Internet Fixes Tips And Tricks

Here is a little info on Conficker. It is still around and causing problems for more and more people.

Conficker uses pop-ups to warn of PC infection and offers fake antivirus software, called ‘SpywareProtect2009′ at a price of $49.95. If purchased, credit card information is stolen and the virus downloads even more malicious software.

The bad thing about getting the pop-up ‘SpywareProtect2009′ is that it usually freezes your PC.  The only way to shut it down is with the power button.  (You will never see me recommend this for anything else.  Its not a good idea.)  If you have AVG or Norton installed they will pick the virus up and quarantine it when you reboot.  There are others but I know these two work for sure. 

Did you know that Windows supports using passwords of up to 127 characters? I don’t use passwords anymore, and I haven’t for years. I’ve switched to using password phrases instead.

Why do I use password phrases?

- Why would you want to remember a password like 2%d7as$d when you could just remember a sentence like “are bandwidth charges on the horizon” or “Send Me Your Computer Questions” or “I hate my old car!” or “Holy Molly not another charge for publishing“

- You can use uppercase, lowercase, special characters, or even spaces… but you are using them in context, which makes it much more natural to remember.

- Post-it notes on your monitor are not secure. Sorry.

- Even the most efficient forms of password cracking, using pre-computed rainbow tables, will never be able to crack a password with 20 or more characters.

These days, windows passwords can be cracked in no more than a few seconds. If somebody can get physical access to your machine, they can boot off one of the hacker tool cds available all over the internet, and they will typically have your password in seconds, if they know what they are doing.

Even with brute force cracking, there is no possible way that you can crack a password that long. Even if somebody had the super computing power to do so, hopefully you change your password every few months or so.

It may be difficult to use password phrases on other operating systems, or especially on websites, because they don’t properly handle spaces in the password, or have a small password length limit. One of the tricks that I usually do is use a password phrase without the spaces, if I possibly can.

So go change your password now.

This was after they supposable floated around on the Internet for several weeks!

Come on President Obama.  You have to tighten up the networks at the White House and the Pentagon.  This is simple networking 101.

You have people that can track the data after government employees open the doors for people when they use Peer to Peer File Sharing to download music.

You can buy software that scans for and closes the ports that File Sharing programs use on a Network but someone in the IT field should not have to tell you this.  I do remember what the government pays for a hammer so software may be out of the question.

Talk to some of your older IT people about a batch file that will load and shut down file sharing ports on all of your PC’s each time they are started.  This is a low cost fix.

One last item while I am on this rant.  How many Flash Drives, IPods, and Zune’s are taken in and out of the White House and Pentagon every day?  These all will carry thousands of files.

They want to put my Health Records on the Web. Not in my life time!!

“Congress should not enact an expensive spending bill under the pretense of stimulus or recovery. Reckless spending of borrowed money was at the root of the financial crisis, and this bill is more of the same. We cannot spend our way to prosperity, and such an expansion of the federal government will put a crushing burden on taxpayers (Grandchildren and Great Grandchildren) in the long-term.”

The Registry is the heart and soul of Windows; damage it and the chances are the Windows Operating system will stop working. It is for this reason that registry editing should only be undertaken by those who are familiar with the way it works, and are competent enough to make any necessary changes.

While it is possible to follow step by step instructions in order to edit the registry, the first precaution necessary, prior to even attempting to make alterations, is to ensure that you have a current backup of the registry, either as a full backup or a backup of the respective registry hive. Should disaster strike and a registry edit go wrong you will, at least, have a working backup with which to replace the damaged registry hive.

To backup the registry proceed as follows:

1. Click Start.

2. From the menu click Run.

3. In the Run dialog box type: regedit.

4. The Windows registry Editor will now open.

5. Click the File option on the main toolbar and, from the drop down menu, select Export.

6. In the Export Registry File dialog box select All.

7. Now name the file.

8. Finally click the Save button.

9. To return the registry back to its original state should something go wrong simply click on the File option on the main registry editor toolbar and then select Import.