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Malware Silently Alters Router Settings – Change Your Router Passwords

October 31, 2008 By

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Not your password for Windows — you may or may not change that, based on your personal preference (or if at work, based on the requirements of your employer’s network).

I’m talking about changing your passwords on your wireless routers and wired routers.

Whether you use a Linksys router, a DLink router, a Belkin route, or one of the many other brands of routers , whether you use wireless or regular Ethernet connnections with your router, change the password from the default password — now!

In my security articles on routers, I have long recommended that you change the router’s password. Sure, it can’t be accessed from the Internet side of the router, but if you manage to pick up some automated malware or a trojan that gives remote control of your computer to someone else, you may find your router subverted. It may run all of your requests through their system, so they can log and analyze your actions, passwords, etc.

Well, the automated malware that I’ve long predicted has now been found in the wild.

Continue reading Malware Silently Alters Router Settings – Change Your Router Passwords

Filed Under: Anti-spam, Anti-spyware, Anti-Trojan, Anti-virus, Networking, Patches, Security Fixes, Security Issues, Terry's Computer Tips, Vista, Windows XP

Anti-Spam Program Choices

July 29, 2008 By

Subscriber and long-time reader Scott Adler wrote to me about his experiences with three of the various anti-spam programs. I’ve used Mailwasher Pro and PopFile and like both, but they are entirely different in their approach to spam. My current choice is PopFile.

I’ve also mentioned iHateSpam, which is from the same company that offers my choice in anti-spyware and firewall programs; however, I don’t use iHateSpam because I don’t use Outlook Express or Outlook as my email program (I use Eudora).

The three anti-spam programs you speak about have quite different impact on ones PC.. I’ve been using I Hate Spam but it’s use brings a slowdown to the reaction of the computer. As the files of friends and enemies build up the computer runs slower and slower until it almost freezes up. That’s what happened to me and it took three days of agonizing trouble shooting before I recognized where the problem lay.

Continue reading Anti-Spam Program Choices

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Filed Under: Anti-spam, Communications, Outlook, Outlook Express, Security, Shopping Deals, Software, Terry's Computer Tips

Emails and Spam Filters

June 17, 2008 By

Several people recently have had the emails, that they sent, fall victim to spam filters somewhere before getting to their recipients.

In one case of which I know, the email was sent to a mailing list. Many mailing list programs have filtering routines that are designed to block unwanted messages — not just blocking unsolicited commercial emails, but also blocking emails that appear to be help requests to the mailing list administrators.

Mailman, one of the more popular mailing list programs, does this kind of filtering so that all the list members don’t get the messages that appear aimed at the list owner. In particular, the filter is usually triggered by one- or two-word Subject lines in the email, especially if they have words like Help, Information, Info, Lists, Options, Remove, Unsubscribe and such.

So, what’s the fix? Don’t use a one- or two-word Subject line. Take the time to write a meaningful Subject.

Continue reading Emails and Spam Filters

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Filed Under: Anti-spam, Communications, Email, Eudora, Opera, Outlook, Outlook Express, Security, Security Issues, Software, Terry's Computer Tips, Thunderbird

Fighting Against Spyware & Malware

March 9, 2007 By

Spyware is software that enables a third-party to track where you go on the Internet. Usually this does not involves specific tracking cookies and companies that specialize in tracking your visits to advertiser sites.

Although this capability has given cookies a bad name, cookies are not inherently evil. They are used for many good purposes such as automatically logging you into a site like My Yahoo! or the New York Times. Most sites do not use cookies to spy on you.

Spyware, on the other hand, is almost always software that is actually installed on your computer — without your knowledge, usually, to monitor and report on what you do. It may be for the purpose of giving you specific advertising. More often, it is designed to steal personal information such as user IDs and passwords or credit card numbers.

Adware is software that generates ads, especially popup ads, to interfere with your computing and Internet surfing experience.

As most people use the term “adware,” and I agree with them, “adware” does not include software that displays unobtrusive ads with your conscious agreement (not buried deep in a license agreement or installed without your agreement) as a way to provide free software for you.

Examples of this latter “non-adware” case are Eudora (email) and Opera (web browser), both of which give you the option to purchase versions without advertising and have ad-sponsored versions available as free alternatives.

Malware is a more generic term to mean any program that is designed to abuse your computer system or trust. Spyware and Adware are in this category, as are Browser Hijackers, Trojans, Viruses and Worms.

Read more in Fighting Against Spyware & Malware

Filed Under: Anti-adware, Anti-spam, Anti-spyware, Anti-virus, Firewall, Security

Email Reliability in this Internet World

February 26, 2007 By

How reliable is email in today’s Internet world? Perfect, isn’t it? You would think that it would be completely reliable — we use it all the time. All we’re doing is pushing around electrons and we’ve known how to do that, in one way or another, for an awfully long time.

Whether we are writing to friends, sending a joke, sending a picture, or sending a business message, email has become a part of our lives. We’ve come to rely on it for easy communications. We don’t even understand our friends that don’t “do” email.

However, as we have increased the reliability of the transmission system. We have also increased the noise and the noise filters that we use to keep control. We also have this concept known as “information overload.” We usually hear about information overload with regard to a person being overloaded with the quantity of information they receive — from mail, from TV, from radio, from emails, from web site.

Unfortunately, we also have information overload with routers, email servers, and email forwarding systems. Sometimes, they get so many emails at one time that they get behind. Occasionally, they lose a few. This is one of the biggest dangers (as opposed to the waste of time and resources issue) with spam. Unfortunately, there is not much we, as individuals, can do about that.

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Some of the other problems we have with email servers also are caused by spam — more accurately, by the measures taken to try to control or to eliminate spam. Our emails occasionally get discarded by email servers that decide they are spam — even when they are not.

If you use an anti-spam program, or if your ISP does, hopefully you have followed my advice from the July 11, 2005 issue of my newsletter. You can read my thoughts about spam (I hate spam!) and how to keep it out of your Inbox.

Read more in Email Reliability in this Internet World

Filed Under: Anti-spam, Email, Terry's Computer Tips

CounterSpy, iHateSpam and Sunbelt Kerio Personal Firewall coupons

December 10, 2006 By

Sunbelt has an unadvertised coupon sale that runs until 12 midnight, Eastern Standard Time, December 31, 2006:

* Get $5 off a CounterSpy license with coupon code CSC5TY.

* Get $5 off a Sunbelt Kerio Personal firewall license with coupon code SPF5TY.

* Get $5 off a license for Sunbelt’s award-winning anti-spam program iHateSpam with coupon code IHS5TY. iHateSpam is for Outlook and Outlook Express only.

Sunbelt also has great discounts on multiple license purchases (of the same program). For example, 2 CounterSpy licenses are $29.92 instead of 2 times $19.95. Plus, you can use the discount code to get another $5 off your purchase.

Be sure to purchase by December 31, 2006 to get the coupon discount. Coupons have no cash value and are good only at the time of purchase. You can only use the coupon on one license per transaction and only one coupon per transaction.

Filed Under: Anti-adware, Anti-spam, Anti-spyware, Firewall, Windows XP

IE7 Vulnerability to Phishing Attack

October 26, 2006 By

Security researchers at Secunia have discovered and reported another vulnerability with the newest version of Internet Explorer – IE7, as reported in heise Security‘s blog.

On the day of its release, Secunia reported a vulnerability where phishers were able to spy on the content of other open windows. As usual, the recommendation was to disable Active Scripting (Microsoft’s name for its implementation of JavaScript). [How to turn Active Scripting back on again, later]

Microsoft quickly announced that this was not an IE6 and IE7 vulnerability, it was a problem with Outlook Express code that was in Windows. According to the heise Security article, Microsoft has known of that vulnerability for about six months.

Gee, isn’t that reassuring?

In the latest vulnerabilty reported by Secunia, malicious web sites could fake the data in the “address bar” of a popup window. This despite Microsoft’s touting of the new anti-phishing, high-security IE7 and its new address bar display in each window.

By spoofing the address of a legitimate site into its popup window, phishers could convince unsuspecting visitors to reveal personal information such as userIDs, passwords and credit card data.

Filed Under: Anti-adware, Anti-spam, Anti-spyware, Communications, Operating System, Security, Web browsing

Computer Running Slowly — Adware & Spyware

October 20, 2006 By

In the article before this (Computer Running Slowly), I wrote about extra programs running in the background, slowing up your computer.

Sometimes, those programs are malicious. They may want to reroute your searches to their own site. They may want to spy on you. They may want to use your computer to send spam. They may pop up advertising. They may block access to certain sites. Or they may do other things you wouldn’t want, either.

Some of them even replace the advertising that you would have seen on a web site.

Why are they doing all of this? Money.

Continued in Computer Running Slowly — Adware & Spyware

Filed Under: Anti-adware, Anti-spam, Anti-spyware, Operating System

Computer Running Slowly?

October 19, 2006 By

Most of the time, when our computers are running slowly, it’s because of all the things we have running in the background. Computer manufacturers seem to delight in loading up computers with 10 to 12 programs that run automatically and put little icons in the Windows Status Bar.

One would hope that these programs didn’t interfere with our other computer activities. But, all too often, that is not the case.

So, how can you get them under control?

There are a number of tools that will let you control programs that start automatically — if you can figure out which ones you don’t need…

Read more in Computer Running Slowly

Filed Under: Anti-adware, Anti-spam, Anti-spyware, Operating System

Hidden File Extensions in Windows

October 12, 2006 By

One of Microsoft’s attempts at “user friendliness” is that recent versions of Windows are set to hide file extensions. What’s a file extension? As an example, it is the “.exe” that is at the end of a program’s name.

Unfortunately, Microsoft decided that we don’t really need to know what file extensions are. Even worse, they decided that Microsoft programs including Windows might not always consider the file extension, when deciding which program to use with a file.

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Huh? That was a lot of words. Let’s take it in shorter sentences.

A file extension is the ending of a file name.

For example, Microsoft Word’s file name is WINWORD.EXE. Word, by default, declares to Windows that it owns files with the extension “.doc”.

So, if you double-click on a file ending with .doc, Word will try to open it. Similarly, the Notepad program “notepad.exe” declares ownership of the .txt file extension.

[By the way, Windows is not case sensitive, so it views Notepad.exe and notepad.EXE and NoTePaD.EXe as the same thing.]

Finally, by default, you do not see file extensions — Windows hides them.

OK, so what’s the problem?

Find out in my article Hidden File Extensions in Windows

Filed Under: Anti-adware, Anti-spam, Anti-spyware, Anti-virus, Operating System