Typically, however, these sites which sell fake tickets for events ranging from Bruce Springsteen concerts to the Olympic games are incredible difficult [...]]]> This month police managed to shut down 100 online ticket scam websites by taking action through the organisation in charge of registering all website addresses, Icann (Internet Corporation of Assigned Names and Numbers).

Typically, however, these sites which sell fake tickets for events ranging from Bruce Springsteen concerts to the Olympic games are incredible difficult to shut down due to most of them being based offshore.  As such, not only do many still remain but more will surely form to replace the fallen.

There are however simple steps you can take to help safeguard against potential online fraudsters:

-          Does it seem too good to be true? Life can sometimes chuck you a nice surprise although more often than not if something looks too good to be true then you’re going to be left disappointed.  Alarm bells should start ringing if you’ve been endlessly searching for seats at the O2, then suddenly you stumble across a random site that appears to have exactly what you’re looking for.

-          Does the site look professional? While not necessarily an accurate indicator, I would be cautious of a site that promises premiership football tickets but looks like it knocked up in five minutes by a primary school child.

-          Does the page have a page rank? This is one of my favourite methods of checking a sites potential legitimacy.  Download and install the Google Toolbar (http:// toolbar.google.com) and this will then provide you with an immediate indication via a small sliding scale just under the address bar as to how ‘important’ Google believes the page you are currently viewing is.  This level is established by monitoring the number of ‘important’ sites linking to the page in question; a page rank of zero would quickly arise suspicions that the page is either relatively new or that no other sites have seen it worthy enough to link to.

-          Does the page have an Alexa rank? By downloading and installing the Alexa toolbar (www.alexa.com/toolbar) you, and millions of other users, provide anonymous usage statistics back to a central server.  This data can be used to create a massive database which ranks the popularity of various sites on the Internet which is displayed via a small scale within your browser.  To demonstrate how this can be useful, consider that Ticket Master (one of the largest legitimate ticket sales sites) is currently ranked the 5,514th most popular on the entire Internet.  This is no small achievement and it’s likely they can be trusted unlike a site which claims to be ‘The Biggest and Best on the Web’ while ranking in at five millionth.

-          Does the page include contact details? Actually try phoning them before making a purchase and talk through your potential order with a real person.  If you get a dead dial tone, an incorrect number or it sounds like the guy is talking on a mobile in the pub then it’s time to move on to another site.

-          Does the site receive favourable reviews? Do a Google search for reviews of the site you are thinking about purchasing off; others will quickly rant if they have had problems and while all reviews should be taken with a pinch of salt this will quickly give you an idea as to whether the company is legitimate.  Also, don’t place too much importance on accreditation logos; the only time they’re worth paying attention to is if it’s a body you recognise that have their own website that can be used to confirm membership.

-          Is their site secure? Ensure that when typing in your card details that you have been transferred to a secure server; this can be done by checking that ‘https://’ has replaced ‘http://’ in your address bad.  Also, never pay by cheque; a credit card will give you added protection should anything go wrong.

This week I will dedicate to a letter I recently received from one of my readers who is experiencing problems with an intrusive file that she picked up whilst browsing the Internet.

I recently subscribed to a Newsgroup, and when I next [...]]]>

This week I will dedicate to a letter I recently received from one of my readers who is experiencing problems with an intrusive file that she picked up whilst browsing the Internet.

I recently subscribed to a Newsgroup, and when I next returned to my desktop I found a new icon entitled “Private-Archive”. When I clicked on it out of curiosity I discovered that it led me into a hard core pornographic site and said that, if I did not wish to view such things, I “should leave the site now” which, of course, I did. My problem is that the icon now refuses to be deleted and I receive the Error Message: “Cannot delete. Access denied. The source file may be in use.”

I desperately want it off my desktop and, indeed, completely out of my hard drive – It makes me feel dirty just seeing it there and younger members of my family have access to my computer. Can you help me, please?

Frances Mommert, Paignton

One of the biggest causes of complaint amongst computer users is intrusive spam or indeed software programs that trick you into allowing them to install onto your hard-drive. One of the most notorious ones was a program that would install itself onto your computer whilst you were on the Internet, drop your connection and then redial you to a premium international phone number. You would carry on using the Internet, completely unaware that you were not connected to your standard ISP but indeed to a £1.50 per minute line; a very costly mistake!

Luckily, all programs need some kind of authorisation to install themselves onto your computer and so whenever a pop up window that looks like it could be up to no good appears asking you a question, no matter how mundane the question may be, I’d recommend always hitting <alt> and <f4> together to close the window rather than clicking on OK. By clicking on okay, you may be inadvertently giving Windows the opportunity to install unwanted programs on to your machine. It is unlikely that you picked this up just by giving your e-mail address to a newsgroup and so I believe that it is probable you were tricked by another part of the site into installing the file.

Anyway, this is all slightly irreverent in your instance as the program in question is already on your computer so how do you go about getting rid of it? The reason it cannot be deleted is because it is resident in your computers memory and Windows cannot delete files that it is currently working with – Unfortunately, every time you start up your machine Windows loads this ominous program although I can only speculate on the reasoning that this program requests to be running continuously. What we need to do is find a way to remove the program from memory so that it can be deleted and luckily there are a number of ways to do this:

First try loading the computer in safe mode by hitting <F8> when your computer first starts booting up – The correct timing is when the message appears ‘Starting Windows 95/98 etc…’ appears on your screen – If you miss it first time around then wait for the computer to boot, reset it and try again and hopefully you should now be able to delete the file.

If this doesn’t work then boot your computer as normal and then try hitting <ctrl>, <alt> and <delete> simultaneously as this will bring up a window where you can shut down programs running in memory. Look for anything ominous, click on it and then click on ‘End Task’. This will remove that particular program from memory at which point you can try once again to delete the intrusive file – Continue closing down programs one by one and attempting to delete said file; don’t worry, there is no damage you can cause here as all programs removed from memory will be reloaded again when you restart Windows. Do not worry about ‘Explorer’ and ‘Systray’ however as these are integral parts of Windows so you should not try and close them down.

The final suggestion I would make if this doesn’t work would be to download an application which will disable certain programs that are included as part of the Windows start-up. This way we can prevent the file from ever being loaded in the first instance so to do this, head to http://www.startupmgr.com/startupmgr.htm where you will find a web-based interface that will allow you to do just that. Again, search for something that looks like it shouldn’t be there – You haven’t given me too much information on what the file is called but there’ll probably be something that will stick out like a sore thumb; if in doubt, disable it as you can always re-enable anything you pick out by mistake. Once you think that you’ve found the mischievous item, restart the computer and try once again to delete the file.

Please let me know how to progress with this issue and I would recommend that just to be on the safe site that you should check your system for viruses. Head to www.grisoft.com and download the free AVG anti-virus scanner and let it run through your system in its entirety.