Ask Leo! #583 – Possible Lastpass Phishing, Ransomware32, MAC address filtering, downloading torrents, and more…

Leo: Related, but maybe warranting another article is the general dropping of support for SHA-1 signed certificates. Since XP does not have support for the replacement (SHA-2, aka SHA-256), since 1 Jan 2016 IE & Chrome can no longer connect to secure sites ... like askleo.com.

(Despite the note above) Firefox is the only common browser that still works on secure sites under XP. Firefox has it's own certificate store which supports SHA-2; unlike IE and Chrome which relies on OS certificate support.

They should be able to connect just fine - there'll simply be a warning that would need to be ignored.

Not only is IE pre 11 support being stopped, but I saw in the news that Windows 8 support is now being stopped. So now I really have to decided whether to upgrade to Windows 10.

Windows 8.1 is still supported. The least challenging would be to update 8 to 8.1.

I have upgraded my 3 year old Windows 7 laptop to Windows 10, not because I like it or really wanted it but because I have learned enough from Ask Leo and my own research and fixes over the years to be the go to person in my family and for my friends when they have any issues with their computers and tablets. I even got into a friends computer that he did not have the password for, it was his late wife's. His IT friend from Northrop couldn't do it, after trying, his suggestion was to buy a new laptop, but I said I could do it. With a some research from Leo's site and my own researching, I was able to burn a disc with what I needed and get in, delete the password and get him back control of the accounts and laptop. Bragging? No. Just letting you know how helpful Ask Leo has been for me for a long time. I love his site. You can never know enough or know it all, in fact my motto is, "You can't know it all, but you can know how to find it".

So, anyway, I figured if I was going to be able to continue to help friends and family, I needed at least one machine with Win10 on it. However, I will not be updating my Win7 desktop and I have installed the GWX program on it and my brother's Win7 machine. After running the program, it found several MB's of Win10 files on them. I had turned off updates last June after hearing that MS would be pushing out Win10 in July. Which means that MS pushed out Win10 files before the actual opening date for download.

I am very happy with my Win7 machine. I have no need to have MS shove something down my computer just because they think they know what is better for me then I do. One of my brothers in Oregon is a beta tester for MS and he sings Win10's praises all of the time...of course he doesn't always mention the many times he has had to rebuild his system over and over because of it, but he is happy. I say, good for him. I am also happy.

After working with Win10 for several weeks now and like someone else above said, "there is nothing in Windows 10 that is any more useful than what is in Windows 7". Oh, and don't get me started on Office365, {{sigh}}

Sorry for the long rant. People telling me that what I don't want is not really what I don't want burns me up.......LOL. Anyway, to everyone reading this page, Ask Leo can be the best resource for info and help you may ever need, listen to what he says!