Articles in Category: Security
Can Search Engines Track My Searches?
Search engines have numerous (and quite amazing) ways to gather information on people and the way they search. It’s nothing to worry about unless you have some critical need for privacy.
Why Doesn’t Malware Appear in the Add/Remove Programs List?
Malware not showing up in the Add/Remove Programs list doesn’t surprise me at all. After all, malware’s success is based on its ability to hide from you!
What’s an Exploit?
Industry experts use the term “exploit” in several ways, which makes warning messages pretty unclear. Stay safe by assuming the worst.
Do I really need to uninstall these programs to update my anti-virus?
When you install a new anti-malware tool on a machine that has similar programs already, you may see a warning about possible conflicts. Basically, you have three choices to continue.
I’m not seeing a padlock with my https site. Is it safe?
https should be safe as long as the padlock icon indicates that the certificate is correct. That proves that you’re visiting the site that you believe you are. If you don’t see it, you should be concerned.
How Do I Keep My Computer from Being Hacked at Night?
Hacking attempts happen all day long. You really need to protect yourself 24/7. Fortunately, there are several steps that you can take to stay safe.
How do I check a website for malware without infecting my own machine?
This is a difficult problem to solve. Steps to protect yourself from a malicious website could mask the problem so you never see it. I can give you a few suggestions.
How Do I Remove Only My Personal Information from a Computer?
Unfortunately, there is no practical way to determine what is and what isn’t personal information. Securing a computer to give away is an all-or-nothing proposition.
Do I need to run the Malicious Software Removal tool?
Malicious Software Removal Tool is something that’s downloaded and run by automatic updates, regardless of the anti-malware tools that you may already use, to provide a base level protection to the operating system.
Why am I getting security certificate errors?
If you are seeing this across a family of sites or just one site, it’s possible (in fact it’s even most likely) that it’s a problem on the server’s side. It may be a designer error. It may even be a malicious site.
How Do I Remove Ransomware?
Ransomware is often not easy to remove because it blocks you from your system. Restoring from a backup is the easiest recovery option, but I’ll look at a few more as well.
If an IP address doesn’t do it, then how does Google know my location?
Google can find your location through multiple datapoints that you probably don’t even realize you’re sharing. There’s a lively and important debate about how much data entities can and should collect and correlate.
Why is Microsoft Security Essentials constantly saying potentially unprotected?
The “potentially unprotected” warning seems fairly common in situations where you really are still protected. I’ll cover several theories as to why it might appear.
Would changing user names result in additional security?
Common wisdom is that you should change passwords periodically; so should you change user names too? My take: common wisdom is wrong from the start.
Why Do Services like Google and Microsoft Ask for a Phone Number?
Many online services request that you provide additional information such as your phone number. I’ll look at how that’s typically used and why it’s a good thing.
I Canceled a Suspicious Download. Am I Safe?
Cancelling a suspicious download in progress typically prevents any part of the download from impacting your machine. Unfortunately there are still a few problems we should look out for.
Is a Long Password of Repeating Characters Good or Not?
The problem is that we don’t know what approach hackers are using to break your password. So, to be safe, the best password is both long and complex.
Is Geotagging My Photos a Bad Thing?
When you take a picture, your camera saves “metadata”, or data about the picture. Geodata can be used to place an image in a geographical location.
What If a Password is Limited to only 8 Characters?
Some devices, sites and software use passwords that are limited to 8 characters. Today that’s often insufficient, but I’ll look at what steps you can take to increase security.
I Run No Anti-virus Software and Now Have Viruses. What Should I Do?
It’s very possible that your machine has become so infected that recovery really isn’t a possibility. If this is the case, the only practical solution is to wipe the slate clean and start over from scratch.
How do I get rid of this advertising popup that keeps coming back?
If your anti-malware tools removed the malware but this browser hijack keeps coming back, then you might be doing something to invite it back on to your system.
How Do I Create a Windows 7 Password Reset Disk, and Why Would I Want To?
Windows includes a little-known and little-used feature that allows you to reset your Windows password if you’ve lost or forgotten it. There’s only one catch: you need to prepare.
Is it safe to use a mobile banking app over an open Wi-Fi connection?
Checking that all apps are doing it right is not feasible, but I set up a sniffer to verify that Gmail was using an https secure connection. The results?
Why Can’t I Go To a URL that Avast Tells Me is Related to a Trojan Horse?
Sounds like Avast is doing its job and keeping you away from websites that are infected with a trojan.
Survey Pop Ups – Annoying Ad or Even More Annoying Spyware?
Survey’s popping up on a website could be the result of programming on that site – or something more sinister.
Should I Disable Java, and If So, How?
Another zero-day exploit has been discovered in Oracle’s Java VM; something that has many security experts suggest that you disable or uninstall Java. I’ll explain why and how.
Windows Defender Offline – Scan Your Computer for Malware Without Booting Windows
Windows Defender Offline is a free Microsoft tool to scan for malware before Windows boots or when it can’t boot at all. It’s can be a convenient approach to removing some stubborn malware.
Malwarebytes Anti-malware Removes Malware that Others Don’t
Even the best anti-virus and anti-spyware tools miss things. Malwarebytes Anti-malware has a good reputation for cleaning up some of the things that other tools don’t.
How Much of My Search History Could Be Recovered?
Web searches are stored in your browser history, but even deleting that may not be enough to prevent the discovery of what you’ve been searching for.
How can my ISP tell that I’m downloading copyrighted files?
Some ISPs are taking a more aggressive position to stop illegal file sharing. Your ISP can see a lot, including the fact that you are filesharing.
TrueCrypt – Free Open Source Industrial Strength Encryption
TrueCrypt provides a solution for encrypting sensitive data – everything from portable, mountable volumes to entire hard disks.
How to Safely Use Multiple Anti-Spyware Programs on Your PC
You need to be careful when using more than one anti-spyware tool. Used improperly more than one tool can cause conflicts.
Another Day, Another Panic
Thoughts on the latest virus threat, and the fact that some people will still get infected.
Watch the Cockroaches Scurry
I discuss a new effort to publicize spyware and its creators.
I Have Up-to-date Anti-virus And Anti-spyware Software. Do I Still Need Sp2?
In a nutshell: yes you do. Anti-virus, anti-spyware and even firewall software are only parts of the picture. Without staying up to date, you may still be at risk. Let me explain why.
Should I be worried about this “WMF Exploit” that everyone’s been talking about?
Yes, it’s serious. But, no, you don’t have to go through withdrawal. In an unprecedented move, Microsoft has released the patch for the problem ahead of schedule.
Spyware – is the crisis really that bad?
90% of all machines infested? That’s inflated and misleading – but the reality is bad enough.
Zotob Attacks! Who's to blame?
The Zotob worm recently brought down computers at several large corporations. Who should share in the blame?
I've fired my sysadmin, is changing passwords enough?
Sysadmins are given a tremendous amount of access – when it’s time to remove that access there are places that are very easy to overlook.
How Should I Set Up My Linux Web Server?
That’s really a much broader question than I can answer here, however, my recent experiences both being hacked, and building out a new server to replace the hacked one, are worth recording. Not only might you find it a helpful laundry list of ideas for securing your server, but you might also have some ideas … Read more
How do I delete items I've been to using Google?
Follow these steps to delete your browser’s history.
Is this stuff in my ‘hosts’ file supposed to be there?
The “hosts” file can be used for good or evil. Anti-malware programs may use it to block things, and malware may use it to block anti-malware.
