GuruNews, Volume 9 Number 18, 5-7-09

Thu May 7 17:56:57 PDT 2009

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Vol. 9, No. 18                           

5-7-09

1 Potpourri             

2 Alternative backups

3 Mobile phones, Windows 7, Twitter rumor, McAfee snafu

4 Script protection and rootkits redux

5 IE8                     

6 Boosting video performance

Over the years I’m sure you’ve heard me slam on Symantec security products.  I’ve had a couple of versions let well known trojans infect my system (even though I manually scanned the downloads with the latest definitions) and another was flawed to the point that it got me hacked.

This week brings more proof that they aren’t to be trusted.  If you used their products and fell for prompts to upgrade to a newer version before the current license expired you may be eligible for a small settlement.

It seems that from 2001-2008 Symantec would negate the remainder of your licenses for the older versions.  Of course you weren’t notified of this, so if you bought say Norton AV 2005 in July ’05 and got an email from them touting the new 2006 version in November, you lost eight months of updates you purchased with the old version if you upgraded.

See, most companies simply extend your license period when you upgrade early to the latest version, meaning the above scenario should have given you a full 20 months of free (actually purchased but the company calls them free) updates.  But apparently not Symantec.

They chose to negate your remainder, giving you just 12 months.  They were caught and sued and settled the suit before the court case.  You, the wronged end user, get a whopping $2.50 in cash and a $15 credit on yet more Symantec security products.  I’d accept the settlement just to pile on and add more to the company’s cost.

Symantec denies any wrongdoing in the settlement agreement, naturally, but why settle when it makes you look like a villain out to screw your customers unless you knew you had no proof that you didn’t?

And while the individual payments are tiny, when multiplied by millions of customers spanning seven years the cost adds up quickly.  Toss in legal expenses, including the plaintiff’s lawyers (I’m assuming here) and Symantec is out a nice chunk of change.

You can read the settlement at:

http://www.heverly-nortoncase.com/

If you noticed recently that your flash drives don’t trigger the Windows auto-open feature, there’s a reason for that.  One of the recent critical updates disabled that feature for everything but CDs due to virus concerns.

Many modern viruses will infect writable media, just like old viruses did to the boot sector of floppies, and spread from machine when the infected device is plugged in.

This is a great idea and adds yet another layer to your system security, but it isn’t without drawbacks.  Many USB hard drives come with backup programs that automatically start when the drive is plugged in.  No pluggy, no starty (so to speak).

This can usually be rectified by plugging the drive in and opening My Computer, the drive in question, then clicking on the different .exe files until you find the one that starts the process.  Once you know what starts it, just right click on it and choose Send To and then Desktop (Create shortcut).  Then you can plug, double click and start the backup. 

To finish things off this week, the kick-off for the annual Crusade for Children is coming up, so you expect firefighters and Boy and Girl Scouts to be knocking on your door and showing up at intersections, boots and buckets in hand.

The Gurus have supported the Crusade since inception, with members often helping on the networking for the Telethon to Kyle’s hosting of their website.  There’s a link to the Crusade website in the header of all of our newsletters as well.

The reason I bring this up, other than the obvious, is that an emailer made a very thoughtful gesture after I had helped him clean up a virus infection.  He made a donation in The Gurus name.  He asked if we got acknowledged for it and honestly, I don’t know and don’t care.  If we help you and you feel the need to do something in return, please make a donation regardless of whose name it’s under.

It goes without saying that we never ask for any donations or other remuneration for our help, we’ve offered it free since the old 84Online days and continue to do so, but I wanted to publically than Jack for his help for the kids and wanted to tell you about it.

Kevin Mefford, Editor

pcguru at microdome.net

Terry Wise

www.ratland.com

Tech News of the Week

For the first time, households opting for just cell phones outnumber
those that only have traditional landlines, according to a National
Health Interview Survey issued Wednesday by the U.S. Centers for
Disease Control and Prevention.  Agency overlap, anyone?

http://tinyurl.com/dxx927  

Tests of the Windows 7 Release Candidate in the PC World Test Center
found that while Windows 7 was slightly faster than Vista, the
differences may be barely noticeable to users:

http://www.pcworld.com/article/164485/windows_7_rc_benchmarks.html

One of the founders of the incredible phenomenon called Twitter said
that the outfit is not for sale:

http://www.tgdaily.com/content/view/42344/103/

Security vulnerabilities on McAfee sites, including one designed to
scan customers' sites for flaws, exposed certain customer accounts and
could have been used for phishing attacks in which malware disguised
as McAfee software could be distributed, security experts say (thanks
to team member Hash for the tip):

http://news.cnet.com/8301-1009_3-10234033-83.html

Matthew Dattilo
thepcgurus at gmail.com 
www.mattstodayinhistory.com

Download of the Week

Malware authors use a variety of underhanded ways of trying to infect your PC, notably using scripts including Visual Basic Scripting (.VBS), Java Script (.JS) and Windows Scripting (.WSH). AnalogX Script Defender is a free, simple way to get help thwarting them.  AnalogX is trusted website that I and many of my tech friends have used for years.  Get Script Defender here:

http://tinyurl.com/dcozby 

NOTE: The link for last week’s free download was mysteriously broken by the time the newsletter went to press.  For that, I apologize and offer a working link for those who still want to give F-Secure BlackLight a try:

http://tinyurl.com/6fsbcg

Carlita Lupino

Cards57 at gmail.com   

Threat of the Week

Pretty mild danger this week, but you need to stay on your toes to avoid it.  In this case “it” is Internet Explorer 8.

It’s been out for a few weeks and, like nearly all new Microsoft versions, I haven’t recommended it as of yet.  Most of my encounters with it have been negative, but many people have had it installed for a couple of months with no problems.  I bit the bullet and installed it on my main PC last night and so far it seems slower but otherwise safe.

But as in the past this is now listed as a critical update and you might get it without even knowing it.  I’ll report back after I’ve used it exclusively for a couple of weeks but for now, if you have the option on updates for Express or Custom choose the latter.  Don’t check the box asking for it to be removed from the list, keep installation available but just bide your time.

Kevin Mefford

pcguru at microdome.net

Email Question of the Week

Q:  How would i increase my video performance on my pc? I do not want to
buy a video card unless i have to. However recently the online game i
have been playing for awhile has become harder to play because my
frames per second have dramatically dropped.

A:  Since this is an online game I would check my connection rate
before buying a new video card.  I usually use www.speedtest.net, it's
a pretty intuitive site use.  Check you download speeds and compare
those to the rates you should be getting (or used to get, if you've
tested before).  If the video stream is throttled you'll get slow
frame rates.

Also if you've changed providers or changed plans recently you may
be getting some latency.  This is a problem with wireless broadband
and all but rules out game play on satellite connections.
 If that checks out you'll need a new card.  You can throw firmware
updates and driver tweaks at it all you like but you can't improve the
basic power of the GPU.

Hope that helps and keep us posted...

Kevin Mefford

pcguru at microdome.net

Contact info and legal stuff

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