And the winner of the Most Hacked age group is …

(drumroll, please.)

* Millennials: Young, Mobile & Hacked 

 “Security professionals who eagerly anticipate more millennials in management, expecting these younger workers’ knowledge of tech to make their lives easier, might want to reconsider. ” Read more..

[ I have a few problems with this survey.. but it’s conclusion(s) sorta feels right. ]

In other news:
* Apple Just Ended the Era of Paid Operating Systems

“The desktop operating system is dead as a major profit center, and Apple just delivered the obituary.” Read more..

[ more good news for Microsoft. {cough, cough..} ]

* McAfee Tanks Independent AV Test

“The dedicated researchers at Dennis Technology Labs puts a small group of products to the test, usually eight or nine, but they perform intensive testing that comes extremely close to real-world user experience. In the latest quarterly report five products did very well, three earned a decent grade, and McAfee just bombed.” Read more..

[ note: Microsoft did worse in one area of the testing … ]

* Hacker Horrorshow Shaping Up for Halloween

“Get yourself ready for the frights of October! We’re not talking about ghosts or ghouls, but malware threats. In a recent blog post, Solera Network, a Blue Coat company, warned victims of this month’s malware infection campaign to keep a watchful eye out for more dangers. These include the ransomware CryptoLocker, clickfraud on a massive scale, and the theft of personal data like passwords.” Read more..

Well.. that’s enough homework for today. Happy reading!

Today’s quote: “We are faced with the paradoxical fact that education has become one of the chief obstacles to intelligence and freedom of thought.” ~ Bertrand Russell

Copyright 2007-2013 © “Tech Paul” (Paul Eckstrom). All Rights Reserved.

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All we really have, in the end, are our stories.
Make yours great ones. Ones to be proud of.

This week’s items of interest.

Howdy folks. Here are a few items I found interesting this past week.

* What’s right (and wrong) with the new Kindle Fire HDX and Kindle Fire HD

“Amazon has unveiled a new lineup of tablets to take it into the holiday season. These tablets being superb hardware at a price that will make you do a double-take, but as with all things, not everything is perfect. ” Read more..

* Apple Gets Failing Grades on New iPhone Security

“In the fanfare of publicity for the iPhones 5s and 5c, and for iOS 7, a persistent and unusual motif was heard: security, security. ” Read more..

* Norton, Kaspersky, and Bitdefender Rule New Antivirus Test

“Researchers at German lab AV-Test keep twenty-odd antivirus products under observation constantly, collating and reporting their results every couple months. They cycle between testing under Windows XP, Windows 7, and Windows 8, sometimes using 64-bit editions. The latest results relate to testing under 64-bit Windows 7. Some products scored much better than when tested under the 32-bit operating system; others lost points galore.” Read more..

* Tech companies have highest turnover rate

“According to PayScale’s most recent survey, employee turnover rate among Fortune 500 companies is greatest in the IT industry.” Read more..

[ Doesn’t surprise me.. ]

* What if Verizon succeeds in killing the Internet?

“Verizon is making a big push to begin actively blocking content and competition from its network. This is a bald-faced attack on the Internet in general. It’s abhorrent. But what happens if Verizon wins?” Read more..

* Design lab finalists reveal gadgets of the future

“From breathing walls to holograms and intelligent kitchen appliances, Electrolux Design Lab’s eight finalists reveal how we might be cooking, cleaning and improving our home environment in the future.” Read/see more..

*    *    *

.. if you only read one.. read the Verizon one ..

Today’s quote: “Health is the greatest gift, contentment the greatest wealth, faithfulness the best relationship.” ~ Buddha

Copyright 2007-2013 © “Tech Paul” (Paul Eckstrom). All Rights Reserved.

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>> Folks, don’t miss an article! To get Tech – for Everyone articles delivered to your e-mail Inbox, click here, or to subscribe in your RSS reader, click here. <<

---

All we really have, in the end, are our stories.
Make yours great ones. Ones to be proud of.

Getting Rid Of Malware, Step 1*

What do you do when your PC is displaying all the signs of having been infected, but your antivirus and anti-spyware scan reports come back clean?

This was the case for a fella who called me for advice recently. He had done things ‘right’ — and by that I mean he has a firewall, he keeps his antivirus definitions up to date, and he runs a couple of anti-spyware applications — but suspected his machine had been hacked anyway.

He couldn’t do things he was used to doing (like deleting a file) and his machine was “really slow.”
But according to his scanners, his machine is in perfect shape.

Tip of the day: If you should find yourself in a similar situation there are several steps you can take to help resolve your questions and (hopefully) fix your machine without taking the drastic step of wiping your hard drive, formatting, and reinstalling Windows.

The first step is to use a scanner that isn’t installed on your machine. Here’s two ways to do that: one, if your antivirus allows it (and most of them do these days), follow its instructions and make an antivirus recovery disk. This is a bootable disk that scans your system before Windows loads.

To use one, put it in your CD tray and restart your machine. A plain-text sentence will appear telling you to “press any key to boot from CD…” (if you don’t see this, click here.) When you see it, hit your spacebar or, well, any other key, and then follow the instructions. When it’s finished, remove the CD and restart your machine again.
[note: you may also use a properly prepared USB thumb drive. Click here to read my article on how to do that.]

A second method is to use an online scanner. I have a list, with links, of several good online scans on my Website, here. Quite a few of the online scanning tools will try to sell you their full application, but you’re under no obligation to buy. The big advantage to these two methods lies in the fact that they have not been compromised, or altered, and the files and scanners on your machine may be– the modification being done by the virus or hacker.

Another thing to do is scroll down to my “Today’s free link” and download HiJack This! Run it and dump the result into a .txt file (there’s instructions for this) and then register on one of the HiJack This! forums (there’s instructions for this too) and post your results there. Before too long, an expert anti-malwareologist [don’t bother looking: I just now made that word up] will have looked over the intricacies, and will post his analysis and instructions. These guys (and gals) are really, really good at what they do, and you can trust their answers.

Also run CheckDisk with the “r” “f” switches (this probably will require a reboot) to make sure the problem is not your hard drive.
Click on Start >Programs >Accessories >Command prompt. In the white-on-black window type “chkdsk /r /f” (no quotes, and be sure to include the spaces). You may be told that certain files are in use, and asked if you want to “schedule this at the next reboot Y/N?” Type in a “y” and restart your machine.

Hopefully these efforts will be rewarded with a rejuvenation of your machine, and you will be back in business again.  If not, you have my sympathy. You may have a rootkit and then your best solution is to re-format your hard drive and reinstall everything, or enlist the aid of a professional

Today’s free link: HijackThis™ is a free utility which quickly scans your Windows computer to find settings that may have been changed by spyware, malware or other unwanted programs. HijackThis does not clean infections, but creates a report, or log file, with the results of the scan. A large community of users participates in online forums, where experts help interpret the scan results to clean up infected computers.

Copyright © 2007-8 Tech Paul. All rights reserved. post to jaanix

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