What is your nastiest experience with viruses and/or other malware? The other day just before presentations my friend came to me with his laptop and showed me the havoc that had reigned on it! He had burnt some discs for others, using data from their USB drive and in the process got infected. Now he was unable to run Powerpoint, nor was he able to scan with the anti-virus as it won’t start a scan due to the infections (see the irony). Just the splash screens and boom - nothing seemed to run.
It is becoming increasingly clear that at the current rate of growth in malware in circulation and under development, computer operating systems and applications will continue to be compromised at an ever increasing rate.
According to Panda Labs, Panda Security’s laboratory for detecting and analyzing malware, every single day in 2007, it received and analyzed more than 3,000 new strains of malware, an increase of 800% over 2006 . Malware epidemic anyone?
Of particular concern is the installation of malware based on social engineering, which seems poised for a major increase in activity; an opportunity created with the boost in user participation on MySpace, FaceBook, and other social networking sites.
When it comes to your security, no web browser is perfect - and no malware app is going to catch everything. I came across BufferZone Free a few weeks ago and have been running it since, and I’m pretty impressed.
BufferZone adds another layer of protection to your browser by setting up a sandbox (an isolated “virtual directory” on your hard drive). As Trustware puts it, the program “transparently redirects modifications in your PC to a virtual, isolated environment, so that unauthorized modifications cannot be applied to your actual PC.” Malicious apps can’t write changes to your actual system files or registry - only BufferZone’s virtualized versions. Anything you download - temp files, images, executables, you name it - gets sandboxed. Why is that a big deal?
We all love our USB drives, don’t we? You should probably be using some portable apps on your USB drive – if not, check out our huge list of portable applications for your USB drive here.
In this post, I want to cover a few apps that will make managing your USB drive easier. In essence, I’ll talk about tools that can be used to make things easier if you’ve got a USB drive – not about apps that work from your drive.
So here we go - five applications to make things easier if you’re using a USB thumb drive.
There is far too much spyware, adware, malware in general. Unfortunately, all of this can be easily received involuntarily. Unfortunately as well, many people do not have sufficient enough programs to make sure these pieces of junk are removed properly and your computer is safely restored. Here I will show you the best free applications to keep your computer secure.
AVG Anti-Virus
It’s one of the mysteries of the internet that I have never been able to get my head around - why anyone would want to pay through the nose for anti-virus software when there are perfectly good free alternatives out there. For the past five years, I have been using AVG from Grisoft and I have always been amazed at how great it is. The other day, they rolled out their 2008 free version and it blew my socks right off.
It’s time for another poll. Today we are asking you to vote on your favorite antivirus program. Actually the goal is to find out what is the most popular free antivirus program among MUO users. So please vote !
If you don’t have a favorite antivirus program and you’re using the one that came with your PC then you can see what others have to say about it. If you decide to give something a try then check the antivirus download links right below the poll.
So here you go …
Occasionally I find myself working on a computer that has some problems. Maybe its malware, maybe its viruses, either way…it mucking up the PC and just generally slowing things down. Has this ever happened to you? If you’ve surfed the Internet for very long, you’ve probably experienced this and/or you’re prone to getting something downloaded and installed without your consent.
During these times I would normally use the trusty SpyBot - Search & Destroy application because it’s superior in many ways, but if I don’t have it with me or feel like just doing a quick online check without having to install a client application, the few choices below provide a good alternative.
