Whiz to Coho, Inc.

03/29/2017

Coho recommends you reboot your equipment once a month. This is common practice in small voltage electronics to dissipate any static electricity buildup in the circuitry.

03/14/2017

ATTENTION CLIENTS:
There is a phishing scam going around where a foreign entity is claiming to be a third party survey group hired by us to conduct an informational survey.

We have not hired anyone or anything of the sort. What these scams accomplish is listed below:
a) By interacting with an email phishing scam, you're letting the original sender know that your email account is active and the spam bombardment will increase exponentially.
b) By giving out your information you're subjecting yourself to fraud, identity theft and a whole slew of other bad things.
c) By acknowledging the ad or interacting with it, you're subjecting your information to third-party black market data hunters, who can use it to take advantage of your online presence by being able to pose as yourself and do a lot of legal and financial scamming, which ultimately will fall back onto you.

If you've encountered and interacted with phishing scams, either in pop ups or emails. be sure to check your credit report regularly for inconsistencies and change your account passwords to protect yourself and your investments.

AGAIN - WE DO NOT SEND OUT CONSUMER SURVEYS OR HIRE ANY THIRD PARTY COMPANY TO HANDLE OUR BUSINESS, WE DO IT ALL OURSELVES.

Be safe out there in cyberland - protect yourself.

01/11/2017

Outages are most often caused by power failures. Here's PGE's list as of 1230 AM 1/11/2017. Be safe out there during this winter season.

View a map of current power outages.

12/14/2016

There is some concern that a recent Windows 10 update broke the internet. There is a fix for this:
If you can, download the latest patch.
1. Open a command line by clicking in your start menu search bar and type "cmd". This will bring up a command line. Open cmd.exe.
2. Type the following:
ipconfig /release and press enter,
then
ipconfig /renew and press enter.
3. If that does not work, reboot your computer.

Sincerely,
Coho.net Customer Service

Microsoft issued another patch on Tuesday that fixes the problem.

10/15/2016

Pge has listed over 50k people without power... and we're not even through the thick of it yet. Stay safe, folks.

10/13/2016

Incoming storm this evening. From PGE, be prepared for power outages.

10/07/2016

Sunday morning we will be doing some hardware upgrades at our BJ Relay. Customers in the Kansas City area and parts of Banks will be affected. Expect short outages until noon.

10/04/2016

#10 has affected some of our customers recently. Be aware.

(Photo: Thinkstock) In 2001, I planned to move to a new town in Connecticut. I put my house up for sale, but it sat there, unsold in the recession, for over a year. Not a nibble, even after I dropped the price and made some improvements. Then one day, my realtor called with some astonishing news.

09/30/2016

Cybersecurity and You

Ahoy Cohoyans, I bring to you today some very unfortunate news that is becoming more and more relevant, and that news involves your personal network security.

There is a scam going around where our customers are getting popups warning of a virus infection on their computers or a major operating system malfunction, and then lists a 1-800 number or the equivelant to call for help.

One thing that is important to understand is that while your personal network IP scheme is safe (It's behind your router and not even WE can get into it) your public IP (basically your internet post office address) belongs to us. This is public information.

Some foreign nationals (and domestics at that) are taking advantage of our clients by implanting Popups disguised as important messages from Coho. They do this by using a computer program to scan your public IP, which is then associated with our company. When you call the number, they lie to you about who they are and what their intentions are.

After they walk you through giving them remote access to your computer, they are free to take whatever documents off your computer that they want. In addition, they can implant a malicious code which permanently opens a port for their system, in which case they can hijack your computer remotely and use it to their whim while you're asleep.

This can create a huge number of problems. To start, if your computer is involved with an attack against the federal government, or any other major entity you could be legally liable. In addition, if you have bank statements, financial information, or any other valuable information it is now susceptible to theft.

More often than not, they will try to charge you for their "service" as they call it, which likely involves planting a virus of their own. This is particularly dangerous not only to your network security, but to ours as well as it exposes some very key network security portals in our network.

If you have already allowed these people access to your computer, you need to run a virus scan and ensure all of your security programs are updated and that your computer is safe. If you don't know how, take your computer in to geek squad or another IT professional and get it looked at.

As a general rule:
1) If it looks suspicious, call us.
2) We will NEVER, NEVER, NEVER (I repeat, never) hire a third party company, particularly one in a foreign country, to handle our customer service. We take pride in our work and we don't want that satisfaction taken away from us.
3) Coho does not generate popups. We never will.

This has been a public service announcement brought to you by your very concerned friends and neighbors at Coho.net.

09/22/2016

Ahoy Cohooligans,

There is a phishing scam going around where our customers are recieving exe files from "[email protected]". WE WILL NEVER SEND YOU AN EMAIL FROM THIS ADDRESS. If you receive an email from this address, delete it, do not open it and DO NOT OPEN THE FILE CONTAINED IN THE EMAIL.

We will also never send you a .exe file unless we tell you specifically over the phone or in person, and even that would have to be a special circumstance.

Internet Security is an ever evolving world, and it's up to you to keep yourselves safe. We will do our best to advise but we cannot prevent all phishing attempts or scams. Practice safe and responsible surfing - NEVER give your financial information out unless you're positive it's safe. If you have any questions, please call our office directly.

08/10/2016

Did you know you can save money when you pay for six months or a year? If you pay for six months of service you get two weeks free, and paying for a year gets you two months free! Call our office at 503-647-5957 for more details.

08/09/2016

** Outage Alert ** Green Mountain's upper access point is down. Cause is unknown. We have someone investigating but it may end up being down until tomorrow. I will have someone there first thing tomorrow morning.

-Ryan