However, it looks like a new day dawning for the company formerly owned by Bill. They’ve come closer than ever before to an actual operating system with Windows7 and now they have what looks to be a great Anti-virus solution. It is full featured, free anti-virus, anti-malware, auto-updating software. I’ve installed it on 3 PCs, 2XP and 1 Win7beta and it hasn’t gotten in the way yet. I have it running at a couple of client locations and haven’t had any new infections reported or reports that it is bugging the client every few minutes.

Supposedly the scan is much deeper (the initial and weekly deep scans take for-flippin-ever) and as a result returns fewer false positives than with other faster scanning solutions (avast, kaspersky in my experience).  All in all, I’m hopeful that this is the product that should have always been in Windows, but I’m glad that it is here now, and freely available.

That having been said my biggest problem with Microsoft and its security policies is that to install Security Essentials or any of the security patches you have to validate your install of Windows. Thats fine for all the legitimate installs but the problem is that the majority of bots and internet attacks come from illegitimate installs of Windows. The internet, your PC, and all other computers for that matter would be safer if Microsoft pushed the security patches to all Windows users- legal or not, and made the bootleggers validate for features. Actually I think the installation should be validated before any functionality is turned on making it nearly impossible to bootleg a copy of windows at all.

Regardless Security Essentials looks to be a great product and if you aren’t protected or are at the end of your subscription, I would cancel and try http://microsoft.com/security_essentials

Be Safe out there.

Seeing as I rarely ever has an original thought. The opinions expressed in this post were shaped by the Security Now podcast with Steve Gibson and Leo Laportte. There is also a great “First Look” at Arstechnica

• Waste the time of the people that read and forward them
• They cause well meaning citizens to notify the authorities and waste public funds and resources only to find out there is no “missing person” or other crime
• Shifts public opinion negatively. Pepsi doesn’t hate God, Starbucks DOES support our troops, and Obama isn’t a Muslim (as far as you know, and he’s in the whitehouse now so quit spreading the hate. (I voted for the other guy).

Here’s what I do to verify an email. I copy the subject line of the email (if it isn’t descriptive enough I will note a couple of key words in the message) then I go to google and paste it in with the word “snopes” (without the quotes). Within the first couple of links you’ll find a link that either tells you the story is a hoax or is true.

Snopes.com is THE last word in internet hoaxes, scams, and urban legends. They heave been collecting them since 1995.

On any given day I probably delete at least a couple of emails with subject lines that begin with “Fw:” Its not that I’m not interested in what my friends and family get passionate about, its just that I’ve been around these Internet pipes for quite a while now. Nowhere more than the web is the saying, “If its too good to be true, then it probably is” more true. Most of these emails are impossible at there primise. There is no way for Applebys to track how many people you sent a message to so that they can send you a $50 coupon. There is no way that the disposed ruler of a small African nation has access to your email address.

Read every email as if the sender approached you in a parking lot. How easily would you fall for what they were selling then?

Please people be careful out there.

I’ve had a couple of questions lately about spam and how one gets such offensive spam if you don’t go to “those” kinds of web sites. Unfortunately it doesn’t matter where you’ve surfed while online, your email is not transmitted to websites when you visit them. Spam works the other way around. There are many ways spammers get your email address; They will buy email lists from “brick and mortar” retailers, online retailers, people who get you to fill out slips of paper to win a cruise, or anyone else that loves having money more than they care about what’s in your in-box. Or, Programmers build software (“bots” short for ‘robots’) that scour the web looking for strings of words that look like email addresses. someone@domain.com (even now someone@domain.com is getting collected and will get unsolicited email).

“E-mail addresses are collected from [among other places] chatrooms, websites, newsgroups, and viruses which harvest users’ address books, and are sold to other spammers. Much of spam is sent to invalid e-mail addresses.” –wikipedia

As for these bots that are actively, constantly searching the internet, it means that if your email address is posted on a website in plain text it can be collected by one spammer and sold to thousands of others. You should instead use a contact form so people can contact you without “seeing” your email address. Your email can also be intercepted, or if your ISP hasn’t properly secured its SMTP (outgoing) mail server then it is vulnerable to hacking. Or if someone else has responded to a piece of spam while also forwarding it to you at your email address. Or if you ever responded to a piece of spam by telling them NOT to send to you again Then you’ve just told that spammer that they have proof that your email is a “live” account and will then sell the list to other spammers… I could go on. The main point is that the average email address is only live for 6 minutes before it begins to get spam, and there is nothing you can do to stop it, only slow it down.

We have a client, a Women’s Hospital, run by women, with a staff of women nurses, and all women patients. They were being overrun by spam of the worst sort. Male Enhancement, Nigerian money schemes, little blue, red, or white pills, etc. They invested in a device called the “Spam Firewall” by Barracuda as soon as we turned it on 90% of their email was blocked, none of that blocked email was their business correspondence. Imagine that, 90% of their incoming email was trash. Unfortunately the spam firewall costs about 1500 bucks with a 500 a year renewal. I’m trying to find a way to let customers route their email through a company spam firewall and then back to them to combat this issue without having to spend an arm and a leg for it. The way I combat it is with rules set up in my email client. When a new wave comes in I build a rule to try and block it. But as soon as I do I they change the wording and get it past so I have to edit or build a new rule.

And as for the content, lets face it, if you want to be profitable but you don’t know your audience then you should prey on the most base characteristics of humans, sex, greed, and fear.

“Be better in bed,” “If you help me move this money I’ll give you some,” and “If you don’t send this to 10 people God won’t love you.”

If you are one of the folks trying to connect spam with online activity you’re looking in the wrong place. I have many many clients that have never visited a questionable site that get flooded with inappropriate spam. Clean out your junk mail box daily and leverage all the rules you can with your email software. Once an email is on the list, no matter how it got there, your doomed to get spam. And Internet filters don’t have anything to do with your email. Services like K9, OpenDNS, and others only stop your internet browser. This is only helpful when clicking on a link inside the email, which is possibly the dumbest thing you can do with your computer. K9 keeps a password protected history of websites visited which will tell you exactly where someone has been surfing.

Some Services:

JunkEmailFilter.com – I’ve heard this one highly praised by the guy quoted on the site.

AVG - Love the Virus protection but I’m not sure about how in-depth the spam blocker is. Worth a call to support to find out.

Kaspersky Labs Internet Security – Highly configurable Internet protection suite with spam guards

SpamHelp.org – Software list, please don’t use the challenge/response software its highly annoying to your friends.

SpamHelp.org – Managed/Hosted Anti-Spam Service

BTW Here’s a sample of my Junk mail folder. Notice the repeat of subjects, these would have been sent by the same spammer from multiple hijacked PCs or servers.

Installing a fresh OS (operating system) got me to thinking about the programs I instantly download on all my windows machines. Here’s a list: (By the way… None of them cost a dime!!)

**the first thing to do and the thing to do on a very regular basis is to go into Internet Explorer, go to Tools and choose Windows Update and follow the instructions. Windows must be up to date to be anywhere near secure.**

• VLC – the universal video player, if it doesn’t play it, you don’t need to watch it.
• Firefox – the more secure, faster, add-on-able internet browser (IE7 is a good improvement almost)
• Adobe – Reader and the flash plugin for internet browsers.
• AVG free version 8- The anti-virus software that is free, it even scans your email, the pay version is the one I recommend to anyone needing a full security application like spyware, malware, root-kits, etc. AVG free is the bare minimum of protection.
• Jing – Takes screenshots and records video of the screen for tutorials and such
• K9 web protection – the internet content filter.
• X3watch – the internet accountability software.
• OpenDNS – I set the network properties to use the OpenDNS servers to catch any internet baddies that might sneak by
• iTunes – gotta have my podcasts
• Paint.net - the “much better than MSPaint, much freeer than Photoshop” drawing program.
• The GiMP – the “almost as good as Photoshop” free “everything graphic” program.
• Filezilla – The best ftp client I’ve ever used. FTP software allows movement of files from the local PC to a location on the Internet and vise-versa.
• OpenOffice.org – The FREE office suite. That’s right, you don’t have to pay $400 for Microsoft Office.

Do you have any must have applications for your machines

Today I was unable to add an email account in Outlook on a Vista laptop. I went to an XP machine and was able to add it with no trouble. Came back to the laptop in question, turned off the Windows Firewall, added the account with no trouble, turned the firewall back on, and was able to use the account in Outlook with no problem. So, Vista wouldn’t let me add the account but once I got it working it didn’t mind using the account… go figure.

Knock it off!

What Jim had done was to call a service called Jott.com, recorded a message and it sent a reminder to his email. I immediately created an account, and started recording.

With Jott you can send yourself reminders to your email, phone or both. And, if you add contacts you can send reminders to their email and/or phone too. And – there’s more- you can arrange some or all of those contacts into a group and send them a message all at once.

We’ve got a group of people that meet at our house every Thurs night. All of them use their email and personal phones differently. So, I just built a group using their mobile phones and email addresses and notified everyone at once.

The system seems to be using a voice recognition software that isn’t 100% accurate but I’ve never seen it miss more than a letter or two.

I highly recommend!!

Filtering web content keeps kids safer and despite what some folks will tell you it is not censorship it is protection. Number 1: You can be held responsible for the content coming through your network. 2. If you know that a child is being exposed to inappropriate material you can be charged with failure to protect. 3. It costs a lot of money to remove spyware, trojans and viruses that are transmitted through unscrupulous web sites (you don’t even have to download anything). Filtering web content is just practical ethically and financially.Web Filters comes in three flavors System Settings, Accountability Software, Content Filtering Software. Here are my choices.

1. System Settings

a.

Use “Scrub It” first, it is not software, it changes a network setting to redirect your internet traffic. There is a simple utility to download that makes the change for you, that’s all you need to make it work. If you click on a link that is to a site on the unsafe list it will block your access before it comes to your computer. Scrub it works regardless of Internet Service or type of computer. Windows, Mac, or Linux. You can change the DNS settings on your computer or change them on your router to filter the whole network.

b,

OpenDNS

OpenDNS works in the same way ScrubIT works. They have a great website that explains a lot. Again you can add this to each machine or on your router. And, I like the logo colors!!

2. Accountability Software

X3Watch is accountability software, this means it doesn’t block anything but it does keep a list of every page visited and sends a report of those with questionable content. You pick at least one friend that commits to monitor your internet activity and it will send a report that shows any suspect websites that have been visited. If also shows when it was turned off. From personal experience I was never able to gain any freedom over porn until I told someone else and they helped me.

3. Content Filtering Software

a.

Naomi is a web filter with no mercy. I like this filter very much!!! If I had kids this would be the one I would put on their computer!!!! If Naomi sees anything remotely questionable it closes your web browser before any content reaches your screen.

Naomi is able to constantly monitor all internet connections, protecting children from inappropriate online material – such as obscene or violent contents; pornography, pedophilia and erotism in the form of images or texts; sites that popularize drugs; gambling games; terrorism; hate propaganda; occultism; sects; blasphemy, etc. –Naomi Home Page

This can be a little frustrating if you click on a link that you didn’t think would have anything questionable on it. Sometimes the page content is fine but advertisers will post ads that the author didn’t know would be there. This would result in a closed page. Please read all the instructions on the Naomi site before installing. If you forget your password there is very little you can do to remove the software. Again, if I had kids this is the software that would be on the machines to which they had access.

b.

K9 Web Protection is the best of all worlds for Windows based PCs. It blocks content based on category, at installation you can decide which content and what level of access you wish to live with. When inappropriate material is sensed by the software it throws up a page that alerts the user to what category the page is and why it was blocked. If the administrator deems the site appropriate the password can be given for 15 minutes of access or total access to that site. Men, I use this and let my wife set the password. Then If I need in somewhere for a time she can unlock the site for me. It may sound extreme but, you do what you can to protect yourself and you show her that she means more to you than the porn.

On my Mac I use Scrub It and X3Watch. On my PCs I use Scrub It, X3Watch, and K9. K9 is working on a Mac version. Please write them and request it so they will know how great the need is.

These are all free (K9 is free for home use only) I will update this list as I find others. If you know of or use other software feel free to comment below or email me and I’ll include it here.

“Please leave feedback for me on eBay and I’ll do the same for you.”

Nothing on ebay frustrates me like this sentence. Lets dissect why:

Instead of going to a pawn shop and getting a third of the value for that used iPod with the clean face and a few scratches on the back, and instead of organizing, advertising, and holding a garage sale for which you’d have gotten a tenth of the actual value, you choose to post your item on Ebay. You took 20 minutes to build an ad using Comic Sans at 38point font. That’s it. All you had to do was log on and answer a few questions and your auction began.

Then the magic happened. I won the item and navigated the checkout process. Congrats. I just gave you my money– I took your “word” that you had a quality product. I then sent you the most secure form of cash possible, straight from my bank account, in the hopes you would send me the item you told me you had.

I haven’t even seen this product (except in your blurry, poorly cropped, picture you took with a cell phone camera from across a dimly lit living-room (nice orange shag by the way) or you were very lazy and ripped off a stock photo from the companies web site). I’m out $166 bucks for a used iPod that you still hold until you get around to shipping it. And, if you do ship quickly and I get a piece of junk, I have to prove that you sent the junk and neither the post office nor myself has mutilated thethe package before I can get even a partial refund.

You know what? I just put myself out on a limb to save you the trouble of actually working for the sale. Now you want me to tell the world that you are an “A++++ Number ONE Ebayer!!!!!” because you ask me too? It is my humble opinion that if I pay quickly then it is YOUR turn to step out and leave me positive feedback and stand on your word of quality. Let’s face it, until I get it and test that it works the way you said it should, every ball is in your court. The result of the entire transaction is in your hands. It is my job to win the auction and to pay on time. At that point I’m done, I have fulfilled every responsibility I can. There is nothing else I can do to ensure the sale continues. It is now your turn to reward that with good feedback, and I will do the same when you have come through for me.

You do not offer a product on ebay in exchange for positive feedback. You offer a product in exchange for money. The quality and service earns you great feedback.