Unintended Internet Consequences

My Thought for the New Year Does a God Need Protection?

Unintended Internet Consequences

How come every time you agree to an update of some website or service you’re using, it screws up thirteen other things? Or is it just me?

I use IOBIT’s Advance SystemCare as a tool to keep my computer clean of spyware and junk files and so forth. Several months ago I began having trouble with all sorts of memories being wiped out.

In both my Word and Excel programs, the feature that retains recent documents I’ve opened would be wiped clean every day or two. I’d go into Options and click the number I wanted it to retain, and it would work for the rest of that day and maybe the next day, but then it would be wiped clean again.

My email accounts and Facebook, Twitter, and HootSuite would all suddenly require me to sign in each time, even though I checked the box to remain signed in. After much frustration, I went to my tech guy, and we sat down together to try to figure out what was wrong. Through much trial and error, we discovered that checking the feature in Advanced SystemCare called “Privacy Sweep” caused all these erasures.

As soon as I unchecked that feature, the “recent document” feature in Word and Excel began working properly once more. The sign in procedures didn’t respond quite so immediately, but I kept checking “Keep me signed in” and FB, etc., eventually got the message and remembered me.

Everything went fine for several months. Then a week or so ago, Advanced SystemCare asked me if I’d like to upgrade from version 7 to version 8. I said yes, and downloaded the upgrade. Unfortunately, I didn’t stop to think that the updated version might automatically have “Privacy Sweep” checked. Sure enough, the next time I pulled up Word, the recent documents were erased. Same with Excel. Both my email accounts along with Facebook, Twitter, and HootSuite suddenly required full sign-ins each time.

It took me a day or so to realize what had happened, and I unchecked the “Privacy Sweep” immediately. Word and Excel responded as soon as I unchecked it, but I’m in my third or fourth day—or maybe more for all I know—of having to sign in to my various accounts. *sigh*

What internet things have you done that produce unintended consequences? Or am I the only one who does these things?

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We may not have it all together, but together we have it all.

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For more information about David N. Walker, click the “About” tab above.

For more information about his books, click on “Books” above.

Contact him at dnwalkertx (at) gmail (dot) com or tweet him at @davidnwalkertx.