Safer Surfing Tool

Have you installed the safer surfing WOT toolbar yet? I install it on all my friend’s and family’s machines (and offer to, to all my clients) because its red – yellow – green “traffic signal” warning system is simple enough for young children.

Here, it’s warning of a dangerous hyperlink embedded in a phishing email that’s attempting to steal my identity and banking login…

..and should you be so foolish as to ignore (or.. simply not notice) the red circle, and click on the link anyway, and try to go to the website..

A warning curtain intervenes. It tells you why the website has “earned” the very bad red rating. You must click “Go to site” to proceed to the website itself.

These ratings are determined by you, me, and other Internet surfers… not some faceless giant corporation or government agency. It is “people driven”, and you get a vote.

Check it out. Visit http://mywot.com today. Protect yourself from “phraud”, and “phishing”, and “rogue antivirus” programs .. like TotalProtect2009. (See Is that anti-spyware program really spyware? and Total Protect 2009/ TotalProtect2009 – 3 Removal Solutions)

Note: It now includes a Parental Control setting!

Copyright 2007-9 © Tech Paul. All rights reserved. post to jaanix

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Copyright 2007-9 © Tech Paul. All rights reserved. post to jaanix

WOT In Action

Have you installed the safer surfing WOT toolbar yet? I install it on all my friend’s and family’s machines (and offer to, to all my clients) because its red – yellow – green “traffic signal” warning system is simple enough for young children.

Here, it’s warning of a dangerous hyperlink embedded in a phishing email that’s attempting to steal my identity and banking login…

..and should you be so foolish as to ignore (or.. simply not notice) the red circle, and click on the link anyway, and try to go to the website..

A warning curtain intervenes. It tells you why the website has “earned” the very bad red rating. You must click “Go to site” to proceed to the website itself. (I won’t say that if you do do that, you deserve whatever bad things happen to you and/or your machine.. but, I might think it…)

These ratings are determined by you, me, and other Internet surfers… not some faceless giant corporation or government agency. It is “people driven”, and you get a vote.

Check it out. Visit http://mywot.com today. Protect yourself from “phraud”, and “phishing”, and “rogue antivirus” programs .. like TotalProtect2009. (See Is that anti-spyware program really spyware? and Total Protect 2009/ TotalProtect2009 – 3 Removal Solutions)

Copyright 2007-9 © Tech Paul. All rights reserved. post to jaanix

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Technorati Tags: browser plugin,safe surfing,WOT,anti-phishing,free software. tools and utilities

Troubleshoot Runtime Error in Internet Explorer

Recent calls from clients has triggered in me a sense of deja-vu. There was an unusual number of people who were having their IE web browsing session crash, due to a “Runtime Error”.

When I looked at their machines, I kept being reminded of one of my earliest articles, Toolbar madness.

So, I would like to take a moment to reiterate: People, you neither want, nor need, 5 different “media players”, 4 accounting programs, 3 Peer-to-Peer apps.. and – most certainly not – a dozen “toolbars”!
(“Paul, why is my computer so much slower than it used to be?”)

I am not sure if it’s conditioning, simple human curiosity, or what, but people have a tendency to download and install every new thing they stumble across.. So they can “try it”, or “it looked kewl”…

In computing, less is more. You want lean. You want mean. And if you don’t use, remove it!
End rant.

Error message: Runtime Error!! Program: c:\Program Files\Internet Explorer\iexplorer.exe. This application has required the runtime to terminate in an unusual way.

Tip of the day: You can cure this malfunction by knowing that it is caused by a conflict with a (possibly corrupted) installed Add-on. In each and every of my caller’s instance, it was the Google Toolbar – so that’s the place to start your troubleshooting.
[Note: to be fair to the Google toolbar, the corruption probably occurred during an update, and was caused by these people having the Yahoo! toolbar installed also. One or the other, folks.]

The quick-and-dirty solution is to go into Add/Remove Programs and uninstall/re-install the Google toolbar, but the way to be sure – or, if you’re getting this error and don’t have the Google toolbar – is to disable add ons one at a time until the problem goes away.

1) In IE, click on “Tools”, then select “Manage Add-ons”, and then “Enable or Disable Add-ons”, as shown above.

2) A list of installed Add-ons will appear. Start by looking for “Google Toolbar Helper”. Select it, and then click on the “Disable” button.

3) Close, and restart Internet Explorer, and surf normally for a while. If you no longer get crashes and error messages, you’ve found the culprit. An uninstall/re-install is now in order (if you want to keep the toolbar, that is).
If you continue to get crashes, repeat the Steps and disable one more Add-on.. until you find the right one by process of elimination.

Today’s free link: Create your own online newspaper at crayon.net (CReAte Your Own Newspaper). Get just the topics you want from the sources you want.

Copyright 2007-9 © Tech Paul. All rights reserved. post to jaanix

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A rocket scientist falls for “social engineering” ploy

…and managed to render his machine unbootable. Today I got a call from a person I know very well,  who had lost his Internet connection (all of a sudden) and he wanted my help. I asked him what changes he had made recently?

He told me that when he ‘woke’ his new laptop this morning [an HP Pavilion running Vista Home Premium] he was greeted with a dialogue window “from Netscape” that informed him that he was usings Windows Firewall, and asked, did he want to “disable Windows Firewall and use Netscape firewall instead. Yes/No?” He, of course, clicked “Yes”. He is a Netscape user (the browser), and has been since Netscape’s browser was the #1 browser of choice.

This window/dialogue was a ploy. The click disabled Windows Firewall and allowed some kind of nefarious script to run. It caused major damage to his machine. I spent hours trying to recover his system (which I was able to do, without any data loss, but it was a near-thing). System Restore and even Safe Mode did not function.

I want to stop here, Dear Reader, and remind you of the title of this post: this man is not dumb. He started his career as a rocket scientist for Lockheed (technically, as an aeronautical engineer), and went on to get his PhD (from Stanford) in molecular physics. He has invented lasers. No. This man is not an idjit.

So why did he answer yes? For a product that doesn’t exist? Perhaps, as a long-time Mac user, he simply doesn’t trust anything Microsoft. Perhaps, he has become so conditioned to answering “yes, I want to continue”, “yes, I want to download that”, “yes, I want to view the “unsecure items” in the email I sent myself”, “yes, allow that program I just launched to run,””continue,””allow,””next” that he just automatically and without thinking hit the Yes button. I’m sure these things were factors, but his answer was (and I quote), “It looked official…and it was from the people I go to the Web on.”

I think there’s a few things in this tale that are worth meditating on. And yes, there’s a moral to this story, which is my Tip of the day: If you are presented with a pop-up, and/or a dialogue box that you have never seen before, please look it over…and think about what it’s asking you. In this case, a Google search would have revealed that there’s no such thing as Netscape Firewall.

The fact is, the bad guys out there have become incredibly adept at mimicking websites, corporate logos, and send very legit-looking emails…and more. They are very good at using us as our own worst enemy. Be cautious out there my friends. Be carefull. Do not click on links you receive in emails; instead, manually enter the URL in your browser. Learn what phishing and pharming are.

Today’s free link: Netcraft toolbar This anti-phishing protection is highly recommended, and works with both IE and Firefox. It clearly indicates “safe” websites (with a green indicator bar), suspicious sites, and blocks access to known Phishing sites. Get it today.

Copyright © 2007 Tech Paul. All rights reserved.

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