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E-Geniuses is continuing its steady growth and has opened a new location in the “Media Capital of the World”, Burbank, California. They’re currently in a soft launch phase and are making preparations for their official grand opening in December of 2009. Although the main office has moved to its new home on the corner of Burbank Boulevard and Florence Avenue, they still maintain an off-hours drop-off and pick-up location in Downtown Los Angeles and will continue to serve all of Southern California with their on-site computer repair technicians. During this transition, E-Geniuses is continuing to operate fully, both on-site and at the Burbank storefront.

Moving from a strictly office location in the heart of Downtown Los Angeles to a full blown storefront location has brought many perks to current and future E-Geniuses clients. The newest Burbank computer repair storefront is situated in a small shopping center that is anchored by E-Geniuses’ neighbor, Andre’s Cafe. While they wait for their computer to be serviced, clients can grab a bite to eat at the family owned and operated cafe that serves affordable American and Thai cuisine until 3 PM everyday. Additional highlights are a private and free parking lot, a comfortable and technologically equipped media waiting room with WiFi access and refreshments.

The expanded location will also serve to hold seminars and workshops, held by E-Geniuses owner, Joey Mariano. Topics will range from computers, new technology, and training sessions to website development and design for small businesses. Mariano, who grew up in Burbank, felt that relocating the central headquarters of his company was a natural move. “I grew up in Burbank and I have always admired the city and its traditional way of life. Burbank has a great community and this is my way of giving back. With E-Geniuses, I want to provide the residents not only computer repair in Burbank but additional services that will fulfill all of their technological needs. I want to provide a different type of computer service that goes beyond just computer repair.” Clients both new and old can continue to expect the same great customer service and quick turnaround times that they’ve become accustomed to from E-Geniuses.

With this new move, they’ll also be providing local repair individuals with the opportunity to become part of the E-Geniuses team. As a team member, they’ll be equipped with a personal workstation with an ample work area, fiber optic high-speed Internet and the use of all common area facilities such as the media waiting room. All of this is in addition to all of the added benefits of being part of the E-Geniuses team.

For more information, feel free to contact the office through their website at e-geniuses.com or by calling (877) My-Genius. Your newest stop for computer repair in Burbank is located at 2718 W. Burbank Boulevard, Burbank, California 91505. Proposed hours for the storefront will be 9 AM to 6 PM, Monday through Friday, 10 AM to 5 PM on Saturdays and by appointment on Sundays.

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Could you tell the difference between your anti-virus program and malicious website attempting to install viruses into your computer?

Real (Windows Security Center)

Fake (Antivirus 2008)

Studies show that cybercrooks have a 3.4% success-rate infecting users’ computers. Chances are high that you will eventually come across an infected website. It would definitely be a good idea to make sure that you can spot the good security suites from the rogues.

Tip #1

The first thing you should do is find out which antivirus you are actually using. Remember the name of the program and what the application windows and interface look like. You should do the same for your antispyware and firewall applications as well. You will therefore be able recognize when a hacked site is attempting to lure you into a trap using scare tactics. Here’s an example of a rogue antivirus program using the scare tactic, “found infections, now buy me or else!”

Fake “Virus Detection”

Tip #2

Use Firefox and the Web of Trust addon. The main reason we recommend Firefox to our clients is because of the wide variety of addons available for it. When setting up a new computer, one of the first things I install is Firefox and the Web of Trust (WOT) addon. WOT shows you ratings for websites before you even click on them.

Let’s say you do a Google search for an anti-virus program. From my experience using WOT, I have found that at least one of the links on the page will receive a bad rating from WOT. Here’s one of the links WOT shows as having a poor reputation when searching for “anti-virus” in Google.

Notice the red warning circle next to the link.

What this means is that other WOT users have checked the site out and have found it to be unsafe. WOT even allows you to see other peoples’ comments about the site. You can rate sites and comment as well. In fact, the WOT community relies on users like you and I.

Here’s what you will see if you enter a site that WOT users have deemed as having a poor reputation.

Of course, websites are constantly being infected so there may be some newly infected sites that have not yet been detected by the WOT community. In these cases, you will need another layer of protection.

Tip #3

Malwarebytes, The Best Free Anti-Malware Program That You Really Should Buy.

Malwarebytes is a free program that has excellent detection rates. It is able to find and remove viruses, spyware and malware that many security suites cannot. It is maintained by a small group that regularly browses forums looking for infection trends and stopping them early. Like I said, the program does an excellent job of removing viruses, but for $24.95 for a lifetime subscription, the full version can actually prevent threats from infecting your computer. Prevention is really the key to safe browsing. (Buy Full Malwarebytes by Clicking Here.)

So lets just suppose you visit a website that was just infected a few hours ago. Since it has just been newly infected, the WOT community has not yet rated the site negatively in order to warn you. So you go to the site and a window comes up saying that your computer is being scanned for viruses and that it is infected with numerous trojan viruses. Assuming you didn’t follow Tip # 1 and cannot differentiate between the rogue anti-virus and your real anti-virus, you download the “fix”. Many times, I have found that Malwarebytes will actually block the download based on the IP address of the website. If it doesn’t, it will detect that the file you’ve downloaded is malicious once you try to install it. Malwarebytes will block these attempts by the virus to infect your computer.

Malwarebytes detecting and removing infections.

Summary

1) Familiarize yourself with your security programs and what they actually look like.

2) Use WOT, Web of Trust addon for Firefox so that you know whether links are safe or not.

3) Use Malwarebytes to prevent malware from infecting your PC.

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Back to School Special

Free Diagnosis on all E-Geniuses drop-off repair services until August 30th. Just mention our back to school special when you bring your computer in and the diagnosis is free!

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When is the best time to get a maintenance plan on your computer? When you first purchase the computer! If you wait until you have problems with it, then you will have to pay to repair the problem first before starting the maintenance plan. It is best to get the preventive maintenance computer plans when everything is working well.

When you first buy your computer, you can be sure that it is virus free. The best thing to do is to keep it virus free. Although viruses and spyware can be removed from infected computers, once they are infected, the possibility that they have caused irreversible damage (without reinstalling the operating system completely) is high.

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As you know, E-Geniuses provides maintenance plans to proactively prevent viruses and spyware from infecting your computer. This allows our clients to safely perform time saving tasks such as online purchasing and online banking. In addition to having us maintain their computers to ensure security, we would also recommend that clients keep track of their credit reports and to look out for unauthorized charges.

Federal law states that you have the right to receive a free copy of your credit report once every 12 months. AnnualCreditReport.com allows users to view their credit reports from the three major reporting agencies; Equifax, TransUnion, and Experian.

If you see any unauthorized credit cards or charges on your existing credit cards, then call your card company right away. Other companies also offer paid services that can alert you when there is suspicious charges made.

A credit report can also come in handy when purchasing a vehicle. If your credit rating is good, then you may use it as leverage to negotiate a better interest rate.

Checking your credit report is not only easy, it’s also free! Make sure to check your credit report at least once a year to ensure a level of security that will protect your credit score. Oh yeah, make sure your computer is also properly secured and maintained.

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Social networking websites have dominated internet culture and communication since the debut of MySpace in 2003, and now with the growing popularity of Facebook, some find themselves stuck between the two platforms.

The key to knowing the difference between Facebook and MySpace is being fully aware of the fact that they are two totally different ways of achieving the same purpose, which is to keep you in contact with your family, friends and co-workers in a cool and interactive way.

MySpace is preferred by many due to its many customizable aesthetic features (including a profile song or song playlist that comes on when friends visit your page), and the ability to post lengthy “Bulletins” to all of your friends at once— both aspects that Facebook lacks entirely. While some over-do it with page customization, making profiles slow to load, most find that customization, in moderation, makes for a more individual and interesting social networking experience.

Additionally, the freely customizable HTML allows you to hide any section you don’t want your friends viewing, which includes your blog, your general info section (with subsections for your favorite music, television and movies, and even your heroes), and, popularly, the comments. This is a favorite choice to make hidden because of the possibly private nature of discussions conducted in comments.

Facebook, on the other hand, is noted for its clean and uncluttered layout; each profile page looks exactly the same for different applications and friends listed on the sidebar.

The site, which originated as a site mainly aimed towards college students, boasts the ability to post Twitter-like status messages that appear on both you and your friends’ “newsfeeds”, indicating what you’re thinking, feeling and/or doing at any given time. Users may take full advantage of this feature to talk about themselves, seeing as the Facebook “About Me” section is limited to a tiny space and amount of characters—as opposed to MySpace, where you can write a biography of encyclopedic length on your profile page and still have plenty of space to go.

It’s plain to see within a short time of using Facebook that its main purpose is to communicate—and it definitely achieves that, if a bit intensely. The default settings allow you to see whenever your friends add another friend, get a new “wall post” or photo comment, achieve a high score in a Facebook game application, and more. If you don’t wish to receive this information or send it to your friends you can simply disable the feature.

However, even with those features hidden, the openness of Facebook is unavoidable—with the friend newsfeed displayed on your homepage, your friends can comment on or “Like” (a functionality allowing your friends to “approve” of whatever you’ve just posted) virtually any activity you take part in.

In closing, you might choose Facebook if you want a straight-forward social networking site with its share of fun and games minus the clutter, and can sacrifice a bit of privacy to communicate with your friends in a ton of different ways. Or you can choose MySpace if you want to be able to completely express yourself and your personality via your profile page and still be able to keep in touch in an efficient and fun way.

Article by Marnie

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