Posts Tagged ‘Download’

Use your remote from iTunes even while minimized

Makes your multimedia keyboard buttons work with iTunes when the program isn’t currently in focus, or is minimised.

Microsoft Office 2010 Beta

So I am going through my email yesterday and I come across an email from TechNet announcing the beta of Microsoft 2010.

One Day Only — Free ZoneAlarm 2010 Pro

You read that correct.  One day only, you can get a free year license for ZoneAlarm 2010.  The leaders in free firewall software are offering you a free step up to the Pro version.

Clampi Virus targets online banking

In the modern world, most people never see their bank (with the exception of ATM withdrawals).  We use bill pay, direct deposit and bank debit cards.  This is the exact behavior that the Clampi virus is living on.

Clean up Past Window Updates

Have you ever looked at your drive size to find that you are missing a lot more space then you think you should?  Well if you run Windows, this will happen anytime you run an update.

I Love this utility

One of my favorite websites to look at daily (ok many times a day) is Life Hacker.  Today as I was going through some of their archived postings I found this.

When is an antivirus really a virus?

Today I recei­ved a call from one of my exter­nal users that was una­ble to access any web­si­tes because some new anti­vi­rus was saying he was unpro­tec­ted and every web­site had mali­cious code.

Since I know that we have McA­fee 8.5 deplo­yed to our users, I knew that this was not a McA­fee issue.  As we dis­cus­sed it a little further he was men­tio­ning that the Anti­vi­rus wan­ted him to purchase the software.

This isn’t the first I have heard of this.  There is a soft­ware com­pany Inno­va­gest 2000 that is pro­du­cing this soft­ware.  They adver­tise it as an antispy­ware appli­ca­tion, but it is the spy­ware.  On some less then savory web­si­tes you will get a pop up that says that your com­pu­ter maybe infec­ted and they offer a free scan.

The fear of being infec­ted moti­va­tes a lot of peo­ple to run this free scan.  Unk­nown to them this appli­ca­tion ins­talls under­neath and now you are stuck.  On that note, I do recom­mend only doing the online scans from repu­ta­ble sites.  I per­so­nally recom­mend the follo­wing: Syman­tec, Panda, and McA­fee.

This appli­ca­tion is extre­mely hard to get rid of.  It rere­gis­ters and ins­talls if it is not com­ple­tely unins­ta­lled correctly.

I hate pro­grams like this.  But it is a fact of life out there.  The modern day snake-oil salesman.

While the pro­gram is run­ning you will see the follo­wing unde­si­ra­ble behavior:

• A “Win­dows Secu­rity Cen­ter” sta­ting that you should purchase Per­so­nal Antivirus.
• Nume­rous alerts sta­ting that your com­pu­ter is under attack or that you have mal­ware run­ning on your com­pu­ter. If you click on these alerts, Per­so­nal Anti­vi­rus will be ins­ta­lled, or you will be brought to the purchase page for the program.
• Your Inter­net Explo­rer brow­ser will be hijac­ked to show secu­rity war­nings when brow­sing the web that stop you from reaching your desi­red page.

As I men­tio­ned before this bug­ger is very hard to get rid off.  But not impos­si­ble.  I found these ins­truc­tions at BleepingComputer.com.

Read more…

New Computer Security Mistakes

I wanted to pass on what I see as some of the top computer security mistakes that most casual computers users make when first setting up a new computer:

Move around your system faster

One question I get asked a lot in my field is how do I move around so fast on the PC.  Without meaning to, I seem to make people feel like they are moving in slow motion when I am opening, closing, copying, pasting, etc.

Online Backup

A few days ago, I discussed a backup tool named Cobian and I promised to look into online space for offsite storage.

Cobian Backup Utility

A few posts ago I made a tongue in cheek comment to backing up.  It did get me thinking a little bit about good FREE, and you will notice I like free, backup utilities that offered a good variety of backup options (location, spanning, archiving, and so on).

Safely type email on your iPhone

I do not personally own an iPhone, but I do keep my eye out on some of the interesting applications from time to time, and this is one that I would love to see on my beloved blackberry.  Email n’ Walk.