I was recently asked what to do about a mailbox being full. This is likely a pretty common occurance, though it’s not a question I get asked very often. Carol’s mailbox gets full all the time, usually because of very large pictures sent to her.

A common issue with mailboxes is that we use them as file cabinets. It would be a bit like saving all your favorite mail in your mailbox. It would fill up fairly quickly, I imagine. While much of it may be junk you can throw away, after a few years it would be impossible to deliver mail.

Pictures take up the most room, probably. The fastest way to make space would be to delete emails that have pictures, saving the pictures you want to keep, first. My suggestion would be to sort your INBOX by size. Do that by clicking on the heading, ‘Size’. Once your mail is sorted biggest to smallest, you can make the most of deleting. Check the email contents for whatever you want to save and save them to your Downloads folder, or Pictures folder, or wherever you think is best.  Then delete the email. You can save the whole email if you want, but usually it’s the pics we are after.

After you save what you want, delete the email. It won’t take long to recover a lot of space from the INBOX. The thing to remember though, you’ll have to empty your trash folder to actually recover the space. When you delete the emails, they typically will be placed in the Trash folder. They will stay there for a preset amount of time. By Emptying the Trash, you will get get the space back immediately.
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What I have described is a general rule of thumb, so your email may work a bit differently. This is a guideline. Also, remember that there are multiple email folders, like Junk, Sent, Outbox, etc. The Sent folder contains all the emails you have sent out. That folder should also be looked at to see if it can be cleaned up. And again, don’t forget to empty the Trash.

The internet has been a topic out here for a long time. While the Bondy household chose to go with Starlink, along with quite a few other folks, there are other alternatives. The one I like is T-Mobile. There is a T-Mobile tower right next to the Fire Station and it covers a big area. A friend of ours reports having a few days of failed service from the tower this past week due to maintenance, but he called me this morning to report it’s working again and faster than ever.
Gary is using a T-Mobile hotspot in his home and reported 60Mbs this morning. When he first got the hotspot a year or so ago, he said he was getting about 30Mbs.

Obviously, T-Mobile's tower won’t reach everywhere in our area, but if it does get to your location, it could be a great source of internet, and it could save you some money over Windstream. Judging from Gary’s experience, it’ll be more reliable, and faster too.

Last week I wrote about pop-ups that you can’t close and say your computer is infected, Mac or PC, and to call this number for help. Sometimes they say they are Microsoft, sometimes Apple, sometimes they purport to be the IRS or Federal Marshals. One person said there was a picture of them, using the computer’s built-in camera. It can seem scary and real. Especially with the noise the pop-up can make, the dire red screen, or maybe even a picture of you presented in the screen.
 
These pop-ups usually harmless, unless you call the number, or click on the screen, or give them access to your computer. Don’t do any of those things.
 
The best thing to do is end the browser that is causing the pop-up and avoid the site that called up the pop-up. If you are a mad-person, then you can call the number and give the scammer a hard time. I do not have that personality but there are people that do. And apparently, there is a ‘call’ center devoted to giving scammers a hard time. I just learned about this and on YouTube, there is a young woman that is a voice actor and musician that seems to spend an inordinate amount of time pestering these horrible people.
 
If I’m not pretty enough to listen to, then listen to this talented young woman CLICK HERE: 
 
I’m giving several links to her videos so you can watch, and relish, her particular talents. She mimics Siri, Alexa, ‘old lady’, ‘Valley Girl/Karen’ and more. BTW, I have friend’s named Karen, so I don’t like that term. I don’t know any Brandon’s, but I don’t like that either. We need to be more tolerant, but that’s for another day. Boomers. I don’t like that. There’s a theme here.
 
Here’s a ‘granny’ and Siri video: 

Here’s an Alexa video.
 
If you click on her name you can find all her videos and see some of the ones where she’s at a call center, harassing scammers with others. I consider them superheroes, of a sort.

Brian Bondy
​Recently, a friend got a pop-up that took over his screen and pretended to be from Apple, saying he had a virus and to call this number….
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He did so and was instructed to buy some gift cards and post the numbers for use to the pop-up site as payment for help.
 
This was fake. A pop-up happens in a browser. Normally, it can be a useful tool by a site to open another window to show something, or offer a form to fill out. Sometimes, a malicious entity will create a pop-up that takes up your whole screen and doesn’t offer a way to close it. It may look ominous, say awful, dreadful things are about to happen, even make a lot of noise to sound scary.
 
These are designed to make you think your computer is in danger but it is not.
 
Pop-ups themselves are harmless browser windows which need to be closed manually. It’s not difficult. They usually appear because a person has clicked on something that looks harmless but it’s a link to the pop-up which will try to scare you into giving them money or control of your computer. DO NEITHER OF THOSE THINGS.
 
On Windows you can do CTRL+ALT+DEL and select Task Manager. When that opens, Right click on the offending browser and select to End Task. That will make the pop-up go away and you can continue on.
 
On a Mac, click the Spotlight icon and enter Activity Monitor. Under applications, click on the browser and end it.
 
The point is, the browser is causing the issue, so cancelling it will resolve the problem. Obviously, don’t go back to the thing that caused the pop-up in the first place. Pop-ups do not harm your computer unless you follow along with them. They don’t install anything by themselves, not are they stealing anything. They are meant to cause YOU to do the work by misleading you. Don’t fall for it.
 
The following link has some good info but it also has some mistakes, so don’t take is as gospel. I found it to have a good explanation though, for pop-ups.
 
Read some more about pop-ups and how to prevent them HERE.  How to Avoid Pop-Up Viruses (And How To Remove Them) (comparitech.com)
 
Pop-ups are usually controlled within the browser’s settings. You can Google your particular browser and how to prevent pop-ups. They aren’t all bad though, only the bad ones are. Obvious, I know, but there are reasons why you don’t want to block all pop-ups. 

Courtesy of Rick Rouse
Great Computer Tip Newsletter and seems like a great all round buy

Have you ever accidentally deleted a Gmail contacts that you didn’t intend to delete?

Even worse, have you ever logged into your Gmail account and discovered that all of your contacts had mysteriously disappeared?

Unfortunately, these things happen from time to time, and we often don’t realize it until several days have gone by.

Luckily, it’s very easy to recover any Gmail contacts that were deleted within the last 30 days. 
Gmail has a nifty “Restore Contacts” feature that works much the same way the “System Restore” utility in Microsoft Windows works.

In a nutshell, Gmail creates time-stamped backups of the contact list that we can use later to quickly and easily recover deleted contacts.

Follow these simple instructions to restore your deleted Gmail contact(s):
1 – Log in to your Gmail account, then click here to visit your Google Contacts page.
2 – In the left-hand column, click Trash.
3 – Check the box beside the contact you want to recover.
4 – Scroll back to the top and click Recover.

That’s all there is to it. The next time you accidentally delete a Gmail contact you’ll know how to quickly and easily restore it.
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And by the way, you can use the procedure above to recover multiple deleted contacts if you need to.
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