How to stay safe shopping online this holiday season? Stay away from fake websites

Photo by Nataliya Vaitkevich on Pexels.com

Since I started shopping online, I have noticed that scams have been increasing more than before. There have been so many hackers attacking websites, stealing data, sending social engineering emails which trick you. There are so many threats to keep track of in this age; the average citizen has no clue as to what to focus their energy on to keep the money in their wallets.

The sliest trick: The Fake Website Email or Message

In the early days of the internet, most hackers tended to focus on the inexperience of the users. As users got more comfortable with using the internet, they became even more cunning, attempting to weaponize what they saw as their home in cyberspace.

The culture we have now in cyberspace is under attack from all sides. We have outages happening more often than even in the 1990s. These outages are occurring almost every month, affecting economies.

The hackers and scammers are damaging the economy to gain an advantage. You should be steely prepared for scams throughout the holiday season.

The most important scam you be aware of is this one: the fake website.

The fake website is very common scam that hackers use but it is probably one of the most insidious out there and I have even come close to falling for it, almost giving a hacker some of the money in my bank account here.

The main aspect you need to consider is to look at the address in the email or message sent to you here.

You must check the address carefully. If the address is saying that it is from the official site and has the “.com” in it, then it should be a legitimate email or message.

However, if the address looks really strange and not like an official address, you should not be clicking any links in the message. Generally speaking, the strangeness is that address has not form or structure in here.

You should also watch for the emails that aim to copy the style of the website. Some of the details are not authentic to the actual website.

Check your original website emails and then compare them to these emails. If they look sketchy, then they are.

With these steps, you will be able to stay safe this holiday season.

Google’s Preferred Sources feature goes live: Is it the change the search engine needs?

Google has launched a change on their search engine which will change the way in which you interact with the news.

Google choose your preferred sources.

Google now allows you to choose your preferred sources. According to Android Authority, this is a response to the AI spam sites that have been clogging up the news feeds on Google.

Is this better?

I believe that Google should have put such a feature many years ago on their site. The inability to filter out specific websites without using advanced search shows that they were just riding on advertising revenue. They did not care to actually improve the search engine and were just making patches here and there just to keep people content.

There are many problems with Google News even with the changes. For many years, Google has not even bothered to curate. Many times I will come across a site which has a paywall preventing me from even reading it.

Another issue is that the quality of the writing is much worse than what you will see on social media. Google’s inability to integrate with social media is going to bite them in the back here.

It’s a pretty small change which will have a big impact. However, they will need to do more to get the search engine back on track and more reliable.

Seven Helpful tips on How to Stream GeForce Now on Twitch

Oblivion Remastered Cloud Ruler Temple with the Blades

Oblivion Remastered is an excellent remake of the original game. When it comes to streaming from cloud gaming services, that is another story.

Cloud gaming has been around for some time now and is still struggling to some extent. It still cannot replace the smoothness of having your own computer playing a game from hard drives or solid state drives.

GeForce Now when playing Oblivion Remastered is clearly a mixed bag. The main issue is streaming the stream of video game. This puts more strain on the internet connection. The issue is once again using a Wi-Fi connection instead of Ethernet. I highly recommend using an Ethernet connection instead of using wireless connection. My house’s internet is Fiber and is very quick and efficient if on the wire, but it is slow when on the wireless connections at home.

At the moment right now, Cloud Gaming is still not a viable option for Twitch Streamers who do not have Ethernet ports. However, with Ethernet ports, this means of streaming cloud gaming becomes much more viable for players.

Solution for using Wi-Fi while streaming Cloud Streams of games on Twitch.

If you cannot use Ethernet at home or other places, you should maximize your wireless connections.

  1. Buy a more powerful router which will allow you to use more bandwidth. Some older routers tend to have more limitations on how much data they sent through wireless signals.
  2. Spend more on a Wi-Fi extenders which had help to bring more of your house into the range of the routers
  3. Attempt to play at times where there is less traffic on the cloud gaming services.
  4. Place your computer as close to the router as possible
  5. Clear out any other bandwidth consuming activities on your computer.
  6. Ensure that you are playing at a time where other family members are not consuming bandwidth at the same time as you
  7. Purchase the Ultimate plan on GeForce Now for the most powerful remote computer so that it can somewhat mitigate performance issues relating to the running of the game.