They're Always At It, Aren't They?

TL;DR: If you're talking to someone from one of your utility companies, they will have your account number on hand, and should be able to easily verify it with you.

Terrific news: we were exposed to a new scam today. Some of you may have already experienced this one, but it was a first for us, so we had to share:

Someone called from a local number pretending to work for APS (our local power company), and informed us that they had a "shut off notice" for our building. 
They asked if we had received a previous notification about our power being shut off, and when informed that we hadn't, the person on the line helpfully volunteered to note that on our "file." 
The person on the line knew our company name, our owner's name, and our address (which makes sense as that is all public record).
After verifying our information, they furbished an 800 number for us to get in touch with their very official sounding "Shut Off Department" so we could avoid shut off. 
While they were talking, we were trying to figure out the simplest way of proving they were full of it, but all that came to mind was asking them for our APS account number. 
They claimed to not have it "on hand" which didn't sound right at all. When asked to pull it up so we could reference it during our talk with the mega important sounding "Shut Off Department" they quickly hung up.

So, we were just tossing around some ideas and started to wonder if a lot of Tax Scammers, and Loan Scammers couldn't be shut down by simply asking them to verify the last 4 digits of your Social Security Number or something to that effect? 
Anyway, food for thought. We just figured we should make you all aware in case you haven't gotten this exciting new scam call yet. 
We were thrilled like the first thousand times we got a call about our car's warranty running out.

SofTech Computer Repair in Prescott Gives You Some Reasons Why Your Computer Is Running Slow

How often have you been ready to throw your computer out the window because it gets slow, or the screen freezes. SofTech Computer Repair in Prescott would like to show you some of the reasons that computers get slow.

• Your computer was running for a long time without shutting down and restarting. Many times a software update will give you the message “To complete installation, restart computer”. But it usually comes at a time when you need to use the computer for something, so you put it off and leave your computer with unfinished business. And when you’re finished for the day, you might decide to just close the laptop screen instead of completely shutting down your computer, especially since it “takes so long to start up” in the morning. Your computer is much like you ~ When you have piles and piles of stuff on your desk, sometimes you just need to take everything off the desktop and start over. So it is a good idea to shut down your computer and let it get a fresh start on a regular basis.
   
• Sometimes you install a program that is designed to run in the background while you are doing other work. These programs that are running in the background take computer resources and tend to make your computer appear to run slower because they are sharing the resources with you. You may want to remove or disable any startup programs that automatically start each time the computer boots. If you have a security utility, malware and spyware protection program or an antivirus scanner on the computer, set it up not to scan your computer in the background. Often when these programs begin to scan the computer it can decrease the overall performance of your computer.
   
• It’s just getting old. If your computer is older than 3 years come to terms that it could be the age of the computer that is causing it to be slow. Computers progress at an alarming rate as new programs and updates for programs come out their minimum requirements increase and will cause older computers to slow down. If your computer is older than five years we suggest purchasing a new computer or just realize it is going to run slow because it is old.
   
• If you’ve had your computer for more than one year it’s likely your computer is not meeting the memory requirements for the new software of today. We suggest at a minimum the computer have 1GB of memory.

If your computer is running slow it may be any one or more than one of these issues. The professionals at SofTech Computer Repair in Prescott will be glad to take a look at your computer and give you advice on how to keep it running as fast as possible, or if the computer has seen better days, they can help you build a computer to meet your requirements. For all your computer hardware, software and device questions, please give us a call at 928-443-8770 or visit our website at http://www.softechcomputers.com.

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