Scam - NBN to cut-off phone service within the next 48 hours

Received a call today from a client. They'd just received a telephone call reportedly from NBN saying their phone service will be cut-off. The company had been trying to contact them for some time.

This is most likely a scam, although it could also be an overly eager sale rep trying to close a deal to get people to sign up to their NBN based service. Either way this is a telephone call you want to hang up on and then check your facts.

First in this case the NBN had only recently been installed and no notification had yet been provided on a cut-off date. Services will not be cut-off until 18 months after the NBN has been installed.

In addition you can go to the following NBN site and check when the cut-off date is.

https://www.nbnco.com.au/residential/learn/rollout-map

Enter your location and then click on the More address information link. In the information displayed you can now find the cut-off date.

It's a fact of life our telephone services are now becoming useless. Many people won't take calls now because most are scammers or marketers. Nothing the government does appears to work to stem the unwanted calls. Millions of dollars of lost income and much grief is caused by these callers. Hopefully the information provided above helps others avoid the scammers and less than desirable marketers.

Kelvin Eldridge
www.OnlineConnections.com.au

AdSense - Earnings at risk – You need to fix some ads.txt file issues to avoid severe impact to your revenue.

Participating in Google's AdSense means that you have to keep up with the changes it requires. Some changes can take a lot of work, some not so much.

The latest message I received when going into AdSense was, "Earnings at risk – You need to fix some ads.txt file issues to avoid severe impact to your revenue.". What's this all about I thought.

Not really quite sure of what ads.txt is about from an industry point of view, but it appears that as a publisher I'm giving approval to have ads from Google on my site/s. Since this is a public file it means companies advertising can also check the file. How this helps the companies avoid fake inventory I'm not sure. There's obviously something going on that I'm not aware.

Whether it makes sense or not isn't really an issue. If AdSense suggests your earnings are risk, then it's time to do something. In this case it's a matter of adding a file ads.txt to the top level of each of your sites. AdSense will even create the file for you.

With your own sites it's then just a matter of uploading the ads.txt file to the root or top level folder of your site.

Now if you also have Blogger accounts where you don't have access to the folders directly you can use the Blogger interface to edit the ads.txt file. In my case not all my blogs are listed as having an issue. Not sure why. At this time I'll only fix the blogs with issues as identified by AdSense.

I did this as follows:

Log on to Blogger
Select the blog
Select Settings
Select Search preferences

Under the section Monetisation there's Custom ads.txt. This showed as disabled.
Select Edit
Select Yes
Paste in the line from the ads.txt file provided by AdSense
Click Save changes

Repeat for all blogs with issues as identified by AdSense.

There appears to be no way to remove the warning message, "Earnings at risk", but as Google scan each site and finds the ads.txt file I suspect the error message will go.

What doesn't make sense to me is not all sites and blogs I have, have been identified as having issues. Perhaps the other sites will be identified over time. Only time will tell.

Kelvin Eldridge
www.OnlineConnections.com.au

ASUS notebook message, "battery plugged in not charging".

Recently a client's ASUS notebook computer displayed the message for the battery, "86% available (plugged in not charging). The notebook charger was plugged in.

In addition the battery indicator on the front of the notebook was flashing orange. According to the manual this means the battery is discharging and has reached 10% battery power remaining. Obviously the message and the indicator are in conflict with each other and one states 86% and the other 10% or less.

The computer was an ASUS notebook with the model number N551JX.

Fixing this problem for this computer was relatively easy and was done as follows:

Turn the computer off
Remove the battery
Press and hold the power button for one minute
Insert the battery
Turn the computer on

The ASUS notebook was fixed, charging and no message displayed in the System Tray and the indicator no longer flashed.

Kelvin Eldridge
www.OnlineConnections.com.au

MYOB AccountRight error server update required.

A client was having an issue with their MYOB AccountRight. The client found the second user was not able to access MYOB AccountRight for the last couple of weeks and received the following error message.

The client contacted me for assistance. I asked if they were under a MYOB support contact which they were. Since they were already paying for support I suggested they should first contact MYOB. No point paying for support twice. If they had further issues they were welcome to contact me back.

A couple of hours later I received a call that MYOB couldn't fix their issue, at which I point I subsequently attended their office. I'm a general support consultant and whilst I have no particular skills with MYOB, I sometimes find I fix client issues after MYOB hasn't been able to.

Whilst the client has a file server, in this case MYOB is run on one of the user's computers acting as a server for MYOB and accessed by a second user on another computer. In effect this is acting as a peer-to-peer network. Both computers were running the same version of MYOB AccountRight so the message didn't quite make sense.

On the second user's computer the first clue was in the system tray; an icon had an error. Opening the icon revealed the following.

As can be seen from this screen the icon error was related to MYOB and the add-on connector. Clicking on the link provided the information that a second version of the add-on connector needed to be removed in the Control Panel. The program to uninstall was the MYOB AccountRight API. The error disappeared from the icon, but the problem of connecting was not fixed.

Now to the main computer. Same error in icon. Removing MYOB AccountRight API and the icon error was fixed.

However, the issue of the second user connecting still existed. A couple of questions confirmed this issue started when the software was updated using the link in an email provided by MYOB. A check in the documentation showed the shortcut for the main user on their desktop should have SE (for server edition) in the shortcut description. It didn't. The client had installed the normal version of MYOB AccountRight and not the server edition.

The server edition of MYOB AccountRight was installed, the icon error returned, so the MYOB AccountRight API had to be removed again. I felt that was weird but these things happen.

Icon not showing an error and the second user could now access MYOB AccountRight from their computer as well as the primary user being able to access MYOB AccountRight. Problem solved.

All the information used to resolve this problem was found using the links and the information provided on the MYOB site. The MYOB support person should have been able to resolve this issue since MYOB knows about the issue and the information is available from the MYOB site. I suspect had the issue been escalated within MYOB the problem may have been resolved.

Kelvin Eldridge
www.OnlineConnections.com.au
IT support.

How much data does Hayu use when streaming a show?

The help information on the Hayu site is not particularly helpful on how much data streaming shows on the Hayu service consumes.

Since the Hayu site doesn't include any real guidance, and there's no ability to change the resolution of the streaming service to a lower standard, I thought it would be good to run a test.

The show selected was from season 12 of The Real Housewives from Orange Country. The episode was 43 minutes in length.

The show was watched on an iPad which was using Wi-Fi to access a mobile phone as a hotspot.

The data used for the 43 minutes episode was approximately 1.38GB.

For a 43 minute episode of a show being watched on an iPad this is quite a large amount of data. In comparison a one and a half to two hour movie shown in SD format would use a similar amount of data.

If you're using a mobile service to watch Hayu it is important to know the data usage may be higher than expected. It is important if you're internet service has a limitation on the amount of data provided with the plan.

I hope this information helps.

Kelvin Eldridge
www.OnlineConnections.com.au

Alert: Attack on Westpac's PayID

Today I read about an attack on Westpac's PayID.

https://www.smh.com.au/business/banking-and-finance/australians-private-details-exposed-in-attack-on-westpac-s-payid-20190603-p51u2u.html

At this stage I don't understand the implications of the attack, but it does appear that people using PayID can have their name determined. How this information can be used for potential fraud I don't know.

What I felt was important, was at this stage I left other people know about the attack. I hope the information helps.

Kelvin Eldridge
www.OnlineConnections.com.au

Optus outages today really made for an unproductive day.

Today was like any other day. Nothing extraordinary. A couple of computers to update and install programs, but today wasn't like any other day.

The client was using Optus NBN but downloading an installing Office 365 ran like the proverbial dog. Netflix wasn't flicking, and Windows 10 updates just weren't happening.

Yet it wasn't apparent the issue was with the internet service provider. You would try accessing some pages and they'd come up as quickly as expected. But Netflix was a no show. Perhaps it was just Netflix. Then Office 365 installs took forever on a couple of slower computers. Yes I expected the installs to run slower, but it was like watching paint dry.

The problem is because some things worked as expected, it didn't appear to be the internet service provider.

It's 11:49pm and a check of the Optus site for the status returns that page can't be loaded. The main page loads fine.

Just another day at the office so to speak. That's computers for you. Patience really is a virtue.:-)

Kelvin Eldridge
www.OnlineConnections.com.au