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By admin, December 10, 2009 08:12

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I received a rather interesting spam the other day and it would seem to have included some well private details.  It looks like this email contains login information for various mail systems but I honestly did not follow up with it.  I figured it may be of interest to the owners of these sites so I’m posting it here rather than attempt to start tracking abuse emails for various domains.

Continue reading 'Spam with a bonus — ‘Oops’'»

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By admin, September 13, 2009 14:02

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I usually advise clients that the vast bulk of these tools are simply nothing more than snake-oil products. However many self-proclaimed experts on many support forums tend to get annoyed with me making such statements. I feel their annoyance may simply reflect the fact that many of these products may well support these same sites, which would be a conflict of interest. Regardless, I’ve never seen any substantial GOOD come from these tools.

After reading this article on MaximumPC, I felt that I would quote the relevent sections to indicate that they are simply products to make you part with your money and nothing more. Few if any offer any serious advantage to the average person, and even fewer advantages to the average machine. Frankly I’ve seen a fair amount of work from people who use these tools and break their systems, so I guess I can be happy for the work. I’m positive I don’t know anyone who has anything ‘positive’ to say about these tools. Registry bloat is a non-issue and no one needs to delete dead old entries UNLESS they are relevent to a malware infection. In which case ‘some’ of these tools can be handy in a malware cleaners toolbox, but only if they know what they are doing.

Continue reading 'Registry Cleaners – Do They Really Improve Your Machine?'»

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By admin, February 27, 2009 10:02

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Received an email this week that looks like your typical spam and it comes with a DOC file attached to it. I included the md5 in the subject for ease of tagging and searching.

It is boring stuff, but it seems very familiar. I am sure this template of spam (if you will) has been sent to me before. Its subject says its from Ms. Cynthia Chalker (From Canada), but the reply to is a South African address, and it’s using msn.com/hotmail.com as the method of delivery (apparently).

And like it says, I have a winning notification that I have won the South African…something. But I have won. Phone number to call to claim my winning prize, and a DOC file attachment.

Obviously I have not won anything. This could be a very simple attempt to get you to call and give information away, or for them to convince you to charge your credit card for processing fees I am not certain.

Continue reading 'Unknown DOC file in email a7b207839f751a525f2328f3a07e7cb9'»

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By admin, February 19, 2009 14:54

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I saw this comment today on a malware site and I normally read them to see how folks troll malware sites looking for blame.
Folks, malware is your problem, not anyone elses.  I am constantly reminded how people fail to understand that its their actions and choices that cause the infections, and today social engineering is a big reason.
Even malware experts are not immune from falling victim to their tricks.  Its been like this for years and outside of the increase in targetted attacks,
its still the #1 reason.

Continue reading 'Editorial: Understanding why Malware infects your PC'»

Comments (11)

By admin, December 11, 2008 14:37

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It seems that Viewsonic has had a lot of problems with its manufacturing over the course of the last several years. The reviews from 2005/2006 indicate that Viewsonic was a premier supplier of flat panel displays.

Since it is well know that most of the actual displays are purchased from the few suppliers of such beasts, Viewsonic is responsible for building the hardware around the display.

Back in 2006 (you could see our article here) we bought two VX922 monitors and they worked fine until Sping of 2008. At that time we started experiencing problems with the monitor staying synced and displaying a picture, at least thats how it seemed.

At that time we started seeing one of our monitors (the one used the most) would simply black out, the green power light would go out, then the green light would come back on, the display would flicker and then both would go black again. It would simply keep cycling this process over and over.

I found that PLAYING with the power button would get the display to stabilize, sometimes smacking the monitor would get it to work. When I discovered this, I realized it was a manufacturing defect.

By the End of September I grew tired of the problem and decided to get it fixed. I contacted Viewsonic support at 1-888-688-6688, and reported the problem. I had troubleshooted it and confirmed it was the monitor. Having two monitors and two identical video cards and multiple PCs made this work fairly straight-forward. I was able to get everything to work except the monitor.

When I contacted Viewsonic on September 25th, they stated they would go ahead and REPLACE the unit. I would have to ship it to their repair depot (3rd party service company, Pro something solutions…) in Edmonton and they would advance a unit the same day.

First of all, they said they would same day replace the unit, and the Viewsonic representative confirmed this company had a unit in stock. They did not. The unit I shipped arrived September 26th, and they did not ship until the 3rd of October, so this was a blatant falsehood or an outright lie. If they gave proper instructions to the repair depot which is highly questionable at this point, the depot did not follow them. They also did not ship a replacement as promised. Regardless I did not really care, as long as I got a working monitor in return.

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Well I called on October 3rd to see what was going on and found out it shipped that day. I received my package on the 10th of October via CanPar. I was actually shocked to see this package, it was the EXACT SAME box I shipped on the 25th, very badly mangled and the bottom of the box was falling out. The driver even made a point in laughing about the packaging job. It turns out, they decided to FIX my monitor instead of replacing it, and then shipped it back on the day expected. This was NOT a replacement, nor SAME DAY service that VIEWSONIC told me I could expect.

We have a saying in customer service…under promise, over deliver. These guys WAY over promised and then did not bother nor CARE about the issue when I contacted them back about this.

When I opened the box there was light damage to the monitor, and the screen was scratched. I asked Viewsonic if a damage claim was made, and no such thing was done. I was shocked that a repair depot would be so careless and reckless sending fragile goods anywhere.

At this stage they decided to agree to advance replace the unit, but I had to send purchase details to them. Ok, so I did. I got two rejections that took until the 20th to clear up. On the 15th of October my second monitor started to fail. So now I call about this one. I asked VIEWSONIC to add this to the existing RMA, but they refused and instead decided to create a new one. Later I was told that this was the wrong procedure. Since I was dealing with two I had to make sure they had both in the system for processing. This took amazingly long for something that is fill a document and fax it back. They lost parts of the fax. Somehow they received page 1 but never received page 2. They blamed me for fax transmission problems, when I later discovered that faxes are emailed to the appropriate department, and they process them via email. Since they had page 1 but not 2 or 3 I could not understand how they messed this up, until I found out that they attach the faxes as TIF images, and multiple pages become a multiple part TIF. So the operator was careless and discarded it after reading the first page. Quite obvious now. Any apologies for this? No. So I again spend countless hours on the phone discussing this and faxing again, and confirming again.

So, after finalizing the details for the second I now have confirmations for the replacements and they are sent out. Within a few days I get the first one, the second one comes after about 4 days. Yes one was expedited, the other was ground. Wow, lovely. At any point we setup the replacements they work fine, seem to be ok, then we ship the old units back at the end of the week.

I was quite surprised to find two separate units, each a different shade of black and missing plugs for the back mounts. No big deal, I pilfered those from the originals and sent them back missing. But looking at two monitors side by side that were identical and now are not is a little bothersome. I certainly will keep them.

So by Nov 11th we finally had everything squared away. I have replacements and they have the originals. At this point I was hoping to never have to deal with Viewsonic again after this.

Well I was actually quite disappointed this morning while I was working I caught some flashing in the corner of my eye, and lo and behold, monitor #1 has started it\\\’s flickering again.

First call to Viewsonic, and I am not happy. I just got standard policy and careless responses to my questions. Stated they would only do a repair due to the age of purchase. I told her that was obviously wrong since I just had these items replaced by advance replacement not a month ago, so the age isn\’t a factor. I called this whole process incompetent and was left on ignore hold. I gave up after 15 minutes and called back.

Now, the monitor I had FIXED worked, but was damaged, the second monitor failed during the course of dealing with the first issue. If the first rep had said they would fix it and return it, I would have been ok with it THEN. If the repair depot had a good understanding of HOW TO PACKAGE GOODS FOR SHIPMENT, then I would not have had many issues and I would have been a happy client.

Instead, I had a new order (replacing 3 CRTS with LCDS) with my supplier, and had ordered the Viewsonics, since they were the best for the buck. After Oct 20th, I canceled the order and changed it to some really nice Samsungs (sorry do not have the models handy). I have had excellent service dealing with the local Samsung rep, the Viewsonic one never bothered to return my call back in 2004 when I was seeking vendors. I simply saw that two of the EXACT same monitors having the EXACT same problem could be a model or manufacturing defect. If its the latter then any Viewsonic monitor could fail at some point. I was not taking this chance.

So we called back, and now no amount of button pushing could get us to the english queue. Every button routed us to the spanish speaking operators. Finally someone spoke english, and transfered me to the english queue. This time I went back to RMA instead of tech support. Speaking to a lady who called herself Zorley (I hope I spelt that right) who was very attentive and listened and took notes about my issues. I am now awaiting a call back from a supervisor who will advise me what they want to do. I explained that this is an obvious issue and that Viewsonic must be aware of it, but there is no disclosure of the failure rate of these monitors. I would NOT buy a used one!!! Your buying a lemon if you do.

What DO YOU think Viewsonic should do in this case? I welcome your feedback on this concern.

Is my concern just me or a bigger problem?

Well here is a link to google with the search criteria I submitted to see if others have had this same problem. Search tags are: VIEWSONIC VX922 PROBLEM:

Massive number of results, try it and see.

The top five posts from that I included here:

http://www.fixya.com/support/p449204-viewsonic_vx922_19_monitor

http://www.tomshardware.com/forum/247964-33-viewsonic-vx922-monitor-black-screen-green-power-light-flashes

http://www.swotti.com/monitors/viewsonic-vx922-19-lcd_14207_problems.htm

http://www.geekstogo.com/forum/Monitor-Problems-ViewSonic-VX922-t181202.html

http://forums.whirlpool.net.au/forum-replies-archive.cfm/513718.html

So you can see, many folks from all over the planet are complaining about these monitors. My assumption is this is a very large manufacturing defect and is likely to affect other models. However since the exact nature has never been disclosed by Viewsonic it will not be possible without breaking NDA to find out the real details.

But this issue has completely put me out of the market when it comes to buying Viewsonic. I hope to later track down where they units where made, and find out what that firm builds besides Viewsonics. Since its likely going to affect many other monitors. But at this stage I can conclude the VX922 is a great gaming monitor until it fails. Then just chuck it in the garbage and buy a new monitor. (…chuck in the recycle bin…)

Should you buy another Viewsonic? I won’t be…ever, and I certainly will not recommend them to any client current or future. Since you all could be future clients I’m advising you not to. Also buy an extended warranty ONLY if it means you can avoid dealing directly with the manufacturer. I highly recommened this for any flat panel display simply due to the poor production value of these units.