IE – Paul's Tech Talk

Say Goodbye to Sluggish Browsing: A Quick and Easy Cache Clearing Tutorial

PaulFebruary 22, 2024Leave a Reply

Why should I clear my cache?

The simple answer is the most important. You have a limited amount of space on any given space. Most of the time it might not be a problem but if you like to visit sites constantly then you may get unwanted files stored on your system that could slow your system down and even slow down your browser experience. It depends on how fast your system will react to your browsing and what happens when you get some bad cache files from websites. This can help clear those up and stop all those popups that maybe becoming annoying to you. You might get advertisements and other pop ups that will cause problems while you are trying to use your computer.

How Do I clear my cache in Google Chrome and Edge?

The real questions is how you would do this quickly and easily to help you get where you can have your browser speed up and non intrusive as it should be. If you are getting popups or something that looks like a browser page then this is where you should start. Clear your cache and get rid of the potenital cache causing problems. Here’s how to do it easily and quickly:

On Google Chrome Press CTL-SHIFT-DEL, while you have Google Chrome up and running this is the quickest way to clear your cache in Chrome.

Google Chrome – Make sure you clear all the cache and click on Clear Data at the bottom to make sure you clear everything out of Chrome.

If you want to make sure you get all the data, you should select ‘All time” in Time Range and check all boxes to make sure you remove all necessary files off of Google Chrome. Once done close out Google Chrome and restart and you should have a cleaner experience with Google Chrome.

Windows Edge Browser

On Windows Edge Browser copy and past this into your address bar.

edge://settings/privacy

Once there you should see something like this:

This will be the same thing as you did with Google Chome select Time range “All Time” and make sure to check the first 4 options available and hit Clear Now as edge removes all the cache that was collected over time. Once done exit out of edge and then start it up and you should have no more problems with popups as long as you don’t have a different browser. If you have a different you should search for how to clear the cache in those types of browsers.

What if you can’t delete the cache?

In Google Chrome the best and easily way to fix this to load up chrome in incognito mode and then try to delete the cache that way. However this may or may not work depending on what might be causing this.

One Edge the easily pres Windows Key + R and type “start msedge -inprivate“. Once you do that then try to clear the browser cache and see if that allows you to clear the cache. The last part of this is that you might need to reboot your system to allow the system to complete some update or problems that might not allow you to clear cache for some reason or other.

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PDF Exploits and how to prevent them

PaulAugust 14, 2009

Now we know that there are PDF Exploits being used more and more to fake anti virus software. I am here to discuss how to make it harder for these exploits to happen in the first. So I will be walking you through using Firefox as the browser, so if you haven’t downloaded Firefox. I would recommend downloading it, it is much safer than using Internet Explorer.

In Firefox, Click Tools, and then Options:

You will look for anything that says Adobe in the Applications tab and select either Always ask or Save file. I recommend setting it to “Always Ask” for the one reason you will know if you have visited a site that uses PDF’s, it gives you a warning of when some website tries to uses Adobes PDF reader.

I also go into Adobe Reader:

Click Edit>Preferences

Disabling Javascript will help prevent some of the more common exploits in Adobe, and anyway I do not need Javascript enabled to read a PDF because I hate flashing stuff while I am trying to read.

This will prevent it from using your web browser you will have to use Adobe Reader to read this. From my understanding if you use Adobe Reader in your browser they can put redirects in internet explorer and have some control over what you browser does when you load it up. This prevents any exploit from taking over IE, or Firefox because now they work alone and not together. While you at it with Firefox, I would go into the Addons Section. Click Tools>Addons and Disable the Adobe Reader Addon to be even more safer on the internet.

Now this won’t protect you a 100% but will greatly make it harder for those invisible Iframes to infect your system. I also have Free AVG running and [intlink id=”3884″ type=”post”]SUPERAntiSpyware Pro[/intlink] running all the time to better protect my system. You may need to download the PDF to be able to read it. You can change the Firefox options above to save it instead of asking what you want to do.

Cellular Modem common problem — DNS LOOKUP

PaulMay 4, 20092 Replies

With Cellular Modems being used more and more, the common problem is:

Address not Found

This is something that comes with any ISP the DNS lookup problem. In which your connection acts like a VPN connection, it connects to a cell tower and then gets transported to the nears server and then goes on the internet. The Server does the DNS lookup for you and send you to the right page. There seems to be a problem with my Cellular DNS server because it doesn’t have a complete list and if it doesn’t know where you to go you get that screen.

[ad#cricket-right-ez]So I found an easy way to fix this problem. I have been using my Host file to tell my computer the IP of the server that I am having the problem. So how do I find out the Ip of the server? This can be a problem to an extent.

I found that visiting the OpenDns.com Cache check will tell me the internet protocol of the server for the time but it could change. I just edit the host file manually and insert the need information by hand. Like I said the IP may change from time to time depending on where you are going or if it is a big server. The servers ip will rotate to help the bandwidth and keep it even on all servers, so this only works with servers that have a Static IP.

There is a program that will help you manage your host file it’s called Hostman and this does makes editing your Host file a little more easily. I have used this and I haven’t found anything that does do anywhere better than this. If you have a suggestion on a good Host Manager, please tell people in the Forums or leave a comment. I’d love to hear some good programs to help update the Host file more easily.

Malicious Spammers target Bank of America

PaulMarch 14, 2009

I’ve saw two different security firms talking about Bank of America and I wanted to share with you:

Picture from F-secure

[ad#cricket-right-ez]The two sites are F-secure and Pandalabs who are talking about Bank of America and how they try to get you to install malware. With Adobe having just sent out the new updates last month it looks like spammers are using this to get people to install Malware.

It is also been known to be floating around in Facebook this spam. So if you get a link going to a site you don’t know about to see a video and it says you need a codec or the Adobe update you should turn right around and leave site. You should always type in the url of Your Bank and not go there through links.

From what they are saying it monitors Network traffic and Steals ICQ, POP3, and IMAP passwords. If you find network traffic going to Hong Kong IP, then it is time to check to make sure all your Virus definitions are up to date and you’ve installed an Anti-virus and Firewall. I would encourage users to report it to Phishtank so that any other unsuspecting user or person going to that site will be warned.

Careless Facebook profiling can lead to Identity Theft!

PaulFebruary 19, 2009

I just got in contact with a old friend from High school and another friend of mine suggest the new friend. I was looking at her profile and couldn’t believe what I saw:

As you can see this is not good I was amazed at how many people are giving out there birthdays and who they are married to to friends and family. So we heard about how people are claiming they need help or are in need of desperate money. This is nothing new, as you know people are having hard economy times and people are using the social engineering to scam people out of money.

I feel that I should warn people the important necessity. You shouldn’t be broadcasting your DOB and who your married to to your friends, just in case they get hacked.

Recent activity indicates that identity thieves are hacking into trustworthy profiles before selling on the login details to interested parties. This information is used by spammers to target legitimate users, posting misleading links on their “walls” – personalized message boards.

[Via Computing.Co.UK]

This deservese a little mind and a lot of understanding. By the spammers hacking into facebook accounts they have the chance to scam or spam people with links to possibly have a virus or trojan installer.

[ad#ad2-right]For example This one blog talks about the Virus:

Symantec’s Norton Antivirus software has flagged this as a “high risk” Infostealer.Gampass virus. More info on this particular Trojan vius is here. (Note: Symantec warns the risk level is “low,” since it originated in 2006, but this new Facebook email is a new iteration of the same virus.)

You might be inclined to click on this link because it’s from a friend, but they did not intentionally send it to you — and yes, their Facebook photo is attached, too.

[Via Sync-blog]

Now I went searching through my friends list and also found this little bit of information. As you can see this one is asking for people to use there account to scam people out of money. They could use this to find out even more information of the Other partner and make you believe your talking to the real deal. Saying they need money because they are stuck over seas or something like that. I’ve seen this on other blogs where people have sent money to “friends” but are actually people who are the scammers. Then if you send the money you are out of luck with your money and possibly your friends to. I am sure there are more but this is prime examples of what you shouldn’t do and why.

So what can you do to prevent Identity Theft and/or being scammed?

Roboform Review — A Password Manager that will help protect your passwords from key loggers and other such phishing sites. I strongly recommend it to to all who are security minded. (Never use the same password for all your accounts)

Are you worried about your identity? — This is good information in checking out sites that might be questionable. You can find out what type of site it by using your brains.

Old Phish Become New again — This is blog post about twitter and what may happen if you did give out your password. This is a good example of why you never should give out your password to third party websites.

Twitter Spammers a getting more smarter — This is also good example of what happens when you see become friends with someone who isn’t real. You could be the next to be spammed and/or impersonated.

If you follow some common steps you to could prevent from being the victim or getting your Identitiy stolen. Some things to remember is Never tell anyone your Birthday the whole date like someone did on twitter a few days ago. It’s nice that they are growing older but that gives people that much more information to use to steal your money or your idenitiy. Think before you give out any personal information like Age, Married, who your married to and anything that might be used to be able to access your account or your impersonate you. Remember only you can prevent from being scammed or lossing your identity, you wouldn’t want to have to pay for your mistakes.