GuruNews, Volume 8 Number 32, 9-4-08

Thu Sep 4 21:34:01 EDT 2008

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Vol. 8, No. 32                 

9-4-08

1 Discussion          

2 Virus cleaning tool        

3 Sony burns you again, Google vs. MS round 2, US 3G rules

4 Annoying websites

5 Laptop evolution

Let's take a break this week and follow up on some past issues that are still generating email.

I continue to get questions, praise and complaints about ForceField.  As before it still seems to work great on some systems, act flaky on others and slow a few to a crawl.

I'm watching for updates to the program and will keep you posted but I do want to bring up a problem I haven't seen before.  Reader Gary M. experienced the slowdown and uninstalled the program but after a reboot, his scroll mouse would no longer work horizontally.

If your mouse supports this it's very handy for unusually wide web sites, documents and photos but I don't think many people use the feature, which is likely why it's something new.  I'm looking into it for Gary and I'll keep him and you posted if there's something you can do to fix it.

Last week's port article generated a lot of email from readers who ran the Local Port Scanner and inquired about what they found.  This brings up a couple of things I should have mentioned last week but neglected to.

First is a site that gives you an idea about what common ports are used for and why they might be open.  You can always Google "port xxxx use" and get some information but a site like http://www.iss.net/security_center/advice/Exploits/Ports/ is much handier.  It lists common port usage and, if you click the port number, gives a brief if cryptic description.

If you don't understand the process listed, and I'll admit some of them left me scratching my head, at least it gives you a little more specificity to add to a Google search of the open port.

The second thing is that most of you are probably behind a router, which acts as kind of a firewall even if it doesn't have a true hardware firewall onboard.

A router uses NAT, or Network Address Translation, which takes traffic from your external address (the address of your modem on the Internet) and reroutes it to an internal IP address that is entirely different.  This means someone attempting to exploit an open port on the router would have no clue where to go internally so it offers a pretty decent level of protection from incoming attacks.

The local port scanner just tests your PC itself but not outside if you have more than a straight modem connection.  For that you'll need something like Shields Up from https://www.grc.com/x/ne.dll?bh0bkyd2.  This will scan from the outside in for open ports so it's actually testing the router, not your PC.

You can get several utilities from the same site to close many of those local ports on your PC, including:

LeakTest from https://www.grc.com/lt/leaktest.htm, which tests software firewalls for egress leaks.

UnPlug n' Pray from https://www.grc.com/unpnp/unpnp.htm, which disables Universal Plug n' Play (believe me, you don't want this thing running).

Shoot The Messenger from https://www.grc.com/stm/shootthemessenger.htm, which disable the Messenger service, a well known source of pop-up ads.

DCOMbobulator from https://www.grc.com/freeware/dcom.htm turns off DCOM, which is used only on servers to allow remote program execution.

These programs will close many local ports that may test as open and, as such, offer that much more security.

This is a great security site, and Steve Gibson also has written one of the best hard drive repair tools I've ever run across (SpinRite).  In addition he developed the very first spyware scanner, OptOut, which is no longer listed.

Next week we'll move to the next step of the inner workings of the Internet but for now I'm calling it a night.

Kevin Mefford, Editor

pcguru at microdome.net

Terry Wise

www.ratland.com

Tech News of the Week

Sony says it is recalling 440,000 units of Vaio laptop computers worldwide due to faulty parts that could trigger overheating (tip o' the hat to team member Art Maley for passing this on):

http://money.cnn.com/2008/09/04/technology/sony_vaio/index.htm?cnn=yes

Even though Google's Chrome has been publically available for less than a week, its Web browser market share has already reached over 1 percent:

http://www.crn.com/software/210500053

Thanks to the release of popular handsets, the U.S. market has surpassed Western Europe in 3G adoption by a hair, according to new data from comScore:

http://www.informationweek.com/news/mobility/3G/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=210500036

Copy us on the good stuff!

Matthew Dattilo

thepcgurus at gmail.com 

www.mattstodayinhistory.com

Download of the Week

How many times have you followed a link to a website only to find the site requires a registration to read the page you wanted to see?  If you're like me, you might be a little miffed.  I've found a solution to those frustrations in a website called BugMeNot.  This website has hundreds of registered accounts available for the top sites on the Internet that require those "first time visitor" registrations.  

Go to www.bugmenot.com and you'll notice a menu.  The third item down that list is called "Bugmenot Bookmarklet".  Just grab that item and drag it to your "Favorites" or "Bookmark" toolbar.  Bingo!

Now, when you go to www.nytimes.com or some other site that wants you to share private information with them, just click on the BugMeNot bookmarklet.  A small window will pop up with login information for the site you're visiting.  If you have some ethical conflicts about using a ruse of this nature, then don't.

Carlita Lupino

Cards57 at gmail.com 

Email Question of the Week

Q:  I am looking to buy a new laptop used for business (financial accounting). I am looking at an intel core 2 duo processor but don't know whether a Dell or an HP would be the best. Any suggestions? 

Thanks for your advice! 

A:   HP has evolved and Dell devolved. Whichever you buy,  I would suggest WinXP as your OS.

Johnathan P. Durbin

jp at jpdurbin.net

Contact info and legal stuff

If you have tech support questions or ideas and/or submissions for our newsletter please submit them by visiting www.thepcgurus.com and click on the "Email the Team" icon. 

Copyright 2001-2008 The PC Gurus, all rights reserved.  Publication, rebroadcast or storage is prohibited without prior consent, however you may freely forward this publication to friends as long as A) it is forwarded in its entirety and B) no fee is charged.

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