iTunes accounts have been hacked!

 

 

 

Over the course of weekend it was discovered that a rogue iTunes application developer had managed to hack into Apple App Store. This person then used the existing iTunes accounts to purchase his own app so that the ratings of his app would top the App Store charts!

However now it has been discovered that there are more than one such rogue developers who have managed to successfully break into Apple's App store and have hacked a number of iTunes accounts all across the globe! Further the accounts which were hacked have reported anywhere between $100-$140 spent using their accounts. Not only this but the hacked accounts were also used to purchase "free apps" in order to boost the app's ratings to sell the app's premium versions.

What can you do

Here is a small list of actions you can take immediately

• Check your iTunes accounts for purchases. If there is anything that you didn't purchase, your account has most probably being compromised. We recommend that you get in touch with Apple immediately. Click here to go to their support page.
• Change your iTunes account's password. It would also be best to change any security related information that you have associated with the account. As additional security measure we would also recommend changing the passwords/security information of the email account you have associated with iTunes account.
• If you are not planning to use iTunes for purchases in the near future we will also suggest to remove your card information that is associated with your iTunes account. One alternative for iTunes purchases is to use gift cards.

 

Should you need further advice or information please do leave a comment here or alternatively get in touch with us by emailing us at help@BritishPcRepairs.co.uk or by visiting http://BritishPcRepairs.co.uk/ContactUs.aspx

 

 

Here is a light take on iPads..enjoy! Of course you can always email us on fixit@BritishPcRepairs.co.uk or send us a message by clicking here

 

 

courtsey http://www.bbspot.com/

Published by Nik

O2 enters the Home Phone market

 

 

O2 has very recently entered the Home Phone market. The line rental starts with only £9.45 a month but you have to take their broadband to take their home phone services. However with their broadband prices starting from just £7.50 a month (for O2 subscribers) it could easily turn out to be the cheapest and the best (read further) deal on the market!

The concept of O2's home phone is pretty much the same as Sky home phone or Talk Talk. You need an active working BT line before you can switch over to O2. Notice the emphasis on the word "active" here. If you do have a BT phone line but you got that disconnected then you need to get that activated by BT before you can sign up for O2 Home Phone. However if you get BT to activate the phone line for you then BT will tie you in a 12 month contract (at least) which mean you can not go with O2 for at least 12 month. Talk about dog chasing it's own tail..doh!

Having said that we at British PC Repairs are big fans of O2 as a company. Over a number of years we have found their customer care to be excellent and undoutebly the best in the business. Their services are not just excellent value for money but they are one of the rare companies who deiver what they promise.

More details about O2's home phone here

If you need any suggestion picking up the right broadband provider for your needs please leave a comment here or email us on fixit@BritishPcRepairs.co.uk

 

 

It has been wildly reported that a botched update by one of the leading anti viruses "McAfee" is causing Windows XP based machines to shut down and eventually crash!

 

This latest update causes McAfee anti virus to falsly detect the presence of a virus. This false detection then triggers a chain of uncontrolled events which eventually lead to some crticial Windows XP files being deleted from the user's computers.

 

If you or someone you know have suddenly experienced loss of network functionality or black screen or a total system crash on their PC we urge you to please contact us "as soon as possible" to prevent more damage to your computer. We can help you save your important data and rebuild your PC to a working condition. YOu can contact us by clicking here or send us an email at fixit@BritishPCRepairs.co.uk. Alternatively you can call us on 01372 890 123.

 

Update: If you are running McAfee on your computer and haven't seen this problem yet, please do not turn off your computer!! Keep checking this blog for more updates!

An example is if you download a file from the internet using a product such as Limewire (this is peer-2-peer software) you are technically making a copy from another users laptop or PC. Unless you are paying the copyright holder the fee, you ARE essentially steeling it.

If someone uploads that file from your laptop, they are making a copy themselves but you are providing them the file and again this is illegal. This is the case with most digital media (games, Films, Music, software). So you might be thinking if I save a radio station streaming music, I am making a copy and not paying the copyright holder and so breaking the law. The answer is yes and no.

This area could be covered by “time-shifting provisions of the copyright Act, as long as the copy is made within domestic premises, for private use and solely for the purpose of enabling it to be listened to at a more convenient time”. In just this example you can see copyright and file sharing is not a black and white case more black, white, grey, silver and a million other shades of grey.

You might have just downloaded an album from a file-sharing site on to your laptop which you have purchased from a shop that day,  that must be ok, I’ve just paid the copyright fee. I’m afraid not, in the eyes of the law you are making another copy of the album on your laptop hard drive. On the other hand if you “rip” a CD or DVD on to your iPod this is technica lly called “format shifting”. This is a very grey area U K law, although it is an infringement it is unlikely you will be prosecuted for it. The UK government are currently looking at making th is a legal practice.

Protecting yourself against copied music

Windows only: Free application PeerBlock is a fork of Peer Guardian 2, the popular application designed to protect your privacy when downloading, updating the two-year-old application with various bug fixes and improvements.

PeerBlock looks and acts almost exactly like PG2, namely because it is essentially PG2 with those bug fixes added. As such, after installing PeerBlock you should be able to follow our previous guide to using Peer Guardian 2 to get the app running and protecting your downloading privacy from prying eyes.

For the complete article Click here

 

In this day and age when you don't really need a laptop or a computer to get onto to the internet which applications are then better at others in their league?

One of our favourite blogs recently conducted a review of the top 5 music streaming services available today. We at British PC Repairs think that the article is absolutely brilliant and will be of immense use to all the music lovers out there.

 

The top 5 services are

 

1. Grooveshark

2. Spotify

3. Pandora

4. Last.fm

5. Lala

 

You can read the full article here

If you have ever wondered why your laptop is starting run slowly, have low disk space or generally becoming unstable it could be a hardware problem (i.e. laptop motherboard, CPU, memory, hard drive etc) or software. Over time files collect on your laptop which are not required and can cause some of the symptoms which may require you having your laptop to be repaired. You might have to seek advice from a laptop engineer.

A possible start to repairing your laptop is with a free piece of software called CClearner

“CCleaner is a freeware system optimization, privacy and cleaning tool. It removes unused files from your system - allowing Windows to run faster and freeing up valuable hard disk space” and has been downloaded “375 million times” * (quotation and statics from www.ccleaner.com)

Below you will find a step by step guide to installing  CClearner on your laptop, notebook,  netbook or other Windows XP based computer.

Download CClearner from http://www.filehippo.com/download_ccleaner/
1)    Click on the link at the top right hand side of the web page to download Cclearner (A green button “Download Latest Version”)

 

When you click on the “Download Latest Version” button a new page will be displayed and CClearner will automatically start downloading.

 

Depending on your browser settings (in this tutorial we are using IE 7.0) the download might be blocked and a message will be displayed saying  “To help protect you security internet explorer blocked this site from downloading files to your computer, Click here for options”

 

 

Left click on any part of this message and a popup menu will be displayed.

 

 

Click on Download File and you will be prompted with 3 Options, 1) Run, 2) Save, 3) Cancel.

 

Click on Save

 

Select a location to save the Cclearner file in then click on Save.  The file will start to download and a progress bar will be displayed

 

 

(Progress bar displaying how long CClearner will take to download to your laptop)
Once the file has downloaded you will either need to browse to the directory where you saved the Cclearner setup file or Click on open

If you have browsed to the file double click on it to start the installation

 

(Location of CClearner installation file on your laptops hard drive)
If you have either double clicked on the installation file (ccsetup228 with this example but the file name might change)  an “Open file - security warning” will be displayed, click on the “run” button, this will start the installation wizard.

 

The 1st question is to select your language, Click “OK” if this is the correct setting.

Click on Ok

Click on Next

It is important you read the licence agreement, if you agree to these then click "i agree"

 

You can change the installation options but in this guide I will leave it as the default.
Click on “Install”.  Cclearner will start to install and is nearly ready to be used on your laptop

 

 

Once the installation has completed successfully you can run it on your laptop.

This program is usually $19.95 but today it is complete Free courtsey of GiveAwayOfTheDay! You can download this program here

 

SoftChronizer is a very easy to use, fast and versatile double-file search program, that was designed to help you keeping your private or corporate book, music or picture collection in order, as well as for other use cases.

SoftChronizer can reliably search for any type of duplicate file in a single hard drive directory (with subdirectories), or simultaneously in different folders on different drives.

SoftChronizer displays MP3-ID3-Tags (displays the bit rate, i.e. a statement about the quality of the music, as well as the duration of a track in minutes and track’s album-name of a song), as well as for images, their size in pixels and their color-depth! – So if you see several duplicate files, you quickly can decide which picture, or which MP3 file you want to keep, or not.

 

 

Brought to you by British Pc Repairs. Your local friendly experts in laptop repairs

 

Folks at one of our favorite blog "Lifehacker" have shared this excellent tip that can radically change your online shopping experience. This is a new internet based service called "Q-Compare" which lets you compare E-Bay prices for an item against Amazon prices! With few clicks you can find out whether a particular item is cheaper at Ebay or Amazon! What's more this app unlike Google search results only lists current and active ebay auctions. Thus no stale results and no dissappointments!

 

Take Q-Compare for a ride by clicking here

 

Brought to you by British PC Repairs..Your friendly one stop shop for all laptop and computer related queries

Here is a great free app for your iPhone which tells you just how safe your neighbourhood is. This app will tell you what percentage of people in your neighbourhood have had ASBOs issued to them and also how does your neighbourhood compare to the rest of the country!

 

More details on the app here

 

Download the app here