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Tuesday, October 28, 2008

hallmark phishing scam

I got an interesting email today. From time to time I check my spam box because as you know sometimes good messages get flagged as spam. This past weekend I had my a birthday. Yes I know i'm getting old! lol but anyway I almost click the message when I noticed something that seem rather odd.

If you ever notice when you hover your mouse in windows explorer over a link you will notice that on the bottom left hand of your browser it will tell you what link it points to. I believe it was pointing to a url that had an exe extention.

EXE is a executable program which I'm sure would of really made my computer go up and under. So anyway the moral of this story is if you think there is a message that has a link that may be a real one. Hover your mouse over the link. If the link does not correspond with the company that sent it, simply put its a fake site trying to phish your computer.

In this case the site pointed to a site called pokerz.za/exe or something like that.

Be safe surfing the internet jungle.

Friday, October 17, 2008

Fake antivirus programs

I remember a few months ago I recommended to a friend a free anti virus program I found on CNET. What I forgot to mention is where he could download the antivirus software program. If your wondering what software I'm referring to is AVG.

He did a search on google using internet explorer and downloaded the anti virus software from what seemed to be a credible website with the free download. Long story short he downloaded a malware program which did a lot of nasty things to his computer.

So anytime anyone makes a recommendation for a software go to download.com. They screen the site so you don't have to worry about what your downloading onto your computer. What helps when you go to download.com is users will place their comments on how good or bad the software is when he or she has tested it on their computer.

Another tip is if you plan to look for the program yourself, use firefox. The browser has a pretty good malware, spyware detection capability that Explorer is barely implementing.

Thursday, October 16, 2008

Is Spybot a scam?

If you came to this blog then you have come to the right place. Spybot is a volunteer program that allows programmers to tailor the program to ongoing spyware threats.

I have used this utility to pick up some of the spyware that my paid subscription spyware sofware could not pick up.

Pros: The pros of this software is that its a free antispyware program. Second its pretty easy to set up. Once you set it up you can then run the update. What I do like about this software is after installation the program will ask you to reboot. The reboot process allows Spybot to scan your computer before your computer has the chance to run the normal software. So if any spyware has been installed it will catch it and you are able to clean out.

Cons: The only con I have seen is that the registry function doesn't seem to work to well and can sometimes lock up your computer when your installing it. Mostly with older computers. I normally skip the registry part and go to the update.

So is spybot a scam? Simple answer no.

If you want a link to the software you can refer to the spybot posting I placed a few weeks back

Spybot software blog

Tuesday, October 14, 2008

Setting up your firewall on your MS XP computer

I had a friend of mine come over to ask what a firewall is and why would you need one if you have an antivirus. This is a good question especially if your surfing the net and most antivirus programs provide a limited amount of protection on your computer.

What an antivirus program does not do is protect your computer from a would be hacker to log into your IP address and search your files on your computer. Luckly I don't store any valuable information like this on my computer so no harm right?

By the way an IP address is what is like a street address to allow the service provider access to the world wide web. With a firewall you can set it so that anyone trying to dial into your IP address will not be able to peer at any files you have on your computer.

If your running low on money and your thinking to yourself this maybe something I need. Not to fear if your operating system is XP. I'm not sure on the newer version but here are some instructions from Microsoft XP

1) Click the start button at the bottom right.
2) Click on the settings tab and then click control panel.
3) Once you get the Control panel menu up on the bottom right of the menu you will see an icon that looks like a brickwall.(that has firewall labeled) Click the icon
4) It will then open up the firewall menu and click recommended to activate it.

Thats pretty much it. If your more of a visual person you can click this video link on how to set up your XP firewall

But.. if you don't have XP or for some reason your operating system did not come with a firewall never fear.

You can download the free zone alarm firewall program onto your computer. Click on this link for to find out more information on the firewall download. I linked the page so you don't have to dig through the site to find the free download.


Thanks for visiting my firewall posting for today.

Wednesday, October 08, 2008

Youtube video page Scam

I just read an interesting article on yahoo which tells how hackers are now using fake youtube pages to redirect youtube viewers to a fake page that downloads either spyware or a virus on the persons computer.

Recently I noticed that youtube has allowed users to place hotspots on a video and allow the viewer to go to that particular site. This can be helpful for those who want to direct people to a clean site but I can see how a hacker would user this new method to direct users to a site that can download a virus or malware onto your computer.

Its an interesting article so check it out.

Youtube Scam article.

Thursday, October 02, 2008

FTC - Cyber security website

This goverment site has a few online tips and tricks to online security.

The site has a few videos on different topics dealing with security.

Here is the link.

http://www.onguardonline.gov/