PC Memoirs

My PC was attacked again. Somehow this program called System Security 4.51 installed itself in my PC and displayed a message saying it found over 30 infections in the system. Of course, the viruses were fake. This program only wants you to believe there are threats on your hard drive, so you can go ahead and buy their antivirus software to remove them.

I tried to close the program, but it only minimized itself into the taskbar. It wasn’t listed in the programs list, so I could not remove it (Control Panel, Add/Remove Programs). I tried to open the Task Manager by pressing CTRL ALT and DEL, but as soon as it showed up the window disappeared. If that had worked, I thought I could find the process that starts System Security 4.51 and close it. Now this looked like a more serious issue.

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If you want to ensure that only you can access a certain file, and users you allow access to the file, then the easiest way to do so is to zip (compress) a file with Winzip/Winrar or Windows’ own compression tool.

All you need to do is download Winzip or Winrar, install the program and select the file you want to protect. Depending on whether you want to use Windows or a third party tool to protect the files, follow one of the three instructions below. The process is very similar and the result is always the same - you ‘package’ the file and add a password to it, so that only users who know the password can open the file.

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In one of my previous posts I listed 10 third party defragmenting programs and I mentioned that Windows includes its own defragmenter. One reader complained that I didn’t describe how and where this Windows tool can be found. So here it is:

In Windows XP, Disk Defragmenter can be found in Start, Programs, Accessories, System Tools and Disk Defragmenter. You can analyze your disk first and based on the report, you can decide if you need to defragment or not.

Windows Vista comes with an automatic disk defragmenter tool that is enabled by default. It is set to run at 1am every Wednesday but you can disable or change this. To access Disk Defragmenter, click the Start button, Control Panel and then System and Maintenance. Choose Defragment your hard drive under Administrative Tools.

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A new research by antivirus software company McAfee has revealed the most dangerous Internet search words that may lead users to pages with malware. The company examined 2,600 popular keywords on the most popular search engines, including Google, AOL, Yahoo and Live and analyzed over 400,000 Web pages.

McAfee concluded that the most dangerous searches include ‘free’ things, like ‘free downloads’, ‘free music’, ‘free games’, ‘screensavers’ and ‘videos’. If you search for any of these terms, you are engaging in ‘risky cyber behavior’. Just by looking for free music downloads, 20% of Web surfers are risking visiting pages with spyware or viruses.

Malware infections have increased dramatically in the recent years, starting from occasional hacking to organized cybercrime and today’s cyber terrorism. You have to be really careful what you are looking for and what sites you visit.

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