I’ve mentioned the threat of computer “trojans” before (here’s a link to a video lesson I recorded last year about protecting yourself from a common type of trojan). There’s a new type of trojan circulating now that I thought I’d take the opportunity to teach you about today.

Briefly, a trojan is a maliciously written program designed to infect computers. It is sort of similar to a computer virus, but worms generally try to trick you into installing them by making you think they’re something you want or need to install. Check out the video in the link to learn more about how they work and how to stay safe from them.

This particular threat I’m writing about is a new type in the sense that it is new to the Mac world, but it’s a type of threat that has existed for many many years on the Windows side of things.

As I’ve been warning people for a long time now, while there still are *zero* viruses for Macs (remember, trojans are not viruses) and there are far fewer security threats targeting Macs, owning a Mac is no guarantee of immunity to problems.

This particular threat is known as FlashFake or FlashBack, and started out trying to trick people into installing it by pretending to be an update to the Adobe Flash Player, which is a common method of playing videos on computers.

More recently it has become what is known as a “drive by download” where an infected website will, if it can, download and install the trojan behind your back.  This is something Windows users have faced for many years and one of the reasons I’ve always recommended abandoning Internet Explorer (the blue “E” icon) for one of the free alternatives such as Mozilla Firefox or Apple’s Safari web browsers.

The FlashFake trojan was found to have infected well over half a million computers recently. It was able to do so due to a security flaw not in the Mac OS X software itself, but in something called Java which runs on all computer types.
Any computer of any make or model which happened to have the vulnerable version of Java could be infected in this way, in other words.

So what can you do to protect yourself?

Well, first off you should always make sure to keep your software up-to-date as these general types of problems are found periodically and fixed by updates (also known as “patches”).  

Windows users keep their software updated by making sure to install any Windows Updates which appear from the taskbar at the bottom of your screen.  

Mac users can update with the Software Update window which should automatically appear on a periodic basis when new updates are available.  You can also go to the Apple Menu in the upper right corner of your screen and click Software Updates to force the computer to check.

I also strongly recommend using a good antivirus or Internet security program (which includes not just antivirus as well as other protection) and keep it up-to-date.  Antivirus programs generally update themselves automatically, but if you have one which is telling you to need to renew it, make sure to do so or you may not be protected!

One good security program I’ve recommended and used for a long time now is Kaspersky Antivirus or Kaspersky Internet Security.  Kaspersky has products for both Windows computers and Macs.

While it’s true there are still no viruses for Macs, it’s still a good preventative measure and can protect you from other threats such as trojans. You also never know when we may hear about the first virus for Mac OS X, so it’s better to be safe than sorry.

Make sure to click the link at the top of the article to watch the video about staying safe from trojans – while there’s some overlap, it teaches you more than what I’ve talked about in this article.

I hope that helps!

Worth Godwin
Plain English Simplicity For This Complex Modern World

You can find the computer training app in the iOS App Store with the link or by searching for Worth Godwin. If you find the lessons helpful, please leave a good rating and review for the app!

I received an email with a question from a computer training student named Mary Anne Robbins who wrote:

Well, most standard routers come with a reset button on the back of the device — often recessed so you need to use a pen or a straightened paper clip to press it — which resets the router to default settings including the password.

However, since your router is provided by Verizon (which I don’t use) it *may* not be standard (cable and phone companies love using proprietary equipment for some reason).

However, if Verizon is providing the device they should provide you with phone support as part of your contract and so they could probably walk you through the process on the phone of changing the password.  You might also check the label underneath the router to see if they printed a password there — don’t know how likely that is, but sometimes they do that, so it’s worth trying.

So, check for a reset button, or since it’s provided by Verizon, if that doesn’t work, call them up and they’ll help you as part of your service contract.

I hope my suggestions help!

You can find the computer training app in the iOS App Store with the link or by searching for Worth Godwin. If you find the lessons helpful, please leave a good rating and review for the app!

A student named Gerald Smith wrote me with a question about the Apple Mac program Garageband.  He wrote:

Hi Gerald, I took a look at Garageband and can’t see any way to hide that toolbar — often these things are located in the View menu, but not in this case as far as I can see.

I’m not sure what version of Garageband and what version of Mac OS X you’re running, but I wonder if maybe you’re using an older version of Garageband and haven’t updated it to keep it “even” with the version of Mac OS X you’re running (this sometimes causes bugs to appear, and this could be a bug).

Another thought is if you’re running older OS X prior to (if memory serves) OS 10.6, a.k.a. “Snow Leopard” then you may have a button on the top bar of the window (the title bar) that is often called a “lozenge button”.

The lozenge button is kind of elongated with rounded edges and is in the upper right corner of many windows of different programs prior to Snow Leopard (which got rid of the button).

Clicking the button tends to hide or reveal various parts of windows including toolbars, so if you see that button, try clicking it. Other than that, my guess would be an out of date version of Garageband.

You can check what version of OS X you’re running by going to About This Mac from the Apple Menu, and you can check what version of Garageband you have by opening the program up and clicking About in the Garageband menu (to the right of the Apple Menu).

Let me know what you find, and I hope that helps!

You can find the computer training app in the iOS App Store with the link or by searching for Worth Godwin. If you find the lessons helpful, please leave a good rating and review for the app!

A couple of days ago Apple approved both of my latest training course apps – one teaching how to use the iPhone, and the other teaching how to use the iPad.  Both apps use the same Plain English style video tutorials to show you how to use Apple’s iOS devices. I posted a couple of walkthrough videos you can watch using the following links.

Video tour of how to use the iPad

and

Video tour of how to use the iPhone

  Take a look at the videos with the links above, or go to the App Store to get the apps:

Basic Tips for iPad

Basic Tips for iPhone

You can find the computer training app in the iOS App Store with the link or by searching for Worth Godwin. If you find the lessons helpful, please leave a good rating and review for the app!

In this audio lesson I’m going to take a number of the simple explanations for specific computer terms which I’ve used over the years and tie them all together to help you better understand how the computer works.

Just about everything I mention here also applies to any kind of computing device including smartphones like the iPhone, or tablet computers like the iPad.

In this easy audio computer lesson you’ll learn and finally understand the following things:

1. what memory and drives are
2. what a CPU is
3. what programs or applications are
4. what documents are
5. why your computer can be slow doing some things more than others
6. why it’s important to have enough memory in the computer and
7. why adding more RAM can speed it up
8. and more

Take a listen and tell me what you think!

You can find the computer training app in the iOS App Store with the link or by searching for Worth Godwin. If you find the lessons helpful, please leave a good rating and review for the app!

In this article, I want to talk a little bit about two computer terms that I see people confusing or demonstrating that they don’t understand completely.  People often use the two interchangeably or consistently use the wrong one.

These two terms are “cancel” and “delete.”

Let’s start with “delete.” To delete something is the process of taking something such as a file, like a Word document or photograph, and removing it. The process generally involves moving it to the trash on a Mac or the recycle bin on a Windows machine and emptying the trash or recycle bin. The emptying part is what is actually deleting it.

When you delete a file, in most cases for most people, it’s gone.

Technically, it’s still there but has been marked as available space on the drive — think of painting over a mark on a wall — it’s hidden but not technically gone. Whatever space the file that has been deleted was taking up is marked as available. Until some other file comes along and is saved in that spot, or part of that same spot, the file is technically available and can be recovered with the right program.

However, as far as most people are concerned, once the recycle bin or trash is emptied, the file is gone for good. Until you empty it, it’s still available for you to pull back out and retrieve.

Another example of how to use the word “delete” correctly is when you delete not a file, but text.  For example, if I decided I didn’t want this specific sentence in this article anymore, I’d delete it with the “delete” or “backspace” key on my keyboard.

Again, as with deleting a file, this is the process of removing something.

In most writing programs (including word processing programs such as Microsoft Word, or email programs such as Mozilla Thunderbird, etc.) you can restore words you’ve deleted if you use “undo” to reverse the last thing you did.

Some programs may let you undo more than once, stepping back through each change you made, but in most or all cases once you close the program, any words you’ve deleted from your document are gone for good unless you’ve saved them in a different file. What I see people doing sometimes is use the term “cancel” or “delete” inappropriately.

Deleting is the process of taking information on a computer and getting rid of it. It is not the process of closing a window.

I have seen a lot of people refer to closing a window or getting rid of an error message that has come up as “deleting” it. That’s not deleting. If you close a window, you’re simply closing a window.

I’ve also seen people refer to closing a window as canceling. I’ve also seen people refer to deleting an item as canceling it. That’s not the correct terminology.

Canceling is when you have a process that has been started and you “cancel” that process. You stop it from continuing, or interrupt it in other words.  It takes you back to where you were immediately before the process.

What do I mean by that? Let me give you an example.

Let’s say you in a word processor, like Microsoft Word. You’ve written something, and then you close the program without saving.

What’s going to happen?

Traditionally, the program will pop up a window or dialog box that presents you with some options. It will say something along the lines of, “You’re trying to close, and you haven’t saved yet. Would you like to save, cancel or continue without saving?”

The wording does vary from one program to the next, but something along those lines is what you might see in the situation where you’re trying to close without having saved yet.

Let’s just say the phrasing is, “Do you want to save the changes you made? Your changes will be lost if you don’t save them.” Then you’re presented with three buttons: don’t save, cancel and save.

What would happen in this situation if you tried these different buttons?

If you don’t save, it will simply close the program or window without saving it, and you will lose whatever work you’ve done since the last time you saved. If you click save, it will save the file, and probably ask you for a file name if you haven’t saved it before.

The other option is to cancel. Cancel would cancel the process of closing and take you right back to where you were before you started to close the window.

At that point you could continue writing, you could save and close or you could decide you’re going to close anyway and that you don’t care about saving. Then it would present you with the same three options, and you would be able to hit “don’t save.”

What I’m trying to say here is that if you are presented with a cancel option, it doesn’t mean it’s going to delete anything.

It just means that whatever process you’re in the middle of, in our example exiting a program, it interrupts that. It takes you right back to where you were immediately before that. It’s not correct to refer to closing a window as canceling it.

It’s not correct to refer to deleting a file as canceling it. Canceling only applies to a situation where you’ve started a process (a series of automated steps) which you have the option of cancelling before all the steps are completed.

If you want to get technical, if you hit the cancel button, it does close the little window with the question in it (the little window with the question in it is referred to as a “dialogue box” because it’s asking a question and waiting for a response — trying to have a dialogue with you).

This is probably where the confusion comes from for a lot of people. Closing the window is not correctly referred to as canceling even if sometimes canceling something will close a window. I hope that makes sense.

I know it’s a little confusing sometimes because you see these words out of context, and you don’t fully understand how they work and relate to each other.

I hope that makes some sense and will help you use those computer terms more accurately in the future so you can recognize and understand what people are saying when they’re using them correctly around you in the future as well.

What you’ve just read is an edited transcription of one of an audio lesson I recorded some time ago.  If you like to study written material to learn computers, you might check out my selection of computer training books on Amazon.com or if you prefer a visual approach you might want to check out my easy video lesson computer courses including the Mac Basics course and the PC Basics course here on my site.

You can find the computer training app in the iOS App Store with the link or by searching for Worth Godwin. If you find the lessons helpful, please leave a good rating and review for the app!

This question was asked by Paul Prior. Paul wrote saying, “Out of curiosity, after updates I get a message saying to restart my computer, which I always do. What’s the reason for this?”

Transcription begins: This is a pretty simple thing to understand when you think about it the right way. First off, the updates he’s talking about are Windows updates, or software updates as they’re called on the Mac.

These are fixes and improvements that have been issued by Microsoft, in the case of Windows, or, in the case of Mac OS X, by Apple. Generally, on the Windows side, they’re almost exclusively fixes for problems.

On the Mac side, they are maybe 50% to 75% fixes for problems, and 25% to 50% are actually improvements and enhancements they’ve added in. You want to do these updates pretty much any time they come out, especially on the Windows side.

It’s not just on the Windows side. I should be fair. Any time there’s a security update on the Mac or Windows side, you always want to do that as soon as you can. Most updates are security updates on the Windows side, generally speaking.

It’s never a bad idea to do a backup first just in case. Occasionally, some people will have problems with these updates. It’s a minority, but some people have run into problems.

As a precaution, it’s a good idea to do a backup first. Doing the updates is a really important thing to do because it fixes problems and security issues. If they’re not fixed, they can cause your computer to get invaded by a hacker, malicious program or what have you. You don’t want to have that happen.

By doing the updates, in many cases, the computer has to restart. Paul was wondering why this is.

Think of it this way. The files on your computer are like a rug. If you’re standing on a rug, can you take that rug, pick it up and clean it? Probably not because you’re standing on it.

It’s in use. Files are much the same. If a file is in use, it can’t be picked up and replaced with a new version of the file just as you could not replace the rug with a new rug until you get everything off of it.

Essentially, what happens when you restart the computer after the update is it’s getting all the stuff off the rugs, picking the rugs up and replacing them with new rugs, so to speak.

That’s why you have to restart the computer after you do an update. Basically, it’s just a matter of getting out of the way of the files so they’re not in use and they can be replaced.

Hopefully that makes sense and answers your question.

You can find the computer training app in the iOS App Store with the link or by searching for Worth Godwin. If you find the lessons helpful, please leave a good rating and review for the app!

You can find the computer training app in the iOS App Store with the link or by searching for Worth Godwin. If you find the lessons helpful, please leave a good rating and review for the app!

Computer users have a wide range of experience and levels of understanding of their computers. The great majority of users have just learned the most basic features of a few of the thousands of programs out there.

It really can be a help for you to learn computer basics that you may have been taught. But that’s nothing to be ashamed of — even the most advanced computer user was at that level at some point, myself included.

Even if you’re just using your computer for word processing, learning a few simple skills can make your life a lot easier.

• First and foremost: save often!    If you type a long letter, or make a lot of changes to whatever you’re working on, and the power goes out or something else happens, you could lose everything you haven’t saved!
  
  Just imagine how upset you would be if you’d worked on something for half an hour, an hour, or longer, and *poof* it vanished.
  
  Just going to the File menu and clicking save can help you avoid losing all that work.
  
  
• Save as new versions periodically:   If you’re working on a large project — such as a story or essay, where you write multiple drafts — periodically use the “save as” option from the File menu to save your file with a new name.
  
  That way if the third draft had something good you deleted in the fourth draft, you can bring it back for the fifth.For example, if you’re working on a file called My Letter.doc and you’ve made a lot of changes since your last save, go to “save as…” from the File menu, and change the name to My Letter2.doc.
  This way, you have both versions.
  
  
• Remember you can click anywhere in the document with your mouse and make changes wherever you place the cursor (the blinking vertical line which indicates where what you type next will appear).
  
  So if you realize you’ve made a mistake two lines back, just click where you want to make the change instead of deleting everything back to the mistake, then retyping it all. When you’re done, just click at the bottom and pick up where you left off.
  
  
• Cutting, Copying & pasting:   If you want to move a word, a sentence, a paragraph, or even a page of text, you can cut it and paste it someplace else in the document.
  
  To do this, just highlight the section of text you want by dragging your mouse (click and hold the left button, then drag) across the text. You’ll see a highlight appear where you drag. Let go of the mouse button then go to the edit menu.
  
  In the edit menu you can select “copy” to make a copy of the text, or “cut” to remove the text that is highlighted.
  
  Then go to the part of the document where you want to move or copy the text and click there so the cursor appears where you want your text to appear.
  Go back to the edit menu and select paste.Your text will appear where you clicked.
  
  You can use this to move text around in a document, or copy and paste it into an other document or even an email, and vice versa. Copying and pasting also can work with graphics or even files and folders in some situations.
  
  
• Undo: if you make a mistake the “undo” option in the Edit menu will allow you to undo the last thing you did. Accidentally highlighted and deleted a paragraph in that letter?
  
  Just undo before you type anything else and it comes right back.  Like all of the skills I’m talking about in this article, you can undo in Microsoft Windows, and you can undo in Mac OS X
  
  
• Learn the common keyboard shortcuts which work in most applications: On Windows PCs, the common keyboard shortcuts include: CTRL-S to save, CTRL-C to copy, CTRL-X to cut, CTRL-V to paste.  ALT-F4 will close a window or program (or prompt you to shut down Windows if you are not in a program).
  
  On a Macintosh computer, common keyboard shortcuts include: Command-S to save, Command-C to copy, Command-X to cut, Command-V to paste. Command-W will close a window, and Command-Q will quit the program you’re in.
  
  In all cases, these key combinations are done as follows: hold down CTRL (or Command), type the other key, and release both. Just like using the shift key to type a capital letter.
  
  On both Macs and PCs, these and additional shortcuts are typically printed in the menus next to the option.

These are just a few computer basics that can really make your life easier. For more help, including easy video lessons, check out my computer courses or my new computer training app for iPhone and iPad.

You can find the computer training app in the iOS App Store with the link or by searching for Worth Godwin. If you find the lessons helpful, please leave a good rating and review for the app!

Yesterday I announced the release of my new app for iPhone, iPod Touch, and iPad – learn computers with the Basic Computer Training & Tips app

Computer Basics App

  This iOS app, along with 2 others I’ll be announcing as soon as Apple approves them, is the first version of what may become the main “delivery system” for my computer training video and audio lessons.

Starting with six hours of quick & easy lessons which cover computer terms, online privacy and security advice, as well as step-by-step computer basics specific to Microsoft Windows and step-by-step basics specific to Apple’s Mac computers. The app also has a built-in way to send me your computer questions and you can check the latest Q&A answers right in the app.

Take a look at the video tour above to see how it works and grab your copy by clicking the blue & yellow button above to open iTunes or the App Store.

You can find the computer training app in the iOS App Store with the link or by searching for Worth Godwin. If you find the lessons helpful, please leave a good rating and review for the app!