PreparedPC

Security and Privacy

What’s a Windows user to do? Between the most recent zero-day exploit to affect Internet Explorer and Mozilla Firefox recently named as the most vulnerable application on the Windows platform, even with all Windows updates installed, virus protection and the current version of your browser, you can still end up with a nasty malware infection.
That’s [...]

Microsoft typically releases updates for Windows on the 2nd Tuesday of each month (aka Patch Tuesday), but this week, they released an important patch outside of their normal schedule.
The security bulletin describes the details. An issue with the “server service,” part of the Windows operating system, could allow your Windows computer to be taken over [...]

Corporations have disaster recovery plans, and so should you. If you want to minimize your own computers’ downtime due to hard drive failure, operating system corruption (i.e. the “Blue Screen of Death”), and the like, there are a number of solutions that you can use that can help you get back up and running quickly. [...]

UPDATE: Adobe released Flash Player 10.0.12.36. Look-wise, it’s an improvement. Take a look at the 3-D effects that Flash Player 10 supports at Alternativa’s demo site.
New versions usually mean new vulnerabilities. Protect yourself with Firefox + the NoScript add-on.
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Adobe recently acknowledged a critical issue with its Flash Player. Named “clickjacking,” this occurs when a user [...]

We’ve all been there. You’ve hastily dashed off an email, then hit the “Send” button, only to feel the pangs of regret. You wrote something that you really didn’t want to say. But it’s too late–the damage is done. If only you could have a second chance to stop that email from going out… Well, [...]

If your family and friends turn to you for help, especially when their computer’s been infected, Lunarsoft can help you.
Their Anti-Malware Toolkit will download the latest versions of a suite of applications, definitions and utilities. Armed with this arsenal, you can be out the door and on your way to helping your friend in just [...]

Since mid-August 2008, users have been reporting “malvertisements,” maliciously-designed Adobe Flash banner advertisements that copy text to the clipboard in Windows, Linux and Mac OS X.
While this “hijacking attack” does not infect computers directly, it copies the URL of a website offering bogus “security software.” Apparently the bad guys’ hope is that you [...]

It’s a situation no laptop owner looks forward to–their laptop gets stolen. With a little planning (and hopefully, the thief’s unwitting assistance), the free service Adeona can help track down your laptop.
Currently, Adeona may be used on laptop/desktop/server type computers, but the developers are researching how to make this available for mobile devices, like [...]

Despite the “cool factor” that Macromedia Flash animations bring to a web page, you might want to limit Flash on your PC. You may have a computer with only a small amount of RAM that you don’t want Flash animations to gobble up.
Perhaps you’ve read about (or seen!) “malvertisements,” maliciously-designed Flash animations that display seemingly-helpful [...]

Bob Dykes, CEO of NebuAd, was recently questioned at a House subcommittee meeting by Rep. Edward Markey (D - MA), chairman of the House Subcommittee on Telecommunications and the Internet. NebuAd is one of the advertising companies which use deep packet inspection (DPI) to examine the (unencrypted) web traffic of the customers of the internet [...]