Moving my blog

I am moving my blog to my permanent website, www.atotalnetworksolution.com, please visit it there at the address
www.atotalnetworksolution.com/blog

Happy computing

Laptop malware ruins career

The below article appeared in the June 23rd, 2008 issue of Network World magazine, on page 16. I have received written permission from Network World to include this article on my blog. It is shown as it exactly as it appeared in their magazine and on their website with no modifications whatsoever. I have provided a link to the article on http://www.networkworld.com/:
http://www.networkworld.com/news/2008/061808-a-misconfigured-laptop-a-wrecked.html


A misconfigured laptop, a wrecked life

When the Commonwealth of Massachusetts issued Michael Fiola a Dell Latitude in November 2006, it set off a chain of events that would cost him his job, his friends and about a year of his life, as he fought criminal charges that he had downloaded child pornography onto the laptop. Last week, prosecutors dropped their year-old case after a state investigation of his computer determined there was insufficient evidence to prove he had downloaded the files.
An initial state investigation had come to the opposite conclusion, and authorities took a second look at Fiola's case only after he hired a forensic investigator to look at his laptop. What she found was scary, given the gravity of the charges against him: The Microsoft SMS (Systems Management Server) software used to keep his laptop up to date was not functional. Neither was its antivirus protection. And the laptop was crawling with malicious programs that were most likely responsible for the files on his PC.
Fiola had been an investigator with the state's Department of Industrial Accidents, examining businesses to see whether they had worker's compensation plans. Over the past two days, however, he's become a spokesman for people who have had their lives ruined by malicious software. He now works as an insurance salesman in North Scituate, Rhode Island
Following is an edited transcript of a telephone interview he gave to the IDG News Service.
Why did you need a laptop at the Department of Industrial Accidents?
We had a laptop basically to do our reports instantaneously. If I went to a business and found that they were out of compliance, I would log on and type in a report so it could get back to the home office in Boston immediately. We also used it to research businesses.
Had you used a work laptop before?
Yes, this was a second-generation laptop. My [first] computer was stolen out of my vehicle outside of work in Boston in November 2006.
How long had you been using a laptop before this one was stolen in November?
About a year and a half.
Did you notice anything strange about this new laptop when you started using it?
Not at all. I'm not that computer-savvy of a person. I'm more of a hunt-and-peck type of guy. I can get in, I can do my e-mail. You tell me to do this form, I can do this form, and that's about it. I typically don't search the Internet, I typically don't go out and browse. I don't play any games. I don't go to chat rooms; never have, never will. I was basically using it for my job.
When did you become aware that there was a problem?
When they fired me in March.
What happened?
My boss called me into his office at 9 a.m. The director of the Department of Industrial Accidents, my immediate supervisor, and the personnel director were there. They handed me a letter and said, "You are being fired for a violation of the computer usage policy. You have pornography on your computer. You're fired. Clean out your desk. Let's go."
They escorted me to my desk, they watched me clean my personal stuff out of my desk, they escorted me out of the building to my vehicle.
What was you reaction?
Shock. I said, "What are you people talking about? I don't understand?" And they wouldn't talk to me. They said, "We've been advised by our attorney not to talk to you." It felt like the blood drained right from my body. I never expected anything like this to happen.
How did this affect your life?
It was horrible. No paycheck. I lost all my benefits. I lost my insurance. My wife is very, very understanding. She took the bull by the horns and found an attorney. I was just paralyzed, I couldn't do anything. I can't describe the feeling to you. I wouldn't wish this on my worst enemy. It's just devastating.
If you get in a car accident and you kill somebody, people talk to you afterwards. All our friends abandoned us. The only family that stood by us was my dad, her parents, my stepdaughter and one other good friend of ours. And that was it. Nobody called. We spent many weekends at home just crying. I'm 53 years old and I don't think I've cried as much in my whole life as I did in the past 18 months.
So what do you think happened?
It was either a rogue hack ... or after my computer was stolen, [the new computer] might have been loaded with the stuff, ready to go. I'm not accusing anybody, but if it was someone in the IT department who was doing this, [maybe they] never had a chance to take it off of there.
The criminal charges against you have been dropped. What about your job?
I will never go to work for them again. I would not work for a company that would not protect its employees. I feel they didn't protect me. The SMS was disabled on that computer.
Has this changed the way you use computers?
Yeah it really has. I use a laptop now for work, but I do not go online until I go home. My days of surfing the Web are over, because I don't wish this on anybody.

Please see my article entitled: http://atotalnetworksolution.com/blog/2008/malware-description/ also see my link to where you can purchase the very good program called SuperAntiSpyware on my website, http://www.atotalnetworksolution.com/antispyware.html.

Internet Explorer "stuff"

Information coming soon, please check back.

Internet filtering (Content filtering)

Information coming soon, please check back.

Speed up that slow computer

You’re so excited, you just got a new computer and it’s fast, super fast. However, a couple of months later, it doesn’t seem as fast, and you’re not as excited.

Why does that happen? It’s because of a couple of things. One, it’s due to the installation of programs, as programs are installed they take up room on the hard drive, and the hard drive has to search harder and work harder to find space to put the programs. You say “But I bought a 300gb hard drive, and I’ve only got 133 gb on it.” That may be true, but FREE SPACE isn’t the issue, contiguous space is the issue. (Please see my post on defragmenting a hard drive: http://atotalnetworksolution.com/blog/2008/defragmenting-a-hard-drive/ ) Defrag your hard drive on a schedule. What schedule? That’s a good question, and it’s not that easy to answer. The answer is it depends on how frequently you write (store) files. If all you use your computer for is to surf the internet and you’re not creating files, then once a month would probably be OK. If you are someone that creates a lot of files a day such as spreadsheets or documents, then you may want to defrag daily. (See my post on defragmenting, and notice my recommendation of JKDefrag.)

Another reason is temp files. There is more than one type of temp files and all can have an impact on the speed of computer. What are the types of temp files? When Windows starts, it creates some files to help it operate, these files are normally deleted or done away with when Windows shuts down, but it doesn’t always do so. Another type of temp files are when programs are installed, some temporary installation files are created. When the installation is finished, those files are supposed to be deleted, but again, sometimes they aren’t. Another type of temp files is Internet temp files.

Windows temp files – there are two types of Windows temp files. (Starting to get the picture why temp files can be an issue?) Some temp files are stored in the Windows\Temp folder (directory for computer old timers, I may accidentally use that from time to time) and some are stored in the “USER” temp folder. (In different versions of Windows, that user folder is in different places, in WindowsXP, it’s in C:\Documents and Settings, and is your [user]name.) You can safely delete all the folders and files that are in the C:\Windows\Temp folder, though when you try to delete them, you may get a message that they are in use, just skip the in use files and delete the rest.

The other type of Windows temp files can also be safely deleted, but they can be hard to find. I stated in the preceding paragraph that they are in C:\Documents and Settings\[username], but they are in some subfolders under that that you may not be able to see, the true to them is: C:\Documents and Settings\[username]\Local Settings\Temp and sometimes there’s even another folder called C:\Documents and Settings\[username]\Local Settings\Temporary Internet Files. If you can find those folders, then you can safely delete everything in them, also.

Now to the temporary installation files, a lot of those are stored in two places I’ve already discussed, the C:\Windows\Temp folder, and the C:\Documents and Settings\[username]\Local Settings\Temp folder. There is another place they can be stored, but I’m not going to discuss that one, because if you delete the wrong folders from there, you can really cause yourself some headaches.

The last kind of files are the temporary internet files. There are two ways to delete them (in Windows there are almost always at least two ways to do anything), and I’ll cover the easiest way. Launch Internet Explorer, click on Tools, and click Internet Options. You should be on the Internet Options page, the second section down is the Browsing history section, click the “Settings” button. Set the disk space to use at 75 or less, I like to use 50. The bigger the hard drive you have, the larger that number will be, but it doesn’t need to be above 75, ever. Click OK to save your changes there, and to go back to the Browsing history section. Click the Delete button, in this section you want to click the “Delete files” button and the “Delete cookies” button. (What are cookies? Check out my post on Internet Explorer “stuff”: http://atotalnetworksolution.com/blog/2008/internet-explorer-stuff/ ), then, before you get out of Internet Explorer Tools, click on the “Advanced” tab, scroll all the way to the bottom and check the box next to “Empty Temporary Internet Files folder when browser is closed”.

A lot of people in today’s computing environment do a lot of downloads, free games, music, videos, etc. Those types of files are really big and can lead to slow down. Be sure you clean up (delete) files of those sorts from time to time.

Another common disk space usage is installed programs, whether they came with your computer, or you downloaded them, or it was something you used to use but now doesn’t. Periodically go through the Add / Remove Program list and remove programs that you aren’t using.

Then, remember to run a defragmenting program periodically, see my post http://atotalnetworksolution.com/blog/2008/defragmenting-a-hard-drive/ for how to do that.

Power / Surge protection

Information coming soon, please check back

Phishing

What Is Phishing? It’s pronounced Fishing, and while I don’t know for sure, I’d say it was called that after the sport of the same name. But what is it?

Microsoft defines Phishing as: a type of deception designed to steal your valuable personal data, such as credit card numbers, passwords, account data, or other information.

You’ve probably heard the term that someone (a sucker) took a line or deal “hook, line and sinker”. That’s the “hope” behind this type of a scheme.
What happens is the perpetrator (phishing is a criminal activity) does is designs a web page that closely mimics a real web page.

Here is a real example of a phishing email: (the hyperlink has been replaced by underlined text for security reasons)

After the last annual calculations of your fiscal activity we have determined that you are eligible to receive a tax refund of $63.80. Please submit the tax refund request and allow us 6-9 days in order to process it.
A refund can be delayed for a variety of reasons. For example submitting invalid records or applying after the deadline.
To access the form for your tax refund, please click here.
Regards,Internal Revenue Service

If you were to click the hyperlink, it would take you to a page that looked very much like the real Internal Revenue Service’s web page. On that page, there would probably be some box to put in your Social Security number (it is “supposed” to be the IRS’ web site) and probably a box to put in your bank account so that you can get your refund to you via direct deposit, and possibly even ask for your PIN number, to further validate your bank account or expedite your refund. Presto, the crook has all the info necessary to clean out your bank account.

One way you can tell if a web site is a phishing site is to look at the address bar of your browser. In the case above, it would probably be a number something like 218.68.122.48 or something like that, (that number that’s displayed is an IP [Internet Protocol]) address, “good” web sites should have the name and not a number in the address bar. It also might be http://www.irss.gov/ or something CLOSE, but “misspelled”.

If you do go to a site that “deals” or “handles” money (such as online ordering or online banking) there should be a lock in the lower right hand corner, and the web site page should start with https, not http. (The S in https stands for Secure.)

How can you protect yourself, your data, and your money?
First, do not click on any links that come in an email “your” bank or any financial institution. For that matter, it’s good not to click on any links in any emails. If any organization, business or whatever sends you an email that has something about financial matters in it, it’s probably a phishing email.
Second, if you do get an email that looks like it came from a financial institution suggesting that you click on a link, instead of clicking on the link or copying a link into your browser, go to the financial institution’s web site directly from your browser.
Third, install Internet Explorer 7 if you use Internet Explorer or Firefox 2 if you use Firefox (Mozilla).

Fourth, if you receive a phishing email, forward it to the US Treasury Department at 419.fcd@usss.treas.gov and to the Federal Trade Commission at spam@uce.gov as well as to your ISP (Internet Service Provider).

Backup your files

Data, that four letter little word, sounds rather innocent and innocuous. And it is, until you loose it. Then it can cause tightness of the chest, pain in the jaw, pounding headache and an almost overwhelming sense of doom.

Businesses fold because of lost data. Individuals can have legal headaches over lost data, but mostly it’s just a hassle or heartache.

Data represents tax returns, photographs, research work (in the case of geneaology work it can mean years and generations of research), letters to loved ones and emails.

As I stated in my post on Protect your data! http://atotalnetworksolution.com/blog/2008/protect-your-data/
computers are made up of mechanical parts such as a hard drive, motherboard, power supply, etc. All of those can fail, as they are just electronics. Most of the parts when the fail do not pose a risk to data. Hard drives do, CD-Rom drives can. A lightning strike can fry everything in your computer. (See my post on Power / Surge protection http://atotalnetworksolution.com/blog/2008/power-surge-protection/ )

In my post on Protect your data! (http://atotalnetworksolution.com/blog/2008/protect-your-data/ ) I explained the concept of cloning hard drives. While cloning hard drives is a great practice, you still run the risk of losing data. How’s that you ask? If a fire occurs at your home (or small business) and you’ve been cloning that hard drive, where is the hard drive? In your computer, along with the master hard drive. Cloning your hard drive every day won’t save your data in that case.

In this post, I’m going to discuss backing up, or making a copy, of your data. If you are a business, you will probably want to think about having a tape backup. (I did some research about 15 years ago and found that 93% of businesses close their doors within 2 years of a major data loss. Since then, businesses depend much more heavily on computers, so I’d say the percentage is much higher.) Home users can also use tape backups, but it isn’t necessary.

Here’s how I do mine. I have a CD/DVD burning program (I use Roxio, but there are many others, including some free ones) and I burn my data to a DVD. I created a Data job and have certain folders (such as TurboTax, Quicken, Documents & Settings) that I will copy to a DVD. Roxio has a feature in it called “Validate” and it will compare and update anything that has changed in the “job” since the last time I burned my DVD, or backed up my data.

Backing up the data isn’t all you need to do. Just like in the case of the fire above, having that copy of the data isn’t going to help if the DVD or tape gets stored on the shelf next to the computer. What you need to do is get that CD off the premises. Store a copy at a friend’s house, in a safe deposit box, whatever, just get it out of the building where your computer is. All the backups in the world are no good if they go up in flames in the fire that took out your computer.

So, safe yourself some major headaches and heartaches. Clone that hard drive, and backup that data! More than likely, one day, you’ll be glad you did.

Protect your Data!!

Protect your data!!
You sit down at your computer and turn it on. A strange cryptic message like “Hard drive not found” or “Operating System not found” appears…your hard drive has lost all of its data. Data, that little word that stands for all your documents, all your tax returns, all the photos of your children, is gone. Your heart sinks down to your feet, if the floor hadn’t stopped it, it would’ve gone even lower. You panic. You call your friend who is a “computer guy”, he works on it for a couple of hours, but nothing helps. Your data has disappeared.

If you haven’t had that happen to you, you probably will. I’ve seen it many times. On rare occasions, I’ve gotten the data back, most times I sympathetically told the owner of a couple of different options. Forget the data and move on (I don’t say it quite like that, because I’m sympathetic) and then there’s the “Data Recovery” solution. There are companies that will recover your data for a fee, a very hefty fee. They are usually fairly successful. Usual prices start in the $600 and can go above $1500 for a standard IDE or SATA hard drive.

A hard drive is just a piece of machinery, it has moving parts in it that wear down and fail. It has magnetic particles on the platters that can develop bad spots; they have circuit boards where capacitors or transistors can fail. The bottom line is hard drives, just like other mechanical equipment, fail. I’ve had the main hard drive on my home PC fail, so I know personally that sinking feeling.

Now the bad part, it could have been prevented. I don’t mean the hard drive failing could have been prevented, remember it’s just a piece of electronics, I mean the data loss could have been. In this post, I’m going to discuss drive cloning.

Cloning, frequently known as “ghosting” (it became known as such because of one of the earliest cloning programs was Ghost, developed by Binary Research and later sold to Symantec) is a manner of “cloning” a hard drive to another. Cloning is also known as imaging. What the process does, in essence, is it makes an exact reproduction of one drive to another, that’s why it’s called “cloning”. That way if a hard drive fails, you can put the clone (the second hard drive) into operation and keep on working. A hard drive can cost anywhere from $65 to $250, depending on size and type. That’s a whole lot cheaper than a data recovery service, and gives instant piece of mind instead of panicking over lost data.

The way it works is, you buy a hard drive and put it into your computer as a “slave”. You’ll need to look at documentation on how to do it, but it is fairly easy. I recommend having the slave be the same type as the master (original) hard drive, i.e. an IDE slave to an IDE master or a SATA slave to a SATA master, but it will work going SATA slave to IDE Master or vice versa. Then you get an cloning program (see below) and install it.

I strongly recommend every person have two hard drives. Personally I don’t recommend mirroring, where everything that gets written to one hard drive is simultaneously written to the other. Why? Because in the case of a virus outbreak (see post http://atotalnetworksolution.com/blog/2008/computer-viruses/ ) or malware attack (see post http://atotalnetworksolution.com/blog/2008/malware-description/ ) the virus or malware is written to BOTH hard drives. With a slave setup, most of the times the bad software is NOT written to the second hard drive.

I mentioned above that I have had my hard drive fail on my home PC. While I still had that sinking feeling a little, I didn’t panic. I just swapped the slave to the primary and kept on computing. (I immediately went on line and ordered another hard drive to replace the failed one!)

Cloning programs:
Ghost is a purchase product.
These three are free products:
Seagate DiskWizard http://www.seagate.com/www/en-us/support/downloads/discwizard
DriveImage XML
SelfImage
(For companies or organizations with 10 computers or more, Altiris’ Deployment Server is a great option. Email me at randydover@gmail.com for more information on Altiris’ Deployment Server.)

Seagate DiskWizard is a very good product. It is supposed to be used if you have a Seagate hard drive. While I am a proponent of Seagate hard drives, and recommend them, I have used Seagate DiskWizard on computers that did not have a Seagate hard drive. I have not used DriveImage XML or SelfImage, so I can not comment on them. Seagate DiskWizard puts an icon on your desktop and you launch it and step through it to create a clone. Ghost is pretty easy to use also, (actually a little easier to use than DiskWizard) but it isn’t free.

Cloning should not take the place of backups. Cloning works great, but the data stays inside the computer, (unless you’re cloning to an external hard drive) on the hard drives. You should make CD or DVD backups periodically and keep those outside of the same building as your computer. See my post on backing up your data: http://atotalnetworksolution.com/blog/2008/backup-your-files/

Malware - Spyware/Adware/Rootkits

Malware Description
What is Malware, Malware - short for MALicious softWARE - is a term used to broadly classify a form of software which is installed in a computer system mostly without the owners permission with malicious intentions. It includes Spyware, Adware, Tracking Cookies, and Rootkits. It can also be termed "Trackware", because they track, store and analyze your browsing patterns thereby compromising your privacy on the World Wide Web. They are probably less malicious, but unwanted at the same time. It includes Spyware, Web bugs, tracking cookies, and "forced" adware.

In the past few years the prevalence of malware has grown tremendously. I strongly recommend having an Anti-Spyware program on your computer, in fact, in today's computing environment; I think having a good anti-spyware program is even more important than having an anti-virus program. I'm not minimizing the need on antivirus products by any means (see my post on Viruses); I am stressing the importance of an anti-spyware program. I've seen many computers rendered inoperable or severely crippled by malware.

Here are some definitions of different types of malware:
Spyware
Spyware is defined loosely as any program that secretly gathers information about you and or your computer use through your Internet connection. Typically, a Spyware program gathers information about you by monitoring your computing activities and then transmits it across the Internet to a remote computer for distribution to other parties for advertising purposes. These programs can also download files, run other programs in the background, and change your system settings.
In addition to violating your privacy and potentially damaging your system, Spyware often slows your computer down by stealing processing time from the CPU.
Another potential problem is that many are poorly written, may contain programming bugs and errors and can cause problems with the normal operation of your computer. One of the causes of your web browser hanging and crashing frequently with those "General Protection Faults" may be due to one of those badly written Spyware programs interfering with its normal operation.

Adware
Adware is usually a freeware displaying advertising banners within the program interface. The developer creates revenue by selling advertising space in the software product, instead of you having to pay for it. Occasionally, some Adware will also act as spyware which includes information gathering code to send non-sensitive information back to third parties. Some people think that Adware is the same as spyware, but Adware isn't necessarily spyware. While legitimate adware companies will disclose the nature of data that is collected and transmitted in their privacy statement, there is almost no way for the user to actually control what data is being sent. In addition to privacy concerns, frequent downloading of advertisement banners and other ads while the user is browsing can slow down the system immensely and for users paying for dialup services by time used, ad-loading and hidden communications with servers can be very costly.

Browser Hijackers
Browser Hijacking is caused by malicious code which can alter your browser settings without your knowledge. Browser Hijackers are extremely common.
Among other things a Browser Hijacker can altering the Homepage/Search Page of your browser, changing various options in your Internet settings, and blocking access to certain functions (parts or all of the internet options screen, registry editor etc)

Rootkit
A root kit is a set of tools used by an intruder after cracking a computer system. These tools can help the attacker maintain his or her access to the system and use it for malicious purposes. An attacker enters the victim’s computer through a security loop hole, like a weak password or a missing patch and then installs his favorite collection of tools which will provide him backdoor(s) to remotely access the cracked system and also mask the fact that the system is compromised.

Tracking cookies
Any cookie that is shared among two or more unrelated sites for the purpose of tracking a user's browsing and/or gathering and/or sharing information which many users regard as "private". Definitions of "private" may differ. Some consider any code "private" if it uniquely identifies a user, even if it is not their name or email address. A typical tracking cookie might look like this: "1www.somedomainname.com/ 0 2719785088 29508922 2980377808 29496852 * " The encoded info in this cookie includes a unique UserID assigned by a web server; the cookie can be used to track a user as they visit other sites that accept this cookie.
These are the more common varieties of malware prevalent in the web at present today.

I recommend SuperAntiSpyware for removing and more importantly blocking malware from being downloaded and installed in the first place. It’s inexpensive, at $29.95, and for an extra $9.95, it can be set to a lifetime license, never having to pay for it again. I’ve been fighting spyware/adware/malware since it first came on the scene around 2001 and this is the best product I’ve seen to date. Click on this link to purchase it:
http://www.atotalnetworksolution.com/antispyware.html

Hard Drive Defragmenting

What is fragmenting (fragmentation) and what’s the big deal with it?
When you store a file such as a document, photo, spreadsheet, etc., the file is written to a hard drive. Inside the hard drive are some platters with a magnetic coating and a moveable arm. The platters are spinning very quickly; slow hard drives have a speed of 5400 RPMs (Revolutions Per Minute) while fast ones are up to 15,000 RPMs. There are usually 3-5 platters in a hard drive, with two sides each, giving 6-10 “writing surfaces”. Each surface is then divided into tracks, which are almost like spirals on an old record; hard drives will have hundreds of tracks on each writing surface. As the platters spin, the data is being “written” to the platter. The way the hard drives work is pretty much wherever the arm is positioned when the file is started being saved, that’s where the first “chunk” of data goes. As the hard drive spins, other parts of the file go in another area, another part in another area and so on. The first part of the file could be on platter 1, side b, track 103, the next on platter 3, side a, track 47, the next – well, I think you get the picture. The more data that gets written to the hard drive, the more fragmented the files become because there’s less “holes” to put them in and those “holes” get smaller and smaller.

Interesting note: The technology of a hard drive has been described as being similar to putting a camera in the nose of a 747, having it fly 5 feet off the ground at 600 mph and have that camera read every blade of grass it flies over.

What defragmenting does is it puts the files in a contiguous pattern. It does not put all of a file together in the same space, because that would actually slow the hard drive down and increase read / write times. It puts them in a contiguous pattern meaning that it puts them on the drive (actually on the platters of the drive) almost in a striping manner so that the “head” (the part that reads and writes the data) can find the parts of the file the quickest. In other words it may start with platter 3, side a, track 29, and go to platter 3, side b, track 30, platter 4, side a, track 31, etc.

The result of defragmenting is a faster drive because the read/write arm doesn’t have to search as much for the data.

Windows includes a free disk defragmenter. (To use it, click Start > All Programs > Accessories > System Tools > Disk Defragmenter, the click Defragment)

There is one that I think does a much better job, and it also is free. It’s called JKDefrag and can be found at http://www.kessels.com/JkDefrag/ With Windows Defragmenter, you have one option, you can’t specify how you want the files arranged or anything like that. With JKDefrag, you can choose how “deep” you want to defrag, the order you want the files in and so forth. It really is a much better program and it’s free, which is always the right price. There are several options to use with JKDefrag, so I’d recommend looking over the instructions and even browsing the forums. You can use JKDefrag to schedule defragmenting your hard drive while it’s not in use, like at 3:00 am.

Computer Viruses

In this post about Viruses and AntiVirus software, I'm first going to introduce 3 different types of "bad software" (I'm not covering adware, spyware or malware in this post, but will have a separate post on that subject http://atotalnetworksolution.com/blog/2008/malware-description/.)

Computer virus
A computer virus is a piece of code that is secretly introduced into a system in order to corrupt it or destroy data. Often viruses are hidden in other programs or documents and when opened, the virus is let loose.

Trojan horse
This is a program that disguises itself as another program. Similar to a virus, these programs are hidden and cause an unwanted effect. They differ from viruses because they are normally not designed to replicate like a virus.

Worm
This is a special type of virus that spreads without any user interaction, typically by exploiting a flaw in popular software.

All three of these types of bad software are generally lumped under the term "virus" and all are combatted by using a piece of AntiVirus softare (more on that below) so from now on, I'll just use the term virus.

Viruses (or virii) usually use some manner of replication, or copying from system to system, hence the term "virus". Some viruses are merely annoying and pop up little messages, while others are very damaging and can wipe out data on your computer.

It is important to use a good AntiVirus software program on your computer. Almost as important as having one is keeping it up to date. What does that mean? New viruses come out every day. AntiVirus companies put out updates on at least a weekly basis. A few years ago an acquaintance called me thinking he had gotten a virus. I started looking at his computer and found that he had gotten one, even though he had an AntiVirus program (and a fairly good one) on his computer. The problem was, that it hadn't been updated in 3 months, and the virus he had "contracted" was one that had come out since then. He was fortunate that it was one that didn't attack user data, just the operating system. I had to rebuild his computer with a new hard drive, then copy his information over, he was a professional photographer, and all of his photos were on that hard drive. It took about 7-8 hours to get his system back up operational. All that work (and panic on his part) could have been avoided if he had kept his AntiVirus on up to date.

I would like to take this opportunity to recommend BitDefender AntiVirus. BitDefender is great for home, small office and companies. It was ranked the number one performing AntiVirus software by PC World, anti-virus-software-review.com, and www.starreviews.com. It is less expensive than most other AntiVirus software products on the market. Email me at randydover@gmail.com if you are interested in buying BitDefender, for home or business.

Router/Firewall

I’m approaching this subject from the standpoint of home and small office users. A router/firewall is really a residential (home) gateway. Just as the term applies, a gateway is a way to get in and out of a place. Throughout this post, I’m going to use the term router and firewall as if they meant the same thing. They really are not the same, but for home users, the concept or purpose is the same.

A firewall's basic task is to regulate some of the flow of traffic between computer networks of different trust levels. Typical examples are the Internet which is a network with no trust and an internal network which is a network of higher trust.

A residential gateway (or router/firewall), is a hardware device connecting a home network with a wide area network (WAN) or the Internet. The residential gateway provides port translation (NAT), allowing all the computers in a small network to share one IP address and Internet connection. The residential gateway may sit between the modem and the internal network, or a DSL or cable modem may be integrated into the residential gateway.

The function of a router is that it “hides” the information (data) on your internal network (your home computers) from people outside of your network. What does that mean? It means that it protects your personal information from anyone outside your home from accessing it. It’s like a data traffic cop.

In today’s “environment” where identity theft runs high, I recommend that no one connect a computer to the internet without a router/firewall in operation.

There are two types of firewalls. There is an “appliance” (piece of equipment) firewall and there is a software firewall. An appliance firewall would be a piece of equipment that you would purchase, such as a Linksys router (see my post on Wireless networking tips). A software firewall is a piece of software that you install on your computer; a good free software firewall is ZoneAlarm. Both act like a traffic cop and only let in and out what is OK. You can install both an appliance firewall and a software firewall. I do not recommend a software firewall alone.

Hoax Checking

I dislike email hoaxes. Really dislike them.
This post is to give some information to try to cut down on the number of email hoaxes that get forwarded.

Before you:
Delete any files (some, even just one, would render your computer inoperable)
Forward that latest email about the latest virus or a sick child's wish.
Forward emails to "get rich (or get anything) if you forward this"
or
Pass along some fabulous recipe

Check out the following web sites. It just might be a hoax.
Great site http://www.urbanlegends.com/
Great site http://www.truthorfiction.com/
Great site http://hoaxbusters.ciac.org/
Good site http://www.truthminers.com/
Good site http://vmyths.com/hoax.cfm
Good site http://urbanlegends.about.com/mbody.htm
Good site http://www.breakthechain.org/
Good site http://www.europe.datafellows.com/news/hoax.htm
Seems to be ok http://www.snopes2.com/
Fair site http://www.nonprofit.net/hoax/default.htm

Another good tactic is go to a good search engine such as http://www.google.com/, then go to Advanced search, and type in a main phrase of the email.

How to Recognize a Hoax
Probably the first thing you should notice about a warning is the request to "send this to everyone you know" or some variant of that statement. This should raise a red flag that the warning is probably a hoax. No real warning message from a credible source will tell you to send this to everyone you know.

Next, look at what makes a successful hoax. There are two known factors that make a successful hoax, they are:
(1) technical sounding language.
(2) credibility by association.

Before you go to those sites you can know that any email which promises to give you money or gift certificates or ANYTHING for forwarding emails is a hoax. These typically go like this - Synopsis of message: Somebody will give you some money if you forward their email some specific number of times. Remember, if something seems too good to be true, it probably is. Also, there is no such thing as a free lunch.
A phone/beer/clothing/entertainment company will send you one of its products free if you forward their email some number of times.
A charity will receive some money if their email is forwarded some specific number of times
Hoaxes along these lines have been spread about Bill Gates (money, software), Disney (vacations), IBM (computers), Miller (beer), The Gap (clothing), Nokia and Ericsson (phone handsets), Neiman Marcus (cookies) and Cracker Barrel ($50 gift certificate).
Why are these hoaxes? It is impossible to track an email as it's forwarded. The Internet email system works in a way which makes tracking email forwarding impossible. For one of the hoaxes to be true, internet email would have to do one of the following:
(a) All internet email, no matter what the starting and finishing points, would have to pass through (or at least be registered at) a central point.
(b) Your email software would have to somehow know the starting-point of every forwarding chain and send a message to it every time you forward that email.
The Internet is not built around a central computer: there's no 'hub' or 'center of the net' which everything has to pass through. If someone in Florida sends email to someone else in Florida, that email may never go outside Florida. If someone in France emails someone in Germany, that email is unlikely to ever go near Florida. There can be no way to count how many times a message has moved from one person to another because there's no collection-point for traffic information.
Hundreds of people and companies have written email software. As long as the software conforms to the Internet standard it will be able to receive and send email. The standard does not mention any way of noting the origin of a message once it has been forwarded. If Alice sends an email to Bob, there's nothing she can put in her message to order Bob's software to tell her if Bob forwards her message. Even if the original message is sent using a special piece of software (as one of the Microsoft versions of this hoax suggests), there's no way of controlling what software Bob uses to read or send his email.

The content of this post may be copied and forwarded as many times as you wish, however you won't get anything for doing it, except perhaps the satisfaction of cutting down on some of the hoaxes being forwarded. (A good technique to use when sending out an email that you DO want to send to a large group of people is to use the BCC [Blind Courtesy Copy], that way no one sees the other recipients.)