#remotesupport

Over the weekend a man in Oregon called for tech support (I’m in Washington). “Bob, I can’t get my printer to work.” I connected remotely to his computer while we talked on the phone. He’s running Windows 11 Home, 25H2. I opened “Printers & Scanners” to see what’s up. He has one printer, and it had an error message. I started from the beginning: downloaded and installed the current driver package directly from the HP website, power cycled the printer, and rebooted the computer. I tested printing from “Printers & Scanners” with the normal test page, then tested from Microsoft Word – oops! – it’s coming up in fax mode! I set the printer as default and tested again. Then I asked the client to try printing something, whatever it was that he couldn’t print before he called me. He opened Outlook, opened an attachment, and printed it. Success. You see, a lot of this isn’t hard. They just need a friend. He’s a residential client. I looked in my records, and he’s been a client since May of 2019. This was the eighth invoice in seven years. The last invoice before this was in October, 2024 – 21 months ago! But he remembers me, and when he does need help, I get the call. THE LESSON Repeat business matters. But you also need to have a large, dynamic, growing customer base, because everyone doesn’t need your help every month. Does this seem insecure? Never knowing if, or when, a client will call back? No. It’s not insecure at all, if you build your client base. The beauty of this business model is that no one person can ever fire you. No one can take away your income. You’ve got to do the work, though, of providing consistently good service, and always be marketing. Continually be about the business of nurturing and growing your customer base. #CallMeIfYouNeedMe #FIFONetworks #RemoteSupport #TechSupport #HelpDesk

A man passed away recently. He had eight different email addresses, including a couple that belonged to his wife before she died in 2019. His family is paying me to close down his social media presence and close out the email accounts. I just closed an AOL email account that he opened in the 1990s. A couple of the other old emails (anyone remember Juno?) had no MFA, and the passwords consisted only of uppercase and lowercase letters. These old email addresses are a spammer’s dream. Easy to crack into, well established addresses, and the deceased person won’t complain or tighten security. If you have a loved one who passed away, make some decisions about their email addresses. Add MFA that you control if you’re going to keep the email active. And when it’s time, close the account. I know that’s a big emotional step. It seems so final. On the other hand, your loved one probably doesn’t want their old email address used for cybercrime. #CallMeIfYouNeedMe #FIFONetworks #RemoteSupport #TechSupport #HelpDesk

BeyondTrust patched a critical pre-authentication vulnerability (CVE-2026-40138, CVE-2026-40139, CVE-2026-40140). Update Remote Support instances now. #BeyondTrust #Vulnerability #CVE202640138 #CyberSecurity #RemoteSupport https://securityonline.info/cve-2026-40138-beyondtrust-pre-authentication-vulnerability/?utm_source=mastodon&utm_medium=jetpack_social