GuruNews, Volume 9 Number 34, 9-17-09

[Kevin-PC Gurus]

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Vol. 9, No. 34                           

9-17-09

 

1 Security threats 

2 Fake virus and spyware cleaners

3 New York Times hacked, Intuit eats a Mint, MMS now in iPhones, Google ReCAPTCHAs, Gurus add CAPTCHA

4 Office menus

5 USB Error

 

The Internet has been and always will be a dangerous place.  Back in the day it was from viruses, today it’s more from spyware, adware and email scams, but the threats today might actually cause you financial ruin.  I’m talking, of course, about identity theft.

 

I’ve mentioned rules to live by many times when it comes to providing personal information when prompted by websites and email messages but the criminals have bumped it up a notch with a unique method.  This new threat has been dubbed “scareware”.

 

Scareware does just what the name implies, it scares you.  It convinces you in some way to provide your name, address and credit card information, usually with the warning of a non-existent infection that needs to be cleaned.  The warning usually offers either a “free scan” or tells you that you need to register or activate your “antivirus” software.

 

The most insidious ones I’ve seen are nearly identical to Windows Security Center other than you are warned than some software, like “Personal Antivirus” or “Antivirus 2010”, needs to be activated.

 

The appearance of these things differs.  Sometimes they are pop-ups screaming you are infected, other times they appear in the lower right corner where legitimate security programs often display messages.

 

The most prevalent vectors for this type of malware are MySpace and Flash banner ads.  

 

MySpace itself is not the source, but they feature lots of Flash and many sites hosting “free skins” for MySpace profiles are fronts for devious individuals or groups up to no good.

 

As far as the Flash ads, those are everywhere.  Some web sites do a good job of policing the advertisers they allow to insure this kind of thing doesn’t happen but most are rather lax.  Fark owner Drew Curtis, as an example, shut down advertising on his site all together for a short time when one of the ad companies feeding banners there was hacked and infected. 

 

To protect your financial security you can adhere to the following steps:

 

Be familiar with the security programs you’re using by name.  Keep those programs up to date and do full scans frequently, in other words at least once a week.

 

Look carefully at any messages that come up from the real programs to see the wording and format.  Also check the layout and messages from Security Center, which you can access from Control Panel.

 

Keep in mind that Security Center never prompts you to register or activate anything, nor does it warn you of infections.  It will warn of a lack of antivirus protection, if the antivirus is turned off or out of date and that’s basically it.

 

If one of these windows slides or pops up DO NOT TOUCH IT!  Often the entire window, including the usual “X” to close the window, is booby-trapped and will install the malware on your PC.  Instead close any other programs you have open as normal and reboot the PC.

 

Never enter your personal information, especially financial information, if you didn’t initiate the procedure.  If you open a shopping website to purchase something you’re safe.  If you get an email or a prompt check it out thoroughly through other means and initiate a new transaction yourself, never through a link in an email or unexpected pop-up.

 

Make others in your household who use your PC aware of these rules.

 

Keep the phone numbers for all of your financial institutions together in one place.  If you slip up you’ll realize it pretty quickly and your first steps should be to shut down the PC and start making calls.  Your first statement on those calls should be “Hi, this is so and so and my credit card number has been compromised”.  That will elicit a quick couple of questions about your account and an immediate freezing of it to prevent theft.

 

What this boils down to is, read carefully and be suspicious of everything.  Being paranoid doesn’t mean that scammers aren’t out to get you, to mangle a common sentiment.  

 

Kevin Mefford, Editor

pcguru at microdome.net

 

 



 

Terry Wise

www.ratland.com

 

 

Tech News of the Week
 

Earlier this week, the New York Times came under fire after one of the
advertising networks they use to sell ads on their sites started
serving an ad that was installing malware on computers.  They have
taken the offending ads out of the loop, but it bears repeating that
you as a computer user need to be aware of your computing.  Safe
computing is happy computing, and if a popup tells you your infected,
scan with your anti-virus program that you already have installed,
instead of something that pops up without your intervention:

http://tinyurl.com/l8ypjd 

Intuit, the makers of Quicken and Quickbooks, have announced they are
purchasing financial site Mint.com .  I personally have used Mint for
a couple of years, and rather enjoy it helping keep track of my bank
accounts and budgets:



http://tinyurl.com/ra8qlr 

iPhone users rejoice!  MMS (picture) messaging is starting to roll out
across the country in what looks like some sort of haphazard fashion:

http://tinyurl.com/luju4f

Google acquires ReCAPTCHA, which is a book scanning service that
translates hard to read text into digital form by asking people to
read and regurgitate what they find:

http://news.cnet.com/8301-30684_3-10354717-265.html?

While on the subject of CAPTCHA, if you go to our website and type a
question to ask of the Gurus, you'll see that we have implemented a
CAPTCHA on our question submission form.  It really is as easy as it
looks.  In the box below the CAPTCHA, type the words you see above.
If the words are garbled beyond reading, hit the refresh button (two
arrows with the arrowhead of one pointing to the tail of the other),
and it will give you two new words.  I'm going to leave the CAPTCHA
information at that for now, but I want to know if you the reader want
to know more about CAPTCHA technology and how it all works.  If you
do, please e-mail me using the web submission form or send e-mail
to daniel at thepcgurus.com and let me know.  If enough of you want to
know, I'll step into Kevin's shoes for a week and write about
CAPTCHA and the technology involved there.

Let us know about the best you find on the web!

Daniel A. Williams

daniel at thepcgurus.com

 

 

Download of the Week
 

Carlita is on a little vacation from llama farming this week so your humble editor will be filling in ;)

 

Do you miss the classic Text Menu in Office 2007 programs?  You know, the File, Edit, View etc. at the top of most every Windows program since the early days.  UbitMenu will put those back for you from a new Menu tab in the top ribbon menu.  It will also work with the upcoming Office 2010.  Business users are asked to purchase licenses.

 

It’s free for personal use and available from:

 

http://www.ubit.ch/software/ubitmenu-languages/

 

Kevin Mefford

pcguru at microdome.net

 

 

Email Question of the Week
 

Q:  I have a Vista desktop computer that freezes during boot up.  The computer beeps twice and shows "USB Controller" on the screen before it locks up.  Any idea what might be causing this problem?

 

A:  Off the top of my head I'd guess something you have plugged into a USB port has gone south.  Try powering down and unhooking any USB hard drives or flash drives (including card readers, which might be plugged in internally) and power up.  If that didn't fix it power back down and unplug all other USB devices like printers, cams etc.  It might even be a USB keyboard or mouse so you'll want spares handy.

 

If that works then start powering down and plugging in one device at a time. When the PC locks up it will be the last device that's bad.

 

If it doesn't work I'd guess failure of the USB controller on the motherboard.

 

Hope that helps and keep us posted...

 

Kevin Mefford

kevin at microdome.net  

 

 

Contact info and legal stuff
 

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