Spyware News: Extended warranty may be a good idea for laptops

Q: Are extended warranties for computers really worth the money? - Janice

A: This question is one of the most common that I have fielded over the years, and has two potential answers: yes and no!

Much like any "insurance" policy, you get value from it only if you have to use it. So it's helpful to understand what the exposure risks are for what you are buying before you make your decision.

For instance, most desktop computers (with the exception of the nonstandard all-in-one units or those built by Apple) use common parts that are readily available and very competitively priced from hundreds of sources.

Many of the individual parts in a standard desktop computer can be replaced for less than most desktop computer extended warranties (especially if you are comfortable swapping parts yourself). In most cases, unless you have multiple failures during the warranty period, you may not recoup the cost of the extended warranty.

When it comes to laptop computers, the scenario is quite different. Virtually every laptop made is a proprietary design, so you have only one source for most replacement parts; the original manufacturer.

The laws of supply and demand are in full effect with laptops, which causes most replacement parts for a laptop to be higher than most extended warranties - especially when it comes to the screen or motherboard.

There are several types of warranties that you can buy for a laptop, including some that are called "no fault." That means that even if you drop it (which is very common), you are covered. Once again, you must weigh the cost of the coverage with the potential odds that you will need the coverage.

Road warriors and college students who are constantly lugging their portable computers around have a much higher likelihood of experiencing a "kinetic" event that could render the laptop useless. So coverage may make sense for them.

For those who mainly use their laptop around the house and on the occasional family vacation, your exposure to the additional risks are lessened. Therefore it may be a closer call.

The bottom line is to make sure you understand what is covered and what is not. The exclamation of "but I thought my extended warranty covered that" is all too common because the purchaser did not look at the exclusions before making the decision.

In computers especially, the vast majority of service issues have nothing to do with the hardware, which is generally the only thing that is covered by many extended warranties. Common problems like virus and spyware infections, operating system corruption, miscommunication of devices or inability to get something to function the way you expected it to are expressly not covered by the extended warranty.

Understanding that all "insurance" products must make the supplier a profit or they wouldn't do it, you can bet that the "house" has the advantage when it comes to extended warranties.

If you ever get the chance to chat with an individual whose responsibility is to process extended warranty claims in the computer world, you will likely hear that more claims are denied than approved, mainly because the purchaser of the warranty didn't really understand what they bought.

A final piece of advice: don't take any salesman's word on what is covered and excluded by an extended warranty. Get it in writing, and review it in detail before making a decision. Rarely is the person who is selling you the warranty the same person who is responsible for processing it.

The person selling the extended warranty generally gets a commission or has a quota they must meet and knows that by the time you figure out it wasn't quite what they represented, it's too late for you. So buyer beware!

Beware McDonalds Christmas Offer Email is Spyware

I have just recieved this email and had a good delve through it and it is actually malware. If you have not recieved it yet DO NOT open it. If you have opened it then run your checker through it. If you have not got a checker then have a look to the right and check out one of the products there that will find it.

Read on....


Who’s going to turn down an email savings coupon from that great American institution - McDonalds? The cyber-criminals behind this spam/scam email are counting on the fact that not many of us will turn it down.

Let’s face it - we’re all pretty used to McDonalds wishing us a “Merry Christmas” so getting an email with that heading is likely to entice many of us to “Simply print the coupon from this Email and head to your local McDonald’s for FREE giveaways and AWESOME savings” as the email instructs.

According to PandaLabs, Panda Security’s laboratory for detecting and analyzing malware however, you won’t get a coupon, you won’t get “FREE giveaways and AWESOME savings”, but you will get infected by the P2PShared.U worm.

“Once on the computer”, according to Panda, “the worm sends out emails with the same subject and appearance to other users. Finally, it copies itself to folders of various P2P file-sharing programs (eMule, LimeWire, Morpheus, etc.) with names relating to security software, image editing programs, program cracks, etc. This way, any user that tries to download any of these applications will be actually letting a copy of the worm into their computer”.

At this time of the year, we can expect to be bombarded by socially engineered email spam/scam with a Christmas or Holiday Season theme, so be more vigilant than you normally would be.

Don’t open unknown email attachments

Don’t run programs of unknown origin

Disable scripting features in email programs

Ensure your anti-virus software scans all e-mail attachments

If you are interested in staying on top of the latest in Internet security news, consider adding Panda Security news to your feed reader by adding the following URL - http://feeds.feedburner.com/PandaSecurity.

Study Confirms A Quarter of ALL Antivirus Apps Do Not Work

A study has recently discovered that one quarter of anit virus applications do not do what they are supposed to do. Promisec study says many AV packages are disabled or weren't installed properly in the first place

Read on....

More than one-quarter of business PCs are running antivirus software that has been disabled or was never properly installed, according to a study that will be published on Monday.

Promisec, a company that makes endpoint management tools, conducted the study on 100,000 PCs to prove a point: that antivirus management consoles from leading vendors are not accurately reporting when their software isn't working. The endpoint security tool vendor hopes the report will help drive users to try out its "clientless" management tools, which it says can take a more accurate reading of the status of AV software on remote endpoints.

The study, which was conducted from June to November of this year, tested the status of AV software on 100,000 endpoints in businesses operating in a variety of industries. According to the researchers, more than one-fourth of all computers were found to have missing or disabled antivirus software. But network administrators weren't being alerted to the problem by the vendors' management consoles, Promisec says.

"It's a serious issue, and really a scary situation," says Gary Morse, president of Razorpoint Security Technologies, a penetration testing firm. "Companies rely on antivirus software and assume they're covered. You've got a CIO sleeping well at night, thinking everything is secure when nothing could be further from the truth."

In many cases, users had turned off the antivirus software, thinking that would make their computers run faster, the researchers say. In other instances, the antivirus software was never deployed to certain computers. But the AV management tools didn't pick up the problems, Promisec says.

"What we're seeing are companies paying Symantec, McAfee, and others for protection that is only working about 75 percent of the time," adds Alan Komet, vice president of marketing for Promisec. "The vendors' management console is simply not a good monitoring source."

Koobface Virus Spreads to Bebo

As we have just reported about malware corrupting the world of social netoworks a virus has been discovered on Bebo.

Read on....

A virus that's attacking Facebook users is also infecting other social networking sites, says ScanSafe.

Koobface tricks social networkers into downloading malicious malware onto their PC. Users receive messages that look as if they're videos. Often they say something like "you look funny." When the user clicks to see the video, he is taken to a new website and asked to download special software in order to see the video.

That software is malicious and once installed on a PC, the Trojan will direct users to hoax search engines and other websites, putting them at risk of ID theft.

According to ScanSafe, Koobface has been identified on Bebo and could even spread to other social networking sites including - MySpace and Friendster. ScanSafe also claims that the virus accounts for one percent of all its blocked malware.

"Those who avoid promiscuous 'friending' on social networking sites will be least likely to encounter a Koobface type threat," said Mary Landesman, senior security researcher, at ScanSafe.

Cyberscams Slide onto Social Networks

With the popularity of social networks it was only a metter of time before we saw this. Malware has started to infultrate social networks like facebook and bebo.

read on....

A warning to those who love such social media sites as Facebook: The bad guys are coming for you.

A slew of security vendor reports on risks to expect in 2009 point to Facebook, Myspace and other such sites as increasingly tempting targets among hackers looking to dupe people out of their sensitive information. PDF and Flash files, once considered safe, are now a threat as well.

The findings on Flash and PDF is seen in a report released Tuesday from security-products firm Finjan Inc. The research finds cybercriminals are increasingly using PDF and Flash files as a vehicle for distributing their malicious code and for infecting end-user PCs. The Web Security Trends Report Q4 2008, released by Finjan's Malicious Code Research Center (MCRC) found criminals take advantage of the specific functionality available in Flash Action Script that enables the Flash file to interact with its hosted web page (DOM). They embed their malicious code in Flash files and dynamically inject it into the hosting DOM to exploit a browser-vulnerability and to install a Trojan, said Finjan officials. Although Flash supports the functionality to prevent such interactions, many sites owners are not using it, according to Yuval Ben-Itzhak, chief technology officer of Finjan.

The report states that large ad networks serving Flash-based banner ads did not prevent their ads from interacting with the hosting web page. The lack of configuration by ad networks to prevent this interaction, between the served Flash-based ad's Action Script and the DOM, has become a new vector for cybercriminals to serve their malicious code undetected.

"Using rich content applications such as Flash files to distribute malicious code has become the latest trend in cybercrime," said Ben-Itzhak "Having the widespread distribution and the popularity of Flash-based ads on the Web, their binary file format enables cybercriminals to hide their malicious code and later exploit end-user browsers to install malware."

Finjan's report also predicts cybercrime will continue to rise as an increasing number of unemployed IT professionals join in and criminals will continue to use Web 2.0 as a portal for scams.

U.K. and Boston-based firm Sophos also published its Security Threat Report 2009 on Tuesday. The research reveals that more malware is hosted on U.S. websites and more spam is relayed from American computers, than any other country. In fact, the November shutdown of McColo Corp., an American web hosting firm which was accused of collaborating with spammers and hackers, caused a 75 percent drop in spam, noted Cluley.

"Not only is the United States relaying the most spam because too many of its computers have been compromised and are under the control of hackers, but it's also carrying the most malicious webpages," said Graham Cluley, senior technology consultant for Sophos, in a statement. "We would like to see the States making less of an impact on the charts in the coming year. American computers, whether knowingly or not, are making a disturbingly large contribution to the problems of viruses and spam affecting all of us today."

Sophos's officials also said that in 2008, organized criminal gangs tripled their attacks against websites, injecting malicious code to infect visiting home users and businesses. 2008 also saw an increase in efforts by hackers to pose as legitimate anti-virus vendors, creating new professional-looking websites and applications every day with the intention of scaring users into believing that their computers have been compromised. On average, Sophos identified five new scareware websites every day, with the figure peaking at over 20 per day on occasion.

The report also documents a rise in hackers spamming out malicious attachments, designed to compromise PCs in order to steal identities, money and resources. By the end of 2008, Sophos was tracking five times more malicious attacks arriving through files attached to emails than at the start of the year.

Like Finjan, Sophos said Web 2.0 applications, such as Facebook, continue to be of interest to spammers and malware who break into users' accounts to take advantage of trusted social networks, and send spam and malware.

"The last year proved beyond doubt that Internet hacking gangs are organized like never before, often working across borders to steal money and data from unsuspecting users. The volume of attacks has increased, with hackers using automated systems to break into vulnerable websites or generate new variants of their malware," said Cluley. "People need to wake up to the reality that the completely legitimate website they are visiting could be harboring a dangerous malware infection planted by hackers. As we enter 2009 we are not expecting to see these assaults diminish. As economies begin to enter recession it will be more important than ever for individuals and businesses to ensure that they are on guard against Internet attack."

Survey: Web-based malware puts corporations at risk

A new study found that 85 percent of malware is being distributed through Web applications, which is creating a growing threat for corporations as employees increasingly do online social networking, video watching, and personal e-mail at work.

Other findings of the survey, conducted by security firm Webroot, are:

• Web-borne malware increased more than 500 percent in 2007.
• One-quarter of companies report that data has been compromised by a Web-based threat.

• Nearly one-third say their Web security was compromised as a result of employees using computers at work to access social networks, Web-based e-mail, and video sites.

• 15 percent enforce Internet usage policies.

About 650 information technology administrators in English-speaking countries were surveyed this summer for the study.

12 Types Of Anti-Spyware Programs

You can try out each program and get the best choice to protect your computer from the possible threats.

In the market there are many anti spyware and ad ware programs like Ad-Aware SE Pro, Counterspy, Trend Micro, Spy Sweeper, AntiSpy, Spy ware Doctor, PestPatrol, etc. available in the market. Each program has its own identity and method to access the internet. The anti-spyware company’s offers free download or it offers for free trial for certain period of time. There are many free antispyware are also available online for free trial with self-update.

You can try out each program and get the best choice to protect your computer from the possible threats. There are many anti-spy ware programs available for free. There are many free games and video or peer to peer sites also contents various spy wares. It is not advisable not to access the system. Many freeware have give virus or malicious things as gift with the installation.

1. Lavasoft’s Ad-aware SE pro 6. It can give you many good features where we can’t find it in other products.

2. Spy Sweeper launched upgraded version 5.2 with many updates for the customers. The Spy Sweeper 5.2 runs quickly, custom or full sweeps in record time.

3. Spyware Doctor promise real-time blocking and protection features.

4. The Norton Internet Security 2007 offers triple security against antivirus, firewall, and antispyware and. It also gives anti Spam, privacy, and parental control.

5. AVG Anti-Spyware offers the free services as well as the paid one. It gives 30 day trial version.

6. CounterSpy runs in the background and protect from spyware and ad ware.

7. McAfee is an effective anti-virus product. It is user-friendly and provides many different forms of support.

8. Trend Micro Anti-Spyware has unique features. Trend Micro Anti-Spyware covers all types of spyware or ad ware components.

9. The Anti-spy provides customize solution. It can automatically start scanning as defined time.

10. CA Anti-Spyware 2007's active shields recognized and blocked spyware.

11. CyberDefender AntiSpywareis identify and defense invasive spyware on your computer.

12. The Spy Sweeper is user-friendly. Spy Sweeper one of the favorite amongst the anti-spyware tools.

Apart from this there are many anti-spyware available in the market. All have different features and compatibilities.

Sony needs a common-sense czar

With so many czars running around trying to solve the nation's problems in tech, auto and drugs, perhaps Sony should consider hiring a common-sense czar.

Is there any major consumer company around that seems to understand basic customer relations less than Sony? Isn't rule No.1 in the CR manual, "Don't spy on customers?" If so, then rule 1-A must be: "Take extra care to avoid spying on customers' children."

The latest example of Sony's disconnect with the masses came this week when the company's music division was fined for surreptitiously collecting information on children under 13-years old.

On Thursday, Sony agreed to pay $1 million to the Federal Trade Commission for collecting information on 30,000 children without obtaining parental consent. According to the Associated Press, Sony violated the Children's Online Privacy Protection Act when it collected the data from hundreds of fan sites, including those of such musical acts as Kelly Clarkson, Britney Spears and Christina Aguilera.

Sony representatives declined to comment.

Sony's growing list of scandals raises the question of whether anyone at the conglomerate has an ounce of public relations savvy. If they don't, the company should find someone fast and that person's mission should be to smack down overly zealous marketing types who come up with lamebrain ideas like this one.

Or how about the one for last year's promotional party for the PlayStation 2 game God of War II that turned into an international embarrassment for Sony. In keeping with the video game's Greek mythology theme, comely women were hired to prance around topless and feed grapes to partygoers as part of the "theatrical dramatization." If that wasn't over the top enough, the centerpiece of the festivities was a butchered goat that was dressed up to look like the animal's entrails were falling out.

Across the world, animal activists howled and critics blasted the company's "bad taste." Sony apologized and yes, returned the goat carcass to the butcher. (I'm not kidding, that was their response).

Then there was the company's supreme blunder, which also came from the music division.

Before Sony, even some hardcore techies were unfamiliar with rootkits. Now, the two are synonymous. In 2005, Sony loaded MediaMax CD 3 and Extended Copy Protection (XCP) software on music CDs to help boost copy prevention. The software loaded a rootkit malware onto the PC of anyone who loaded the discs. Rootkits are programs designed to hijack control of a computer.

Texas' attorney general filed suit against the company and accused it of loading spyware onto computers. Class action suits were also filed in New York and California. The fallout lasted years.

The rootkit debacle makes this latest child-spying case all the more mind-boggling. Even if you give Sony the benefit of doubt and discount the possibility the company is evil, then what are you left with? Yes, that's right: incompetence.

I have met a lot of smart people from Sony and I have to believe that some of them realize the company is developing a nasty reputation as an enemy of consumer privacy.

Firefox: Most Risky App to Businesses in New Study

The good old FF browser gets little love when it comes to security

Firefox has its plate full when it comes to security. It has grown a substantial enough market share to place it in a strong second after Microsoft. This gives it a high profile and leaves it a desirable target to be exploited by hackers and malware writers. Worse yet, it has less money to fund security efforts that Microsoft, and according to some experts, less focus as well.

While small market share browsers like Opera and Chrome have built a reputation on their security (with Safari, being a noticeable exception, have a reputation for insecurity), Firefox continues to plod along in a day to day fight, trying to remain a secure platform while dealing with the challenges of browser celebrity.

Perhaps for this reason, Bit9, an application whitelisting firm that helps employers block employee access to certain apps, placed Firefox on the top its list of most vulnerable apps. The remaining spots on the list were filled out with more familiar names, with two through twelve respectively being: Adobe Flash & Acrobat; EMC VMware Player, Workstation, and other products; Sun Java Runtime Environment; Apple QuickTime, Safari, and iTunes; Symantec Norton products; Trend Micro OfficeScan; Citrix products; Aurigma and Lycos image uploaders; Skype; Yahoo Assistant; and Microsoft Windows Live Messenger.

The Bit9 study looked at several factors in ranking vulnerability. One factor was how popular the applications were. Another factor was how many known vulnerabilities existed, and how severe they were. Lastly, it looked at how hard patching was for the particular application.

In order to make the list, programs hand to run in Windows and not be centrally updatable via services such as Microsoft SMS and WSUS. Many say that the survey was unfair to Apple products because it kept easier patched Microsoft applications off the list.

In some ways, though Bit9's list is a useful benchmark. It aptly points out that many networks have Firefox installations running on machines, without the system administrator being fully aware of the instance of these installs. Thus, despite the fact that most of the vulnerabilities looked at have been patched, the installs may not receive these patches immediately, until the employee upgrades to the next edition of the browser.

The study's conclusions only marginally apply to the consumer market. However, when it comes to the business market, the study argues that picking or allowing employees to run Firefox, even with its security plug-ins, is a ticket to the IT danger zone as malware increasingly targets application layer targets such as Firefox.

Security in Recession

With the National Bureau of Economic Research in the United States announcing last week that the U.S. has officially been in recession since Dec. 2007, IT budgets are highly likely to be strictly controlled both in the U.S. and in other parts of the world. I had a conversation with a friend over the weekend, and he asked me if I expect redundancies in the IT Security industry, as companies could no longer afford to have dedicated security personnel on their books.

To be honest, yes I think there will be. However, I also think that the overall IT security industry will continue to grow in 2009 - bad guys are not going away anytime soon, and a lot of their existing scams work really well in this economic climate. Companies who choose to think otherwise may well end up regretting it in the long term, and here are my thoughts on why:

At the end of the day, security boils down to risk management. The three core values every organization needs to protect are often shown in the acronym CIA (Confidentiality, Integrity, Availability). Different organizations prioritize on different areas, but I think when it comes to economic downturn, confidentiality, and availability are obviously the most affected.

In terms of confidentiality, we are talking about an organization’s private data being protected. I’m based in Ireland, where 17,000 people had their jobs slashed in November. This is a drop in the ocean compared to other countries, particularly the half a million employees who lost jobs in the U.S. Insider threats have long been one of the largest risks facing organizations, especially in the case of the so-called “disgruntled employee.” With large number of employees made redundant, having their salaries cut, etc., there are a lot of incentives for these same employees to engage in data theft.

When people feel hard done by their employers, they are more likely to relax their morals. In these cases they may no longer consider taking confidential company information outside of the company as stealing. They feel an entitlement to this information, after all, they’ve put years of work into helping the company grow. The very fact that there are so many Data Leak/Loss Prevention (DLP) solutions on the market should give you an idea of just how big this problem is - and I think the risk of Data Theft/Loss is going to increase in the current climate

Which brings us to the other big factor - Availability. Almost every company is currently engaged in examining their costs, and reducing them wherever possible. Whether it is in terms of head count or even simply lowering all of the thermostats in their buildings by five degrees (my hands are going blue typing this), a lot of companies are walking a very fine line trying to keep afloat for the next two to three years - even the smallest misfortune could tip the ship.

This is where malware comes in. The recent WORM_DOWNAD.A attack was quite successful in infecting unpatched Windows machines, with a quite a few companies having thousands of machines infected by the threat. Cleaning a threat like this costs a lot of money - a company may need to pay their IT staff overtime to fix the problem, or they may have to bring in external contractors. That’s not where the real loss is, however. Picture a company of 4000 employees. Now picture all of those employees being unable to use their machines for three hours while the systems are being cleaned, patched and tested. That is 12000 man-hours of work which that company is paying for, and getting nothing in return. To put it another way, that’s about 6.5 employees’ salaries for the year which sums up to around 200-250K. There are very few companies that have that kind of money to burn at the moment.

So, to any organization thinking of cutting their security budgets, think long and hard about weighing the short term savings with the potential losses. I wish I could say that there won’t be companies that would go under because of a malware attack in the next couple of months - but optimism is not exactly in large supply at the moment.

Remove Antivirus 360 - Antivirus 360 Removal Instructions

We have bought you something that most of you have been pulling your hair out over. Those annoying fake anti spyware programs that claim to be real. They fake scan your system and "find" spyware on your PC that you can only remove if you purchase the software to then find out it does not work.

Well get rid of it now with our steps.......

Antivirus 360 is latest rogue anti-spyware program which uses scare tactics to promote itself using terrible false scan results, pop-ups, security alerts e.t.c.
Antivirus 360 uses Vundo Trojan in order to install itself on your computer without any informing and approval. Once installed Antivirus 360 will configure itself to run automatical scan each time you turn on your computer. Once you turn on your computer, Antivirus 360 will say that it is seriously infected with different types of malware. Moreover, Antivirus 360 states that legitimate Windows files are “dangerous threats”. And the only way to remove all detected trash is to purchase licensed version of this pseudo-security software. Also Antivirus 360 may put your data and privacy on risk. So we recommend you to remove Antivirus 360 manually or using our removal tool (Spyware Doctor + antivirus).



How to remove Antivirus 360 manually:
It's possible to remove Antivirus 360 manually , but you have to be very experienced in dealing with registry entries, program files and .dll files.


The files to be deleted:

* %Program Files%\A360\av360.exe
* %UserProfile%\Desktop\Antivirus 360.lnk
* %UserProfile%\Start Menu\Antivirus 360\Help.lnk
* %UserProfile%\Start Menu\Antivirus 360\Registration.lnk
* %UserProfile%\Start Menu\Antivirus 360\Antivirus 360.lnk
* %UserProfile%\Application Data\Microsoft\Internet Explorer\Quick Launch\Antivirus 360.lnk

Remove registry entries:

* HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\13376694984709702142491016734454
* HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Run “13376694984709702142491016734454″

Please be careful because manual removal of Antivirus 360 may seriously damage operational system and sensitive data. Also there is a big possibility of incomplete removal, because some files could be hidden and program could re-install itself after you delete files and registry entries.

In Midst of Economic Meltdown, Malware Business is Booming

1.9 million job losses, a dollar worth less than the Canadian and Australian dollar, the collapse of the auto industry, the complete meltdown of credit. What a year it’s been for we working stiffs!

If you, as many ‘mericans already have, find yourself on the job hunt in the near future, forget about real estate, investment, Avon sales or tool and die work. Apparently, the boom industry in 2009 will be in the crimeware sector. Hopefully, with corresponding spikes in the antivirus industry (please don’t leave me to the spammers!).

According to industry insiders, 2008 saw a 258% spike in the URLs spreading contagions via phishing tactics. Classic scams like emulating login portals to harvest valuable personal data, passwords and usernames are becoming more common as cyber criminals perfect their craft. Malicious tapeworms, retroviruses, MoBo-VD, circuitry eating zombie nets and Trojan donkey-kits are proliferating rapidly.

If you do a lot online banking, social networking, or even MMORPGing think twice before throwing your social security number, birthday, maiden name and blood type around the internet. Phishing tactics are no longer as transparent as the koobface worm we’re still seeing on Facebook.

These dweeb and nerd criminals manage to make some convincing mimic logon pages and tricky programs. Red flags to look for include any obviously ex-Soviet URLs (.ru, .az, .kz, .by .cz, .tm et al), key misspellings (think Homtail, hotmale, or hottamale instead of hotmail), and anything that has a .exe within a hundred feet of it.

If, on the other hand, you’re looking to get involved in the profitable crimeware industry, there are great opportunities out there. Why not work as the overlord of a zombie botnet? Trading in stolen credit card numbers would be a refreshing career change, no? Just be prepared to feel my wrath, and the wrath of anyone else who has ever lost personal information!

If you’re not feeling ambitious enough for a fast track career in malware development, you’re probably going to want arm yourself with up-to-date antivirus and antispyware software. Check out our software reviews to keep your identity secure.