If your computer automatically updates Windows or you use Check for Updates to update your computer this week, you might be dead in the water. Instead, you can manually install the Windows updates.

Rich Woods had a warning about the Windows 10 update coming out this Tuesday which is probably worth heeding. You can read his post for the details:

https://www.neowin.net/news/just-stay-away-from-windows-update-on-this-patch-tuesday

For those of you who don’t have an IT department, I’ll summarize and clarify some of the details.

Most of us are on Windows 10 version 1709 and will soon be updated to Windows 10 version 1803 via Automatic Update (which is the version that has issues). However, if you manually update your PC by installing the latest patches, you can avoid the issues. Here’s how to check what version of Windows 10 you are on.

1. From the start menu, type “About” and open up About your PC.
   
2. Scroll down in the About window until you find your version number.
   

If you already have version 1803 and your computer is working, congratulations! You don’t need to do anything. If you have 1709 or earlier and want to avoid the risk of affecting your machine with Automatic Update, read on.

If you have version 1709, you can view the available patches/updates here:

https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/help/4043454/windows-10-windows-server-update-history

There are patches listed on the left. If you want a specific patch, you can open up the page and scroll down to the bottom, there is a section How to get this update with a link to the Microsoft Web Catalog for the item:

 

Or, you can simply install the Cumulative Update from this page:

http://www.catalog.update.microsoft.com/Search.aspx?q=KB4093105

Installing updates manually takes a little extra time, but hopefully it helps you avoid some much bigger issues!

Steve Johnsen is a marketing strategist, a business coach, and the Founder of Cloud Mountain Marketing. He is also the author of the Amazon #1 best-seller, 5 Easy Steps to Make Your Website Your #1 Employee.

Not all website code is created equal! If you’ve read my book, 5 Easy Steps to Make Your Website Your #1 Employee, you know that there is good code and bad code. Search engines easily read good code and those pages show up in search results. Bad code looks like gibberish to search engines, so pages with bad code don’t tend to show up in search results.

One of my clients, Myrna, became a client after paying a major search engine optimization company (who shall remain nameless) for 9 months without results. She wondered why she wasn’t showing up at the top of Google.

When I looked at her website, I found that it not only wasn’t showing up at the top, but her web pages weren’t even indexed at all in Google. That meant that her web pages weren’t in Google’s database and couldn’t show up anywhere, at all, in any kind of search results.

Her business was in a fairly small niche in the travel industry. I could see that if her code were readable, good code, she wouldn’t even need SEO because she would be found organically. Instead of SEO, we rewrote her code, made her site design a bit neater and moved her web hosting to a much better server.

Within a week, her business was showing up on page 2 in Google for all her target keywords. Within a couple of weeks, it was showing up on page 1. It typically doesn’t happen that fast, but because of her small niche, a simple rewrite of her code and a change of her hosting was all that was needed.

Does your website code need to be rewritten? If your site isn’t showing up on the first page of Google for your target keywords, it’s definitely worth a look.

To your success!

You’ve written copy for your website that speaks directly to your prospective customer. Your website design beautifully represents the look and feel of your brand. Next, you must make sure that your website is easy to navigate.

When people have a hard time finding what they’re looking for on a website, not only will they be frustrated with the website, but also with the business. Not a good first impression.

Even if your website is well-designed and well-written, but your new customer can’t find where they need to go on your site, you will lose customers before they become customers!

So, what can you do to ensure easy site navigation? First, make sure it’s obvious what you want people to do when they get to your website. Next, use common sense when you build your navigation bar. The tabs should be self-explanatory and clearly direct visitors to the other pages.

Put yourself in the shoes of your prospective customer. What would they need to see in order to get where they need to go?

To your success!

You may have already heard about the Heartbleed bug. Heartbleed is a bug that was found in OpenSSL, the security protocol used across much of the Internet, that could potentially allow someone to secretly install software on a third-party servers and steal passwords or other information. Many websites and Internet-based services have been potentially vulnerable. Heartbleed is not just the latest Internet chain letter. This was a serious issue and the following information may be valuable to you.

If exploited, Heartbleed could allow someone to get access to your email accounts, bank accounts, credit card numbers, files stored in the cloud, etc. In order to protect your information, affected service providers (the companies, not you as the customer) should have taken both of the following steps:

• Update/patch OpenSSL to remove the bug
• If it was at all possible at any time for Heartbleed to be exploited on the server, replace SSL certificates.

Here are some services that were potentially affected by Heartbleed, where it is recommended that you do change your passwords:

• Facebook
• Instagram
• Pinterest
• Tumblr
• Gmail
• Youtube
• Google +
• Yahoo.com
• Yahoo mail
• Bing
• Blogspot
• LL Bean / BarclayCard
• Amazon web services (but not Amazon.com)
• Etsy
• GoDaddy
• Intuit/TurboTax
• USAA
• Box
• Dropbox
• Github
• Minecraft
• Netflix
• Salesforce.com
• Hootsuite
• AWeber

And a few sites that are not affected or where you do not need to take any action. Fortunately, many banks are on this list:

• Amazon.com
• LinkedIn
• Microsoft.com
• AOL
• Hotmail
• eBay
• Groupon
• Paypal
• Target
• Nordstrom
• Walmart
• Bank of America
• Capital One
• Chase
• Citigroup
• E*Trade
• Fidelity
• Schwab
• Scottrade
• TD Ameritrade
• US Bank
• Wells Fargo
• 1040.com
• Healthcare.gov
• TaxACT

For a much longer list, you can visit this web page:

https://github.com/musalbas/heartbleed-masstest/blob/master/top10000.txt

For other services, I would recommend that you contact your service provider to find out the status. Or, you can use this webpage from LastPass as a quick screening tool to check a website’s vulnerability. If status is unclear, do contact your service provider.

https://lastpass.com/heartbleed/

If a service you use could have potentially been affected, I recommend that you check with your service provider (or use the tool above), to verify that any bugs have been patched and that SSL certificates have been replaced.

After you have verified that both these steps are complete (and only after these are done), I recommend that you change your passwords with any service that you care about if there was any chance that they were affected at some point in time:

• Email accounts
• Online bank accounts
• Online credit card accounts
• Online accounts with any merchant/vendor where you have provided credit card information

If a service provider was never affected, then you do not need to change your passwords.

Yes, changing all your passwords is a pain, but the alternative could be much, much worse.

A few additional recommendations:

• Do not use the same password on two different sites. Create separate passwords for each site.
• Use strong passwords: At least 9 characters long, with a mix of upper & lower case, numerals, and special characters.
• Avoid using your name, date of birth, or words that can be found in the dictionary in your passwords.
• If you have a service that offers 2-step validation (via text message to your cell phone), enable it. It’s a pain to use but provides very good protection.
• Update your browser(s) to the most current version.
• For good measure, delete/clear your browsers’ cache, cookies, and history.
• Have fun while you’re making all these changes. Put on some music and enjoy. 🙂

Monitor your accounts closely over the next few months and follow up quickly on any strange activity. Hopefully, none of your information was compromised. However, with many services, you cannot be completely safe until after your service provider has patched their servers and certificates, and you have changed your passwords.

To your success,

Steve Johnsen