There are pluses and minuses to everything. With the implementation of Google’s new privacy policy, the down side of customized search results is that – come March 1, 2012 – all your search information will be shared across all Google products. If you want to prevent that, you’ll have to act fast.

Preventing Google from sharing personal information, such as health status, sexual preferences, etc., gleaned from search habits is as simple as deleting your Web history. Now, you’ll have to do this for each Google account you have, but once it’s done, your search history will no longer be shared internally and externally. It will only be used internally.

Deleting your Web history is pretty simple. First, log in to Google account, click on the drop down arrow beside your login ID in the upper right of the page and select the “Account Settings” link. On the Account Settings page, scroll down until you see “Services.” Under services, click on “Go to Web history.” On the Web history page, click on “Remove all Web history,” then click OK, and you’re done.

As stated earlier, Google will continue to use information gleaned from search habits for internal use, which means it will also continue to gather this information, Google will no longer keep the information gathered from your searches indefinitely and some of it will become anonymous after 18 months.

Today is the last day that anyone who wants to keep Google from sharing his information across all Google products, with external vendors and other external recipients can do so by erasing all Web history. How much you enjoy customized search results may determine whether or not you think keeping your Web history enabled is worth the risk. Just keep in mind that all kinds of unknown individuals could be privy to your search habits.

Sometimes Google searches can be a study in frustration. It seems like everybody who has something to sell has either bought his way to the top of page one or has leveraged SEO to leapfrog over everyone else and become one of the top 10 results and shove more relevant results onto later pages. Fortunately, Google is always working to improve its users’ experiences.

According to Matt McGee, in his article for Search Engine Land, Google’s Panda 3.3 update occurred on Feb. 27, 2012, and should be “more accurate and sensitive to recent changes on the Web.” In addition to the Panda update, Google has launched more than three dozen improvements or updates designed to produce more relevant search results and provide an overall better user experience.

The improvement to local results is one that everyone could appreciate. According to Google, it has launched a new system that will enhance local searches by facilitating Google’s ability to detect when “queries and documents are local to the user.” This could make searching for things like new places to shop or dine on where to buy tickets for local theater or sporting events a lot less time consuming.

The improved local results also apply to YouTube predictions. For example, someone in the United States who begins a search with “Brad Pitt in” will receive different YouTube predictions from someone in France who conducts a similar search. As Google explains it, someone in the US would get a result like “Brad Pitt in New Orleans,” whereas someone in France might receive “Brad Pitt in Cannes” as a result.

Other improvements that people might like are things such as more coverage of related searches, which will cause the “searches related to” feature to appear in response to more queries; less duplication in expanded site links, which will create more snippets based on page content rather than query content; updated Safe Search, which will reduce the amount of irrelevant adult content that shows up in response to many queries; and improvements to freshness, which helps Google “surface fresh content in our results even more quickly than before;” and the international launch or shopping-rich snippets, which help users “more quickly identify which sites are likely to have the most relevant products for their needs, highlighting product prices, availability, ratings and review counts.”

Some of Google’s improvements are especially helpful to those who live in countries such as Korea and Turkey. For example, more organized search results for Google Korea separates results into categories such as news, blogs and homepages. Turkish users can get a weather forecast on the Google results page.

With any luck, Google’s latest improvements will indeed yield more relevant search results and make Googling less frustrating. There’s no escaping the ads or purchased results that appear at the top and side of each results page, but having more relevant organic results appearing in response to queries is a welcome improvement. Those who still aren’t satisfied, may just have to wait for the next round of improvements … or give Blekko a try.

Still confused?  Give us a shout today, we are your trusted IT service provider.

As hackers become more sophisticated, businesses and individuals become more vulnerable to attack. Everyone must remain vigilant. Installing security software and firewalls are a start, but they certainly aren’t enough. For one thing, security software only works when it’s used. People who install the software without ever taking the time to schedule regular computer scans defeat the purpose of having the software in the first place.

In 2011, we saw many large enterprises and government agencies come under attack from “hacktivist” groups like Lulz Security and Anonymous. That doesn’t mean that small-business owners and individuals are safe.

As part of an attack on Booz Allen Hamilton, a hacker group revealed the email addresses of 90,000 military personnel, ordinary people who had no reason to expect that they would be targeted by hacktivists. A similar and possibly more damaging attack came at the hands of the hacker group Anonymous when members revealed the email and IP addresses of some of the Family First Association’s newsletter subscribers. They shared the credit card information of a dozen others. The Family First Association drew Anonymous’ fire when it protested the television show “All-American Muslim” and encouraged retailers like Lowe’s to withdraw their sponsorship of the program. Cyber attacks are anything but victimless crimes.

Hackers can access personal data in a number of ways. They can infiltrate company databases and lift customers’ information. If an employee has sensitive company information stored on a laptop or smart phone and it gets lost, whoever recovers it could have access to that information. Hackers also gain access by sending email messages with tainted links or attachments. One way that both businesses and individuals can protect themselves is by encrypting files and/or password protecting them. Encryption is something that all business leaders should consider, especially if they allow their employees to take work home on company laptops, tablets or smart phones.

Beware of malware that masquerades as security software. Many people have probably had popups appear on their computer screens letting them know that their computers contain about a dozen different viruses, worms and other threats. Don’t believe it. Clicking on the link to have the threats removed could start the installation of real malware. Although this particular ruse has begun to abate, authorities recommend that people remain on guard. Sadly, sometimes people have to be on guard even against people they know.

Spoofing the email address of someone’s friend or colleague is another way that hackers can get an unsuspecting individual to open malicious email. Sometimes, the friends’ or colleagues’ email accounts are hacked and the attackers go through their address books. Either way, be careful about opening emails from friends or colleagues if the subject line is left blank or if it has something incendiary like “Did you see what someone said about you on Twitter?” That should raise an immediate red flag.

Neither small-business owners nor average individuals should ever allow themselves to believe that only big businesses and government agencies have to worry about hackers. Cyber criminals don’t discriminate. We’re all fair game.

We are all too familiar with the kind of damage that hackers can do to people’s computers or companies’ databases once they’ve had the chance to upload viruses or malware. Identities can be stolen, bank accounts can be cleaned out and lives can be ruined. Businesses, too, can suffer severe damage if a hacker penetrates a company database and simply deletes all of the company’s client information or financial records. But the idea that a hacker could actually cause someone to lose Internet access may still seem farfetched. It isn’t.

In November 2011, the FBI began warning people about a virus called DNS Changer that allowed Estonian-based hackers to gain control of people’s computers.  A domain name system (DNS) is “an Internet service that converts user-friendly domain names into the numerical Internet protocol (IP) addresses that computers use to talk to each other,” explained the FBI in its consumer guide. The way DNS Changer works is it puts a fake DNS server that the hackers control in place of the one on their victim’s computer. This allows the hackers to redirect an unsuspecting victim to websites with bogus software or money-making advertisements.

If you think security software could have helped, you’re wrong. Besides giving the hackers control of their victims’ Web travels, the malware also blocked their victims’ ability to update their operating systems or anti-malware protection.

But what does all this have to do with losing Internet access? Well, on March 8, 2012 the deadline for those who know they’re infected to remove the DNS Changer malware from their computers will expire. Anyone who hasn’t removed the malware by then will lose Internet access when the FBI shuts down the bogus servers for good.

Anyone who is uncertain about whether or not his computer is infected can download the FBI’s consumer guide, have a computer professional run a diagnostic – which may or may not reveal anything – or use the Avira DNS Repair Tool. The tool is free and requires no installation, but it won’t remove the malware from your computer. Using the repair tool will simply “reset the entries to Windows standard.”

If your computer is infected and you don’t mind starting over, then reinstalling your operating system is probably the quickest and easiest way to rid yourself of the malicious software. Just make sure that you’ve backed up all of your important files on a jump drive or external hard drive first. The other alternative is, of course, to enlist the aid of a computer professional. This service will not come for free. So, if you have a tight budget, reinstalling your operating system might be the way to go.

For some people, being able to access the Internet is an absolute necessity. If you’re one of them, you might want to take advantage of one of the options available to you to find out if you, too, are in danger of losing your Internet access come March 8.

Business professionals lead hectic lives, and they are always on the lookout for ways to save time and increase their productivity. If you use Windows, there are a few tips that can make life a little bit easier on you as you do your day-to-day tasks. They may not save hours, but a few minutes here and there is still helpful.

One thing that many people may already know, especially experienced administrative assistants, is that you don’t have to open a document in order to print it. If you find the document you want to print and just right-click on it, you will find the “Print” option in the drop-down box. I would call this a pseudo-timesaver because the document will open automatically before printing begins anyway. So, how much time have you really saved? If you print a lot of documents every day, those seconds could add up, but if you only print once in a while, the time saved is negligible.

There are some who believe that pinning programs to the start menu is a timesaver, but I’m partial to pinning them to the taskbar. I imagine if you have to access a lot of programs, pinning them to the start menu makes better sense. But if you only have about a dozen programs that you need to access on a regular basis pinning to the taskbar could work well for you. You can pin a program to the taskbar or the start menu by right clicking on it and selecting either “Pin to Taskbar” or “Pin to Start Menu.” This will not remove the program icon from your desktop if you happen to have it there as well. If you do decide to pin programs to the start menu, it’s a good idea to use small icons so you can fit more of them in that tight little space.

As someone who writes a lot, I find that having the Microsoft Word icon pinned to my taskbar to be a great timesaver because I only have to click on it once to launch Word. And I find that Word launches faster from the taskbar than it does from the desktop. Again, when you have to do something often, those few seconds could add up to valuable minutes of time saved.

If you’re like me, you’ve saved a document in an uncommon location because you were in a hurry and didn’t pay attention to where it was going. As long as you saved it somewhere on your computer, you should be able to find it via the “Search” tool at the bottom of your start menu.

This next timesaver is only available to people who use Microsoft Outlook. If you want to e-mail a document to someone, you don’t have to pull up your email. You can just right click on the document you want to send, click on “Send To” then click on “Mail Recipient,” and you’re ready to email your document.

Busy professionals want to spend more time actually doing their work than they spend preparing to do it. The aforementioned shortcuts may not save tremendous amounts of time, but a couple of them could slightly satisfy the all-too-human need for instant gratification.