Goodbye Norton Antivirus

I was in the local Best Buy lustfully looking at the new Windows 7 laptops and overheard a conversation about antivirus programs.  The sales associate was trying to encourage the new computer buyer to get the extended anti-virus program so that she would be covered for the next three years. I wanted to butt in and say, “Don’t do it. Microsoft has a free anti-virus program available to download.

Microsoft Security Essentials is highly rated and FREE.

The one thing I don’t like about it is that it seems to run and take up lots of resources when I first start the computer. MSMPENG.EXE is the file that I find running under my processes and taking up 50% of my resources.  Here’s a link which discusses this problem (click here)

Note – this is such a hassle on my XP machine, that I got rid of it and went back to AVG Free 8.5
My Windows 7 machine seems to be fine with MSE.

Vacations-Thumb Drives and Security

While vacations are great and thumb drives are great, security goes out the window for many people who haul around their laptop or thumb drive on vacations. If either gets lost or stolen, there’s a good chance the “bad guys” will have access to all your accounts, passwords and banking information.

I’ve found a nice solution by creating an encrypted area on my thumb drive and putting all my sensitive data into that area. How you do it is a bit complicated but not that bad. Here’s a site which explains the process step by step. (click here)

To use the thumb drive, you just plug it into your computer and you will get a popup – choose “Start TrueCrypt Background Task” then OK.
- choose a drive letter – like Z:
- Select File – choose the encrypted file o nthe thrumb drive.
- Select Mount
- Type in your password.
- Exit

Do You Like Being Tracked?

Cookies are one way advertisers watch you and collect data on which sites you visit. If you’d like to limit their tracking abilities in Firefox 3.5 , here’s what to do.

Tools – Options – Privacy – Use Custom Settings for History – You can accept cookies and third party cookies, BUT check the box which says – Keep Until I close Firefox.

This way any cookies which do make it onto your computer are deleted when Firefox closes.

Is this Site Safe?

While we generally know that most of the sites we regularly visit are safe, what about sites which we have never visited before?

Google has a nifty tool to let you check out a site BEFORE you start browsing its pages.

Just enter the URL below, but instead of NBC.com, enter the web page you want a report on.

http://google.com/safebrowsing/diagnostic?site=nbc.com

New Router – Think Security

802.11N has finally been finalized and new routers with the new specs should be hitting the stores soon. If you are planning to upgrade to one the new routers, make sure you follow Leo Laporte’s list of router security tips.

Five steps – 1) rename router, 2) change the default password, 3) turn off Wide Area Network Administration/Internet Administration, 4) Turn on WPA2 encryption with a hard password with numbers and punctuation included, and 5) turn off Universal Plug n Play.

Your Old Locks Are No Good!

I just saw a video on the program “Scam School” which shows how easy it is to open a standard lock that you might use for school or gym. (click here) It turns out that these tips to opening standard locks are all over YouTube also.The bad guys must be jumping for joy.

The solution is to buy a shim-proof lock such as Master Locks 1500iD or  1590D models. The problem is that I went to five stores, called two more and looked on the net, but can’t seem to find one available for sale. The 1590D is a brand new model, but the 1500iD should have been available somewhere. I’m hoping they will be available in August or September. If you know of a source for these locks, please let me know.

Protecting the Kids with OpenDNS

One fairly easy and free way to protect the kids (and yourself) on the internet is to use OpenDNS as a way to connect to sites. It has parental controls with 50 filtering categories plus phishing protection. You can even make the changes on your router so that all computers in your house will be protected. You do need to create an account with OpenDNS, but that is easily done. I’m running it on my main computer to give it a test.

Turn Off JavaScript in Adobe Reader

Adobe Reader seems to be having more security flaws lately. One way to reduce those problems is to turn off Javascript in Adobe Reader. Here’s how to do it:

Open any PDF document.
- Edit
- Preferences
- Javascript – uncheck the box to enable Javascript.

Encrypting Your Files

Everyone has a different solution to remembering their passwords – yellow sticky pads, paper, excel spreadsheet. One solution I like in Win XP is to just encrypt a folder and put all the files you want encrypted into that file. Now only you can open those files. Here’s how to do it.

Open Windows Explorer and locate and right-click the folder that you want, and then click Properties. Click Advanced and under compress or encrypt attributes, select the Encrypt contents to secure data check box, and then click OK. Now anything file you drag into this folder is encrypted.

There are a couple of big problems with this solution, but it will keep out the casual hacker. If a person can guess your login password then they have access to those files – so don’t let others use your account. Setup a Guest account for people who need to use your computer.

The second big problem is that there are easy ways to get around the user password, so again only allow trusted people access to your computer.

I would definitely not use this solution for a laptop which is easily stolen.

Conficker Test for Your Computer

Click on the link below to see if your computer is infected by the Conficker Virus.

(Conficker Test)