Home & Small Office Computer Guide

Our favorite antivirus software is now available for mobile phones.

While it’s extremely unlikely that you will ever pick up a virus from a phone call there is nothing to stop viruses being transferred to high-end phones when they’re being sychronized with a PC.

The new Kasperksy Anti-Virus Mobile monitors wireless connections and scans text messages and data transfered during synchronization.

Why am I not surprised

by Stuart Livesey

A team of British security experts have tested 15 different antivirus programmes on Vista and four failed. One of the failures was Microsoft’s very own antivirus software package, Live OneCare.

Another failure was McAfee’s antivirus package but McAfee claims that the security experts failed to use the latest release in their tests.

One that passed the test was the one that I use and recommend -  Kaspersky

You can read the more about the test here

It’s been reported that McAfee had an ‘Oh God’ moment on Friday and released an anti-virus update into the wild that wasn’t quite right.

The update had a problem in the DAT file that caused it to incorrectly identify thousands of files as infected when they weren’t. Anyone who had McAfee set to delete infected files lost out big time.

One Systems Administrator for a major company reported that they lost thousands of files from dozens of servers and around 2000 user machines.

Oops.

by Bruce Kramer

With the proliferation of spyware, or malware there has also been a proliferation of applications claiming to be your partner in fighting the problem.

Many folks get into a jam worse than they were in before they started using what they thought was a legitimate antispyware program. Rogue antispyware programs usually start out by alerting an individual in some unambiguous way, perhaps through a pop-up or unsolicited email (spam), that they have a spyware and or virus problem.

They will urge the person to buy or use their product. It may even tell them that they that it has already found (through osmosis I guess) a large amount of spyware and that by purchasing their product you will be free of the ugly vermin once and for all.

Not only are these programs digital snake oil serving no useful purpose and charging $30 and up, but it is like having a mole or insider infiltrate your computer. Once the rogue program is in your system it opens the door for other malicious programs to come in and wreck havoc on the computer.

Most of these programs go by heroic names such as Error Guard and WinFixer, or other names that sound very similar to reputable, well established antispyware programs. The user should not be fooled by the name or its claim or you could be in for a long ride.

Once the seed is planted and the rogue program has opened the door for his partners in mischief the programs will work together try to ensure their survival so it is not as easy as terminating a singal piece of spyware. After one is gone another one will take his job sometimes even regenerating the one that was just terminated. Once these guys have enough for a full team it can be an uphill battle unless the user has some experience in dealing with the tactics they employ.

What the user can do to protect themselves: First of all, be wary of any antispyware application that does not offer a free, fully functional, trial of their product. If it can’t be driven it around, kick the tires and ask some questions through tech support, either by phone, email or website because it might not be the real deal. Don’t buy from a pushy salesman, meaning don’t buy from spam and pop-ups.

Don’t be fooled by the fools.

Stay safe and happy computing.

Cramer’s Computer Services provides In home, on site computer service in the San Antonio area. Specializing in virus and spyware removal, upgrades networking and more.

Cramer’s Computer Services
210-865-2933
http://www.mysahomes.com

None of the Nortons products have ever been very high on the list of security software that we recommend and over the last few years Nortons products have really begun to sink to the bottom of the list. We see far too many virus riddled machines coming into our friend’s computer shop for repair that were supposed to be protected by Norton Anti-Virus for us ever to think of Nortons as anything more than a placebo.

Of course that has led to us receiving a lot of criticism for rubbishing a wonderful product and these days when the discussion turns to anti-virus software we tend to find some excuse to depart for the other end of town. It’s either that or wind up being dissed as haters by Nortons sycophants who attack us in one breathe and then wonder why their machines are running slow in the next.

So it’s nice to see a real expert who doesn’t think mucht of Norton range of products either. The Bleeding Edge is a blog written by a leading IT journalist here in Australia and here he gives yet another reason why Nortons is the becoming the joke of the computer security world.

It still appals me just how many people have absolutely no idea about how to protect their computers. I’m not talking about protecting them from theft but about the damage that comes from inadvertently downloading trojans or viruses.

Quite often when we’re down at our friend’s computer shop we see at several peoplen come in with their computer tucked under their arm to have it fixed. It might be running slow or they can no longer connect to the net and sometimes if they can connect they find that their browser has been hijacked and they can’t get to the sites that they want to see.

Invariably a quick scan of the machine turns up some virus or trojan and the owner of the computer is completely mystified as to how it might have got there. They instantly throw up their hands and say that they have never been to a site that might have downloaded something like that to their machine.

It’s quite obvious that they are trying to say that they have never been to an adult site because they are the only ones that could possibly do such terrible things to their machines - or so they think. And sometimes they are genuine, they really haven’t been visiting any naughty sites but that doesn’t matter one little bit.

It’s not just adult sites that can drop those nasty things on your machines. There are quite a few mainstream marketing sites and even just general sites that will do exactly the same thing. Quite often you will pick up garbage like that when you respond to some free offer for smilies or similar things and at other times all you have to do is just click on a link.

Quite often the computer owners will declare that they have Nortons or this or that anti-virus software installed and they just don’t know how something like that could have got through.

Well the fact of the matter is that most anti-virus software is not half as good as you might think it is. There is a lot of hype and hoop-la used to sell anti-virus software and most of it is little more than smoke and mirrors.

Right now the very best anti-virus software that is available is called Kaspersky. You can find it at http://www.kaspersky.com.

You can do a free online scan of your machine (although that does take some time) or you can download a trial version that will last for a month. After that you will have to pay a very reasonable amount for a year’s subscription.

Kaspersky will scan your machine and your incoming email and it will also update itself three times a day so it is far more current and up to date than most of the junk that people think will keep them protected.

We use it on all of our machines and surf a wide variety of sites every day of the week. We have had only one minor problem since we installed it. And at the time we first installed it and it ran its initial scan it found a virus in an attachment that had come in an email three years before and was archived on one of the machines.

Several other anti virus programmes that people often recommend had missed that attachment but not Kaspersky.