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It does not come soon enough, this holy holiday, when depression rates soar and stress doubles during a a few months in the winter; yes, Christmas is here!

We all know shopping is done and the gifts are bought for our kids, friends, and loved ones, but this year it seems everyone is going online to shop. This brings up new threats to your security and new ways for those pesky thieves to get your money. Here are ways to protect against them and make sure the season is as jolly as it should be.

If you have kept on the blogs at Geek Choice, you are one step above everyone who has not, because you know about phishing attacks. These are fake websites that grab your info without you even knowing it, usually by clicking on a link that goes to a website set-up by a hacker. During the holiday season, these attacks increase ten fold because people are ignorant to phishing, thus making it easy to hack into your credit or debit card information as they surf and shop. Be careful, be aware, check the URL that loads from a link on website or email-make sure it matches what the address bar says.

While you are looking for the coolest toy or newest video game that your kid just has to have, before you fill out the form of payment with your credit card information, check the website for signs that verify that it is secure. First look at the address bar, look at the beginning of the address: if it has HTTPS you are good. Also look on the bottom of your browser, it usually has a locked padlock to show that it is secure. Most big sites like Amazon, EB Games, and Best Buy actually have certificates of security on their sites.

Here is a good one, forget using debit cards unless you are okay with putting information such as access to your bank account. Use credit cards.

There are certain security questions that a site might ask you, like where you have previously lived, answer them. These are designed to make sure you are who you say your are.

Attacks happen all the time on the internet, you may think it won’t happen to you, until it happens and ‘what are you gonna do’ is all you can say. Don’t be that schmuck, take action. Arm yourself with sufficient facts that will keep you safe this holiday season. When you are spending all that money on things that will probably become trash in a couple years, remember that there are people out there with the means and the will to access your information. But they cannot if you know what to look for.

That is our goal, my goal in this blog, to educate the masses of people out there of the risks posed by the internet. It is a scary world today, and today’s world is online, so what are you doing to protect yourself?

Turn on the computer, wait a couple minutes for it to load up, click on your internet browser, and enter into a world where anyone can see where you are and what you are doing. Sure, we keep our business and personal life separate right? That is why we have “personal” and “work” computers, but there is a big difference as to how the meaning of “personal” actually is true. You cannot go anywhere now without being taped, you are tracked by purchases and paper trails, and now it seems that the little privacy you had left is gone.

Wish you could put the “History” behind you? After you click on your internet browser and start to surf around the web, everywhere site you visit is recorded and saved, making it very easy for people to find out what you are up to. You might be saying to yourself, “Yes this may be true, but not for me because I am a virtuous person, there is no need to worry about someone finding out my History!” That’s nice, but what we are talking about is the fact that people can get into personal files that could hurt you regardless of the porn sites or other personal adventures that might make you look bad.

Let us say that you use a payment service online that transfers money to your bank account. By the hackers finding out this information, regardless of the fact that reloading the page won’t work, they may have the means to get into that site with your personal log-in information. Feeling scared yet? I am, because I use this very system and preventing something like this is crucial.

Luckily, Google Chrome, Mozilla  Firefox, and Apple’s Safari have taken these preventive measures by not allowing for JavaScript to run in your browser. Phew!

There is a name for people who snoop around your personal information: history sniffing.At University of California, San Diego, researchers have discovered 485 of the 50,000 of the most popular websites are exploiting a flaw that allows them read your browser’s web history.

Notice how you click on a blue link, revisit the site and the link has turned purple, marking that you have already clicked on this link. What hackers can do is hide links on a certain website, say for example to Facebook or Twitter, then use the spying sites to use JavaScript code to find out the color of the links are.

JavaScript coupled with the use of Cascading Style Sheets, a common website language, make it very easy to track where you have been on the internet. Some of those 485 sites actually download your entire web browsing history! Whether you are doing illegal activities or you are a saint that only uses the internet to write emails, the fact that people can find out this information is kind of creepy. There is no privacy anymore, especially in the computer world, where history hackers are getting into the “trash” and checking out personal files.

Stay protected out there.

Problems are attached to your PC from the day you buy one, it is as natural as nature, but what can you do about them to minimize  the problem and make it does not turn into one you cannot solve? There are a couple actions you can take to ensure peace of mind and comfort of use knowing that the machine you paid $2,ooo dollars will not be breaking down anytime soon.

Most of the time, it is not being skilled enough or able to intellectually solve the problem yourself, it is not knowing where to look. Fixing your computer should not be such a hard task that leaves you feeling powerless and overwhelmed. When calling the “support” number for the computer, which usually fuels the frustration, does not work and you need help fixing it, read this blog.

If you cannot get out of the program you are running because it is frozen, stuck and not moving at all, press these keys down in order: Ctrl-Alt-Delete. This little trick will solve this problem like magic. A task manager window will open up, displaying all of the programs you are running with the status of each next to them. You will see different status’ if one is acting funny, such as “program not responding”. Highlight that program, and on the bottom of the task manager, click the “End Task” button. Wait for the magic to happen, and resume your activity on the computer.

Most people in these “modern” times we all live in, amidst all the emerging technology and fast growing trends, are trying to keep up with the crazy pace. Not everyone knows about fixing what may seem like simple problems to tech-savvy people, are complicated to those who are not.

That is our goal here at Geek Choice: self-knowledge, giving the customer the know-how to fix problems on their own to maybe save a few bucks in these tough economic times.

Back to problem solving. If you notice the speed of your internet not up to par, there is a quick easy solution for this one. Temporary files are things like history, cookies, and downloads which are saved to your computer. Maintenance is a good idea to keep this issue from happening. I have noticed with some people who let this go, and there internet is so slow I could write a book on blogging before they check their email it is that filled with crap.

Solution: Go to the search box located on the Start Menu and type ’.tmp’, it will pull up all the temporary files. Right click the mouse on each one, or select them all by selecting one and then, holding the shift key, going down to the last one. Hit the delete button, you are on your way to faster surfing instantly.

Troubleshooting the PC can lead to even more problems if you go beyond your skill level and end up really screwing things up! Make sure you know the limit of your knowledge, for example if it involves going inside your computer or trying to delete or mess with programs that you do not know the importance of.

Call Geek Choice at 1-800-433-5435 and the nice people on the phone will direct your problem towards the solution!

In a recent blog post about the browser war going on between Internet Explorer, Google Chrome, and Mozilla Firefox, it looked as if Chrome was winning the battles and taking over. But as in war, the victor only seems to win, thus catapulting us back into the firing lines of these fast and ever-advancing browsers all competing for the top spot on the world’s computer.

Firefox is pumping out these new versions, with this new release being the seventh beta version since its inception a little over six years ago. However, release of the full version has been delayed until 2011 due to bugs and problems that pushed back the release date. It seems this is not the first time Mozilla has slipped up and missed a deadline, but let’s look past the mistakes and look towards the future with all it’s wonders and possibilities.

Can it get much faster? That is one question that seems to be popping up a lot lately as these browsers heat up the race to be the fastest out there. According to people who claim to know something, Firefox 4 is THREE times faster than the existing 3.6.12 version. What is so great about this new browser? Let’s take a look at the record.

The tests came in from both the Kraken and Sunspider JavaScript benchmark, and the V8 benchmark test, to prove just how fast this browser was. There are three reasons for this improved capability of loading web pages:

1. JägerMonkey, an upgrade from TraceMonkey which propelled Firefox 3.5 to the front stage, is designed to do the same again yet keep Firefox on top. JavaScript is very heavy on certain web sites such as Gmail and Facebook, slowing down most browsers because they do not have the speed or strength to keep up with all the code. JägerMonkey is the future of JavaScript.
2. Hardware acceleration, both in graphics and in Windows xp and Mac OS x, is supported enough so that loading the web pages with all those videos and pictures will be much faster.
3. 3D capabilities that enable Firefox to skip the question of asking users to download plug-ins to view certain web pages, it is built in.

Together these equal a powerful web browser.

The improvements could make Firefox the number one used browser in the world, right now it is number two behind Internet Explorer. We all know the reason for that right? IE has a deal with all the new computers to have it built in to the system so that when you buy a computer or laptop, you get IE. No wonder they are number one.

Firefox also is coming out with a new feature to get rid of the already old use of tabs at the top of the screen. The Panorama feature is designed to allow the user the ability to customize and create their tabs in any way they would like. With a stroke of the key, you can see an overview of all your tabs and easily maneuver through them to find the ones you want.

Watch out everybody, the browser war has only just begun…