Phishing email scams are increasing day by day. New tricks are being learnt by the phishers and email providers are after them to be more clever in detecting phishing emails.

Related: You can find 9 effective ways to detecting phishing emails on this blog.

In a recent development, GMAIL, arguably the most secured email provider, has started cooperating with Paypal and Ebay, for better protection against phishing. Paypal and Ebay are notably the most targeted domains by phishing email attempts.

In the details posted on the Official Gmail Blog, Brad Taylor, Software Engineer and Gmail Spam Czar, has stated…

Now any email that claims to come from “paypal.com” or “ebay.com” (and their international versions) is authenticated by Gmail and — here comes the important part — rejected if it fails to verify as actually coming from PayPal or eBay. That’s right: you won’t even see the phishing message in your spam folder. Gmail just won’t accept it at all. Conversely, if you get an message in Gmail where the “From” says “@paypal.com” or “@ebay.com,” then you’ll know it actually came from PayPal or eBay. It’s email the way it should be.

Google is understood to be working on the well known concepts of Sender ID and DomainKeys for validating the sender, and this is one step further in the attempt to provide complete protection against all phishing attempts.

However, phishing attempts seems to be an the rampage these days with phishers and spammers working on newer ways to improve their success rates.

Full details here.

Virus!

One of the most feared and often highly misrepresented term of computer terminology. The root of ALL evils, at least many think so. I have seen many long time computer users linking all sorts of hardware and software troubles and crashes to so-called viruses in their system. But it is not so.

What actually are AntiViruses ?

Too Simple a question, who doesn’t know the answer. But technically…

Antivirus software are computer programs that attempt to identify, neutralize or eliminate malicious software. The term “antivirus” is used because the earliest examples were designed exclusively to combat computer viruses; however most modern antivirus software is now designed to combat a wide range of threats, including worms, phishing attacks, rootkits, trojan horses and other malware. Antivirus software typically uses two different approaches to accomplish this:

• examining (scanning) files to look for known viruses matching definitions in a virus dictionary, and
• identifying suspicious behavior from any computer program which might indicate infection.

As you must have used many Antivirus programs, we are not talking about them in this post. There are the merits and demerits of all of them. But one thing is for sure. No Antivirus is perfect. By the very nature of their working principle, Antivirus invent the process of cleaning a virus only after a virus is born. And this gap, between invention of a virus and its vaccine decides the effectiveness of an anti virus software.

Here comes the role of Free Online Antivirus Programs.

How Online Anti virus programs help ?

Once it is established that no Anti virus program is perfect, then it is sometimes better to apply double protection, meaning that you you two anti virus programs to scan your PC. But you cannot (or rather should not) use two anti virus programs simultaneously on one machine. So, why not try using free online antivirus programs. So that is the reason of writing this post.

Here we introduce you to 10 best online free anti virus scan utilities, which you can use absolutely FREE.

1. Trend Micro HouseCall 6.6 Free Scan: HouseCall is a FREE Web-based tool designed to scan your PC for a wide range of Internet security threats including viruses, worms, Trojans, and spyware. It also detects system vulnerabilities and provides a link so you can easily download missing security patches. After each scan, HouseCall delivers a detailed report, which identifies security threats detected on your computer.
2. Panda ActiveScan: Panda ActiveScan 2.0 detects all types of viruses, Trojans, worms, spyware, dialers, hacking tools, jokes, and other active or inactive (latent) security risks on your PC. It also detects vulnerabilities of software installed on your PC which could compromise your computer’s security. You can use Panda ActiveScan 2.0 whenever you want to make sure that your PC is free from all types of threats. Also, if you are registered or have bought the paid version you will be able to disinfect the threats that ActiveScan 2.0 finds on your PC.
3. Computer Associates Virus Scanner: This scanner requires a browser such as Internet Explorer which is capable of rendering ActiveX objects.
4. Symantec Security Check: Virus Detection checks for known threats, including top threats identified by Symantec Security Response. It provides an analysis of your results and offers suggestions for further action. It does not examine compressed files. In order to run Virus Detection you must be using Microsoft Internet Explorer 5.0 or higher with ActiveX and Scripting enabled.
5. McAfee FreeScan: McAfee FreeScan helps you detect thousands of viruses on your computer. Based on the award-winning McAfee VirusScan engine, FreeScan searches for viruses, including the latest known “in the wild” viruses, and displays a detailed list of any infected files. Should viruses be found, FreeScan even provides links to more information about the viruses and what you can do to clean your system.
6. BitDefender Free Online Virus Scan: BitDefender Online Scanner is an on-demand virus scanner which incorporates the award-winning BitDefender scanning engines. You can use it to scan your system’s memory, all files and drives’ boot sectors, and to automatically clean infected files. It is also ActiveX based. Requires Internet Explorer.
7. ESET Online Scanner: A user-friendly, powerful tool, our online antivirus utility can remove malware—viruses, spyware, adware, worms, trojans, and more—from any PC utilizing only a web browser. No installation required. The scanner uses the same ThreatSense® technology and signatures as ESET NOD32 Antivirus, which means it is always up-to-date.
8. Free Virus Scan - Kaspersky Lab: This free online virus scanner is a great way to find out if you have any viruses or spyware on your machine without having to uninstall your current antivirus software or install a new one. Most importantly, you can see what viruses your current antivirus software let slip through. It is stated that this free online virus scanner is very powerful and scans your machine very deeply, so it could take hours to complete. We suggest running it during a time of low activity.
9. F-Secure Free Online Virus Scanner: F-Secure Online Virus Scanner (version 3.3) is a free service. Use it to find out if your computer is infected, and disinfect your computer if needed. The product will automatically download the necessary components and virus definition databases as it is started. The size of the download package is about 35 MB incl. databases
10. Authentium :: Command-On-Demand - Free Virus Scanner: Authentium Command On Demand is a highly-effective, totally free virus scanner. Command on Demand scans for more than half a million Internet threats, using definition files that are updated daily.

Why to download Free File Shredders ?

Do you know that deleting the files from your Folders only deletes its reference from the Windows Directory structure. The actual content of the file remain present in your Hard Disk and are easily recoverable. Even if you delete them permanently (!) from Recycle Bin, freely available file recovery programs can easily recover the data from your HDD.

If this data is some junk office files and documents, you can forget about them. But in case, the data is sensitive, then you sure need to take precautions for your PC Security.

Here comes the role of File Shredders, which use different algorithms to actually wipe that data and make it completely unusable. There are many file shredder programs available on Internet, some are paid and some are free.

Where to find free file shredder software ?

Here we present you 11 great Freeware File Shredder Program Downloads.

1. Eraser: Eraser is an advanced security tool (for Windows), which allows you to completely remove sensitive data from your hard drive by overwriting it several times with carefully selected patterns. Works with Windows 95, 98, ME, NT, 2000, XP, Windows 2003 Server and DOS. Eraser is Free software and its source code is released under GNU General Public License.
2. System Purifier: Jitbit System Purifier is an all-in-one file shredder, privacy eraser, disk cleaner, free space wiper/eraser and startup programs manager.
3. SuperShredder: SuperShredder gives you the ability to delete files using not only common methods such as Gutmann and NISPOM (DoD), but can be completely customized to give you all the security and/or performance you may need. It can receive files via drag-and-drop onto the application or the icon, selecting files from inside the program, command line, and can even add a shortcut to your ‘Send To’ menu inside the Windows Explorer so it’s simple to delete files in a secure and convenient fashion.
4. File Shredder: In File Shredder you can choose between 5 different shredding algorithms, each one gradually stronger than the previous one. It also has integrated Disk Wiper which uses shredding algorithm to wipe unused disk space. This one is free for both personal and commercial use and works with Windows NT, 2000, XP, 2003 Server and Vista.
5. Simple File Shredder: When you use Simple File Shredder to shred a file, the file is over-written with with random bytes before it’s deleted. If the file was ever restored using recovery software, it would be worthless. Simple File Shredder v3 provides a new fully customizable System Shredder. Using the System Shredder, you can easily group browser cache, cookie, and history files to be located and shredded.
6. UltraShredder: UltraShredder is a standalone, USB portable file shredder which deletes sensitive files by overwriting them with random characters, saving it to disk each time, and then bypasses the recycle bin, thus acting as your personal, portable file shredder. If the file were to be recovered by a data recovery program, they would only be able to see unintelligible characters on disk where the file used to be. The program is a great tool to destroy sensitive data, and is very small with a minute memory footprint, and makes no changes to your system whatsoever.
7. CHAOS Shredder: By overwriting the portion on the hard drive that was previously allocated to the files several times with junk data, CHAOS Shredder will completely erase files from your disk, without the possibility to recover it by any practical software or hardware methods. CHAOS Shredder allows you to purge, wipe and erase data with methods that far exceed US Department of Defense standards for file deletion (DOD 5220.22).
8. Zilla Nuker: It will securely shred and destroy any sensitive files on your hard drive, including locked files and previously deleted ones. It works with Windows 95, 98, ME, XP, NT 3.x, NT 4.x, and 2000. Highlights include: different shredding modes (ex. Quick Mode), scheduler, option to shred whole drives, etc.
9. FileASSASSIN: FileASSASSIN is an application that can delete any type of locked files that are on your computer. Whether the files are from a malware infection or just a particular file that will not delete - FileASSASSIN can remove it. The program uses advanced programming techniques to unload modules, close remote handles, and terminate processes to remove the particular locked file. Please use with caution as deleting critical system files may cause system errors.
10. Pocket KillBox: Pocket KillBox is a program that can be used to get rid of files that stubbornly refuse to allow you to delete them.
11. CBL Data Shredder: The CBL Data Shredder program supports a range of methods of erasing data, providing different levels of security and convenience. In general it would be true to say that each time a hard drive is overwritten, the chances of recovering any data from it become very thin. (For examples of the sorts of hardware-based recovery techniques that may be attempted, please see the succeeding section).  The CBL Data Shredder program works by overwriting the entire disk with a pattern of bits. Wiping the disk with a simple (non-random) pattern once is known as clearing or erasing. It may still be possible, with specialist hardware, to read data off the disk.

Malware Attacks on websites and blogs are increasing day by day. There are many forms and shapes in which these malware programs attack your websites. Some are easily seen, while some are hidden and not easily discovered. For instance, if a website is hacked, most of the time it is defaced and the entire world knows within minutes about the attack. These types of attacks are generally launched by hackers, who want to prove a point or two.

But there are some other types of attacks, which are more sophisticated and they insert a malicious script in your website code. On the face of it, you don’t see any change, but silently, your website is now one of the many similar platforms for that hacker to launch a bigger attack somewhere else. Your website is being used only as a pawn in the bigger game plan.

This situation is very risky. Soon your website will be tracked as a malicious site by various security agencies, including Google. And once this happens, and Google detects malware or phishing attacks are coming from your website they will place a warning next to your results listing, an interstitial warning page when the user clicks the result and a pop-up warning if the Google Toolbar is installed. As soon as this happens, your site is virtually killed.

How to Get Warning Alerts to Protect Your Website from Malware Attacks

Thankfully, Google comes to your rescue here. Google has recently started Safe Browsing API, which is a simple method for developers to download Google’s list of suspected phishing and malware URLs for which malware warning alerts are issued to the users of Firefox and Google Desktop. There are many applications under development at present which will make use of this API.

One such useful service is SERPGuard. It is a FREE malware alert service that regularly checks the Google Safe Browsing Blacklists. And whenever any mention of your website URLs appears there, it immediately shoots you warning signals, through emails, twitter and RSS. You just have to sign up with a FREE account with them and verify your site by uploading a small code to your webpages, and it starts monitoring your site for any malware and fishing attacks.

A really useful service in the long term.

If you want to know more, follow these links to get the answers about SERPGuard.

What is the Google Safe Browsing Blacklist?

How do I get my website removed from Google Safe Browsing Blacklist?

How do I remove malware from my website(s)?

How do I report sites for the Google Safe Browsing Blacklist?

What is DOM-x Player ?

Yesterday, when I was going through my Yahoo Answers session, (I am a regular at Yahoo Answers), I came across a question, which asked for how to open a media file, which requires a special Media Player, named as DOM-x Player. This quickly reminded of my nephew getting into trouble after downloading DOM-x Player, and it made me to write this post.

If you are not aware, DOM-x Player is a one of the many Rogue Malware programs, which are infecting more and more PCs nowadays. The mechanism of DOM-x Player installation is easy. It is generally spread through the various online file sharing sites like Rapidshare and various Torrent sites like BitTorrent. People who want to make a quick buck disguise a rogue file as a movie file. When you download it and try to run it, this gives you a link and asks you to download DOM-x Media Player. If you get into this trap to download and install DOM-x Media Player, then you may be in trouble.

Although DOM Player Malware is not the latest entrant, but it surely is causing damage today also. If you take a look at the various keywords being searched for DOM Player, you will notice that how many people are still searching for DOM Player.

For more information on this, you can visit TorrentFreak.

Related Search Term: Daily Estimated Searches (By SEO BOOK KEYWORD TOOL)

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Should I Download DOM-x PLayer ?

Do I really need to answer that question ?

It has now been confirmed.

In a recent study, folks from Google, IBM and Communication Systems Group in Switzerland, have discovered that more than 40% of all the Internet users are exposed to malware risks because of unsafe browsers. Only 60% of the Internet users bother to update their browsers with the latest patches and plugins, which help them avoid the malware attacks.

Out of these 60%, majority are using Mozilla Firefox, as expected. As many as 83% of Firefox users keep their browsers up-to-date. While Internet Explorer users are the lazy people, and only 48% actually update their browsers. Part of this fact is because of the painless process, with which patches gets searched and loaded in Firefox. It’s automatic like breeze. You even don’t really have to bother to update your Firefox.

Firefox downloads updates automatically and prompts the user to install them immediately. If the user declines the update, the patches are installed the next time the browser is started. Opera checks for a new version on startup, but requires the user to manually download and re-install the browser. Safari relies on an external Apple-updater that checks for new updates at regular intervals, and IE is updated roughly once every 30 days, when Microsoft issues patches on the second Tuesday of the month.

What I feel is that this figure of 60% is also a bit high, if we take into account all different types of plugins and applications used by modern browsers. I have my own doubts, that if we consider the updation of all plugins including Flash Player, Java, QuickTime, Adobe Reader etc., this figure will be much less.

What do you think ?

There are many other interesting facts and figures. If you are interested, then follow this link to read the complete report of the study (PDF).

Do you require to Clean PC Files. If you feel like answering these questions in “YES”, then you sure need to clean up PC files.

• Do you often install and try new software?
• Does your PC not running on its optimum performance levels?
• Is you Hard Disk clogged up?
• Does your system crashes up often?

There are lots of FREE PC Cleaning Programs available on the Internet, which can help cleaning your PC. IN this post, we will take a look at 7 such useful programs, which you can easily download and use.

How to Clean PC  - Free Cleaning Software

Cleaning up PC requires you to concentrate on many areas of your PC. We will focus on these areas one by one.

APPLICATION CLEANUP

1. AutoRuns: There are lots of the programs, which try to get into your Startup folder, when you try to install them. Even if you are not using them, they continue to run in the background and consume lots of RAM and slow down your PC performance. Besides this, they also make your PC boot slowly. So the solution is to Cleanup PC by knowing what applications and services get run on the startup. There is a nice Free PC Cleaning Software called AutoRuns (Download Autoruns here), which shows every application and service running on startup and it even tells you the DLLs in use. Once you get that information, you can decide, whether you want to keep that there or not.

HARD DISK CLEANUP

2. Easy Duplicate File Finder: If you have been using your PC for a long period, there are many chances, that your PC has many different types of duplicate files. They make it very difficult for you to search and organize them, besides taking up the importance hard disk space. Would not you like to clean these PC file and get rid of the duplicates. Easy Duplicate Finder (Download Easy Duplicate File Finder here) is a program, which scans for the duplicate contents on your PC and reports them. You can clean files en masse or do it on selective basis. It also tells you other details like system files etc. which protect you from accidentally deleting important files.

3. Wise Disk Cleaner: If you want an applications, which does more that just Duplicate finding, then use Wise Disk Cleaner (Download Wise Disk Cleaner here). Besides reporting the duplicate PC files, it also finds other types of useless stuff like temporary applications that are no longer in need, various log files, back up files, index files and lot of other crap. Just start using it, and you will be surprised to know the crap stuffed on your hard disk. Regular cleaning PC is extremely important to get rid of all of them.

CLEANING INTERNET FILES

4. Clear Expired Cookies: In today’s world, it is very common for the websites to place cookies in your computer, when you visit them. Most of these cookies are useful as they help you to remember login information, customization of the sites etc. However, many of these cookies have a life period, after which they expire and just clog your PC. Expired Cookies Cleaner is a useful and Free PC Cleaning tool, which cleans up PC by clearing the expired cookies. Download Expired Cookies Cleaner

5. HackCleaner: If you want to do more than just clearing expired cookies, the try HackCleaner (Download HackCleaner here). This simple but useful PC Cleaning software not only clears up the cookies, but also deletes many type of temporary files, Internet Toolbars and useless DLLs. It is also capable of moving data from RAM to a page file thus increasing your system performance.

PC REGISTRY CLEANING TOOLS

6. Wise Registry Cleaner: If you are habitual of trying and installing new Software programs, then chances are there that you registry will be in bad shape. Many software programs, which are badly written do not clean up registry and over a period of time your registry is full of junk. As your registry collects more and more junk, you increase the chances of slowing down your PC and crashes are more often.

Wise Registry Cleaner is PC cleaning software, which cleans up registry by finding orphaned or bad entries (Download Wise Registry Cleaner here). It classifies them into those, which are dangerous to be deleted and those which can be safely deleted. Before deleting, you can always take up a backup so that you can easily restore registry, if any problem occurs.

GENERAL PC CLEANING TOOLS

And in the end, a useful PC Cleaning Program, which helps you to cleanup PC files and keep them in top shape.

7. PC Decrapifier: Whenever you buy a new PC, chances are that the manufacturer has put in many trialware programs, for which he gets paid. You can easily identify them and delete them with the help of a useful PC general cleaning software called PC Decrapifier. (Download PC Decrapifier here).

Use these tips on cleaning PC and download free PC Cleaning software to keep your system clog free.