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There is nothing worse than computer problems, and there’s nothing better than free software to prevent them in the first place. One of my favorite utilities of all time, Winpatrol, has just updated to their 2008 version, and the company owner has provided me with an affiliate version that I can give away at no charge. |
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Google has the ability to Mark your search listings with a warning to users if they think you are doing something wrong, or trying to download spyware onto people’s computer when they visit. You may not even know they’re doing it until you see it, and worse, you may not know if your site is even compromised until they do! |
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I can’t believe I fell for it. One of my MSN Messenger contacts APPARENTLY sent me a chat message, saying this…
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Ransomware is a new term for spyware that actually extorts money from you, and it’s sweeping the world like wildfire. In a nutshell, imagine you wake up one day to find that all of your files have been encrypted on your computer. That’s right, you’re now unable to access anything at all, because a piece of spyware has rendered them completely inaccessable by you, the computer owner. |
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Yesterday, it was reported that… “Oregon Department of Revenue officials thought they were tightly secured against data theft. ” Then they went on to say that  ”an employee from using an office computer to surf porn sites and download a Trojan horse, a hidden spyware program not yet known to intrusion-detection software. The Trojan installed itself Jan. 5 and for the next four months secretly captured and relayed data to the hackers who created it.” |
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Viruses used to be just like graffiti, designed to satisfy only an egotistical itch, but now they can make the creators money. Someone’s created a virus that takes peoples over computers, then goes out one the web, and clicks on ads that make website owners money. It’s pretty diabolical, like something from a Saurday morning cartoon. |
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*update - as of 1/1/2007 AVG is no longer free…sorry! Antivirus companies charge a lot for their product, and with good reason. However, there’s a company that has decent software that they give away free to home users, with the hopes of earning your office business. I really like AVG Free antivirus for home users, and I have it on my kids computer. |
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Yes, another threat is here that won’t patch itself on the Microsoft Windows updates. This security hole is in ”Flash”, which is software that allows you to view Macromedia Flash sound and motion files over the internet. You likely have this software on your computer already, and it has a newly discovered vulnerability. |
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This is a note to my web hosting customers in Portland and elsewhere, but since it applies universally, I’m posting the info here… OS Commerce and PHPbb are free, or “open source” software programs available with all PDXTC web hosting packages. Upon installation from your web hosting control panel, you have access to the latest version, and any known security vulnerabilities are patched upon installation. |
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Some of these websites are up and some are down, but all these four will do the trick - http://www.grc.com/miscfiles/wmffix_hexblog14.exe |
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update 1:45 pm Jan 3, 2005 - Use the solution from New Years Eve if it’s not up when you try it… Since my previous post, Ilfak Guilfanov has a better option for fixing this dangerous flaw. |
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This article is four days old, and I meant to post on it right away. All versions of Windows are affeceted, regardless of whether you’re updated with Windows patches. One of my customers got infected already, and there was nothing I could do to fix it. By the time I got my hands on the computer, I took the hard drive out, stuck it in another machine, and could not even read the Windows directory anymore. |
