Words of Wisdom by MrWes

If you have any kind of digital presence on the internet, you have probably experienced SPAM or PHISHING emails.  Those unwanted emails that never seem to go away.

A few months ago, my email boxes were so full, I was seriously considering abandoning my email address and starting all over.
The only problem with that plan was I have had my favorite email for over a decade. It’s part of my identity.  Can you imagine how disruptive it would be?

I have tried a few different paid filters that run locally on my computer, but the SPAM emails seemed to always evolve and sneak through the filters.

Finally, I had enough.  I needed something that would filter obvious SPAM and PHISHING emails before my computer saw them.

I spent many hours researching SPAM filtering services.  I finally decided on trying out a spam blocker called at MXGuarddog.com.

So far, I have been happy with my choice.

Here are a few notes about my experience

1. You need to be in control of your Domains DNS settings because you’ll be routing your email through MXGuarddog.com servers.
2. After the account has been setup, you choose which emails you want to filter.
3. You choose how aggressive you want the filtering to be.
4. If there are emails that slip through you send email with the SPAM email attached to MXGuarddog.com for them to learn what you consider SPAM.
5. Each email receives its own Quarantine report.  You can decide to release message from quarantine or release and whitelist the sender.
6. You can also set the Quarantine Report frequency.

So far, I am pretty impressed.  My emails have become manageable again.  I feel like I’ve regained my life.

When it comes to sharing files between computers you have a few options.

If both computers are on a network you can do file sharing.  Of course if the operating systems are different you may encounter challenges to get the computers to play nice with each other.

You might copy files between computers by using a USB drive.  Depending on the drive limitations you might have to repeat a cycle of upload files to USB drive, download files from USB drive. then make space on USB drive for next set of files.

What if your computer doesn’t have a network connection or you don’t have a cross over cable.  How are you going to share those files?

I recently purchased a device that works with Macs and PCs.
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On the same day I was wondering if money spent on AAA and Backblaze was worth it; I found out both were. They both saved my butt, just when I needed them.

AAA is American Automobile Association. Backblaze is an automatic online backup system.

Fortunately, AAA is available to help you resolve simple issues like Locked Keys, Out of Gas, Jump Start, replace Tires, local towing, etc.  I have only one key for my car & I accidentally locked it in my car.  Of course it wasn’t smart to do that.  I don’t know what I would do if AAA wasn’t around to help.  At least the problem was easy to resolve and help me get back to being productive.

A few months ago, I started using Backblaze.com for backups.  I have been recommending it to my family, friends, and clients.  It is a reasonable service at $5/month for unlimited data storage.  Actually pretty affordable when compared to other services.

One client has Backblaze software installed on several Windows 7 computers.  It has been operating for a few months and nothing to report good or bad.  Backblaze has been quietly backing up  data without any issues.  It wasn’t until recently we discovered that her computer was infected by an email virus that wiped out her documents and email data.

Fortunately for her, Backblaze had been backing up her data before the computer was infected.  After retrieving the lost data her computer was back up & running in no time.

Just like AAA, Backblaze is there when you have an emergency.  The only problem is you need to start using them before you have an issue that needs to be resolved.