tl:dr — The Computer Peeps recommend disabling Start Menu Web Search in Windows.
Category: Security
We’re Breaking Up — With Chrome
It’s not them, it’s us. Jk, it is them.
tl;dr — Google Chrome’s stance on adblocker plugins/extensions greatly increases consignment/resale stores’ chances of encountering malicious content when searching the Web. Thus, The Computer Peeps no longer recommend Google Chrome as an option for browsing the Web.
Gmail App Password(s) Deleted via “New Sign-in” Email Alert
tl:dr — Watch out for emails from Google regarding your own sign-in activity, as these security emails contain a button that if clicked, will delete all of your App Passwords that allow your consignment/resale software to send email.
Gmail, Less Secure Apps, App Passwords & Consignment Software
tl;dr — As of May 30, 2022, Google no longer supports the Less Secure Apps feature that allowed third party programs (e.g. consignment software such as Peeps’ Software) to be able to send emails. This means, your consignment software likely will no longer be able to send emails from your Gmail account. Going forward, the already-available App Passwords feature in Gmail has to be utilized for sending emails.
Domain Listings Website Listing Service Scam
If you receive a letter in the mail from Domain Listings, it’s a scam — do NOT send money to them!
Yet Another Windows 10 Option to Configure
As part of Peeps’ Configuration Protocol (our treatment/setup of a Windows machine), we tweak, prune, and better-secure the Windows environment to make it both cleaner, as well as safer for our customers. With Windows 10, the amount of work involved increased exponentially vs. Windows 7. There are so many places Microsoft has added potentially annoying or confusing things.
And as of the latest round of Windows Updates, we’re now seeing the weather appear in the Taskbar:
Norton 360 Scam Email
Recently, a handful of customers forwarded me emails to see if this was something that needed to be taken care of.
MailChimp Could Not Create SSL/TLS Secure Channel
Peeps’ Software integrates with MailChimp, allowing stores to automatically add new consignors and customers to their MailChimp mailing list.
Recently, our app started returning the following error:
Could not create SSL/TLS secure channel
Liberty Consignment Software ‘Local Processing Error’ With Gmail
When the Item List Email in Liberty, depending on the version of Liberty you’re running, it’ll either just *appear* to send (but didn’t), or you could get an error.
Windows 7 Extended Security Updates
Windows 7 reaches its ‘End of Life’ in January 2020. Computer Peeps can fully manage the process of staying on Windows 7, via Microsoft’s Extended Security Updates (ESU) program.