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The CrowdStrike Outage

Anyone who was out shopping or trying to catch a plane last Friday afternoon (the 19th of July), will know that a serious and widespread computing outage was wreaking havoc on all kinds of services. The CrowdStrike Outage, named after the company responsible, is being called the biggest outage in IT history. Surprisingly, it was not caused by a coordinated attack as was initially feared, but by a bad update, which appears to have slipped through without being tested. CrowdStrike has a secur...

A New Email Address??

No one wants to move to a new email address. It's about as painful as moving to a new house, but just like a new house, sometimes, an upgrade is in order. Recently we've had quite a lot of clients whose email is hosted with a particular provider, who have been thinking about moving. I'm going to allow this provider to remain nameless for this article, but it's been historically very popular in NZ, and has now decided to charge users a monthly fee to continue to use email through them. We ha...

Spark Scam

This week we've been altered to a scam purporting to be from Spark regarding Xtra webmail. You'll see I've entered a placeholder email address into the picture of it above to protect the identity of the person who sent it to us, but they actually do have an Xtra email address, making this phishing email particularly convincing. It also had a few genuine Spark links at the bottom of the email; all in all, it was a high-quality phishing email which, I imagine, many recipients might have fallen for...

Dual Monitors Stands on Sale

We have a sale on this month for dual monitor stands (stands only). The model is the AOC AM420. They have a clamp attachment to your desk and are suitable for monitors with vesa mounts 100x100mm or 75x75mm (most standard monitors have these). They will take monitors from 17" to 34" (your monitors are probably 24"; monitor size is measured diagonally across the screen). Our Price: $120Notes:Price includes GSTSale price available until the end of July, while stocks lastRRP for this model is $...

Free Bluetooth Mouse with New HP Laptop

Here at Green Mouse we've accidentally purchased some high-end Bluetooth mice, so we've decided to give them away for free when you buy one of our HP ProBook Laptops, which are also on sale. Here are the details:HP ProBook 455 G10AMD Ryzen R5-7530U CPU16GB RAM512GB SSDWindows 11 Pro15.6" Screen1 Year WarrantyPlus a free bluetooth mouse with each laptop purchased (while stocks last). Price: $1670 including GSTPrice is for the laptop (and mouse) only. While stocks last....

How to Spot a Scam Email

Requests for Login Details or Personal DetailsScammers are very keen to get hold of your personal details, especially login details for your internet banking or your Microsoft 365 login details so they can delete your data and ransom it back to you.Generic GreetingsScammers are often sending out thousands of these emails at a time so they don’t know or care to use your name. A real company would certainly do so.Spelling and Grammatical ErrorsThese emails often originate in non-English speaking...

DKIM, DMARC & SPF - How Google Plans to Secure Email

In response to the never-ending barrage of spam and phishing emails, Google plans to implement arguably extreme measures to ensure the emails received by Gmail inboxes are from who they say they're from. Here's what all these acronyms stand for:DMARC (Domain-based Message Authentication, Reporting & Conformance)SPF (Sender Policy Framework)DKIM (Domain Keys Identified Mail)As you might have guessed from these terms, the plan (in broad strokes) is to insist that emails hav...

Holiday Hours

Here are our opening hours over Christmas and New Years:We will close at mid-day on the 22nd of December and reopen at 8:30am on the 15th of January. For any urgent jobs please ring and leave a message. Kerrin will monitor the messages over the shutdown period: 07 827 7119...

How to Choose Your New Computer

Buying a new computer can be quite an investment. It's not something most people do often and it's chock-full of technical jargon. Here at Green Mouse we have minimum standards for the computers that we're prepared to sell and whether you want to buy from us or someone else, we're always happy to discuss the specifications of a prospective purchase. There are several reasons for this:We want you to have a good experience with your new computer. We can upgrade certain components to improve t...

FaceBook Messenger Scam

Over the long weekend I received a message via Facebook Messenger which was initially quite worrying, especially since I run the Facebook page for Green Mouse Computing and produce content for that page. It also turned up on my phone, which is unusual for scams, but of course I could have accessed Facebook Messenger on either my phone or my computer. I've pasted most of the text in the picture above - it was trying to suggest that I'd breached copyright somehow and the FaceBook team were ab...

Monitors on Special

We have an over-stock of these great monitors and we're running out of space so they're going on sale!Here are the specs:24" screenFull HD 1920x1080HDMI or VGA inputVesa Mount 100mmBlue Light shieldFlickerless Technology2 x 2W speakersHDMI cable included3 year warrantyPrice: $265 including GSTDown from the RRP of $29924" is a standard size monitor and with HDMI and VGA, it's compatible with most computers. Available while stocks last....

Scams, scams and more scams

On a single day this week we've had multiple clients successfully scammed via the standard phone scammers. People are getting phone calls from scammers claiming to be from legitimate companies such as Microsoft, who say that their computer has already been targeted or infected, and who offer to solve this problem. Another client clicked on a link on FaceBook and a pop-up appeared on the screen saying that infection had already occurred - in this case she called the number in the pop-up. Someone ...

New Norton Scam

Today we (and some of our clients) have received a new Norton scam email which I thought was quite clever and so worth bringing to your attention. It appears to work like this:You receive this email which suggests that you have purchased Norton Anti-virus when you didn't intend to. Maybe you're supposed to think that you've already fallen victim to a scam, or maybe they want to you remember buying Norton at some point and think that the subscription is still active. Both of these scenarios are f...

How to Set Up Password Recovery

Three global trends of the recent past have come together to make password recovery one of the best preventative steps you can take to avoid serious disruption to your life:The move to email communication and online access for almost every administrative function that people carry out in their day to day lives. The ramping up of security by the large, multi-national companies that facilitate these processes.The loss of direct customer service by the above companies. I recommend an annu...

Passwords and Parents

We have seen a few cases recently in which a parent or elderly family member has passed away, or just lost access to their various accounts and passwords, and their adult children or other family members have been unable to retrieve access to these accounts. I have written at length before about how difficult it can be to recover passwords for accounts belonging to large multi-national companies whose focus is on security, and not on customer service. Has anyone tried to directly contact Go...

Specific MS365 Phishing Email

Last week several of our clients who use Microsoft 365 received the same, very particular phishing email from the same sender - vanessa@alfosomoraleslaw.com. Of course our advice was to immediately delete it. The red flags are the usual: urgency, poor grammar; this one didn't even bother to get the Microsoft logo right. I haven't included the original link here for obvious reasons but when I hovered over it the destination was quite clearly not Microsoft. It was mostly nonsense, but it did inclu...

QR Code Scam Emails

The race is still on between scammers and email applications to produce/ protect from new technology for scams emails. Recently scammers have come up with an alarmingly clever new idea - QR codes. Spam filters rely, at least in part, on the text of an email to determine whether it is legitimate or part of a scam.So phishing emails, as I've discussed before, tend to have spelling or grammatical errors, employ urgency or threats, come from weird or incomprehensible sender addresses, contain links ...

Storage Space - Local vs Cloud

We have been noticing a bit of a trend lately relating to how people use and store files on their laptops and in the Cloud. Several years ago we all started using the Cloud (OneDrive, Google Drive, Dropbox etc) to sync and store our files which was a wonderful improvement in storage space and security. There was just so much space in the Cloud, for example if you have a MS365 license and OneDrive you get a full TB of space. This was much more than our computers typically had so we all started us...

Outlook.com for Email

Now I know that most of you will immediately balk at this idea, but I'm going to set out a case for change, for anyone using a free email account hosted by their ISP (Internet Service Provider, such as Spark, Slingshot etc). The most common example we see are email addresses ending in xtra.co.nz. They are likely either using POP3 or IMAP and this technology has been superseded.We recommend upgrading to a new Outlook.com account, here's why:Reliability – ISP Hosted mail servers suffer from outa...

Microsoft 365 Scam Alert

A few of our clients and Kerrin have received this in an email recently. It's a scam. It looks quite convincing though, I imagine it's been fairly successful as scams go. They have the office logo correct, but it is old. Microsoft is not using 'Office 365' anymore; they're now calling it Microsoft 365. But hopefully the biggest giveaway that this is a scam is that it has come through in an email. This is not how your Microsoft 365 system will operate. If you need to enter your password the notif...

Christmas Hours

Here at Green Mouse we would like to thank our excellent clients for another great year.  It's been a big year of change for us - Josh has left us for another position and we've moved into our very nice new office at 16 Dick Street. This has put us back into the same building as the Saasam team again and it's been great to catch up with them. This year we will close for the holidays on the 23rd of December at midday and will open again on the 16th of January at 8:30am. If you need your comp...

Passwords!!

Imagine your computer suddenly dies, or your laptop and phone and tablet all get stolen from your car - will you be able to get back into your various accounts? As companies strive to improve their (and your) security, passwords are becoming ever more important but also, more numerous and more difficult to recover. It seems like every company wants you to have your own account with a password, and they all have their own requirements: capital letters, unusual characters, and numbers may all be r...

2-Step Verification for Gmail

If you have a Gmail email account, you may recently have received an email about 2-step verification (2SV). It's the same thing as the multifactor authentication (MFA) that Microsoft talks about, and it's designed to solve the biggest remaining source of risk for your account security - human error.  Both Microsoft and Google have extremely good security these days. By far the most common and effective method for scammers to get hold of login details is by asking users for them via scams an...

We have Moved!

Green Mouse is happy to announce our amalgamation with our sister company SaaSam Group Ltd. The two companies have always maintained close ties; moving forward, Green Mouse will fall under the SaaSam Group umbrella - enabling us to work even more closely together and utilise our combined strengths and natural synergies.   SaaSam is locally owned, with offices in Cambridge, Australia and the UK. Saasam provides Cloud based solutions to small to large enterprises. Also a Microsoft partne...

Josh Leaving Green Mouse

Today is Josh's last day at Green Mouse Computing. He has secured a position in the IT support team in a large national company in Morrinsville; we wish him the best of luck in this exciting new role.Here at Green Mouse we would like to extend our warm thanks to Josh for all of his work over the years. He has been a valuable member of the team and we've enjoyed his lighthearted presence here in the office. We know that Josh will be missed by his regular clients but him and Simon have worked...