Author: Mark Snell

Hey there YouTube!

Chrome extensions, are they like those tail fins on cars like
the EK Holden? No!

Chrome extensions are little additions to chrome that extend its capability and customise the browsing experience. They allow the user to customise Chrome to their preferences.

Extensions are usually downloaded from the Chrome Web Store or can be directly installed with other programs. For example, Evernote which we learned about in Episode 18 installs a Chrome extension that allows you quick access to save web pages in a variety of forms to our Evernote List.

Extensions are designed to have a single fixed purpose and be minimal. To access existing extensions simply go to the hamburger menu, click more tools and then extensions. Here you can see some of the many extensions I use every day and a few that I’m testing at the moment.

To add new extensions you need to go to the Chrome Web Store which you can access by going to the menu at the top left of the extensions, clicking open Chrome Web Store from the bottom. You can also access it by clicking the chrome apps button at the left end of the bookmark toolbar and then clicking on the web store apps or the link at the bottom right corner.

The Web Store itself lists probably tens of thousands of available extensions with many ways to search and filter them. I won’t spend too long here other than to suggest that you have a look around and try a few and see what you like.

I will, however, recommend a few of my favourites. I’ve already mentioned Evernote and another program I spoke about, LastPass relies heavily on its Chrome extension.

Another useful extension is Adblock plus. There are many of these types of programs, I tend to look for the one with the lots of downloads and a good rating. The one I have has a logo of ABP and is currently at version 3.4.

Grammarly is a great extension that helps with spelling and grammar and the paid version adds a bunch of other features. Momentum is a great New Tab replacement with its own personal dashboard including To-do, weather and inspiration.

The Great Suspender is an amazing extension that puts apps to sleep after
an hour, great for people like me who have lots of tabs open but don’t want
them using lots of available memory.

The last one I’ll mention is eBay; an extension that allows you to keep tabs on the items you’re watching, buying or selling on eBay.

I hope that was really helpful for you. At The Tech Doctor Network, our goal is to guide you each step of the way as you become comfortable with your computer.

We release episodes every weekend. If you want to be notified about new videos click the subscribe and the bell icon below.

Please leave any questions or comments down below.

Thank you so much for watching. Have a great day!

Today is Melbourne Cup Day in my home city of Melbourne: a day of high fashion, horses and a four-day weekend for most people.

[If something looks odd with me, I’ve shaved. I’m supporting Men’s Health by taking part in Movember. Please feel free to donate to support this wonderful cause.]

I’m celebrating with an episode talking to you about what on earth keyboard shortcuts are and how they help.

A keyboard shortcut is a series of two to three keys that you press together
that do something quickly for you. If you do a lot of typing you have both hands on the keyboard then these shortcuts allow you to keep your hands on the keyboard, rather than reaching for the mouse. They’re really useful and a time saver once you get used to them.

Many keyboard shortcuts utilise the Ctrl keys on the bottom row of the keyboard the outer left and right of the main part of the keyboard, the Alt keys either side of the spacebar, the Windows key between the left Ctrl and Alt keys, and the Function keys across the top of the keyboard.

Three of the most common keyboard shortcuts that work in almost every
program are Copy: hold the Ctrl key down and then press C this is usually denoted like this [CTRL+C]. Paste: which is [CTRL+V] and Cut: which is [CTRL+X]. Copy stores whatever is currently highlighted in a special storage area called the clipboard. Paste simply takes that same item from the clipboard and puts it back in your document where the cursor is located. Cut is copying something but also deleting it from the document which is great if you want to move it somewhere else. [CTRL+Z] will undo whatever you’ve just done.

Other useful windows shortcuts include [F5] which causes the screen to refresh in many applications including web browsers and windows explorer. Also for windows explorer is the Windows key + E [Win+E] which opens a new windows explorer window and then [CTRL+Shift+N] which creates a new folder for you in the current folder.

[Delete] deletes the highlighted item sending it to the Recycle Bin while [Shift+Delete] deletes it completely, bypassing the Recycle Bin, so be careful.

Now it’s your turn; have a play with using the Windows key and the four arrow keys and see how you go moving windows around.

The final shortcut I’ll leave you with is [CTRL+F] which is the search or find shortcut, allowing you to type a few letters, a word or a phrase and see if or where it is contained in the current document or webpage.

I hope that was really helpful for you. There’s also a great reference sheet from Microsoft Support Keyboard Shortcuts.

At The Tech Doctor Network our goal is to guide you each step of the way to help you feel comfortable with your computer. Come back every weekend for new videos. Press the subscribe and the bell icon to be notified of new ones.

Thank you so much for watching and have a great day!

Hey there YouTube, do you want to give away all of your hard-earned savings to a scammer?

Stay tuned to hear some ways to detect the scams and stay safe online.

The Merriam-Webster dictionary describes a scam as a fraudulent or deceptive act or operation. Basically, someone trying to take your money without a physical threat.

I receive some form of scam usually via an email about 5 to 10 times
a day. Thankfully, most of these end up in my spam folder and I never actually see them. Some though, do slip through so I thought I’d take a moment to have a look at a few and explain how I recognize
them as scams.

The first 3 points I look at are: Is it too good to be true? This is
a simple one that people often forget be it due to greed or some other
blindness, we forget the basic internal fact check: If it seems too good to be
true it’s probably a scam.

Secondly: What do they want from me? Usually, it’s clicking on something or a request for personal information that they can use to scam you in some other way.

Thirdly: Where are they trying to lead me? This is, in fact, almost the easiest one to spot. Did you know that simply by putting your cursor to hover over a link, most programs will display either as a pop-up beside the cursor or down the bottom left or right corner of the screen, the address where clicking the link will take you. If it doesn’t match up with what they’re saying it’s time to be on high alert.

Here are some examples that I found in my spam folder this week:

The first one, other than the warning that Gmail has posted, the obvious thing for this one is that it’s from the Canadian Tax Office, and I live in Australia, so it’s clearly a scam.

The second one is from a well-known big Aussie company, the hardware store Bunnings, but hovering over the link shows that the link will take me to a website called work-careersservice.com. Scam

The third example, a job that earns thirty-five thousand dollars a month. That fails the too-good-to-be-true test. Scam

These are just a few examples from emails I’ve received in the last few days.

I hope that was really helpful for you. At the Tech Doctor Network, our goal is to guide you each step of the way to help you feel comfortable with your computer.

Come back every weekend for new videos and please subscribe and hit the bell icon to be notified for each new episode.

Leave your questions and comments below. I’m here to help you. Thank you so much for watching, have a great day!

Buzzer sound by guitarguy1985 on Freesound.org: https://freesound.org/people/guitarguy1985/sounds/54047

There’s lots of horror stories in IT, don’t let your story be one of them.

Happy Halloween guys, I thought it was time for a quick midweek reminder.

Computers are fairly cheap, your data is precious. I’ve had way too many sad users that I can’t help, most of whom would have been saved by a good backup. If you do have a backup, have you tested it? Can you actually access and restore current files?

I know an organisation that had been dutifully rotating its
backup drives weekly for five years. Thankfully the admin decided to test the content one day and found that the data on the drive was three years out of date. The copy process had broken down and no one had checked.

Thankfully a disaster was averted in this case. I’ll have a full episode or two on backup soon but between now and then, stop and think
carefully about your data and what would happen if it disappeared.

I’ve personally raked through the ashes of a burnt-out home business and found what I think was the backup drive in beside the computer.

Unfortunately, they were both just a molten mess of metal and plastic.
Don’t let the zombies eat your computer’s brains.

Thanks for watching, please subscribe and leave a comment below with
your computer Horror Story, and have a great day.

One thing I forgot to mention on the episode a few weeks back about Installing software is the Microsoft Store.

Sorry about that, I’ve been installing software manually for decades, and it was only later that I was installing something else and realised there is often a better way.

The Microsoft store is a curated and managed selection of Apps that meet a collection of Microsoft Certifications to be sold in their store. It’s not just for paid programs though, there are many great free apps in there as well. The Microsoft store is accessed by the shopping bag icon in the taskbar of windows.

It contains menus at the top for Home, Apps, Games, Devices and Film & TV. We are mainly going to concern ourselves with the first 3: Devices is for Hardware: Surface Tablets, Laptops, Desktops and Xbox consoles and accessories. Film & TV allows you to buy or rent Movies and TV show to watch directly on your computer or push to your TV if you have the correct setup. We will get to episodes about that sort of thing muuuuch later. 🙂

The Home screen is simply a jumping off point to find whatever you might be interested in and highlights new and popular content from the other categories.

The apps section shows some highlighted apps at the top and then bands of collections of software: Best Selling, Top Free, Top Paid, Windows Themes, Apps picked for you, New apps Microsoft love, Creative apps and more and more. It ends with a list of software categories that you can scroll through.

The games section similarly shows highlighted apps then bands Top Paid, New games etc ending a collection of game categories for your browsing pleasure.

While you can get some of the free apps without a Microsoft Account, many of them do require an account. In much the same way as a Google Account, you may already have a Microsoft account if you use Outlook.com, Hotmail.com, Live.com or MSN. If you don’t already have an account there is a relatively simple process to go through to create one. Simply click Microsoft Account and then Create one. You will need to provide an email address, a password and your Country.

Once you are logged in you can simply click “Get” and the app of your choice will be downloaded and installed.

Buying a paid app is as simple as clicking the “Buy” button, confirming your login and selecting a payment method. You can pay from your Credit or Debit Card, Paypal and Possibly even have it charged to your mobile phone. Kids, please make sure you have the permission of an adult before doing this. Some applications can be very expensive!

As well as being safer and easier, the other advantage is that all your Microsoft Store Apps will be upgraded automatically as new versions are released. This can be quite handy, a real time saver and much more secure, as you know you will always have the latest, safest version available. The downside is that some software is available paid in the store that is available free elsewhere, and there is some software that is simply not available in the store at all.

I hope that was really helpful for you. At the Tech Doctor Network, our goal is to guide you each step of the way to help you feel comfortable with your computer. Come back every weekend for new videos and please subscribe.

Leave your questions or comments below. I’m here to help. Thank you so much for watching. Have a great day.

Help! Someone’s stolen my password.

Over the last few weeks, I’ve had several people come to me with a slightly unusual problem. They’ve received an email where someone has sent them their password, and not surprisingly, they’re fairly confused by that.

Here’s a sample of one of the emails.

In it, you can clearly see your password. It’s from some random person. It’s to your email address (or you wouldn’t have received it) but the To: line also
includes your password as does the body of the email.

In the body of the email is some insinuation that you have been
watching porn and that they’ve recorded you doing it. They also claim to have collected all of your contacts from Messenger, Facebook and email and what they’re doing is basically asking you to pay them $5000 so that they won’t release that information to your contacts.

There’s lots of interesting language in this and there’s also a few things where they’ve covered their tracks well. They’ve asked you to pay in Bitcoin which can’t be traced, they also state that they have a special pixel in this email so that they know that you’ve read it, which can be done.

But all in all it’s a complete scam with one caveat. Your password is actually
publicly known. So, how does something like this happen? From time to time websites get hacked the bad guys are out there poking around at websites and sometimes they find a way in and as part of that they occasionally manage to steal a list of usernames and passwords. In this case, this has happened. These lists are often then put up on websites
or sold.

The long and the short of it is they do actually have your email address
and password (or at least “that” password). Hopefully, it’s not your only password. If you’ve watched Episode #012 where I talk about passwords and
LastPass and having different passwords for different websites.

Basically, it’s blackmail. It’s a scam but it’s a great identifier that that password is publicly known and needs to be changed. But there’s a way
you can check. If you go to haveIbeenpwned.com and there you can put in
your email address and it will tell you if that email address is linked to any
known password breaches.

Some enterprising villain has decided to pair the usernames and passwords found and attempt to blackmail you with them. There’s nothing to worry about from them specifically but it is important to change your password on any site that you’ve used that password on.

Basically you can delete and ignore that email but what you can’t ignore is the message that it’s sending, that you need to change your password. Be alert but not alarmed.

Thank you so much for watching The Tech Doctor. We’re here to help you get to know your computer, be comfortable using it and look after it yourself. We release new episodes every weekend, so please come back and subscribe.

Also if you have any questions for, us please leave them in the comments below.

Thank you so much for watching and have a great day

[Outtake] The word pwned comes from a computer game where somebody
accidentally mistyped the word “owned” it became a bit of an internet meme for being owned by someone else.

Do you have lots of notes all over the place? On sticky notes, in notebooks, scribbled on the back of envelopes or even on napkins? I have a solution that will keep all your notes in the one place, searchable and accessible from wherever you are.

Welcome to Evernote, my note-taking app of choice for the last dozen or so years. Evernote allows me to take notes of all types: text, photo, audio, video, even lists and store and arrange them safely so I can access them on my phone, iPad, work or Home laptop or even just by logging in to the Evernote Web page.

My account has over 22 hundred notes of various types from random thoughts to shopping lists, journal entries, business ideas, and business cards. Next month I’m going to a conference, my ticket with barcode is stored ready in Evernote. As the day draws nearer I’ll add my itinerary for traveling there to make sure I arrive on time.

Evernote is what is known as a freemuim service. There is a free version that does a good portion of what most people want, or, if you want a bit extra, or want to support the company that does such a great job, you can update to the Premium version. There are also business versions available to help with the sharing and collection of notes from multiple people.

To get started with Evernote, simply go to https://techdoctor.com.au/evernote. This link allows me to earn a small referral commision if you chose to purchase so that I can use the money to continue to grow and improve this channel.

Once you have created your account (you can even just use your Google login) you can download the software for Windows or Mac, iOS or Android. For instruction on installing, see episode 015 on Installing software. Evernote is, in fact, the software I used to demonstrate that episode.
Then once you sign in on whatever device, you can create your first note with the big plus button and type away.

Even before you do that, though, you might just want to read through the Welcome to Evernote note that is already created for you when you first log in. It gives you information on capturing ideas, Making To-do lists, Adding reminders, Creating tables, Organising your notes and Sharing your notes.

It also has a bunch of links for further information. There are also notes on The Wonder of Attachments and the joys of Web clipping, which allows you to save a web page for later reference.

This week we are talking about Computer Viruses, Spyware, Worms and Rootkits. All the nasty things that can get into your computer and make your life miserable. While all the different names do have specific meanings, the people who really care about those sort of things aren’t watching, So I’m going to bring all these different concepts together under the name of Malware, which is short for Malicious Software, and described on Wikipedia as any software intentionally designed to cause damage to a computer, server or computer network.

Not that we want to get Malware, but it is worth knowing how it can get on your computer because prevention is much better than cure. Malware exists for a couple of reasons, programmers showing off and to make money. There is a dark side to the internet, and there are people that are willing to do nasty things just to make a buck.

Most of the ways average people get exposed to malware is by stumbling into some of the darker areas, either by accident or looking for something like illegal software or movie downloads. It is also possible for legitimate sites to either be hacked or accidentally serve bad advertisements that can take you across to the dark side.

As I said, prevention is best, so I always recommend keeping up to date antivirus and antimalware software running on your PC. For Windows, I recommend Kaspersky Internet Security.

The main point of this video though is to introduce you to another great piece of software that acts both as a preventative and as a cleanup tool. That software is called Malwarebytes. If you aren’t ready to buy Malwarebytes straight away, there is a link at the bottom of that page to a 14-day free trial to get you started.

If you aren’t sure how to install the software, I have a video to help you with Installing.

Running it is as simple as double-clicking on the icon and clicking the “Scan now” button. It will check for and install the latest updates and begin to scan your computer. When it’s complete it will either give you the good news that your system is clean or provide you with a list of all the items it has found.

I simply always pick “Select all” and then “Clean”. The system will churn away for a while and either present you with a clean bill of health or request a reboot. If you are asked to reboot, I strongly encourage you to do another scan after the reboot. I’ve known a few cases where you have to peel off layers of malware on particularly badly infected systems.

Don’t you wish you could remember all the tabs you had open before the power went out, or windows updated and your computer restarted?

Someone came to me the other day needing help with a wireless issue. To fix the problem, the laptop really needed a restart, but the user was reluctant to restart as they were almost at the end of their Masters Thesis and they had several documents open and dozens and dozens of Chrome tabs open with various research topics. In the end we found another way to get wireless and she promised she would reboot it after she squared everything away on the weekend.

One tip that I was able to share with her was Chrome’s Bookmark all feature. Simply go to the hamburger menu, Bookmarks, Bookmark Open Pages. Chrome will give you a window asking you to create a folder for the bookmarks. I tend to call it the date and some sort of reference and then click Save.

In your bookmarks you will now have a new folder with that name and inside is all the tabs you have open in that window. tabs in other windows are not saved, so if you have multiple windows, you will need to bookmark them too. Really handy if you want to be sure you have all those resources.

It’s worth noting that Chrome will “usually” give you the option to restore all tabs if it is restarted, but it’s safer to be sure. I have noticed there can be some glitchyness with multiple Windows open, especially if there are multiple Chrome accounts with windows open.

So far on this channel, I have recommended two pieces of software: Google Chrome and LastPass, and I walked you through the process of Installing Chrome in some detail, but not so for LastPass. I have a lot more software to recommend, so I thought I’d step you through the process of installing software so you can be confident that you are doing it safely and properly.

There are several things to think about when you want to install some software. What do I want, where do I get it from, how do I install it?
Deciding what you want is a fairly obvious one, you might have seen a recommendation from this or another YouTube channel, you might have seen something on the TV, heard it on the radio or had it recommended by a friend. If you know exactly what you want you can often find it by going directly to the manufacturer’s website or googling the name of the product. Be aware though, not everything is always exactly as it seems. It is possible that nefarious groups or individuals can buy website domain names similar to or with subtle misspellings of actual product names.

Once you are sure that you have the correct page, you can buy, or if it’s a free program (as many of the ones _I_ recommend will be) download it to your computer. Downloading a program simply collects the required installation files from the seller’s website and puts them into the Downloads Folder of your computer. You will know from Episode 14  that you can find the Downloads folder by going to Windows Explorer, or you can usually find a link to the installer at the bottom of the chrome window that you used to start the download.

To install the program, simply double-click on the installer icon. The program will then likely step you through several different screens telling you about the program, asking you to accept the license agreement, asking where to install and possibly offering other software that can be installed at the same time. I urge you not to just keep clicking next, but at least get a quick understanding of what each screen is asking before you press next, and don’t feel pressured to accept an offer of a program just because it comes with another piece of software that you do want. Make your own decisions, don’t let others make it for you.

Many programs, once installed, will either start themselves automatically or place an icon for you on the desktop. If that’s not the case you will find it in the programs list in the start menu, and from there you can pin it to the start menu, or even the taskbar if it is something you use often.

That’s all there is to it, enjoy your new program!