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Filed under: Security

Phishing for the fail whale -- watch out, Twitterers!


Courtesy of Twitter.

Warning! There's a Twitter phish-fest going on at the moment. Hopefully you'll read this before you become an ill-fated Twit...!

If you receive a DM that looks something like this:
hi. this you on here? http://blogger.djh****.com
Do not use the link!

It will redirect you to a copycat Twitter log-in page, and then forward you to a fake fail whale -- and then later, when you least expect it, your account will have its avatar replaced with a naked girl that seems to be enjoying a deliciously unsymbolic and in-your-face penis. You will then, unwittingly, tell your friends all about fantastic dating websites that you've had a lot of success with recently. I think you'll all agree that's a fate even worse than a celebrity not responding to your well-thought-out and poignant tweet.

[via Sophos]

Filed under: Internet, Utilities, Web services, web 2.0

Vertor shows you what's in a torrent before you download


Torrent downloads can be kind of a crap shoot. If you'd like a little reassurance about what you're about to download, take a look at Vertor.

The service launched recently and provides automated checking of torrents from a number of trackers, like Pirate Bay, Demonoid, and several others. To date, the service has verified more than 140,000 torrents.

20 second MP3 clips are provided to let you preview album downloads. Movies and TV shows display screencaps taken at regular intervals (usually every 10 or 15 minutes) during playback. The contents of text files (like NFOs) packed with applications and games are also posted.

All downloads are also scanned with antivirus software, though they're currently dissatisfied with its performance. It's slated for replacement with a more reliable engine on December 30, 2008. Even in its present state, it's still more of a reassurance than most other torrent sites provide.

Already downloaded something from another tracker? Using Vertor's advanced options menu you can enter the hash code and see the results of their checks, provided Vertor has grabbed the torrent.

Thanks, Nick!

Filed under: Internet, Security, Utilities, Windows, Freeware

Free Comodo Internet Security is here - screenshot tour


As a long-time fan of Comodo Firewall, I was glad to see the company developing a more complete Internet defense application. On October 28th, they released Comodo Internet Security.

Why the move? To quote from the press release, Comodo's president Melih Abdulhayoglu believes that "Safe computing on the Internet should be a right, not a privilege." He continues, "We are offering an advanced, intelligent Internet Security package at no charge in order to promote a safer, trusted Internet for everyone."

So far, I'm every bit as impressed with Internet Security as I was with their standalone firewall. Apart from rolling the usual antivirus and firewall features, Comodo's new product sports a number of interesting features and very low resource utilization.

The program's main window is uncluttered and informative, providing a vitals like the status of protection systems and updates, and the present level of network activity. It also features links to quickly lock down your system or set the program to install mode (which tells it ramp down the activity alerts temporarily).

Read more →

Filed under: Internet, Security, Utilities, Features

Keeping it private (and safe!) on public computers

libraryEven if you have a computer at home, on occasion you'll find you need to use the public computers at a library, internet café, or your local copy shop. Traveling, technical glitches at home, or the sheer convenience of checking on something right now brings almost everyone to a public computer once in a while. It brings a few people -- whether they own computers or not -- to public computers daily.

I have a confession to make. In a former life, I was a systems librarian. I know what's on public computers. No, I don't have your personal information. I removed that from the public computers, along with a lot of keylogging software, viruses, and spyware. What I do have is a few little tricks to keep your private information private.

The cardinal rule of public computing is the most obvious. It's also the one most often broken. Sometimes there's no avoiding breaking it. Sometimes, though, it seems there is a digital variety of the "belief in immortality" that's usually attributed to young adults. This digital immortality seems to affect people of all ages.

Read more →

Filed under: Internet, Utilities, Blogging, E-mail, VoIP, Social Software

Dev Chair : Safety first


Many years ago, car manufacturers emphasized only new features to entice new buyers. Then some time in the early 90's car safety became important and car manufacturers put safety features top of the selling points for new model.

I feel that right now Web 2.0 service providers are operating like those car manufacturers before the shift to car safety.

Ever since the infant days of the internet, people have been putting more and more data online (emails, newsgroup posts and IRC conversations) without giving it any thought. But in the Web 2.0 age we are leaving behind a trail of data much more personal than ever before. We tell people about our lives, our thoughts, and where we've been with our photos (some even tagged with geo-data).

Read more →

Filed under: Business, Internet, Web services

MySpace Parental controls

myspace parental controlsParental controls are good to have these days. There are a lot of sickos out there and the protection of our children online should be at the top of our lists. Social networking giant MySpace announced on Wednesday they are developing a parent notification tool and age verification software. The software, codenamed Zephyr, will be a desktop application. The current MySpace age verification software online does not allow children under the age of 14 to gain access to register for an account, but really, who cant lie about their age? There have been a number of reported cases of minors who have been violated, stemming from their underage MySpace accounts, and MySpace along with parent company News Corp intend to stamp out the chances of minors gaining access to the site so they don't get harmed from their service. No date has been announced for the age verification software's debut.

Filed under: Security, Macintosh, Apple

Top eight OS X safety tips

Mac securityDoes Mac OS X have security vulnerabilities? Of course it does. Are they targetted as rampantly as those on certain other OSes? No, but if you value your data why not do everything you can to protect it? To that end, Apple Matters has a valuable article called Top 8 OS X Safety Tips. As is usual with this sort of article, some of the tips seem like common sense ("2. Turn that Firewall on"), but there are a few tips you may not have thought of for keeping your files safe, your passwords secret, and your Mac secure.

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With Halloween fast approaching, it's a great time to get in some practice defending your territory against zombies. In Graveyard Shift, you take aim at zombies and other creepy-crawlies, blasting them into splatters of cartoony green guts. It's a casual first-person shooter, and it's very easy to get the hang of - use the mouse to aim, click to fire. Graveyard Shift has at least 15 levels, and it might even have some secret stages I haven't unlocked yet. They key to getting good at Graveyard Shift is learning to use ...

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