From a security standpoint, it makes a lot of sense to move to Windows 7 ASAP.  Windows 7 will have a small fraction of the security vulnerabilities and requisite update fixes as did Windows XP.  Why? Windows 7 was built from the ground up with security in mind, which was only an afterthought with Windows XP.  No doubt, there will be vulnerabilities to fix.  But in the long run, it should prove to be a very good move for the average user.  We have been running Windows 7 on a test machine since the Beta was first available, and are quite pleased with its performance and functionality.  Not totally pleased, mind you, but pleased enough to be recommending it to all our customers and readers.  Let us know what you think.

Key loggers can be some of the most dangerous spyware one can have have on a computer.  They can capture every stroke you type, and that includes passwords and user names, account numbers and  credit card numbers.  Many of the creators of this nasty spyware claim that there software is undetectable.  Well, we don’t know if that is true, but true or not, there is a solution that may well save you from ID theft, bank account theft and many other potentially very serious problems caused by key loggers.

Give yourself some piece of mind and install KeyScrambler from http://www.qfxsoftware.com/.   The free version protects Internet Explorer and Firefox.  Paid versions are available that protect much more software, including Microsoft Office and numerous other programs.  We have been testing it for a couple of weeks and have found no problems.  We have not tested its ability to foil key loggers, but it comes with some good recommendations.   And we are going to give it ours also.  Check it out.

http://www.myantispyware.com/

This site provides a number of excellent tools for defeating Malware.  We highly recommend it.

We have used quite a variety of FTP (File Transfer Protocol) programs and we recently tried Core FTP LE.  We are very happy with its performance and it has become our new favorite.  It doesn’t have the fanciest interface, but its performance was solid and predictable.

Core FTP LE can be downloaded from the maker at http://www.coreftp.com/

We have been testing the Comodo Firewall, and we have found it to be a top quality product. We like the ergonomics and look and feel, the intelligent pop-ups, and the easily customizable options, the automatic setup and best of all, it’s reputation for toughness with the bad guys.

It is our new favorite firewall. We previously recommended the Zone Alarm free edition, but it has fallen further and further in the rankings as Check Point apparently seeks to drive customers to the more profitable products. Zone Alarm Pro still stands near the head of the line. But the free edition is near the bottom of the ratings.

Install the COMODO firewall, Scan for Known Applications and set the security level for Low and you will minimize the pop-ups and be well protected.

Panda Software’s new scanning engine, called NanoScan, is astoundingly fast and offers scanning for over 600,000 viruses and malware infestations. In tests, it scanned complicated systems in about one minute.

NanoScan requires an ActiveX control, that must be downloaded an installed.

NanoScan can be found at the following link:
http://www.nanoscan.com/

Highly Recommended.

After scanning with NanoScan, Panda offers an even more thorough scan, called ActiveScan2, or a number of more narrowly targeted scans. ActiveScan2 claims to be the most through online scanner available. ActiveScan2 will require between 5 minute and an hour to scan the typical system, depending on the options selected.

Also Highly Recommended.

Try this little utility and save on your power bill and help save the planet at the same time:

It is called LocalCooling - a small utility to help raise the awareness of the amount of power a computer uses, and the amount that can be saved. 

For more information and to download this free program, please visit LocalCooling.com.

“LocalCooling is a non-commercial project from the Uniblue Labs team.”

As noted in the previous post, even the best of us can be fooled by a well designed spoofed web site. 

The Netcraft Anti-Phishing Toolbar offers an extra line of defense against spoofed sites.  It will block access to known phishing, spoofed web sites, and assign a risk rating to other sites.

This is a very good tool and is highly recommended.

It can be found at: http://toolbar.netcraft.com/

a-squared, a respected anti-malware company, has created a new online malware scanner.  This scanner is available for no cost.  Several different depths of scanning are available.  And this is not one of those phony “free” online scanners that find all kinds of weird stuff and then demand money to remove it all.   The a-squared scanner offers a “quarantine”  option, and after objects are quarantined, they may be deleted or restored.  The online scanner can be found here:  http://www.emsisoft.com/en/software/ax/

a-squared also has a no cost desktop version of the malware scanner.  It must be updated manually.  It is available for download here:   a-squared free version

a-squared also has a desktop version that sells for about $39 (for the first year subscription, with subsequent years at half price).   The advantage of the desktop version is that it provides full time active protection, including automatic updates, while the online scanner does not.

a-squared Personal

mini-review:

In out first test of the online scanner, it found a number of fragments of previous malware infections, as well as a number of tracking cookies, but it locked up when it tried to scan a ZoneAlarm update file.  We don’t know yet if it was Zone Alarm that blocked the scan from completing, or if a-squared locked up. 

By the way, we were able to scan, and quarantine the results, as long as we did not allow the scan to continue until it encountered the ZoneAlarm file.  We are using the full ZoneAlarm Security Suite, and further testing will be required to see if this also happens with only the ZoneAlarm firewall installed.   We suspect this is only a temporary conflict with ZoneAlarm.  We will continue testing.

In fact potentially, email is very public.  Especially web based email like Gmail and Hotmail.  But pretty much no matter what email client you use, email is easy to intercept and compromise.  Email is not private unless you encrypt your email in some manner.  There are a number of options available.  But beware of their limitations.

• Some can only encrypt attachments. 
• Some programs can only encrypt the contents of an email, but not the attachment or subject.
• Most will not encrypt the subject and header. 
• Most require extra steps on the part of the sender and the recipient.
• Most require that you send a password to your recipient, and obviously you can’t do that through email.

Even users of Outlook or other computer based email clients should realize that email is sent through the Internet in “plain text” and can be intercepted and read both legally and illegally.

“The gap between law and technology is widening every day, and privacy is eroding,” said Jim Dempsey, the CDT policy director who authored the report.

“What makes this even more troubling is that most users of these new technologies don’t realize they are putting their privacy in jeopardy.”

Modern consumers live in an age when web based e-mails pileup on services like Microsoft’s Hotmail and Google’s Gmail, and all kinds of files from personal photos to bank, medical and travel records are stored online.

Few computer users realize however, that web based e-mail is subject to much weaker protections than messages stored on home computers.

While the government needs a warrant, issued by a judge, to search someone’s home computer, it can access a person’s web mail account with only a subpoena, issued without judicial review.

Source: ‘Big Brother’ watching e-mail, computer data: US report

We recommend that all users employ a secure email service, or software, or client that encrypts their communications.   In particular, we highly recommend an email security system called Ciphire.  Ciphire does it all.   It completely wraps the email in a secure, encrypted package including the header, the subject, the body and any attachments.   And it does it seamlessly and competently in the background.  It works with most any email client.  The one requirement is that the recipient must also have Ciphire installed.  And please note that it does not work with web based email such as Hotmail or Gmail.

We have been testing Ciphire for some time now and it has evolved into a very capable and usable way to secure email transactions.  Once installed, it can be set to automatically encrypt email communications between any users of Ciphire, and do it in a very user friendly manner . 

It is also relatively unique among the various email security systems available in that it can encrypt the entire email, including the header, the subject, the body of the email, and an attachment, entirely automatically when it determines that the email is being sent to another Ciphire user.

Here is more about it in their own words:

Ciphire Mail is the world’s most powerful email security tool and requires no learning. It works smoothly with your regular email client. Just download, install, and forget.

Ciphire Mail has been optimized for the average, non-technical individual who has no real knowledge of security or cryptography, but who needs their benefits nonetheless.

Ciphire is free of charge for personal use and is available at https://www.ciphire.com/. 

Highly recommended.

Editor, Internet-Insecurity.com