Computer Tips -Tech Info

Tag: free

  • Search engines to blame for malware spread?

    There are a couple news stories about a McAfee SiteAdvisor report about the search engines responsibility for sites that distribute malware.

    McAfee said Friday that the epidemic of spyware and viruses could be linked to search engines. According to research from the company, even seemingly benign search terms could bring up sites loaded with nasty payloads.

    The study looked at the five major search engines — Google, Yahoo, MSN, AOL, and Ask — and covered a period from January through April. Researchers found that in every search engine, popular keywords returned sites that could be potentially dangerous.

    What’s worse, in popular keywords such as “free screensavers,” “digital music,” “popular software,” and “singers,” as much as 72 percent of the returned results contained some kind of risky link.

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  • Microsoft fixes security fix….

    Well, for the second month in a row (I don’t recall one in March..) Microsoft has re-released a patch for Windows. This time it’s the Flash patch (which really falls under 3rd party software). They’ve re-worked the version detection of the update in an attempt to solve all the problems that people have run into with this update. The MS Security blog information is here.

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  • Antispyware products put to a test

    There is no doubt that spyware is a problem, but when a vendor of anti-spyware software claims 87% of pcs have on average 34 pieces of spyware per machine installed…… you do have to wonder. And when they claim that in part on FREE anti-spyware software…..

    “Security analysts blame this increasing infection rate on the adoption of free anti-spyware programs that use outdated technology and don’t provide immediate threat definitions to combat against new and emerging threats. To guard against new spyware programs, home computer users must use an anti-spyware program with frequent definition updates and engines that are capable of removing the toughest spyware from deep within the operating system. Unfortunately, users who only install free anti-spyware programs do not get access to frequently updated definitions and versions.”

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  • Search rankings and “where you stand”

    Search engine rankings are one of the concepts that I think is vaguely understood. It’s amazing to me how a subtle change in a series of search terms (or quoting a pair of words) can so drastically alter the results. Let’s say you’re searching for discount shoes, there’s a difference between a search for discount shoes and “discount shoes”… Of course, if you’re hosting your own site…. it’s awfully nice to be able to get an idea of where you turn up in the search results for given terms. The biggest problem is…. most search engines give a chance for you to see if pages on your site are found with the terms, but that doesn’t tell where in the rankings you compare to other sites. The hard way of course, is to type in your search term and go from page to page until you finally encounter your site. This can be painfully tedious though.

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  • How to escape from the deluge of credit card offers…..

    This isn’t necessarily tech related, but modern life related I guess. I can’t count how many credit card offers we receive in the mail each month. I have visions of a few acres of forest land somewhere being tagged with our name and the subtitle… “credit card offers”. I’ve never followed up on an unsolicited card offer that I recall and as I was tearing one up recently, I noticed a little not at the bottom….

    “You can choose to stop receiving “prescreened” offers of credit from us and other companies by calling toll-free 1.888.5.OPT.OUT. For more information about prescreened offers, please see the PRESCREEN & OPT-OUT NOTICES in the Terms and Conditions section of this offer.”

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  • So many things so little time….

    I feel like I’ve done this article so many times in the past…. there are so many things I’m hoping to post and time seems to evaporate before my very eyes. This afternoon I hope to be posting a few things that have been on that list. I also have a few other projects that I’ve been VERY eager to get a start on, which may happen this afternoon (or in whatever’s left of it.) As of late, of course, I’ve been trying to not work through the day, into the evening and late into the night. My pattern of filling all my free time between and after appoinments trying to make posts was quite tiring, maybe I can at some point try to find a balance where I’m not investing toooo much time chasing stories that are already out there.

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  • Customized small download linux iso….

    This is a good idea…. let’s say you want a linux install, but you’re very particular. You’d like to have a certain setup out of the box, say a basic desktop with OpenOffice and Firefox/Thunderbird. Nothing fancy, just a basic desktop and you wanted to deploy over several systems. Some distributions give you the choice to save settings for a later install, but for most, this can be the start of a fairly tedious install-fest. Someone has come up with a good solution to this (and a solution to the multi-GB of iso downloads….) You go to a web page answer a few questions and then download a CUSTOMIZED linux install iso that then takes care of the whole process for you.

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  • More Fake security sites

    More sites that claim to be windows security center or the like are popping up… a list:

    securitycaution(dot)com
    dnserror404(dot)com
    todaywarnings(dot)com
    updatesystempage(dot)com
    yoursecuritysystem(dot)com

    From sunbeltblog.

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  • Check your hard drive’s temperature in Linux

    I started using this program after frying a hard drive in 6 months. It was on the server and serving up Audio 24/7 and it was sandwiched between a cdrom drive and another hard drive. There was no air flow around the hard drive and subsequently it had a very short and very rough life. When it started failing at 6 months, I started investigating the possible cause and how to keep another for failing so quickly.

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  • Microsoft OneCare and another unofficial patch

    Brian Krebs at the SecurityFix today has questions about Microsoft OneCare. In fact, with Microsoft saying that OneCare is “more than just antivirus” you wonder whether that’s just marketing speak, or if that’s really the case…. he speculates about OneCare doing the registry patch that was a recommended workaround and a few other things related to OneCare.

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