Internet Security concerns are growing day by day.

Each passing day gives birth to new Internet security threats, newer malware, viruses, spyware, trojans, rootkits and what not; and with them we come across various Internet Security Tools. Some of them require to shell out money, but there are some security tools, which provide you Internet Security on-the-fly.

One such tool is WOT.

WOT is the acronym  for Web of Trust. WOT is actually a Firefox add-on, and so is available absolutely FREE. Once you download and install, it starts giving you information about a website’s trustworthiness, before you open the site.

It protects you from

• Spyware, adware and viruses
• Browser exploits
• Unreliable online shops
• Phishing, spam and other Internet scams
• Annoying or malicious spam

WOT reputation ratings have four components:

• Trustworthiness
• Vendor reliability
• Privacy
• Child safety

WOT lets you customize your level of protection to make your browsing experience safe and enjoyable. To protect your family, you can even set WOT to block inappropriate content for children. Ratings are shown on Google, Yahoo!, Gmail, Wikipedia, digg and other sites

This security tool operates in two ways.

First is through Search Engines. When you enter a search query in Google, it puts a colored circle in front of search results. The color of the circle tells you about the trustworthiness of the site. If you hover your mouse over the circle, you get more information about the site. See the screenshot below.

Second is through the Firefox Location bar. Once you install WOT in Firefox, you get a button, which changes color as per the trustworthiness of the site. If you click on the button, you get more information about the site. See the screenshot below.

There are lots of settings available for this Internet Security Tool, which you can tweak to let this tools operate as per your requirements.

I find it attractive in comparison to lots of best spyware removal tools.

Download WOT (Mozilla Firefox Site)

Online Malware Detection - What it is ?

Internet is spreading fast. And with this, the online threats to your privacy and security are increasing day-by-day. Hundreds and thousands of innocent users are made victims by these spyware and malware programs every day. There is a continuous race between malware developers and security experts and vendors to stay ahead. HiJackThis, is a tool in the hands of a user, to detect malware and remove it from their system.

But Beware. HijackThis is not a tool, which is easy to use. Its use requires you to be able to fully understand and interpret its results and logs. Thankfully, there are lots of forums and platforms, where you can post the log files of HiJackThis, and the volunteers may help you after going through your logs.

HijackThis, sometimes abbreviated HJT, is a freeware spyware-removal tool for Microsoft Windows originally created by Merijn Bellekom, and later sold to Trend Micro. The program is notable for taking a heuristic approach to detecting malware - rather than relying on a database of known spyware, it quickly scans a user’s computer, creates a list of differences from a known spyware-free environment and allows the user to decide what from the list needs to be removed. HijackThis is used primarily for diagnosis of spyware, as blind use of its removal facilities can cause significant software damage to a computer.

Use HijackThis can generate a plain text logfile detailing all entries it finds, and most entries can be removed or disabled by HijackThis. Inexperienced users are often advised to exercise caution, or to seek help when using the latter option[1], as HijackThis does not discriminate between legitimate and unwanted items, with the exception of a small whitelist of legitimate entries — thus allowing a user to unintentionally prevent important programs from running, which may cause their system or its peripherals to stop working. HijackThis will, however, attempt to create backups of the files and registry entries it removes, which can be used to restore the system in the event of a mistake.

Visit HiJackThis Download

Accidental file deletion.

This happens with everybody, with you, with me, with that computer geek, or this average Joe.

You delete a file, thinking that it is just cluttering your hard dick, only to find later after a week, that it contained the all important information, you require today. BANG.

There may be other ways also to lost your files and documents. A hard disk corruption, a rogue virus or worm or even a well thought out partitioning or formatting a disk drive. You always think about that lost file.

But there are programs and software available, which can perform data recovery of that old file. There are many of those, and it will be difficult for you to choose the best one among them. Among them, there is at least one software, which delivers exactly what it promises.

Welcome to Stellar Phoenix Windows Data Recovery Software.

This is a magical piece of file recovery software from renowned Steller Information Systems, which is a complete data recovery solution that helps you to search, locate and recover your lost, missing, inaccessible or deleted data. It is powered by ‘Raw File Recovery’ feature that recognizes & recovers more than 300 file types including documents, spreadsheets, web content & images.

The key features include…

• Advance Search: Helps recover selected files and folders
• RAW File Recovery: Recover more than 300 file types in case of severe file system corruption
• Enhanced Photo Recovery: Recover RAW camera format files.
• Compressed FS Recovery: Recover data from compressed NTFS file system
• Create Image of the Media: Recover files from storage media having lot of bad sectors
• File Preview: View the file contents and get an overview about the recovery results.
• Improved User Interface : It makes data recovery easier without requiring any technical knowledge. The interface includes options such as Find File, File Mask and File Filter to help you search, view or recover any specific file type.
• Multiple Recovery Options: Recover large volume of data as compressed file or to a FTP server.
• Live Update: Receive latest product enhancements and keep your application updated
• Save Scan: So that you are able to resumes recovery at a later stage

Yet another feature is that it is a flexible tool. If you want to recover a file type, which is not included in the standard list, you can add that to it using a wizard. It is meant for the Windows platform and works on all versions including Windows 2000 / XP / 2003 / Vista in all of the file systems like FAT16, FAT32, VFAT, NTFS and NTFS5 file system.

You can download a demo version from their site, but the full version with the standard features will cost you $99 USD.

But this will an investment worth making, if you store sensitive data on your computer.

This review was done on request, but not on paid basis. We agreed to review the product on Webtools & Tips, because of the merits of the product. If you also want to showcase your product on Webtools & Tips, feel free to contact us.

This is part of a series of everyday Tips for your Internet Security. You can find the rest of the Tips here.

Microsoft Outlook and many other web-based email programs have a Preview Pane feature, which shows you the contents of an email just by clicking (selecting) an email. This offers a lot of convenience as you can quickly browse through the contents of the mail before actually opening it.

But it offers a big security risk too.

Seeing the preview is as good as opening the email. Many of today’s email viruses will run as soon as the email is opened without you double-clicking on an attachment or anything. It’s kind of like opening an envelope from your  mailbox only to find that there is some mysterious white powder in it. Once it has been opened, the damage is done.

So why to Risk your Internet Security. It is too precious to jeopardize just to for the sake of saving a few seconds.

How to Turn OFF Preview Pane

• If you are using Outlook go to View menu > Current View > Click Customize Current View.
• Click on Other Settings
• In the AutoPreview group, click No AutoPreview.
• In the Preview Pane group, uncheck Show Preview Pane.
• Click OK.
• If you are using any other Email Client or a web-based email service, then look for the options in your Email Settings.

We encourage you to go through all the Tips on Internet Security. Some of these tips are quite common, but often ignored by most computer users.

This is part of a series of everyday Tips for your Internet Security. You can find the rest of the Tips here.

Keyloggers are a common problem of most of the PC users, who do not have a tight security. Keyloggers operate at various levels like hardware, software, shell, OS; and most of them are designed to steal your private information to pass on to a remote administrator.

Remember, Keyloggers are real dangers, which can happen to any PC, including yours, and it is a fact that a few of the most dreaded online frauds have been committed using keyloggers.

Using Onscreen Keyboards to Defeat Keyloggers

Defeating keyloggers depends upon what type of keylogger is there on your system. However, here is a simple tip, which can avoid you falling victim to many keyloggers.

Many people are unaware that MS Windows XP / Vista have a built-in onscreen Keyboard, where you can use your mouse to type the characters. You can find it in the Accessibility Options of Windows.

Now, whenever you have to enter the username and password on a site, specially your banks, paypal, ebay etc., just open the Windows Onscreen Kwyboard to type the characters. I am not saying that this method is fully protected, but this can defeat many of the keyloggers, and your vulnerabilities reduces considerably.

Finding it a hassle? But remember, your Internet Security is too valuable to risk. Each small step contribute a lot to fortify your Internet Security.

This is part of a series of everyday Tips for your Internet Security. You can find the rest of the Tips here.

Emails today are the lifeline of online communication. They are not only simply a means of communication, but they are used for many websites as the login names. Google and Yahoo use the email addresses to give the access to many web applications. In such a situation, it becomes highy important that you keep secure all your email messages.

Recently Gmail has started encrypting all your email transmissions with SSL. If you have configured your Gmail accounts for encryption, you would notice that the URL is now “https://” instead of simple “http://”. This small “s” makes big difference towards your Internet Security.

How to Encrypt Gmail Messages

Just login into your Gmail account. Go to Settings, and then at the bottom of the general settings page, select the “Always use https” option, and click the Save Changes button.

See the small video below to understand the process.
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We encourage you to go through all the Tips on Internet Security. Some of these tips are quite common, but often ignored by most computer users.

Yes it is TRUE.

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Ads for Adobe PDF is a new opt-in service that enables publishers to monetize their PDF content through advertising. The advertising service, powered by Yahoo!, automatically matches and displays dynamic, contextual ads in Adobe Reader and Adobe Acrobat when a user views the PDF. Publishers that sign up to participate in this program are eligible to be paid for valid clicks on ads. In this unique advertising relationship, Yahoo! helps connect advertisers from its extensive network of online advertisers with publishers that are distributing content through Adobe PDFs. Yahoo! will incorporate this new advertising inventory into its portfolio of online advertising opportunities.

There are a total of 10 different ad sizes and a variety of ad color palettes, including a combination of border, background and text colors. The Ad formats are similar to hugely popular Adsense ads.

This will surely pave a new income stream for offline publishers and content developers.

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