Here’s an example of how social engineering can be more important than technical sophistication. It’s an email with a credible from address, credible header, credible subject line, credible contents: From: john@flexiprint.co.uk Subject: Photo Approval Needed Hello, Your photograph was forwarded to us as part of an article we are publishing for our May edition of… Read More »
For firewalls, I always recommend Zone Alarm from ZoneLabs. To my mind it’s still the best and most intuitive firewall around. But most people only need the free version. And that’s where the problem is. Why do ZoneLabs make it so hard for ordinary users to download it? Readers and friends who have tried to… Read More »
Further to my earlier post about whether one can trust Google’s Sponsored Links, here are some notes from a chat with Ben Edelman, an expert on spyware: Ben says legally it’s a difficult area: For Google, the sponsored links are just ads, not any kind of endorsement at all. But users have the sense that… Read More »
In case you needed a reason not to surf for porn, here’s one: Nearly all porn sites install some sort of spyware or adware on visitors’ computers, according to a survey released today by Eblocs.com, an anti-spyware vendor. The study “entailed visiting 100 porn sites and running multiple anti-spyware software programs… to identify any Spyware contaminating… Read More »
Johan Malmberg of Uniblue Systems, makers of Windows system utility WinTasks, tells me they’ve launched a new site, www.processlibrary.com, which is “a free service site that provides the user with detailed information about every common process. In the recesses of most computers, 20-30 invisible processes run silently in the background. To know what every process… Read More »