New Anti-virus Ratings

PC World has new anti-virus ratings out for the New Year.
You can find the article here.

The article talks about how well the top paid anti-virus suites are doing not just in protecting you against known threats, but also emerging threats, such as banking-related malware.
Still the top rated paid security program: Norton 2011

PC World also rates the performance impacts of these program.
Lowest total memory use: Trend Micro, Norton, and Kaspersky.
Highest total memory use: PC Tools, G Data, and Bit Defender.

What does those Blue Screen numbers mean?

If you've ever gotten the Blue Screen of Death you know that there are always numbers there; numbers like 0x000000C. Often these numbers come right after the word STOP.

I found a website that lists, in order, all of those stop error numbers and the words that are most often associated with them.

You can find it here.

Why you should always encrypt your smartphone

Ars Technica has a great article on why smart phone encryption is a good idea, and also why limited government is a good idea.
http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/guides/2011/01/why-you-should-always-encrypt-your-smartphone.ars

New phone coming to Verizon Wireless

In case you haven't heard, the iPhone is coming to Verizon. I can't wait.

I'm in the market for an upgrade to my phone and this came at just the right time.

I'll let you know the progress.

How to fix desktop shortcuts after uninstalling Google Chrome

If you have used Google's new web browser, Chrome, and decided you dont like it enough to want to uninstall it, you will an unexpected consequence:
None of your desktop shortcuts will work. Windows will give you a polite error message about not finding the program you had clicked the shortcut for.

A little bit of clicking around and you will find that nothing is missing, the programs, web pages and all of your data are still there, it's just that the shortcuts dont work.
What's more, you will find that even if you create new shortcuts, they dont work either.

So, what to do? Turn on Internet Explorer, go to Tools, then Internet options and click on "Make Internet Explorer the default browser", click Apply then OK and close Explorer.

Your shortcuts will now work.

A New Year, A New Chance to Keep Posting

This is my third year of promising to post more and more often. Do you suppose this year I'll actually do it? They say third time is the charm; I hope so.

Now on to the post.
Ten Threats for 2011

Bob Sullivan's Red Tape Chronicles has presented his ten threats for 2011 that Web users will have to watch out for.
They are:
1: Geolocation (apps like Foursquare and Latitude)
2: More Internet connected gadgets (Anti-virus for your TV, anyone?)
3 & 4: Mobile phones, iDevices and Tablets
5: URL shortening (tinyurl and bit.ly)
6: Friendly Fire (personalized attacks pretending to be someone you trust)
7: Less spam (but more infected Facebook posts and tweets)
8: The Cloud (If Amazon can delete Wikileaks, they can delete you)
9: Hactivism (Hacker Activism)
10: Government sponsored virus/spyware.

If you wonder how likely these are, you can check out last years predictions here.

Jailbreaking iPhones no longer a federal crime

The Librarian of Congress has ruled that 'jailbreaking,' or unlocking your iPhone's computer to use non-App Store programs, is now legal and no longer a federal crime under the Digital Millenium Copyright Act (DMCA).
Details here: http://www.eff.org/press/archives/2010/07/26

Third party apps failing to use Windows security

Yep, thats about it. Several popular program written by people outside of Microsoft(which is why theyre called 'third-party') are failing to use the new security features in Windows 7.

Data Execution Prevention and Address Space Layout Randomization were introduced in Windows XP SP2 and Windows vista respectively, but have not been the easiest things to include in a third party program until the release of Windows 7.
Microsoft has made it easier to include these security features in programs designed to run on Windows 7, but only programs made by Google (Chrome and Picasa) are taking advantage of them.

You can read the article about this here.

AT&T raises data prices for iPhone lovers; lowers them for everyone else.

If you are an AT&T customer, there is good news on the horizon; your phone bill will go down. Unless you are a heavy iPhone user, that is.

AT&T is introducing tiered pricing for iPhone users. (Read article here.) The lower tier is for people who dont use alot of the data functionality of their iPhone. These people will see a low to modest reduction in their billing.
The upper tier is for people who use more than 2GB of data per month. These prices are designed to cover the cost of lowering pricing for everyone else.
So you can expect to pay modestly to significantly more than you are now.

In case you are wondering how much is 2GB per month, Comcast reports that the average Comcast customer uses about 2GB per month for email alone.

Game site Mop.com compromised

Cnet reports that the popular Web-based game site Mop.com has been compromised; which means that user accounts may be stolen. Capsule summary here. Full article here.

How to recognize untrustworthy computer security companies

A blog post on Bruce Schneier's personal blog brought to my attention a video commercial from someone who is arguably the worst representative of the computer security industry.

See the video here. But be warned, the company who put out the ad wants you to Be Afraid. Be Very Afraid. (The link to the video does not go to the company mentioned.)

So, how to recognize a bad IT guy from a good IT guy? The bad ones are the ones who speak in hip-hop gangsta language, or who respond to email correspondence like this:

"(name of emailer) you are a fucking joke!!!!! You been doing pen test for 6 years I have been doing for 27 years. I have been in business for 20 years doing it. I wrote 8 books on security. I have contracts with goverment agencies. I will challenge you and any one who wants to go up against me. We can put up $1 million each and have the processed go to charity. If you don't have a $1 million lying around then you are not a real hacker. 6 years is a joke. You are still a rookie!!!!!!! Now I am call you and everyone else out!!!!!"

Also, the bad ones are the ones who try to frighten you into buying their product or hiring their services.
I think that's called a protection racket.

New malware threat turns out to be only hype

Researchers at the pay-us-to-fix-a-problem-only-we-know-about website matousec.com have recently been getting alot of press stemming from their conclusion that all anti-virus programs are worthless and helpless in the face of a new threat they have just discovered.

You may have seen screaming headlines declaring "New attack bypasses EVERY Windows security product! "; it turns out that this is mostly hype the matousec.com website has generated in order for them to make some money by selling a solution to this oh-so-scary sounding problem.

There is a very good article explaining why this is not something to worry about on the Sunbelt Security blog here. Some language may be technical.
The article explains that the portion of Windows this problem exploits has been known about for years, and no-one has been able to take advantage of it yet, because there must be pre-conditions met for this attack to even work.
Your computer must already be infected with a certain type of virus (not just any will do), the attacker, whether human or software, must be able to run a program on your computer without your knowledge, and this particular attack is, for malware, a very large program(which would make you wonder why everything got so slow all of a sudden).

So, in the end, dont believe the screaming headlines. If you are unsure of your protection, call your local friendly repairman. I dont suggest calling the Geek Squad, or your city's equivalent, because they will see your question as a money-making opportunity, instead of trying to reassure a nervous client.

An Easier Way to Move to Windows 7

If you are currently using Windows XP (and most people still are), the upgrade to Windows 7 (which is highly recommended) is problematic.

First, you have to back up everything you want to save, including some things which are hard or cumbersome;
Second, you have to make sure you still have copies of all of your programs;
Third, you must format the hard drive;
And then, you can install Windows 7.

Now there is an easier way. Cnet has an article on a new product soon to be released which will make the process much easier. (Click here to read the article.)

Is your browser giving you away?

Short answer, yes. Ars Technica has a good article, here, about how you can be individually tracked across the Internet by way of your browser; even if you turn off cookies.

It turns out that the most privacy conscious people are the easiest to track, because of the methods they use to try and be anonymous. Its hard to get lost in the crowd if you are the only one wearing hot pink.

Because of the way the browser talks to websites, even without cookies, websites (and tracking software) can uniquely identify the computer that your browser is installed on, as well as learning all of your browser plugins and other modifications. If you have Flash installed, Flash will reveal all of the fonts on your computer, too.

If you want to be private on the Internet you have to be so normal, so average, that you put your computers health at risk; OR, you have to cripple your browser to the point at which you can hardly see anything or do anything.

How Your Computer Connects To The Internet (in plain English)

The Remote Help Expert 's Blog has a great post on how your computer connects to the Internet, and explains what that box with the funny antennas is and what it does.

And he does it in Plain English! (Just like I try to do.)

The post is here.

All your Facebook posts are now open to entire Internet

Facebook's newest privacy and marketing changes now allow search engines, such as Google, Bing and Yahoo, to index and make readable all of your posts.

Facebook used to require that you were a 'friend' of any person whose posts and other details you wanted to see. The new default position is that everything in your Facebook profile is open to everyone to see unless you specify that it is private, post by post, and photo by photo.

If you dont specify privacy, Facebook opens you up for searching by the Internet. Including such people as: your boss, your future employer, your wife/husband/mother/father/etc, and last but not least, credit rating agencies and lenders who have started searching Facebook, MySpace and Twitter to see if you are a respectable and credit-worthy person.

So if you dont get that job, or that loan, just remember "next time, I'll remember to set privacy."

Apple and Nokia continue patent fight

Nokia has increased it patent claims against Apple's iPad.

This means, when things eventually shake out, that the iPad will be ~1% more expensive, because Nokia most likely just wants royalty payments.

See the article here: http://arstechnica.com/apple/news/2010/05/nokia-applies-patent-thumbscrews-to-apples-ipad.ars

Email options with Windows 7

Deb Shinder, editor of Win7 News, has some really informative things to say about your email options in Windows 7.

There's Outlook(of course), but, "you have to pay for it - usually a little under $100 (You can buy Outlook 2007 from Amazon for $87.94 at the time of this writing). To me, it's well worth the price, since I depend on my email, calendar and contacts for doing business. "

She gives a little history on why there is no longer an Outlook Express, and what happened to its successor, Windows Mail:
"OE was introduced in 1997 as part of Internet Explorer 4.0 and was included in Windows 98, 2000, Me and XP. Recently, as many XP users have bought new computers that come with Windows 7, they have been unhappy to find that part of Microsoft's initiative to cut down on "operating system bloat" included leaving out some of the extra applications - such as the email client.

"Microsoft actually dropped OE when they released Vista, which included an updated mail client called Windows Mail. Unlike OE, it wasn't designed as a part of Internet Explorer, but its interface was very similar to that of OE. One big difference "under the hood" was that WM stored messages as individual files, rather than in one big database file as OE did. This was a very good change, since with OE if the single file got corrupted, you lost all of your messages. Windows Mail also added better security, including the SmartScreen filter and phishing filter. Windows Mail also blocks certain attachment types, and although you can disable this, you can't granularly allow those attachments only from specific senders.

There were some other changes that weren't so great, too. Many folks were not happy that Windows Mail didn't allow for management of multiple identities like OE did. In fact, it will consolidate your identities into a single user profile if you upgrade from OE. Another point of dissatisfaction: Windows Mail couldn't be configured to use a web-based email account such as Hotmail or Gmail"

So, besides Outlook, what can you use with Windows 7?

Thunderbird(from Mozilla, makers of Firefox); Windows Live Mail (the current successor to Outlook Express, downloadable from Microsoft); and numerous others.

Isn't it funny how...

Most computer repair people who advertise on Craigslist dont tell you who they are?

Why hide your email address if you're a legitimate business?

They dont even tell you their name.

And, I've noticed, the cheaper they are, the more they go out of their way to hide any contact information.

It's just like my customers tell me: "You get what you pay for."

Controversial National Security-level Internet treaty trimmed

ACTA, the secret police-state copyright "trade agreement" (so it doesnt have to be ratified by elected officials), has had the paragraph that would have forced your Internet Service Provider to cut off your Internet service if you did something the movie studios or record companies didnt like taken out.

This "trade agreement" is still so horrible it will turn all developed nations into police states, though.

Article here: http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2010/04/acta-treaty/ .