Medlin Software, Dennis

A necessity for any computer with data or information other than your own (and really, for all computers these days). It is a reasonable protection step which, if ignored, can be used against you if there is a breach. At least with the editions of Windows I use, it is "baked" in and seamless. The other encryption to be aware of is to encrypt your backups before they go to other media or the cloud. Do not rely on the backup service to encrypt for you. In other words, you handle the encryption first, using your own key, then upload or copy to storage.

For applications which did not succumb to the direction to store items in the Windows Registry, this can still be true... But, most device users are so well insulated from file management, the odds of a good copy are slim. Like is often the case, this is a good and bad thing.

From a support perspective (if you ever want a reasonable chance at receiving support), let software install and use the folders the maker determines work best for their software. Makers have reasons for selecting the folders they do. When you elect to use something else, you are "on your own" in most cases. If you are looking for security with the encryption, with a current computer, running encryption on all drives is not a huge burden. If encryption is desired, encrypt all, since not doing so may miss something on the raw drive you were not aware of.

The reliability of manual copy of data or apps went away with DOS... All applications should be "installed', and all data should be backed up and restored using the application's built in backup and restore functions. In many cases, the same application version used to make the backup should be used for the restore (contact the application vendor for specifics).

Agreed, but some may choose not to. My point was not about the merits of paying MS for extended support, it was the fact that it can be done, that W7 can be safely used after Jan 2020, if one wishes to avail themselves of the paid support. Companies (such as WK!) and individuals who claim otherwise are simply incorrect. Even further, while no one should believe XP is still viable, MS has, and continues to (May 2019 for instance) release security updates for XP and other unsupported editions. It is easy to do the math and realize MS knows many use XP, and it is cheaper to support XP unofficially than to deal with XP security issues. There is a good chance this policy will repeat with W7 after Jan 2020, but then again, offering paid extended support may be a trial balloon so see if they can really stop supporting an OS. I suspect that if there is another major need for a security update, which would save MS support costs, they will provide it free, XP to present.

From the OP: "The company they are contracted with requires them to receive their pay in their own personal name with a 1099, they can't receive it in the name of the company they are starting." This is a common red flag that the person doing the work is really an employee, but to take the job, they capitulate to the employer's policy. If the entity receiving the 1099 must be a particular person, then it is an employee/employer relationship since the "employee" cannot send someone else to perform the task, and cannot be in business for themselves (since it must be reported to a particular person, not the person's business). As provided in the OP, nothing more than a scam to avoid WC, matching taxes, benefits, etc. Think Uber, DoorDash, FedEx, etc. DD is one I am slightly familiar with based on reading their documents. DD has verbiage making it appear the dasher can hire out the deliveries to others, but it is not really practical, since DD actually has verbiage which would limit the dasher's selection of employee's or subs.

Jack offers a great tip. it is usually less risky to obtain a new computer with the desired OS preinstalled, compared to upgrading an OS. Arguably the main bene is having a known working setup (the old machine) on standby for 6 to 12 months while you get moved into the new machine. Hardware is CHEAP compared to recovering from a loss of data (via hardware failure, human failure, etc.).

False. W7 can be used as safely as today, via paid support, for three more years. The paid support is not cheap, but it is available.

Indeed! As seen when the OS is updated, having application items affected by an OS upgrade causes issues (which is should not), and while the issue is MS caused, the support is pushed away from MS. There are other ramifications, but the result is still the same, so what cbslee says.

Can't offer an opinion on how ATX will operate after the upgrade. But, there are "unexpected" things to be aware of, and not panic. For instance, if you have software which installs and uses a custom font, the new version of Windows may not "see" the custom font until you reinstall the application which provided and uses the font.

I see society in a way where sense is no longer common, and where the first reaction to any issue is "it could not have been my fault, who can I get to pay". Nuisance/go away/key money is large enough to be life changing to some, and those who pay (us) seem to not want to fight with dollars, and would rather pay for the problem to go away. My first message of the day was from someone who just updated their computer to a new OS version, and wrote me a nastygram about how my software failed after the OS upgrade (it did not). Now uncommon sense would have triggered the OS upgrade as the cause of the issue, but I can be easily reached, MS cannot, so MS successfully offloads their support on others (again).

Unless this is a voluntary "come clean", only send exactly what is ordered in the form ordered. Nothing extra, nothing missing per the order(s). Sent with proof of delivery and signature required. (The last part is "new" for me, but I had to send something not too long ago. It arrived the day before the government shut down, and having that proof of delivery helped later when the office reopened.) Why I say only what is ordered is maybe the agency only goes back part way, not the full ten, and maybe even more likely, to not ever provided "extra".

"see themselves". Tough to defend unless it matches some sort of regulation :). I have trouble seeing how a 1099 to a specific person for work done personally ("they must pay to the 1099 worker directly") can be transferred to another entity to then be converted to W2 wages. How can it be a proper 1099 situation if the person receiving the 1099 could not have sent someone else to do the work (since it, if the entity policy is in place, would have had to issue a separate 1099 to the person sent to do the work)?

New computers are needed, but the "moving" is alway6s tough, even if one practices and has loads of experience. #1 Do NOT reply on someone such as the you know who squad. While they may transfer most things, they will more than likely not transfer everything. Then, when you pint out things are missing, they cannot really help as they have their "one way" of making the transfer, and do not really go any deeper. #2 Make a list off all applications which have important data. Contact the application vendor for their instructions for moving to a new computer. The application vendor is the expert with their product, so rely on them for their expertise. Remember, software is best "installed", not copied or moved, then use the software vendor's instructions for backup.restore/moving data - after the software has been installed on the new computer. #3 Do the steps learned #2, DO NOT wipe or discard the new computer for several months (I use 6) in case you discover something was missed. #4 While I have not used one in decades, there is still likely specialty software to mass move data to a new computer. (This is likely what the squad people do as well). The problem is, things WILL be missed, and you will still have to install your needed software anyway, so these things, without loads of experience, may not really save time. If you ignore #1, those in #2 cannot help after the fact.

So many red flags... Hard to follow the message, but it sounds as if the paying entity is paying the group of friends separately. That would make then either a group of individual business owners (each with their own business), or a group of employees who are getting the shaft from their employer. The paying entity, if hiring the group's "company" would be writing checks to the company, not to the individuals. --- I may be blinded by the simplicity of the recent CA ruling defining employees, which is much easier than the federal 20+ questions, and which, over time, will likely "leak" to other states, but on the face of the OP, I see a huge mess I would not touch as is.

There are things an employer can do, such as asking for verification in early Dec. which has always been a good idea (SSN, W4, Address, etc.). Personally, I did not support masking on the W2, since it is the one time employees can see what the employer is using, but the fear mongers have convinced the masses that not masking is horrendous. Well, more work equals more pay...

It is actually one of our kid's Jeep, but he does not need it at present, so we store, use, and maintain it. Works great to tow behind our small motor home, and we rarely have the doors or top on. It was a lease return from PA (military person turned it in after posting out west). We got it with 36012 miles on it in 2005. Jeep aftermarket is so strong, you can buy repop parts and create your own from scratch if needed. The Jeep is the one vehicle I still feel I "drive", but as above, the new driver aid features are great too. For instance, I am pondering adding lane departure warning system to our motor home (beyond the one dog who always lets me know when I hit a rumble strip!). Maybe then I can get DW to drive it once in a while.

I wish Ford GM, DC, etc. still supported their old pieces, but they do not. I would not mind paying the original list price for a business couple to cut up as shown in my image... I'd even pay triple list price. Now if my wife would let me race the thing in white chinos, a white t shirt, and a Sam Brown belt, I could recreate the photo. There was something awe inspiring then about the safety in the car being rolls and rolls of tape around the steering wheel and self welded cage. I still favor a very thick wheel as the stockers just feel too thin. Back then, the cars lasted a decade or more as they were tanks. The occupant, after a crash, not so much - there was zero give in those things, and the walls were either solid concrete or 2x4 (and you did not want to have a board come in!). I would not mind having back my 68 hemi roadrunner I paid $600 for in the late 70's. BUT, progress can be good, as evidenced by my daughter noticing all of the air bags in our modern car today. Heck, even an old racer like me appreciates antilock brakes and traction control, as the connection between my eyes, brain, and feet just is not as fast as it once was. I do still drive a Jeep with a clutch, but even that has air bags (but sadly, no antilock or TC. I allow that guilty pleasure as a fair trade from sticking to four wheels for the last three decades (on public roads anyway). I guess I can live the old, and accept, even appreciate and rely on, the new.

Employee W2 SSN masking is coming soon... Employers and employees will now have to do verification work, since employees will no longer have a way of knowing what SSN their withholding was credited to. While having a SSN compromised is not fun, human error will cause more trouble.

While I don't recommend using W7 after 2/20, even with the paid support, the truth is W7 does not end until 2/23 (because of the ability to pay for extended support), so the above policy is ----- (fill in term of laziness or misunderstanding).

It should be very "clean" for the recipient. The other item to check, and it may take work, is if the message is actually received. Email is getting less and less reliable (see below). Hopefully the security portal has a tracking and reporting method, so you can see who received their messages, and who opened them. --- I happen to have a relatively large number of Moose Lodge clients (likely using my payroll software to pay their bartenders!). Most use use an email account controlled by their national HQ. The national folks have decided to use a cloud based email "anti spam" product, which has very aggressive settings. The problem is not that our emails were flagged (since this can easily happen to anything resembling a receipt), but that they block messages with a not so easy way for the end user to even know what was being blocked. The end users are lodge members, who may or may not have any technical expertise, and likely assume the national handles the email system for them. For me, this meant every lodge was calling or writing asking why I did not send their receipt! (It is never that they have not received the receipt, it is always assumed it was not sent - since many consider sending to never fail.) After loudly complaining to the folks who are being paid to filter the messages, they white listed my domain. While this is good for me, it is not so good for Moose (and any other customers of the spam filter company) if they really want to be "secure", since all it took was an online chat to get on their white list. (Virus companies do the same thing, proving how useless paid protection is, since any system with a whitelist makes the protection worse than useless, since those on the whitelist could go rouge, get hacked, etc.) The other ALARMING item I was remind of, and why secure/encrypted email is important when needed, is the filter provider has full access to all inbound messages. If you were to send a non secure tax return (PDF can no longer be considered secure), this is one more point of attack you may not even have been aware of... and I had forgotten this (I do not use such a service) until the filter company sent me headers from messages which went through after they white listed my domain!

There is effeminately a line we all have. Crossed today by someone asking how to change paychecks to the owner's name and SSN because the employees are not eligible to work in the US.

"Perhaps the best way to do everything right..." This is a major part of my daily work struggles. What I mean is the letting go of what my experience/training/preferences tell me is "right", and accepting I cannot control what others feel is acceptable.

Likely, unless the return is a PDF, you would have to come up with something to allow printing in a close format. (Note, even PDF is not perfect, it cannot be guaranteed to match what the author intended, since PDF software now allows the end used to adjust the file, such as line width, fonts, etc., and that does not even consider the fact that printer software is imperfect - such as really margin accuracy.) PDF is the one format you can count on to be close, assuming the end user does not muck up the settings. Personally, I would not trust any built into PDF creation software password and/or encryption. PDF security is said to have been compromised, at least once recently IIRC. Since it is a common format, it is reasonable to believe there are hackers constantly looking to break the security. With that said, PDF security, with a kept up to date creation system, is likely good enough to say you took reasonable steps to be secure, if you are comfortable with that, and with your business insurance :). For sending something securely via email, PGP type systems as Catherine mentioned, are likely reliable, provided the system in use handles the questions from the end user (unless you want to take on that support). On the other hand, when I get "secure" messages from our charge card processor, it comes in the form of a message, with a link, for which I have to sign in to see the message. There is no support needed, as it is very clear what I have to do. It is a bit of a PITA, since the message eventually is shown to me as a tif file (an image), but I am completely comfortable their system is as secure as can be (since it contains data one would not want in the wild). While I do not use ATX, what G'maBee said about a client portal is very likely some sort of secure method to contact your clients, and possibly share data. Hopefully it is some sort of system like what our charge card processor uses, not just a way to send "secure" PDF files.