Posts Tagged ‘website’

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.

Must Have Application for Thumb Drives

It’s a sign of the time, you can buy a thumb drive almost anywhere.  I have even seen them in Gas Stations in the Omaha area.

Things Learned from the Internet

• You want it, you can find it online.
• If you don't want it, you can also find it online.
• It might take a while.
• Sometimes the hunt is half the fun.
• Everyone has a website. Grandfathers, mothers and babies. Everyone.
• At some point, Google became a verb.
• The difference between web surfing with Firefox and IE is the difference between body armor and a trendy cotton vest.
• If it sounds too good to be true, it probably is.
• The Internet is the geeks playground. Here, we rule.
• Not that you would ever need to know the dietary habits of the South American anteater, but it's comforting to know you could find it online if you did.
• When in doubt, Wikipedia.
• Anyone who uses the term 'Interweb' has never been online.
• Explaining the Internet to someone who's never been online, is like explaining the Magna Carta to your cat.
• Almost everything of substance can be summed up with a “DUDE! Check this out!' and a hyperlink.
• Be safe. Be cynical.
• Some else already said it first. But that doesn't mean it won't be said again, and again...
• The Internet IS redundancy.
• There is no such thing as 'sufficient bandwidth'.
• There's always something new.
• You can never go back once you've tried it.

Go Figure, Dirty sites are dirty…

Symantec, the makers of a very widely used array of internet security programs, has compiled a list of the 100 “dirtiest” sites.

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.

Find drivers for unknown devices

Have you ever been given a com­pu­ter, or bought an old fixer upper PC that didn’t have all the discs or infor­ma­tion for the components?

I know this is frus­tra­ting since I too have had this pro­blem.  Espe­cially when it invol­ves key equip­ment (Net­work card).  There is nothing more irri­ta­ting then loo­king at your device list and seeing the yellow ques­tion mark.  Well tech­ni­cians, as with almost everything com­pu­ter rela­ted, there is a site setup to help with this.  PCIDatabase.com

So how does this work?

You will want to go to the ques­tion mark in the device mana­ger and right click on the entry (there maybe more then one on a rei­mage or a cus­tom built machine).  For those that may not be fami­liar on how to get to the device mana­ger here are some sim­ple steps.  Find the My Com­pu­ter icon on your desk­top (upper left by default).  You will want to Right click on the icon and you will get a menu like this:

After you left click on the pro­per­ties entry a new win­dow will pop up:
If you do not have the tab shown, you will want to click on the Hard­ware tab.  Once here, click on the device mana­ger and you will see a list of ins­ta­lled devi­ces.  You will scroll down for the yellow ques­tion mark.  In my exam­ple there are none, but I am sure you will find them rather quickly.

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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.

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Kidzui

When you think of trus­ted names in pro­ducts for kids, some of that come to the top of the list inc­lude: Bar­bie, Mat­tel, and Hot Wheels.  Now ima­gine the three of them com­bi­ning to create a safe way for kids to access the inter­net and parents to check and con­trol that access.  What you would be left with is Kid­Zui.

What is Kid­zui?  Well let me try and help with that.  Kid­zui is a brow­ser that has parents in mind.  With a cen­trally mana­ged list of web­si­tes that are allo­wed, not allo­wed, abi­lity to be noti­fied when your child adds a new friend, as well as many other cus­to­mi­za­ble secu­rity fea­tu­res, Kid­zui is all about allo­wing super­vi­sed independence.

With two ins­tall options (Fire­fox Add-in or Stan­da­lone down­load) the setup is inc­re­dibly easy.  Follo­wing the setup you will be then promp­ted to do the ini­tial regis­tra­tion of your parent account.  During this phase, you will be set­ting up your first “Zui” or child account.  You can create an account for all mem­bers of your family.  Please note, keep your pass­word and email address you set this up with away from the child so they can not login and undo wha­te­ver set­tings you choose.

Some of the paren­tal options in the brow­ser itself are: full screen (kiosk) only mode and require a pass­word to exit.  This would be a great fea­ture to keep anyone from being able to close Kid­zui and just launch IE or Firefox.

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Smart Installer

Many PC users as well as the technogeeks out there find themselves from time to time having to reformat. I know that since we are all good and conscientious people, we always have good and complete backups, so I won't get into that.