Tangled up in Purple » antivirus

Three Score and Ten

nix — Mon, 10 Mar 2008 08:29:04 +0000

I’ve just hit the big seven-oh on my photo blog. The milestone picture was taken at Dick Smith Electronics today. The kind folk at DSE had stuck a nice bright Norton Internet Security sticker on the eee PC.

They hadn’t done the same with the nice shiney Mac Book Air sitting just a metre away. Surely if the eee PC needs Norton Internet Security when it runs Xandros (with it’s own rather redundant antivirus) then the MBA needs the same kind of attention.

Oh well. It provided me with material for my 70th.

EDIT: Slightly related – here’s a story about losing the Mac Book Air .

Tidy Up

Linkeracy – 16th August 2006

nix — Wed, 16 Aug 2006 07:21:36 +0000

From around the tech-sphere:

Microsoft Live OneCare is to be released for New Zealand users by the end of the year.

“Microsoft said international beta versions of OneCare will be available by the end of the year in Australia, Austria, Belgium, Canada, France, Germany, Ireland, Italy, Japan, South Korea, Mexico, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Singapore, Spain, Switzerland, and the U.K.”
OneCare is an all in one antivirus, antispyware and PC tuneup suite that works online and promises to keep a Windows computer running in tiptop condition. It costs $US49 for up to three computers and is targetted at home users.

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ZDNet and CNet are reporting yet another trademark battle. This time is the big A calling in the lawyers over Mach5products.com‘s product ProfitPod and and a company called TightPod‘s range of laptop accesories. Apparently if these companies hadn’t tried to trademark their products (and therefore the word ‘POD’) they would have been alright.

Searching

nix — Tue, 16 May 2006 17:33:57 +0000

The BBC report that if you go looking for “free screensavers” you are highly likely to get a lot more than you bargained for. Researchers used Google, Yahoo, MSN, AOL and Ask search engines and discovered that even the well-known search engines would happily point searchers in the direction of sites with that were going to attempt to change users’ browser settings, install nasty software or deluge users with spam.

The report looked at the websites returned for 1,394 popular keywords searches found via Google, Yahoo, MSN, AOL and Ask.

The results returned for each search term were then analysed using the Site Advisor security tool. Once installed this piece of software warns users when they browse websites known to be dangerous.

The most benign of the pages that Site Advisor flags up try to change browser settings (to redirect people to ad sites) and the most dangerous deluge users with spam or bundle adware and spyware in with downloads.

In one case signing up with one site led to a test e-mail address getting more than 300 spam messages per week.

So what were the most dangerous search terms?

Free screensavers

Bearshare

Screensavers

Winmx

Limewire

Download Yahoo messenger

Lime wire

Free ringtones

Ouch.

The moral of the story? Be vigilant! Safe surfing behaviour. Keep your antivirus and antispyware tools up to date. You don’t get anything for nothing – especially on the internet.

I Still Haven’t Found What I’m Looking For

Tidy Up

nix — Tue, 25 Apr 2006 09:11:51 +0000

I have tidied up a few pages on this site.

Firstly I added a new entry page, here.

Then I added a couple of extra pages about internet security and some of the services that I offer through my business, NixIT Teaching Technology.