No typos. Skype has had a major outage, internationally. As of this moment, it has been down for about 3 hours. So if you are trying to use Skype to call other Skype users or just to make calls to normal phones and you can’t, it’s not your computer. It’s Skype.
I haven’t been able to find a predicted time for Skype to be back up. You can check the status of it at any time at this link:
http://downdetector.com/status/skype
Over the years positions have changed as far as which program is the most used to access websites. Years ago and until relatively recently Microsoft’s Internet Explorer was the most used. But that has changed.
Internet Explorer and its successor, Edge (found only in Windows 10), combined user share has recently fallen considerably, mainly due to Microsoft dropping support of the older versions of Internet Explorer (6 through 10) and supporting now only Internet Explorer 11 and Edge.
Despite that drop, Firefox, an alternative browser, has also lost some ground on user share. So which browser has capitalized on all that combined user share and become the number one browser as far as user share is concerned?
Google Chrome.
Updates in Windows 10 computers are known for installing automatically and now there’s a type of infection that will try to encrypt your files while showing a fake Windows Update screen like this:
The percentage counter does work (goes up) but is nonetheless fake.
Even though an effective antivirus solution should detect this type of infection, the best defense against this type of infection is to have a good backup plan, in case your files are indeed encrypted and need to be restored from a backup.
It cannot be overstated how key it is to have a good backup plan in place as the best defense against these types of infections.
Fake computer support services are not new, but their “infiltration” techniques have been improved, definitely. What do they do?
In this specific case, a user was having trouble renewing the antivirus protection (Kaspersky) and contacted what he thought was Kaspersky support, only to be met with someone with a thick Indian accent that started following the 5 steps above. One of the things he did, once he gained access to the computer in case, was plant a program that when run, would display the following message on the computer screen:
“Please Enter Your Product Activation Key”,” kaspersky Setup”
Once they key was entered, the fake program would display this message:
“Can not run setup. Windows is Infected. No Internet security Available. System Error Code: 3204. 808 Infected Programs. 1521 Malwares found in Win 32 network. Network Security and the computer with the network is getting compromised by the unknown locations. Try again after removing RunDLL files. ” ,0+16 , “Installation Failed”)
The above message makes no sense and it’s only aimed at getting step #3 above done. But as you can see IT WAS TAYLOR MADE to prove to the user the specific problem had been found and needed handling.
Fortunately the user in question, while not supper savvy in computer matters, was smart enough to distrust the whole thing and ended up not buying the service and calling his trustworthy computer support guru, who straightened things out.
But this is a warning so that you are aware of this fake support technique and can recognize it if you see it.
A word made from combining Malicious and Advertising, it basically means using online ads to spread malicious programs (malware) that can infect your computer.
You’ve probably seen the little ads on the sides of many websites you visit, be it Yahoo, Msn, youtube, facebook, and so forth. Those ads are the ones that potentially can be compromised, and made to deliver malware to your computer, even if you don’t click on the ads themselves. It is enough that they are part of the website page you are visiting and that the computer is vulnerable to the particular exploit being used to infect your computer. More about that below.
As a user, what you should know is that ultimately what malvertising like many other type of malware activity uses as the means to infect your computer is normally vulnerabilities in your programs, whether your web browser (Firefox, Chrome, Edge, etc) or one of its plug-ins, such as Flash, and so forth.
Malvertising has been in existence for a while, but the interesting aspect of it is that it has been in the rise as a method of delivering malware through websites and the internet.
Because of the above you should:
If you need help accomplishing the above, feel free to ask questions.
I’ve covered before the subject of social engineering. It’s important as it relates to you and the subject of computer security, and it’s still very prevalent as a main intrusion method used by the bad guys. They basically fool and make the user help them infect their own computer or allow access to it. That’s all social engineering is.
One of the latest most notorious methods are fake support pages that actually play a recorded message that can be heard through the computer speakers. Nothing to worry about – as long as you don’t follow any of the suggested instructions. Additionally, sometimes these pages that open in your browser are hard to close – they don’t respond to the normal methods to do so. So what do you do?
If you’re somewhat familiar with Task Manager in Windows computers, you can use it to end the application (in this case the web browser: Internet Explorer or Firefox or Chrome or Edge, etc.), although this method might make cause all tabs in the opened web browser to close as well. Nonetheless you might have to resort to that.
A more extreme method of handling this webpages that resist arrest is simply to shut down or restart your computer.
A malware check, just in case, might be in order after that.
About 4 years ago, an attack method to reveal encrypted data that could be used, for example, to decrypt chat messages in Gmail or Facebook and many other “secure” connections on the internet, was uncovered. It was labeled CRIME (an acronym for Compression Ratio info-leak Made Easy). An offshoot of it was revealed in 2013, called BREACH (Browser Reconnaissance and Exfiltration via Adaptive Compression of Hypertext).
Those 2 attack methods have since been mitigated with subsequent updates on how encrypted traffic is handled by your browser, and a percentage of websites. But recently the BREACH attack method was revived. This was made possible because certain popular websites, like Facebook, have not really closed the door on the vulnerabilities that make the attack possible.
So careful with what you say in a Facebook or Google chat.
A chat application that doesn’t suffer from the above shortcomings? Wickr.
First a disclaimer: this is my personal viewpoint and opinion, so take it with a grain of salt. As a somewhat advanced computer user since the pre-Windows days, I’ve had a chance to see the coming and going of a number of Microsoft operating system versions. Recently, after being asked once again my opinion about the latest one, Windows 10, I thought it might be useful to show it in a graph, compared to a number of earlier operating systems.
This graph shows, from my point of view, the value of the last few Windows Operating Systems, on a scale of 1 to 10:
As you can see I consider Windows 7 the unsurpassed pinnacle of Windows Operating Systems. Some may wonder, what was the criteria for the above graph? Is it based on reliability, performance, security, privacy, user friendliness, stability, overall popularity? I’d say all of the above. But again it’s just my viewpoint.
I hope this better answers the question about what do I think about Windows.
A number of users with Windows 7 and 8 based computers might have noticed Microsoft recent attempts to persuade them to upgrade their computers to Windows 10, in recent months. This included, briefly in October last year, an attempt to make Windows 10 a recommended update in Windows Update, a move from which Microsoft backed off shortly after. However at some point “early this year” Microsoft apparently intends to move the update to Windows 10 back to a recommended update, which means if you are using a Windows 7 or 8 based computer, you’re likely to find yourself prompted to start the upgrade without much choice.
The good news is there are some ways around this. I unfortunately can’t go into too much specifics because 1) It’s a little more involved than what the average computer user normally deals with and 2) the workarounds have been evolving and still are, as Microsoft changes its approach to persuade users to go ahead with the upgrade. But if you are in a position where you need help or coaching through this, I can be of help.
One other thing to be aware of is that if you have gone ahead and upgraded to Windows 10 and it has been less than 31 days since you did it, there is a way to revert back, if you so wish, to the earlier version of Windows you had installed. This is an easier task than the one in the paragraph above so here’s a brief how-to you can follow:
Open the Start menu and select Settings. Click the “Update & security” icon and select “Recovery.” You should see a “Go back to Windows 7” or “Go back to Windows 8.1” option. Click the Get started button to get rid of your Windows 10 install and restore your previous Windows install.
Then contact me if you need help making sure the update back to Windows 10 doesn’t happen again.
Back when Sunbelt Software (the company that created VIPRE) was still around, I used to use VIPRE antivirus for my computers and recommend it to others. At some point in 2012 I migrated off of it because the newer versions, under a different brand now (a company called GFI) had in my opinion become bloated and buggy. Back then I stopped recommending it, and over the last 3 years, I’ve run into several instances where VIPRE was behind a number of computers being slowed down by it.
After running more and more into this, and finally recently deciding to survey a number of readers and clients, I’m ready to recommend against using it at all. be it the 2014, 2015 or 2016 version.
Get something lighter and more effective. I personally use Kaspersky and have been using it since I phased out of VIPRE 3 years ago, and have not had any problems with it. Other users with different computer configurations might want to choose otherwise, but I definitely recommend against using VIPRE.
Ask me if you have VIPRE and want to try something else – I’ll recommend something tailored to your needs if you tell me about your computer system.