The Latest Anything With Computers

Archive for January, 2011

Disgrace site WikiLeaks personally continue beaten. Large corporations also serve continuity WikiLeaks shriveled balls that are in fear of the United States government.

After the Amazon, the largest online book seller universal, terminate hosting services to WikiLeaks, now turn its financial transaction service PayPal closed for a site that upheld Julian Assange, a former journalist from the Australian.

WikiLeaks use a PayPal account to accept alms from anyone who cares about the importance of freedom of speech as the mandate of the First Amendment of the Constitution of the United States.PayPal quibble, the service is stopped forever for violating WikiLeaks Use Policy.

“Our payment service may be used for activities that encourage, promote, facilitate or instruct others to engage in illegal activities. We have been told to account holders regarding this action,” the official statement PayPal via its official blog, on Friday (12/03/2010 .)

Despite this, WikiLeaks still have plenty of channels to receive alms, which are required to pay the bills related to computers, programming experts, and others.

Most people are aware that there are continuous security issues with Microsoft’s Windows operating system and other programs. However, what most people do not realize is how easy it is to significantly improve your computer’s security and reduce the likelihood of becoming a victim to ever increasingly sophisticated threats that lurk on the internet. These steps should take less than a couple of hours to complete and should not clean out your wallet.

1) Windows Update – the first crucial step you need to take to make sure that all your Microsoft applications have all the latest product updates installed. These updates or “patches” address security vulnerabilities and other issues. Microsoft usually issues these updates on a monthly cycle. Visit the Microsoft website or switch on automatic updates from the Windows Control panel. Even if your “new” computer is second hand this is still a critical first step. If you buy a used computer with Windows XP make sure Service Pack 2 or SP2 is installed.

2) Strong Passwords – people often overlook this but having well thought through passwords is an important element of your computer security. A strong password should include at least 8 characters with a mixture of text, symbols and numbers. As a minimum you need to make sure the services most at risk have a strong log-in password. These services include your bank, credit card, other financial services like PayPal, your email address and any other services like Ebay which hackers can use to generate profit.

3) Anti Virus Protection – while it is fair to say the threat of the computer virus has receded during the last couple of years they can still inflict serious damage on your computer. Part of the reason why the threat has reduced is because PC manufactures are now more frequently bundling anti virus packages with their new computers. For example last year my new Dell shipped with a 90-day trial of McAfee’s Internet Security Suite. The best bet here is to purchase a security package which includes firewall and anti virus software as a minimum. Top brands include McAfee and Symantec Norton products. However, Microsoft has recently entered the market with their “OneCare” offering which is very aggressively priced.

4) Firewall – if you are using a broadband connection then a firewall is definite requirement to manage the traffic flowing between your computer and the internet. A firewall monitors the inbound internet traffic passing through the ports of your computer. Better products also monitor outbound traffic from your computer to the internet. As per above the best bet here is buy a firewall application as part of a security package which most vendors offer as standard. If a hardware firewall is included as part of your router package then you do not need anything else. A company called Zone Labs offer a great free firewall product called Zone Alarm which should be used as a minimum. Windows XP does now ship with a free firewall but the product does not monitor outbound communication and therefore I believe does not offer adequate protection.

5) Anti Spyware Tool – this software is the last piece in your basic internet security set up. This tool helps combat spyware and adware. There is a good mixture of free and paid versions on offer. Good free software include Microsoft’s Windows Defender, Spybot S&D or Ewido Anti-Malware. Ewido Anti-Malware is frequently recommended in computer help forums. Be careful if you decide to purchase a solution. There are a number of rogue vendors out there which aggressively push products which offer you little value. Stick to trusted names like Webroot’s Spy Sweeper or PC Tool’s Spyware Doctor. These products always come out well on independent tests.

Not everyone will like changing his email address to get rid of spam because many people share their email addresses with their friends, colleagues, subscribers, and customers. They also may have business cards and other material with the email addresses printed on them. Moreover, getting a new email address won’t free you from spam forever. It will work the first time while your email is new. But as far as you will be using it to communicate with your contacts, the spam flow coming to that email address will be growing. So, how to combat spam? Where is the right solution? One of the effective ways to combat spam is using an anti-spam filter. Fortunately, there are a lot of anti-spam tools available on the Internet.

I am using the anti-spam filter is called SpamCombat. For me, it’s a “must-have” tool. I’ve been using it for about 2 years and my statistics show that 80% of emails I receive are deleted by SpamCombat.

The particularity of SpamCombat is that it works at the source i.e. it connects directly to your inbox on the server and manages the emails there. It’s not the same when you are using the filters in your email software, for example Outlook or Thunderbird. The major difference is that SpamCombat deletes spam and junk emails on the email server so that you never have to download them. Using an anti-spam filter in Outlook, for instance, would mean that you have to pull down the messages onto your computer first and then analyze and manage them accordingly. This may pose a threat if some emails contain viruses.

SpamCombat is easy to use. It’ll take just a few minutes to set it up. The downloadable version of SpamCombat will never expire so you have plenty of time to decide if it is working for you. SpamCombat is provided with 6 filters, which detect spam emails with great accuracy and precision. You can customize the filters for your needs. On the company’s user forum there is a topic dedicated to SpamCombat filters: http://www.justlan.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=937

The program users gratefully share their filters with others and I found many useful anti-spam filters there. I added some of them to my SpamCombat installation and the amount of spam that was identified increased to 80%. This means that on average, 3 of every 10 emails I receive are legitimate and are allowed through by SpamCombat. The rest are deleted at the server and I don’t have to spend time downloading them. This is a big deal if you are using dialup access to the Internet.

There is a concept of a blacklist and a whitelist. You can “whitelist” and “blacklist” the emails by any field from the message header (not only by the From field where the message sender’s email address is) and by any word or phrase from the message content. SpamCombat will allow all emails through that are on the whitelist, and it will mark for deletion or automatically delete all those that are on the blacklist. Adding or removing someone from the whitelist or blacklist is a very simple point and click exercise.

SpamCombat also allows using wildcards and regular expressions to set legitimate filters up. For example, if you specify all emails coming from your company domain name as being legitimate, then all messages from your colleagues will be allowed through without you having to specify each person. You can achieve this by using a wildcard setting such as “*@youworkdomain.com”. This can also be used to blacklist an entire domain such that all messages are immediately marked for deletion or automatically deleted depending on your settings.

There is also the Bayesian filter, self-learning system based on legitimate and spam emails you receive. I trained the Bayesian filter well and now it identifies my legitimate and spam emails in the proper way.

SpamCombat also has more advanced filters. One of them is known as “DNSBL filter”. There are servers on the internet which list known spam addresses. When you receive a message from one of these addresses, SpamCombat automatically marks it as spam without your filters even being invoked. This is a remarkable filter. It identifies about 10% of spam emails that I get.

Another advanced filter is called Complex Filter. This filter is based on the VBScript. If you are familiar with the VBScript, you can write a script and add it to the Complex Filter. A nice filter is described there: http://www.glocksoft.net/sc/discover-amazingly-powerful-anti-spam-filter/

The software configuration is very flexible. You can choose a deletion mode for spam emails by yourself: you can specify the emails to be deleted automatically without your participation, or you can have the program mark them for deletion but let you preview them just in case. This is important at the beginning until you tailor the program for your mail.

You can also set SpamCombat to move spam emails to the internal program trash or delete them permanently. The emails will be stored in the trash for a number of days depending on your settings. There is also a way to recover an email from the trash and receive it with your regular email client.

SpamCombat is independent software and does not interfere with your email client. It sits in the system tray and does its work thoroughly. On my computer, it checks my inbox every 20 minutes and notifies me that new emails arrived. I then review them and do a cleanout. I have my email client setup to only receive messages when I instruct it to so that SpamCombat has the most opportunity to do its work.

SpamCombat is an indispensable tool in my email arsenal. If spam is a vital problem for you, it could do likewise for you. Download your free copy today and use it for as long as you want to fight spam on your main email account.