Many of these emails are sent stating you (the one with the hacked email) are on travel in Spain or England and have lost access to your money. They want  you (the recipient of the email)  to wire money, etc. Some just have a link in the message. Never click on those links!

What the hackers do

They get your email login and password, log into your account and do the following:

• Sends spam messages to your entire contact/address book
• Turn on your vacation reply, so anytime anyone emails you, a spam message gets sent.
• Possibly will change your password so you cannot log back in
• Cause a lot of problems for the person that they hacked

If you are the victim of a hacker, and can log into your account, here is what we recommend:

• Changing your passwords and security questions as soon as possible
• Email everyone telling them you have been hacked and do not reply to that message
• Report this to your email provider
• Change your social media passwords to not be the same as your email passwords

If you have tried changing your password and it will not let you into your account, you can try to have it reset by the email provider. My last client with this problem could not get it to work, Hotmail set up a temporary forum for her to communicate with them about it, but she lost access and is now completely locked out of her account. What recourse does she have? I recommended that she get off Hotmail and pay for her own email account. For $50 a year, you will be able to avoid this problem and own your own email account.

The problem with free services, is that you get free support and on the email providers time frame. You will never get instant access back to your account and will probably have to wait in a queue until they have time for you. If you are running your business with a free email provider, I recommend getting off that account now. Even Gmail as great as everyone says it is, has support forums. No phone number to call, no quick email support.

What can you do to help prevent this?

• Change your passwords often on your free email service
• Change your social media passwords to not be the same as your email

If you would like Call That Girl to help you with this move to another email provider, feel free to email or call us and we can help!

952-681-7969

info@callthatgirl.biz

1.) Figure out a budget. Remember that with a new computer, you may need to buy new software. The Office suite can run up to $300 for the full package, so keep that in mind.

2.) Make sure you buy a laptop in person. Buying online gives you no sense of how the computer feels, weighs or views in bad/good/extra light.

3.) Go to a store and make sure to check out the next few things…

• Keyboard. Play with the keys and make sure you can type ok and see the keys. Some laptops today have the shiny look and feel and it’s hard to view and use those! It’s even hard for me and I can type 100 wpm!
• Weight. Pick up the laptop and make sure you can carry it without problems. Many folks end up buying 10 ton weight laptops and they are very hard to drag around.
• Screen. Check out the screen and make sure there is not too much glare. If you plan on working outside, many screens have too much glare and you can’t read the screen in natural light, even too much overhead light can be bothersome.
• Screen width. Many folks hate the wider screens. It is not an issue for me, but for those with the regular monitors, it’s quite a change. Test opening some stuff on the computer and make sure you like how it looks.
• Memory. Try to get 4 gig of RAM if you can. For Vista users, your computer will work like a dream. 2 gig is fine, but isn’t that great. My laptop came with 2 gig and I can’t upgrade at all! Find out if the computer can upgrade too. I’m stuck, but luckily I use a lot of internet windows, so it’s not that bad.

That’s the quick and dirty…many folks also ask about the processors and hard drive space, etc…my answer is you’ll be ok probably if you can find a computer that fits your needs with the list I gave you. Those are much more important. Of course, if you need a 320 gig hard drive, then you will of course find one that has that. Most folks today are fine with 160 gig hard drives. One of my computers at the office has a 20 gig hard drive and I am just fine!

Happy Thursday!

Lisa

• $10!
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• All my secrets to marketing
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Looking back today to August 17th, 2007….I was sitting at my home computer, just got back from work, coffee from Starbucks was still hot, wondering what was I going to do next with my life. I was just fired 30 minutes ago. Yes, in 30 minutes I was at the Startbucks in the City Center by 8:30 am to meet the boss (actually, I kinda knew I was getting fired), Fired by 8:40 am and home by 9:00 am. I was told “You don’t fit in with the team” aka…”We don’t like you”.

Lovely! So off to Monster and Career Builder I go. In 2007 there were plenty of job search sites and plenty of jobs! I had probably applied for 20 in three hours. Then I got sick of thinking about it. I got sick of thinking of having to go back to a job that I wouldn’t maybe fit in again with. I was tired of it all!

By noon, my brain was starting to shift a bit. I had started Call That Girl in 2004 and she was sitting idle for the past three years. Could I do it? Should I do it? HOW do I do it? By 1:00, it was on. I was going to make a go of it. I had no idea what I was doing, but Call That Girl was going to be a computer repair company and my only job.

Three years later, and now starting on my fourth year, I have acccomplished so much. But not enough as I’m not done growing yet. My eBook launch is in two days, my Rochester location should be open in September (pending a lease signature) and I have just tons of other marketing ideas to bring to the table. LinkedMinnesota, the group I run on LinkedIn is a very succesful networking group with 5 staff members and over 14,000 members (running this group is now a PT job almost too!)

With much to celebrate, way more than I could write down…we thank you for supporting us. We thank you for being in our network and connecting with us, and most importantly, we thank you for just making these past three years the best I have ever had. I mean it too…I’m glad I got fired! Thanks Jeff!

Last winter I heard of Drop Box and installed it, but wasn’t sure how to really use it. Then a colleague asked me if I was using it and I was “yeah, but not”….he said “DO IT” and then I did it and LOVE it! OMG.

I only share the important files, but I can see this becoming a tool that I really need to use. I found it you can allow many users access by allowing their email accounts into certain folders, so they have limited restrictions.

It’s cool, so if you have two+ computers needing the same files and are not on a network, this is a great solution! Test it out with their 2 gig no fee test. If you need more, you can purchase more then. Here is a link that gives me some more free space if you try it out, I get no money, just space.

https://www.dropbox.com/referrals/NTU1NzkwNjE5

Comment below if you have any questions,

Lisa

• Up to one hour of support (if you have questions about anything, this is a great time for it)
• Telephone support only (we remote into your computer via the internet)
• Must book the appointment by August 1, 2010
• Appointment can be scheduld at anytime after August 1,2010

Lately though, I have noticed how much email I have been getting a day and realized that I needed to start getting it under control. It was at around 150! And since I am running a business, I would spend each evening organizing and replying to all of these emails. Very exhausting. The idea of starting to  use rules and subfolders for my email is something that a professional organizer would probably want to do for me, so I stepped up and started doing it myself.

Here is what I have been doing, and it’s a process. You have to do it almost everyday to make it work. I have noticed results and it’s getting better. I woke up to 2 emails today instead of 20.

First let’s start with this.

Today, only answer the important emails. The business critical ones, the ones that really need to be answered. Let the rest go, do not move them or delete them or anything. Just let them sit.

Tomorrow morning will be when the work starts. If you are like me, you probably wake up to 20 emails, mostly all the newsletters and updates you have subscribed to.  I got to the point, it was annoying and wanted them gone. Just sick of them and needed them organized or to not come to me anymore.

Tomorrow am: Open each email with a directive thought. Here are a few examples of my emails.

1. Things I must do NOW
2. Things I must do later
3. General FYI, but I need to keep the info
4. Newsletters
5. Special Projects
6. Etc

Next, create a subfolder in your email program to reflect these needs. Then move all of those emails to those folders with the exception of the newsletters.

Once your email is organized a bit, then attack the newsletters. I started unsubscribing from newsletters that I didn’t want anymore and then created a rule for ALL newsletters to go to. I want to read them, just not today. I prefer to read through them on weekends when I have time. So now I know where those are. My email inbox is now pretty clean and in just 3 days, I have already noticed a big change! I love it!

I am by far not a professional organizer, but this was pretty easy for me to get going with, took a few minutes a day and well worth it. Trust me, I had the feeling of living on the edge of my inbox and now I’m not feeling it so much. Yes, I’m still addicted to the Blackberry and yes, I still check emails every morning, but now I feel better I don’t have to clean up so many emails when I get on the computer.

whew!

Here is how easy it was.

I plugged in the usb easy set up key into the computer

It didn’t auto-install as I expected it would as it says “easy set up”, but it did open up and I hit the “connect” icon.

It literally walked me through 2 steps to connect the Cisco Valet

• Plug in the wireless router power 
• Plug in the cable modem’s network cord to the Cisco Valet.

The Easy Set Up usb key configured the computer/router/everything. No extra network cords needed (even though the Valet gives you the standard blue network cord). It skips all the technical words that confuse the average person and it was so simple, I was really amazed.

This wireless router sells for a bit higher price of $125-$149, but it’s really nice and has a great range if you are in a big house and having issue with getting good access. This one should get full range of 125 feet.

I don’t write up reviews much, but I loved this wifi router so much I had to tell everyone.

Full review at PC World, pictures compliment of PC World

http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2362115,00.asp

Many people are quite shocked to learn that we are a software business, but it makes sense when you figure 90% of computer related problems are due to software not working right.  Hardware is also so cheap to just replace, many folks don’t want to pay $200+ to fix a motherboard (the hardware inside your computer) when getting a new computer is just about that cheap. Is that the way to go? Sometimes, on older computers I would say yes.

There are many things going on inside your computer in regards to hardware. Many years ago, hardware was easy and fairly cheap to replace. These days, some issues are not so cheap to fix as some of things inside your computer are working together. If one thing breaks, you must replace many things.

Why we are staying out of hardware…because there are enough hardware repair businesses out there. I am good at software, the market is there, the software problems are there, so why not do what I do well and focus on that. My competition doesn’t understand how I can survive off software, but in all reality, it makes sense.

What is software? Any programs on your computer that you use to enjoy your computer time. Your internet, office programs, cameras and printers, Gmail, Hotmail, antivirus, Firefox, Facebook..the list could go on and on.

A few answers for you…

• Yep, most viruses are software related (we can fix these, even remotely)
• Yep, most computer crashes are due to software (we can usually fix these, not all remotely)
• Yep, if your internet works, the chance we can fix your software problem remotely is GOOD.
• Nope, if your computer doesn’t boot up at all, it’s probably a hardware issue and needs to go to a repair shop.
• Yep, feel free to call us and ask us what we think before you take it to a shop 952-681-7969

Please consider Call That Girl next time you have a computer glitch or something is going wrong. If the computer boots up, it’s something we can tackle!

Once upon a time an account executive from a Minneapolis business tried to get CTG to become a referring partner. They found me on LinkedIn, told me they LOVED my business and asked me out for coffee, I refused of course because I don’t do coffee dates anymore.  They persisted and offered to come to my office if I would have a few minutes. Ok, I can do that for a fan (and I sometimes accept if someone will come to my office for a few minutes to pitch something that I may need). During our meeting, we discussed an upcoming instrustry change and maybe becoming friends outside of work “we get a long so great, we should hang out!” type of conversations began. Hey I’m a social person and I love making new friends, so I said yes to happy hour and yes to making a new friend. Then the day of our get together they cancelled. Not a big deal. Then they cancelled again. I was starting to get irritated and wondered what happened.  Then started the fun emails, more chat about the industry changes coming up, calls to keep me on the line, etc. Never met again in person. But what I did notice was this person had slowly received information out of me that I had good insight on in the industry and like a friend…I trusted them with it.

Moving ahead, they slowly lost contact with me after I shared most of the good industry tips I had. Then one day, I got an interesting email that was sent to their entire sales team and I was listed as a sales team member. Wrong Lisa I guess (thus my reference to Auto-fill). I read the whole sales pitch/proposal and found a lot of my “good tip’s” from this executive in the email giving out to their team all of the things I told them. Now, none of these were secrets by any means, all public knowledge, but for us in the industry, it was information that not a lot of folks knew about back then.

Was I ticked off? Yes. I wrote that person back and said, “You didn’t get it ALL accurate” LOL! I am quite sure that they about shit their pants when they noticed I was cc’d because I can tell you this much, I should not have been copied on that email. I still crack up thinking about it. Never heard back from that person ever again.  There are a lot of lessons to this story and the one I want to remind you of is remembering the auto fill feature when sending out emails (double check names! Auto-fill is so easy to just grab the first “Lisa” on the list), there are some other lessons here but I’ll let you figure those out for yourself.

Happy Monday!

Lisa