As we have discussed here in the past AVG Antivirus is an excellent and free Anti Virus program. In fact because of the price (did I mention free!) and the small footprint (AVG doesn’t eat up much system resources and memory) it is one of the most popular AV programs around.

I have read recently (in the Windows Secrets newsletter) that the AVG can make a mess of some emails you receive. You see AVG has an email scanner built in – which is good. It checks emails and attachments for nasties like a virus or trojan when you send and receive an email. Great!

By default though what it also does is to add a little ‘certification’ to the bottom of each email to attest to the fact that it has been scanned. A few years ago this was pretty common practice for AV programs but it is rarely seen today. Here’s an example of what it puts on:

No virus found in this incoming message.
Checked by AVG - http://www.avg.com 
Version: 8.0.138 / Virus Database: 270.5.0/1556 - Release Date: 7/16/2008 4:56 PM

Frankly I find this pretty annoying but other people may like it, who knows?

Anyway it seems the adding of this text to emails you receive (and maybe send too) can garble the HTML code and mess up the email, even to the point it is unreadable.

But never fear I have a solution. From Windows Secrets:

To disable e-mail certification in AVG, click Tools, Advanced settings, choose E-mail Scanner on the left side of the window, and disable Certify e-mail for incoming messages. The steps are described in the AVG FAQ (scroll down the page to number 1376).

 

You may also want to disable “certify email for outgoing messages” too.

Please note – this does not turn off virus scanning of emails, it just turns off the last step of putting the certification on the bottom of each message.

So if you find some messages are coming in a little strange or, like me, you don’t want the little note on all your messages then just follow the steps to remove the certification. Easy!

If you go to this page you (click the image) you can download a free internet security suite suite.

 

The offer is made thanks to Westpac Bank and you don’t need to prove you are their customer to download. I have taken advantage of a similar offer from ANZ in the past.

The banks take the attitude that if they can help you stay safe on the net then you are less likely to have your password stolen and your bank account details misused. A cynic might say that by offering this free they are giving themselves an escape clause when a customer sues and says their site doesn’t offer enough protection

Anyway what you get is a free 12 months license for PC Tools Internet Security Suite which includes:
1. Spyware Doctor with Antivirus 6 for Windows
2. Privacy Guardian 4.1 for Windows
3. PC Tools Firewall Plus for Windows

I have not personally used any of these programs so I cannot recommend them one way or the other. But at this price they may be worth a trial

Looks like common sense has won out in the eBay drama we discussed at our last meeting. Alternate payment methods like Bank Deposit and COD will still be allowed on eBay Australia. Every auction must include PayPal but can include the other methods too.

This makes sense to me. PayPal is a useful and convenient way to buy stuff all over the internet. A lot of stores allow or even encourage PayPal. And using PayPal on eBay gives you some level of buyer protection too. I just think that it shouldn’t be restricted to PayPal only. What if I find something locally I want to buy and go round to pick it up - I want to pay cash not have to do it all online.

The outcome achieved here is the best for buyers and sellers alike. Sellers can still nominate PayPal as their only allowed payment method if they want to and buyers can use PayPal to pay if they choose to. But there is no monopolisation of the process to feed eBay revenues.

I don’t believe for a moment that eBay changed their mind '”to end confusion” or because of the complaints of users. They were prepared to bully buyers and sellers however they want. It was the ACCC forcing their hand that sorted it out.

So strike up a win for our tax dollars at work – you don’t say that every day do you!

eBay Australia ditches controversial payment policy.

Giving in to unrelenting pressure from sellers and the competition regulator, eBay Australia has officially called off its effort to force members to use its PayPal subsidiary for transactions on its e-commerce site.

The announcement came a week after eBay said it would postpone enacting the policy until the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC) had its final say.

"eBay has withdrawn its notification to the [ACCC] about removing other payment methods. Instead eBay will continue to allow all existing payment methods on eBay.com.au," the statement reads. "We have decided to withdraw the notification to stop any further confusion and disruption among the eBay Community."

eBay said it will continue to look for ways to foster a safer online environment for its users, but will do that "while still offering a variety of payment choices."

Sellers on eBay.com.au are still required to offer PayPal as at least one payment option, a requirement that took effect in May. Associated changes to PayPal Seller Protection and increased PayPal Buyer Protection remain in place.

Auctiva Article link

I swiped this post from Jeff Alexander’s blog. Jeff is married to my cousin and is a top bloke. He works for Microsoft and this is a post about the new Windows search software. As I mentioned at our last meeting I have found the upgrade to version 4 has noticeably sped up my Vista machine. If you use Vista then you should definitely download this update.

One of the great features of Windows Vista is it’s integrated search engine which allows you to find all those bits and bytes on your computer.  But in the last week I found this interesting little tidbit.  Windows Search 4.0 was quietly released for free download for Windows Vista, Windows XP, Windows Server 2008 and Windows Server 2003.  This one kind of came under the radar a bit so I thought I would give it a go and install.  Well to my surprise my machine seems to be faster!  And of course search is a whole lot faster.  But in a nutshell this is what the new version has to offer.

• Improvements in performance and stability of the indexer
• Fuller complement of Group Policy settings, available on all supported operating systems
• Fast sorting and grouping of results in Windows Explorer
• Indexing improvements in online e-mail
• Ability to index delegate mailboxes for online e-mail
• Support for indexing (local file system) encrypted documents
• Expanded ability to perform fast remote queries of file shares, including those on Windows XP and Windows Server 2003. This includes automatic indexing of shared folders.
• Item previews in Windows Explorer for Windows XP

So this is one of those things that kind of sits under the covers quietly plugging away but it’s nice to see the search team has made such an improvement.

Check out the download today!  I’ve put it on all my machines!

As promised last week here is a link to download the article I compiled on eBay

Click here to download the file

It includes

• General details on eBay and it’s origin
• General details on PayPal
• A description of how they both work
• A schedule of fees and charges from eBay and PayPal
• Articles discussing the current ‘discussions’ between eBay and the ACCC over eBay’s intention to limit the method for auction payments to only be through PayPal
• Tips for buyers using eBay including discussion of bidding strategies and a link to an Auction Sniping tool, and
• Tips for sellers including details on using Auctiva to create and promote your sales on eBay

Some of this is my own work and opinions but some is from other sites – please refer to the links for more information and details of the original authors

I plan to expand on the buying and selling tips again in future and will post this as a separate item here on the blog. So look out for updated details sometime soon.

But for now I hope you find this useful

Details found care of Gizmo’s TechSupportAlert.com newsletter

Subscriber Richard Dent writes " Gizmo, here's a website that your subscribers might find useful. It allows anyone to send an email from any "From:" address without registering or logging on."
http://send.arrowmail.co.uk

This could be very useful if you were away from your home computer and wanted to send an email ‘from’ your own address and didn’t have access to your own email. Gmail users have the ability to send from multiple accounts from within Gmail itself although in my experience the email still arrives as being From: ’Other Address’ via ‘Gmail Address’ which is not so useful if you were trying not to show your Gmail address. Anyway – this site may be of use to some.

Have you ever lost a user manual or instructions for an item? Of course you have – I know I have!

It could be a TV or a DVD player, a food processor, an air conditioner or some other complicated piece of equipment. Or maybe you bought it second hand and the booklet didn’t come with it. And the frustration mounts!

There are a number of places on the web you can look for a copy of the user manual. An educated Google search can often turn one up and of course try the manufacturers own site too. But there are also some places on the net that accumulate the manuals for you and one of these is SafeManuals.com. Apparently they have over 800,000 guides saved and growing.

I have included their search function in this post – click the buttons below and give it a try. You might just find something you are missing!

As discussed in the past I highly recommend Mozilla Firefox as the browser of choice. It has so many features over the standard Internet Explorer browser in windows to make it more secure plus countless extensions which make it more useable. I find the user interface – toolbars, etc – awkward on IE 7 after they updated and I don’t like using it. Firefox just makes more ‘sense’ to me plus has all the bonuses too

If you aren’t using Firefox yet then now is the time to switch. It has just updated to version 3 which is faster, slicker and just generally awesome. If you are using but haven’t updated yet then hop to it – you will be surprised how great the new version is

I participated in the ‘Download day’ for Firefox and helped set a new world record for downloads. Here’s my certificate :)

So give Firefox a whirl – you won’t be sorry :)