My wife and I are trying to sell our car. We listed the car online for a reasonable price but we haven’t gotten much of a response so far. It’s a tough market, we know that. Hopefully it will sell soon but who knows.

Yesterday someone emailed my wife about the car. They said they were interested but that they felt we were selling way under that value. I told my wife I thought that was odd since its listed only slightly under the “blue book” value. She said that in his email he had a link which he claimed linked to where he was getting the current value of our car. This made me suspicious, especially since the link was a “tiny url”.

Tiny Url is a url (or link) shortener and there are tons of them out there. I personally use http://bit.ly quite often.  We’ve all sent links before and we’ve seen that they can get really long. Url shorteners can take a really long url, such as http://lifehacker.com/5271367/moviestinger-reveals-which-movies-have-scenes-after-the-credits and make it look like this http://bit.ly/otWQq . Shortened urls are very useful for things like Twitter where you can only post 140 characters and long urls take up too much space. I’ve long said though that these would be used for malicious purposes since when you click on the link, you have no idea where it is actually taking you. So I can say, “Check out this picture of my cute dog” and then post a link which takes you to a malicious website. You think you’re just going to a picture of my dog but once you reach the actual destination of that link, it’s too late.

My wife first of all, didn’t click on the link this guy sent. We know the value of our car. We didn’t need him to tell us what it is. Plus she knows not to click on links in emails. She did respond (in case this guy was really interested in our car) and said we are aware that it’s priced a little under value. She asked if he was interested in the car. He wrote back again and said “yeah but did you check out the value?” and he gave the same link again. At this point it seems as if this guy is begging us to click on his link. I can almost guarantee you the link was bad.

So think before you click, ALWAYS. Don’t click a link in an email unless you are 100% sure that it’s a legitimate link from someone you know. Also remember, if someone you know has an infected or compromised email account, they could be sending you bad links too. My suggestion, don’t click on any links in emails ever. Be careful out there. The bad guys are trying harder every day to figure out ways to steal your information and compromise your computers and accounts.

I’m so happy to share that I’m not moving. I was able to work out the issue I was dealing with and I’m able to keep Jet the Nerd. I’m terribly sorry for the confusion and mess. I wish it could have been avoided.

Don’t forget to follow me on Twitter.

Cheryl K is the winner of the Energizer Giveaway. Cheryl, you will receive an email confirming that you have won. You’ll have 7 days to respond in order to claim the prize, otherwise the runner-up (who has been selected already) will have a chance to win. Congratulations Cheryl.

I often get asked the question, “how can I clean up my computer?” I must first say this, if you’ve been infected with a virus or spyware, there is no guarantee that anything short of a complete system wipe will completely clean your system. Please read this post for further explanation.

With that in mind, here’s a good system to use in order to try and clean your computer (this is for a Windows PC).

I recommend superantispyware, malwarebytes, and avg free. They are all free to use. Some of them have paid options that give you more configurations and automatic updates. Are you using any anti-virus software now? If so, is it up to date? If not, you need to start by installing avg free right away.

http://www.download.com/AVG-Anti-Virus-Free-Edition/3000-2239_4-10320142.html?part=dl-AVGAntiVir&subj=dl&tag=button

(be aware that it will also try to install a security toolbar, uncheck that because it’s not necessary)
After that is installed, make sure it downloads the latest update and do a complete system scan.

Next, download and install superantispyware.

http://www.superantispyware.com/download.html

Again, make sure it updates and run a complete system scan. Reboot your computer when it’s done. If it found anything the first time, run it again. Keep running it again until you get a clean system scan and reboot the computer between each scan.

You can now uninstall superantispyware.

Next, download and install malwarebytes.

http://www.download.com/Malwarebytes-Anti-Malware/3000-8022_4-10804572.html?part=dl-10804572&subj=dl&tag=button

Do the same thing that you did with superantispyware, update it and keep scanning until you get a clean scan.

You can uninstall malwarebytes once you’re done. You definitely don’t want all of them running at the same time. Do them one at a time. Also, if you keep any of them installed, keep the AVG and uninstall the other two.

If at any step so far, you are unable to get a clean system scan after trying a few times, your system is not going to be cleaned without a complete hard drive wipe. This means it’s time to backup all your valuable files (be careful not to backup any of the bad stuff), format the hard drive and reinstall everything from scratch.
If every thing so far went smoothly and your system scans are clean, download CCleaner as a final step.

http://www.filehippo.com/download_ccleaner/

This is a great program that cleans up your system. Run it weekly or every other week. It doesn’t clean viruses, it cleans crap (it was originally called Crap Cleaner).

I’m not going to try and rewrite the post but the EFF has written a great post about Apple’s claim that jailbreaking the iPhone is illegal. It’s a great read and I just wanted to quote the part that stood out to me the most.

“One need only transpose Apple’s arguments to the world of automobiles to recognize their absurdity. Sure, GM might tell us that, for our own safety, all servicing should be done by an authorized GM dealer using only genuine GM parts. Toyota might say that swapping your engine could reduce the reliability of your car. And Mazda could say that those who throw a supercharger on their Miatas frequently exceed the legal speed limit.”

I couldn’t have said it better, which is why I didn’t try. Apple tries to justify it’s closed attitude towards it’s software and devices by saying it protects the user. They say that tinkering with their software compromises the safety and security of their software. Sure, there are people in this world that shouldn’t mess with stuff. But if they want to mess with it, they should be allowed to mess with it. You aren’t renting or leasing the iPhone. You own it (supposedly). I wouldn’t paint flames on the side of a leased vehicle (ok, I wouldn’t paint flames on the side of any vehicle). But if I own it, I should be able to do what I want with it. This is exactly why I don’t own any Apple products (except the 4th Gen iPod that was given to me by a very good friend of mine).