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Issue #262: July 29, 2012
Q: We use Quicken for banking. Every time I close it, a new Quicken icon appears on my desktop. I must have about 50 now. When I double click one, it opens and says Quicken will back up this file and has a back up form with a blank for a selected program. How do I eliminate these and mainly stop Quicken from doing this?
– Reuben R.
Midland, Texas
A: In order to ensure the integrity of your data, Quicken periodically makes a backup of your data. It appears that you have selected the Windows Desktop as the location for Quicken to store its backup files. To change this, you’ll need to create or select a different folder of your choosing. Perhaps you could create a “Quicken Backups” folder under the “My Documents” folder that’s exclusively for this purpose. That way, the Quicken backup files won’t get mixed-in with any of your other files. To create the folder, open a File Explorer window either by double-clicking “My Computer” or using the Geeky shortcut WinKey+E. Navigate to the location where you’d like to create the new folder, then in the menu bar, click “File”, then select the “New” slide-off, and click “Folder”. Windows will create a new folder, appropriately named, New Folder, with the name handily selected so all you have to do is start typing whatever name you want. If you accidentally unselect the text, you can restart the renaming process by right-clicking on the folder and selecting “Rename” from the context menu. Once you have a new location in mind, go to your Quicken configuration, and under Backups, select the new directory location. You should not see any new files appear on your desktop.
TIP OF THE WEEK – Compromised E-mails: It might just be my perception, but an old problem seems to be rearing its ugly head again. In the last few weeks I’ve received e-mails from several trusted acquaintances that have an innocent-looking subject line that says something like “Check this out!” or “You have GOT to see this”. The phrases are generic enough that one generally couldn’t tell just from that whether it would have been written by the person whose address is in the “From” line of the mail. The body of the e-mail generally contains nothing but a single hyperlink, implying that the recipient should click the link, because it’s something the sender thinks is cool or interesting. There are a couple of big problems here. First problem: the purported sender did not send the e-mail. Second problem: the hyperlink is will take you to a website that will attempt to infect your computer with some form of spyware, adware, virus, or other stuff that you just don’t want on your computer. There are no outward signs that these are malicious e-mails, making this an easy vector for the delivery of malware to unsuspecting computer users.
When you hear me say “Don’t click on links in e-mails” these are exactly what I’m talking about. In almost every case like this, the problem is caused by “the sender’s” e-mail password getting compromised. As long as the password continues to work, the people in the sender’s contact list will probably continue to get these SPAM e-mails that appear to come from the sender, even though the sender did not send them. If this happens to you, the majority of the time you won’t even know that your account is sending these e-mails unless one of the recipients is nice enough to write back to you and tell you. When that happens, the very first thing you should do is change your e-mail password, then run a complete virus check on your computer. If you are one of the many people who use the same password for everything (a very poor security practice) you should consider changing all your passwords, and this time, choose a different password for each site for maximum security.
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