Southern Illinois IT Professionals

Today we embark on a very exciting now format/program for SIIT. In the coming months we plan on releasing videos and new blog entries focusing on the recycling of old, used and broken tech items. We will show you how to take an item mean’t for one purpose and use it for another. Stay tuned for more info.

A couple of weeks ago, while sitting in wireless class, I made a comment that
generalized how I didn’t feel connected to many in my class because I don’t
yearn to rush home and work on computers. I need to define that the work I am
talking about would be any task associated with computers outside the scope of
your main income producing job. However, I do recognize the second income
potential of a home based computer/network shop and will not include this in
my discussion. What I AM talking about is the countless hours spent at the
computer at home after having spent 8 hours at a computer at work. This would
include all the tweaking, upgrading, and yes, even gaming. (more…)

Southern Illinois IT Professionals is now accepting contributors to submit articles. It has always been our goal to make this site as interactive as possible for the IT professionals in the Southern Illinois area and beyond. If you would like to contribute articles to this site you can. All we ask is that you keep the subjects of the articles as pertaining to the IT and Tech Industry. To start just click the login/register link above, when you are approved by the Administrator you may start posting articles.

Has this ever happened to you? It’s 3am and you just got home from the bar, and you had a little too much to drink. The reason you were out drowning your sorrows was that you didn’t have a very good day at work. Something there just rubbed you the wrong way and really ticked you off. For sake of argument let‘s say your boss is making you work overtime every night this week. As you order beer after beer you start thinking about how nice it would be to just give him a piece of your mind. By the time you get home you’re livid and go directly to your computer and compose an email that would set the record straight (at least in your mind you think it would). You click send and stagger into your room and pass out. You wake up the next day, completely oblivious to what happened the night before, and go to work. When you arrive there is a note for you saying that the boss would like to speak to you. Then it hits you, OH NO WHAT HAVE I DONE!!! If you would have only known about Mail Goggles, a new feature to Google mail your job would still be safe.

Just go to your Gmail account and click on settings and then the ‘Labs” tab. Go check it out, it might sound a bit funny but it could possibly have some practical use.

First: Always Run Behind a Router
Routers come with a hardware firewall, and when configured properly they can be 10 times better than a software firewall. Not only does a router give you added protection in the form of a firewall, it also give you room to expand should you ever want to add another computer creating your own home network. Also if you ever plan on using wireless devices it would be smart to purchase a wireless router at this time.

Second: Use a Good DNS
About a couple months ago there was an announcement about some holes in DNS making it susceptible to DNS poisoning. DNS poisoning is basically changing the association that a domain has with its proper IP address. A hacker could go into a DNS and change the destination of a website. For instance if you typed in http://www.myspace.com it would actually take you to a page that looked like MySpace but is actually a phishing site that would record your login name and password. Not a good thing. Most importantly, some of the major internet providers like ComCast had not made the appropriate changes to their DNS servers a month after the news was made public. As of the time of this article I am not aware if the correct changes have been made to the ComCast DNS servers. I suggest using www.opendns.com , OpenDNS was one of the first DNS providers to secure their servers, and for the home user it’s free.

Third: Stop Clicking on Every Link You See
When receiving emails from someone you don’t know delete it immediately and never ever click on a link inside of that email or open an attachment in an email. If you receive an email from someone that you do (more…)

Earlier this week I received a phone call from a friend of mine in Chicago who was having trouble with his computer. My friend, who shall remain nameless, was visiting websites that he shouldn’t be if he wants to maintain a healthy computer. Yes, that’s right, it was porn. It seems that while on a particular site he received a popup. This popup looked like it had originated from his antivirus program. It told him that his computer was infected with countless viruses and malware applications. It instructed him to run a scan of his system from that popup. Had he read it a bit more carefully he would have realized that it also asked him to pay a fee. That alone should have thrown a red flag. When he finally realized what he had done he panicked and turned off his computer. Now, when he started his computer back up it was stuck in an endless boot loop. That’s when he decided to call me. He said, “I think I’ve just done something I shouldn’t have.” He then proceeded to tell me the story of what happened. I couldn’t help but laugh, not into the phone mind you, I laughed to myself inside. Since it wouldn’t let him boot into safe mode we had to do a recovery of his operating system (XP). I got him all sorted out with his drivers and everything, scolded him a bit and told him not to go back to those sites anymore. He reluctantly agreed and ended the phone call. A few days went by and I received another call from him. I think I did it again he said and quoted a particular porn site and told me never to go there. This time he couldn’t get rid of a virus scan popup, very similar to the one he had earlier in the week. I directed him to his task manager (more…)

Thank you for joining us. It is our goal here at Southern Illinois IT Professionals to provide a forum for IT professionals in Southern Illinois and the surrounding area as well as Alumni from the area colleges and universities. In this forum we can seek help or provide help for our colleagues in the area as a learning tool and to help us tune our skills to make us better at our jobs. We can get to know each other, make friends, and obtain valuable job contacts that could help us grow in our careers. -SIITPros