card statements. (ID Theft Protect, Aug 2007)

89% of users do not use a password manager to store their online and offline usernames and passwords. (ID Theft Protect, Sept 2007)

Identity theft is costing the British economy over £1.7 billion annually. (2006 – CIFAS)

Impersonation of the dead is growing at a rate of increase of 60% each year. (2004 – UK Home Office)

In 2004 most UK card fraud was committed via face-to-face transactions in shops. (2004 – Cardwatch)

These are just UK figures.

So what can you or should you do to help protect your ID in an ever increasingly connected and online world?

• Keep personal information secure.
• Keep all your plastic (credit / debit / identity) cards safe.
• Keep your documents safe.
• Keep your passwords and PINs safe.
• Use individual passwords for anything that requires online transactions – monetary or not.
• Protect the identity of deceased family members.
• Shred letters / documents that contain identifying information.

I will almost certainly expand on some of these in the weeks and months to come, but if you need any specific information or answers now then please do ask via the comments section or via my contact form or even by using the Skribit suggestions tab.

I’ve taken to recently unfollowing a bunch of folks on Twitter.

Not because I don’t want to see their tweets but because I’m seeing them twice and sometimes three times.

You see, I use lists – probably not as extensively as some do but then TweetDeck does recommend you restrict the maximum number of open columns. So in an effort to improve the flow of my twitter world I’ve taken to trying to be more organised.

Some lists I’ve created myself:

ChurchIT – this one covers far more than just IT. The basic criteria is do you go to a church (I don’t care what denomination or faith) and are you involved in IT, Tech, Media, AV, or similar in some way. If so, and I’ve seen your name then you are likely on this list. Currently it has 197 members and 17 followers.

CCNA – this one loosely covers anyone that tweets about the Cisco Certified Network Associate certification. It’s work related so I feel duty bound but it only has 19 members and one follower.

Welsh Rugby – I think this one is fairly self explanatory but it is a list of folks that play or have played rugby for or in Wales. A passion of mine and has 32 members but no followers.

I also have a couple of private lists that include folks I know IRL (in real life) and the folks I’ve interacted with on the 31DBBB project. I’m open to bribes for making my 31DBBB one public though. Equally I have a few lists I follow that I didn’t create.

The trouble with my recent actions is that it could cause some folks to unfollow me – and I accept this as it is too much effort to tell them individually that I’m following them via a list so please don’t drop me. Instead I’ll accept that my sphere of influence will likely decrease.

That’s no bad thing – after all it’s not about me.

Anyway, to utilise lists requires that you have a twitter app that allows you to easily view them.

My software of choice is TweetDeck because for me and the way I use Twitter it just works – and there’s an iPhone app for it as well.

• Do you use lists – if so tell me a list or lists you follow?
• What software do you use to manage your lists?
• How do you find your lists?
• Would you find a lists 101 helpful?
• Are you on any lists?
• Do you have a twitter plan of action?

Here are 10 of the most popular Internet Scams.

I list them purely for your edification in the hopes that you don’t get caught out by them

- or that you can use this as either a quick reference

- or as a pointer for friends that may need some advice.

So, without further ado and in no particular order:

1. Nigerian scam – aka 419.

This almost always appears as an email from someone that is the “relative of the late [insert grand title]“ – in short they utilise emotion to try and get you to part with smaller sums of money in return for a decent %age of a much larger sum. One of the best sites out there for advice and fighting back is 419 Eater.

2. Lottery scams.

Similar to the 419 scam this one typically asks for an up-front payment to release the funds you’ve won. See FraudAid for some great advice.

3. Advance Loan Fees.

These, like the previous two, will ask for an up-front fee typically referred to as an admin or processing fee. They will normally ‘guarantee’ the loan – but ask yourself this: Why, when a conventional bank or credit card company will add the charge to any loan, do I need to pay an up-front fee? Short and to the point advice from Fraud.org.

4. Holiday scams.

These almost always take the approach that you’ve won a greatly reduced cost cruise or holiday but you never get to hear the ‘catch’ until you’ve signed up and paid what you believe is the total cost. Then the hidden clauses come out. ExpertLaw.com appears to have the best coverage of these types of ‘deal’.

5. Phishing scams.

I’ve talked about these before – see my full advice here.

6. Disaster relief scams.

I trust I don’t need to spell this one out? Instead I will simply say – go direct to the homepage of your favourite disaster relief charity and donate there. And if you don’t know any then check out CharityNavigator.

7. Chain eMails.

This is the modern equivalent of a chain letter and you are asked  to forward a small (typically) amount of money to a name & address and add your own to the bottom. More advice and fun at some of the emails out there from BreakTheChain.org.

8. Overpayment scam.

Best way to describe this is with an example. You want to sell item A for £100. Scammer B offers £500 in the form of a cheque (or similar) for goods they’ve sold in your country and for you to forward on the remainder. In this example £400. Then the cheque bounces and not only are you without item A but you’ve also sent B £400. Much more info on this type of scam at Scambusters.org.

9. Computer money making machine scam.

In return for some money, yes up-front, you are asked to install a program on your computer that opens lots of popups / adverts. Each of these effectively generate a click for that advert and ths income for the scammer. You are highly unlikely to see any return on this other then seriously impaired computer response. Avoid.

10. Employment scam.

The only reason this scam exists is to gather information – yours. Oh, and possibly your money too. The end result is likely to be fraud of some kind, either your ID is stolen or money from your bank (knowingly or not) and far from earning you money will always cost. Job-hunt.org has some great advice on this type of scam.

• Have I missed any obvious scams?
• Have you any great links to share that provide advice on avoiding scams?

As today is my daughter’s 10th birthday (which is far more important than any country celebration <g>) I’m being lazy and just posting some links.

The links will show you that I’m far from the only site talking about internet safety but I do try to make my approach cover all aspects and not just children.

• PRNewswire is a web based press release centre – here’s one of their recent releases.
• i-Safe is a US based non-profit promoting education in internet safety.
• Internet Safety with Professor Garfield – everybodies favourite cat teaches internet safety.
• 180 TechTips does more than just general Tech Tips, they also have a specific section on the internet – 5 min lessons on tech, good stuff.

That’s all for now – enough to keep you going but this section will probably become a regular within my ISS series.

It would appear that a certain Irish ISP (no names, no pack drill) has taken to blocking content they deem as unsuitable. This follows on from another Irish ISP that has adopted the “three strikes and out” rule on file sharing.

They aren’t just blocking the unsuitable content but entire sites.

The worrying thing is the lack of choice offered and no prior warnings – just blocked unceremoniously. Additionally there is no burden of proof required – so malicious reports could easily see someone barred from the internet. When you consider that most schools in the UK expect children to have access to the web at home for school purposes – then we once again enter into the realm of a two tier society. The have and have nots.

But, I don’t want to get into the politics of these decisions here, but show how (in the case of the site blocking) it can be overcome with some simple changes. Equally, making these changes could improve your surf speeds even if you don’t get blocked.

The approach is to utilise a third party DNS service such as OpenDNS or Google.

If you’re not a fan of either or find they aren’t perhaps as good as your current ISP then try using namebench – which is a simple utility that has code for Windows, Macs and *nix. In their own words they state that namebench “hunts down the fastest DNS servers available for your computer to use“.

So why is this a 201?

Mostly because it’s a step above an intro lesson to DNS (covered here) as you’ll need to know how to access yoru router and change it’s settings – that I won’t cover here, but OpenDNS cover a ‘how to‘ for most major manufacturers.

And another way around this is to utilise one of the methods discussed here recently.

• Should ISP’s play judge & jury?
• What about other un-regulated setups such as the IWF?
• Ignoring for now, the dangers to minors are you for or against ineternet censorship by organisations?

Today’s post is a guest post from Kevin Weatherby. Kevin is a cowboy by trade and a pastor by calling and has some fantastic stories and insights and a wonderful ability to link stories from ‘the ranch‘ to real life spiritual applications.

Here’s one that caught my eye recently and Kevin kindly agreed to re-write it to better suit my tech blog. Thanks Kevin.

My friend Stuart asked me to pass along a few high tech cowboy tips and pointers post. I am always willing to help people out where and when I can. Today’s lesson will be on computer repair. There is a right way and a wrong way to get things done….I’ll leave you to decide which one this might be.

When you live 30 miles from the nearest anywhere, you learn to use a variety of things in a variety of situations. Cowboys can figure out how to fix items, or at least patch them, with the simplest things he has laying around.

I had lightning strike the house about 5 years ago and ruined my computer. I know I should have had a surge protector, but it was outside running the air compressor, the drill, two heat lamps, a fountain pump, a weedeater, a radio, a kick-butt chair massager, a battery charger, two ceiling fans, a burned up coffee maker, a curlin’ iron, and a cell phone charger.

Well, this computer wasn’t working, so I didn’t figure I would break it by trying to fix it. It was already fried. I opened it up to see if anything was wrong. The whole durn thing looked like a rainbow bright rat’s nest with all the colorful wires and green boards. I didn’t know the first thing about what any of that stuff did or where to begin. The whole thing looked broken to me. I couldn’t even find the cards from the Solitaire Game that I played so much. But I did find one of the mines from minesweeper. It looked remarkably like a mouse turd.

I figured I would just start where the cord went in the back. I had to take out about fourteen screws the size of a pencil lead just to get into the little box where the cord goes. I didn’t have a screwdriver that small so I just took a hacksaw and opened it like everyone else does. That is how ya’ll would do it, right?

Anyway, the first thing I saw in this little box was a fuse. It was not a big fuse, but it didn’t take an electrical jeanius to see that the durned thing was blown. I had never seen a fuse like this in my whole life. I didn’t know where I was going to find a “little weird computer fuse” store. So I did the next best thing. I made one out of baling wire.

All a fuse does is make electricity go from one side of it to another. Wire will do that. I went out to the horse pens and got some wire that was tied up there. I didn’t use the good stuff, I used the real rusty batch. It didn’t have to be pretty. It just had to run a little electricity. I taped that little piece of baling wire on the outside of that fuse and secured it with a little piece of duct tape. It’s very hard to get a piece of duct tape that small. I was afraid at one point I was going to have to get some bubble gum to make the wire stay put.

In the end though, the toughest part was getting the blasted thing back together, not fixing it. I had hacksawed all the little screws off and I couldn’t figure out how to get the cover back on. If I hadn’t seen that cover come off there with my own two eyes, I would have bet you a good dog that the cover was off something else.

I plugged the computer in and hit the magic button. The thing fired right up and I used it for about three more years.

Now that baling wire was not ever intended to be used to fix a computer. It might have worked out alright, but that definitely was not the tool for the job. I learned two things from that close encounter with the computer kind.

The first is to not be afraid to dive into something you don’t know anything about. You might surprise yourself with what you can do.

The second is that if you have to use a hacksaw to get into something, you should probably stay out of it. Let someone that knows what they are doing get the job done right the first time–without duct tape and rusted wire from a horse pen.