That’s not news; it was always true that you can find fake Rolexes in the worst parts of some cities. But now it’s the Piranha Plant from the Mario Brothers games, as an insect-eating plant you can grow from seeds available on Amazon. (Nope. They’re weed seeds.) And there’s a 30Terabye solid state drive, portable model, for $70. If that was real, it would cost well into the 4 figures, but no, it’s only $70, because it’s 60 Gb of micro SD card and a trick BIOS that reports a very large drive that doesn’t exist and let’s you copy unlimited files to nowhere.

Here’s how to recognize these frauds, and others that are more subtle. It’s in the December 2022 PC Updater News, available free here. (Plus back issues and a free subscription.)

The August PC Updater News is ready for download, or subscribe for free to get it every month.

This month, it’s about what you need to know about the information being taken from your browsers any time you go out on the web, who knows about it, and who’s buying it for marketing and for phishing purposes. You leave a major trail of breadcrumbs in your wake as you surf, and they’re being mined to break any remaining privacy you might have had online.

The June 2020 PC Updater News is available now, here. Missed issues and the free newsletter signup page are here.

This issue covers how to recognize both a trojan horse attempting to breach the city gates, and how to recognize a file claiming to be something you want, when it’s just another attempt to breach computer security, usually ransomware, banking and mail login capture software, or cryptominers.