Consumers Increasingly Interested in Paid Tech Support Options

Support.com recently completed an online survey of U.S. broadband-connected consumers and found that an increasing number of consumers have purchased or have expressed a strong interest in using a paid tech support service when faced with a difficult technology problem.

The Sept 2009 research found that 28% of U.S. broadband-connected consumers have paid for a computer tech support service (online / over the phone, in a store or in-home). Of the 72% that haven't yet paid for tech support, 44% indicated they "would considering paying for a computer tech support service when faced with a computer problem" they couldn't solve themselves. Both results - purchases and consideration - have increased over the past few years. Repeat purchase rate is also up - 53% of consumers who have paid for a service have done so more than once (vs. 45% in Oct 2006).

"My computer was infected with a virus or spyware" remains the most common problem with a long tail of slow computer and application-related problems following. Not surprisingly, consumers who have considered paid tech support were much more likely to have experienced a computer problem they couldn't solve themselves.

The majority of paid services (52%) are provided by thousands of local computer repair shops and independent technicians across the U.S., but this is down from 63% (Oct 2006) as retailers, service providers and standalone premium technology support companies have entered the market.

The Support.com online survey was fielded to 2,204 broadband-connected consumers, age 30+ during Sept 24-27, 2009.

For a copy of the research email James Morehead (morehead@support.com) - VP Product Management, Support.com. Please include your name, title, company and phone number with your request.

Backup Strategy to the Rescue (after hard drive failure)

There is nothing more catastrophic to a computer than a hard drive failure. Hard drives are the one component where failure can mean a complete loss of data. This is a cautionary tale from a real experience about the importance of having a backup strategy for your data.

Over the past few weeks one of my computers has been acting erratically - locking up at random every couple of days. I used my support.com subscription to get some advice and as I suspected my hard drive was on the verge of failing.

The computer in question is my media hub (that I wrote about previously) - the central store for all of our family's music, photos and home videos. 200+ gigabytes of memories and online purchases about to crumble into digital dust. Sounds like a tragedy - but it wasn't. It was a minor inconvenience in the end.

Learning from earlier mistakes, I protect this critical personal computer with a comprehensive (but not expensive) backup strategy. First I'll summarize what I did proactively:

Automatic backup to a USB-connected hard drive - using SyncToy (freely available from Microsoft's website) and the built-in scheduling capabilities in Windows Vista my computer automatically backs up personal folders nightly. That provides me with a fast way to restore files but was only part of my backup strategy.

Automatic online backup - there are multiple providers of online backup and I use one of the more popular options.

Why do both a USB drive backup and online backup? A few reasons:

• Redundancy - my data is in multiple places - on the PC, the USB drive and in the "cloud" or online backup provider (who also backup your backup in their network storage facility)
• Offsite (survives a fire or water damage)
• More comprehensive (online backup solutions backup items I haven't configured SyncToy to grab)
• Flexible recovery - it is faster to backup and store 200 GB from a USB drive than uploading / downloading 200 GB from the web

I didn't use to be so proactive about backup... the last time a hard drive failed I had to re-rip hundreds of CDs to build back my MP3 collection. Lesson learned.

With every failed hard drive there is an opportunity to rebuild a bit better - which I've done. I installed a new, larger, quieter and greener (less power) hard drive to replace the failed drive. I re-installed Windows Vista but upgraded to the 64-bit version to take advantage of a memory upgrade.

I then restored the bulk of my files from the USB backup drive and then restored the rest (the odds and ends you never remember to backup) from the online backup provider.

A bit of a nuisance - yes - but a crisis? No. Because everything that mattered was backed up - not once, but multiple times (and in multiple places). I was protected.

If you'd like help doing the same online technology service companies like support.com (where I work) can help get you there. With all memories now going digital it is important that families - not just corporations - proactively backup data now (to avoid tears later).

Virus and Spyware - Avoid Infection With Careful Inspection.

Enter “virus and spyware” in a search engine and you’ll be pummeled with results – more than it is possible to absorb. Do this, don’t do that, install this, don’t install that. A single blog entry can’t capture every possible permutation of malware so instead I’ll describe two real attempts by Internet bad guys to infect my home PC and/or steal personal information. I thwarted both by being observant – and being observant is by far the best way to prevent a nasty virus or spyware infection. And before you think otherwise, neither of these examples is the result of visits to sites with, well, salacious content.

Real Example – Phisher attempts to hook me (I got away)

What is phishing? Here’s Wikipedia’s take: “phishing is an attempt to criminally and fraudulently acquire sensitive information”. A nasty example arrived in my email inbox last year. Not surprisingly it was a phisher impersonating a bank - one of the common ploys to get private information. Here’s the text verbatim (the only thing I’ve changed is my email address – to protect my privacy):

=== Actual phishing email ===
From: "Wachovia" To: "xxxxx" Subject: Wachovia Bank: please confirm your online banking account data -Fri, 25 Apr 2008 00:18:31 -0500 Date: Fri, 25 Apr 2008 04:18:37 +0000

Dear Wachovia Bank customer,

We would like to inform you that we are currently carrying out scheduled maintenance.In order to guarantee the high level of security to our business customers, we require you to complete “Wachovia Commercial Online Form”.Please complete Wachovia Commercial Online Form using the link below:
http://commercial.wachovia.com/Online/Financial/Business/Service[remainder of URL removed by me to prevent propagation]

This is auto-generated email, please do not respond to this email.

=======

This was an easy one for me to identify as bogus – I’m not a Wachovia customer. The phisher, however, likely sent out millions of emails like this in the hopes some subset of people will be Wachovia customers. The emails themselves are sent most likely via infected PCs to make it less likely spam filters will block the email.

The link – and this is the key part – looks like a link to Wachovia’s website but it isn’t. The actual link takes you to this website: “commercial.wachovia.com.dllstackontodir29.cn”. Note the “dllstackontodir29.cn” tacked on to the end – that’s the home of the bad guys, not Wachovia.

What you see on the screen rarely matches the actual link. This is not a bad thing for legitimate sites – the full website typically carries a lot of extra information that makes the website work but is meaningless to the consumer. The display name (what you see on the screen) is just enough text to tell you what you are clicking on. Scammers like phishers, unfortunately, take advantage of this.

Similarly, it appears the email came from wachovia.com – it didn’t.

Golden rule here – never believe an email like this – a legitimate business doesn’t take this route to communicate updates. Furthermore, if you aren’t sure go directly to the site and log into your account from there (rather than clicking a link in an email) – if there is something you need to do you’ll find out there. Finally, if you accidentally click a link you didn’t intend to, close your Internet browser.

Stay tuned - next time we'll talk about bogus spyware protection (also known as scareware).

If you think you are infected give us a call at 1-800-PCSUPPORT or click through to http://www.support.com. That link goes to where it says it will go - no phishing.

Additional resources:

• More on phishing: http://www.support.com/blogs/supportcom/post/if-it-smells-fishy-it-s-problem-phishing.aspx
• Update on the Conficker worm: http://www.support.com/feature/conficker-virus-protection