The Best And Simplest Computer Virus Protection

Many computer users live in fear of computer viruses. It is true that computer viruses can do a lot of damage that most likely could have been easily prevented – that is if they had a working up to date virus program.

First of all be reassured. Even if your computer is "wiped clean" or "wiped out" you may not be in the doghouse so to speak. If you use the computer mainly for browsing on the internet, then it is only a matter of a reinstall of windows to get you on the web again. Your computer is only a device to access the internet. It is as if you get a new phone to plug into the wall or a new TV to watch the channels that were there that were and are still there.

Your email most likely is safe as well. If you use a web based mail program like hotmail or yahoo to access your email – then your email is most likely still sitting on that company's server in California, Bombay India or somewhere else in the world. If Microsoft goes bust, your lost email will be the least of your problems in today's world. If you use a mail reader client like Microsoft Outlook or Outlook Express, then at the worst your new email is sitting safely at that computer mail server computer.

Next it can be can be said that we have gotten off easy with computer viruses. Well at least up the present. Computer viruses can be written by its developer to do anything the developer wishes. For the most part computer viruses have been relatively innocuous. The majority of the computer viruses that you will encounter, at present, in your career as computer user, are of the "Trojan" variety and are not that mean or destructive to your computer. . Trojan antivirus are computer viruses that patiently sit in wait for a signal from a control computer, somewhere in the world, to be part of a large scale computer attack on some remote computer to overwhelm that service and disrupt its function on the internet.. You may have heard such tales in regards to C.N.N. or Amazon having their internet service being knocked out of service maliciously. Believe it or not it is estimated that up to 50 – 60 % of most computers have these Trojan viruses sitting quietly and patiently in their computers and do not know and most likely will never know that they are infected.

The first rules of computer security is that if the computer is used at for storing delicate, sensitive or important data - then that computer should not be attached to the internet or have an internet connection. It's as simple as that. If you don't talk then you can never be accused of blabbing.

As an example there was a firm that was allowed access to very confidential government data as part of its business plan. . It was made very clear, by the government agency involved as a sponsor, that this data was most confidential. I f this information was somehow leaked or placed on the internet then dire consequences would occur. What could be a simpler message? And yet in this case, all for the convenience of the owner of the firm, the computer was directly attached to a fax computer. Even of that computer was only connected to the fax max machine computer for a split second that is all it would take for the wrong information to "get out". Politicians follow the rule of deniability. Why shouldn't you. ? Make your life trouble free. If the computer is nowhere near the internet in any way shape or form you can never be blamed. Simple as that.

The most important factor in computer antivirus protection is not so much the product used or installed – and there is no shortage of very reasonable computer antivirus products. The most important factor for computer antivirus security protection is that updates for the antivirus be done on a regular basis.

When you purchase a new antivirus product or complete a renewal product that is in essence what you are doing. It as if you are buoying a magazine subscription for the year.

By purchasing the subscription you are now entitled to antivirus updates for the coming year. New computer viruses are coming out "all the time". It does you little good to be protected from last years plague. You need to be protected from the current viruses that are causing the havoc now.

Make sure that you either have a copy of an antivirus installed that has current virus definitions or if you purchased a commercial product that you have a valid subscription that allows you access to the current up to date virus lists. Next be sure that you run regular full comprehensive antivirus scans to detect and quarantine new and perhaps dangerous computer viruses. More featured commercial antivirus programs may do this automatically.

In the end most of life comes down to preparation and attention to detail. A major role of fire departments is not only to fight fires but fire prevention. Your computer antivirus protections scheme and program should be likewise.

How to Share Internet Connection Over WiFi in Windows 7?

Internet is a term that doesn’t require any introduction these days. Most of the people use Internet either for education or work or entertainment purpose. There are several ways through which one can get an Internet connection for their device and one of the most popular way is through “sharing”. With WiFi capabilities, you can access Internet for free. However, you need to have a Wi-Fi router to share the Internet connection between multiple devices, which is a bit costly and not everyone can afford it. So, here is a simple and free method to share yourinternet connection with other devices like Mobiles, Laptops, iPads etc…using your computer’s in-built WiFi.

Connectify is a small utility for Windows7 that enables you to share your Internet connection with other laptops, mobiles or any type of Wi-Fi enabled devices. What the “Connectify” utility does is, it actually turns your Windows 7 laptop/computer into a WiFi hotspot, thus sharing your Internet connection become easy.
Simply, install it and share the internet connection over WiFi with all other WiFi enabled devices.

Make Usb Device Storage Only

There may be several reasons why one would want his USB drives such as Flash drives or external hard disks to be read-only.  A few reasons would be :
  • To prevent someone from stealing data on our computer
  • To prevent our USB drive from getting infected with virus when plugged into other people’s computer.
  • Don’t want the data present in the pen drive to be modified.
This can be dealt easily using the below two ways.

Prevent Write Access to USB Storage Devices

  1. Start -> Run -> enter “regedit” to open the registry editor on your system.
  2. Navigate to the following registry key
    HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\System\CurrentControlSet\Control\StorageDevicePolicies
  3. Create a new DWORD under this key with a name called “WriteProtect” and assign 1 as its value.
  4. That’s it! All the USB storage devices on your computer are now read-only. To revert back to the original state, simply change the “WriteProtect” key to 0.
If you’re worried about handling your registry editor, simply use the Thumbscrew or Wenovo USB disk access manager tools instead of following the above process.

Make USB Flash Drive Read-Only

USB Dummy Protect is a freeware utility that sits in your pen drive and takes up all the available free space on the drive, thus letting no data to be entered into the drive. It makes the USB drive read-only.
Simply, copy the .exe file to the USB drive and run it. A dummy file will be created and the tool allocates all the remaining or available space to it. If you ever want to add or copy some data in future, simply delete the dummy file.

Background of Password cracking

Passwords to access computer systems are usually stored, in some form, in a database in order for the system to perform password verification. To enhance the privacy of passwords, the stored password verification data is generally produced by applying a one-way function to the password, possibly in combination with other available data. For simplicity of this discussion, when the one-way function does not incorporate a secret key, other than the password, we refer to the one way function employed as a hash and its output as a hashed password. Even though functions that create hashed passwords may be cryptographically secure, possession of a hashed password provides a quick way to verify guesses for the password by applying the function to each guess, and comparing the result to the verification data. The most commonly used hash functions can be computed rapidly and the attacker can do this repeatedly with different guesses until a valid match is found, meaning the plaintext password has been recovered.

The term password cracking is typically limited to recovery of one or more plaintext passwords from hashed passwords. Password cracking requires that an attacker can gain access to a hashed password, either by reading the password verification database or intercepting a hashed password sent over an open network, or has some other way to rapidly and without limit test if a guessed password is correct. Without the hashed password, the attacker can still attempt access to the computer system in question with guessed passwords. However well designed systems limit the number of failed access attempts and can alert administrators to trace the source of the attack if that quota is exceeded. With the hashed password, the attacker can work undetected, and if the attacker has obtained several hashed passwords, the chances for cracking at least one is quite high. There are also many other ways of obtaining passwords illicitly, such as social engineering, wiretapping, keystroke logging, login spoofing, dumpster diving, timing attack, etc.. However, cracking usually designates a guessing attack.

Cracking may be combined with other techniques. For example, use of a hash-based challenge-response authentication method for password verification may provide a hashed password to an eavesdropper, who can then crack the password. A number of stronger cryptographic protocols exist that do not expose hashed-passwords during verification over a network, either by protecting them in transmission using a high-grade key, or by using a zero-knowledge password proof.

Career Talk: A Day In The Life Of A Lawyer

A lawyer is a person who is authorized by the state or country to practice law, give advice to his or her clients and represent their legal matters in the courts. According to classes or ranks of jurists lawyers can be designated as advocate, attorney, barrister, counselor and solicitor. A lawyer has to study law and new laws on a regular basis to stay up to date in order to protect their clients. This is the basics of a career in law, protecting your client's freedoms and rights.

A Day In The Life Of A Lawyer.

1. Get ready to travel: Lawyers spend most of their time in offices and courtrooms. They travel to meet their clients wherever they are and homes, business places, even emergency rooms in hospitals and state or federal prisons can be a fairly regular visit depending on which area of the law a lawyer is involved. They also travel different places for meetings and to gather proof or evidence for their case that they can submit to the courts, legislative bodies, or to other high authorities of the law.

2. Irregular work hours may be the norm: Lawyers quite often have irregular work schedules and even work for several hours in discussing with clients or preparing the briefs of the case during non office hours.

3. Back to the studying board: A lawyer is also known as an attorney who acts both as an advocate and an advisor in society. The advocates represent one of their clients in criminal or civil trials by arguing and presenting evidence to the court to protect their client. On the other hand the advisors give advice to their clients regarding their business and legal personal matters. All the lawyers, whether an advocate or an advisor, have to research the purpose of laws and judicial decisions to apply them in the critical circumstances faced by their clients. The most important aspect is that a lawyer's job depends very much upon his or her own field of specialization and position. All this requires continual studying.

Types of Lawyers:

There are allot of areas to specialize in as a lawyer. This list is not exhaustive but covers some of the most popular fields you'll be able to specialize into if becoming a lawyer.

Immigration lawyer, wrongful death, traffic, tax, software, social security, securities, personal injury lawyers, patent, nursing home, mesothelioma, medical malpractice, malpractice, litigation, international, insurance, injury, fraud, employment, dwi, dui, divorce, defense, criminal, construction, corporate, compensation, car accident, bankruptcy, auto accident, assault and asbestos lawyers.

How to Become a Lawyer

To become a lawyer you'll have to attend law school via a college or university after your high school studies. There are some online law schools that offer the full Juris Doctor [JD] programs which do not require taking the law school admission test [LSAT]. It is not necessary to quit your job to become a lawyer. There are special JD programs for those students who are interested in working at the same time as pursuing their education in their spare time.

Simply conduct further research online by searching for the keywords of "online law degrees" or "juris degree from home" with quotes around the keywords.

Combating Viruses with Security Software

Help, I was sitting in front my computer and it starting acting strange! Pop-ups were on my screen and I was not even surfing the web. My home page was changed somehow and so did other web settings. My programs are at a crawl and overall my computer is just not working the way it should be.

If this sounds like your computer, chances are you have been infected with some type of malicious software. Several types of software can infect your computer; some of these are spyware, a virus, a Trojan, and a worm. That is why you need security software.

Below is a brief and simple description of the software that can infect your computer and cause poor performance.

· Spyware is a program that gathers information about the user through the internet without their knowledge. It monitors your web activity and passes this information to another party without your knowledge. Spyware is designed for commercial gain, thus when it is installed in your computer you will probably receive unsolicited pop-up advertisements. It can also gather your email addresses, passwords, and credit card numbers stored on your computer.

· A virus is programming code or a piece of code that loads onto your computer without your consent. A virus is also self-replicating by inserting copies into an executable code or documents. Any virus is dangerous as it uses up memory and brings your system to a halt.

· A worm is much like a virus in the fact that it is self-replicating but differs in the fact that it does not need another program to do so. A worm can spread itself without any action from the user. A worm can attach itself to you address book and send a copy to everyone in it, then attaches itself to the receivers address book in addition, send it out to everyone in that address book. Worms are dangerous and in the end can cause networks to crash.

· Trojans are designed as legitimate software that you can download onto your computer. Once installed though, they can be annoying and/or malicious. Annoying activities of a Trojan would be changing your desktop around or silly icons appearing. Malicious damage from a Trojan is capable of deleting files on your computer and allowing personal and confidential information to be collected without you being aware.

Preventing spyware and other malicious software from infecting your computer through security software is lots easier going online and finding a reputable online scanning site after the fact. Sometimes if your computer is infected, you may not even be able to get online. Therefore, prevention is better than fixing.

You can protect your computer from malicious programs in many ways. Here are a few tips to consider :

Always have the latest version of anti virus and anti spyware technology on your computer. You will also need to keep the program files up to date in order to protect against newest threats.

Only download files from a trusted source. If you are not sure, run a virus scan on the file before downloading it or saving to your computer.

There are limitless resources on the internet offering anti spyware and antivirus programs. Many sites offer free online scans, and provide instructions for removal of any malicious programs on your computer. Once you have selected a well known, (well-known being the optimal word) follow the instructions for installation carefully to ensure that the scan will work properly. Below are the most common and well-known virus and spyware removal programs.

McAfee (mcafee.com) virus remover features up-to-date protection from the latest viruses and web activity threats for the user. They have three main anti-virus and anti-spyware programs that you can choose perfect for home and business uses.

Microsoft has an anti spyware (microsoft.com) removal tool that you can use to scan your computer. This functions mainly by reviewing and checking your files for unwanted software contents, and once found can be selected and removed depending on the procedures indicated on the program. Just follow the tools and guides on how you can remove the infected files.

Ad Ware Personal provided by Lavasoft.com features scanning and fixing infected files and drives, detection of known and unknown but potentially damaging software with its Code Sequence Identification (CSI) technology. This program also has a spyware removal and capabilities of removing other damaging programs in your system.

The above sites are just a few of anti spyware and anti virus removal programs that are available on the web. Take the time and do the research and you will find the right security software for your needs. Once again, it is imperative that the site you select for your computer security is credible. 

Creating Holiday Digital Photo Albums

After wonderful holiday and other family gatherings,you need create photo albums, edit your digital photos, and then watch them on your TV using your DVD player. Imagine being able to show your friends and family all of your great shots in the comfort of your living room! Your whole family can enjoy this private photo albums.

This article will help you create your Digital Photo Albums yourself. These freeware or sharewares combine ease-of-use, power and flexibility.If you have older photos that are too delicate for handling, you can preserve the image forever on this software.

Album Creator Pro is a Photo Album product from firmtools, get 5 Stars SoftSea Rating, AlbumCreator lets you create online albums from your digital photos using unique and highly professional Flash and HTML theme templates. You can customize the existing templates, create your own or download additional ones. The software also includes editing tools to enhance your photos, remove red eye, adjust colors, apply watermarks and more. It supports EXIF data, so you add EXIF information as image comment or image title. Album Creator Pro includes a simple FTP client that lets you upload the finished album to your web site. You can choose between several Flash themes and a variety of HTML templates, each of them unique and sophisticated. Additional features include lossless rotation and direct import of photos from your digital camera.

Flash Album Creator is from dreamingsoft, Flash Album Creator lets you create your own digital photo slideshow and publish it as a Flash file on the web, or as standalone EXE file. The slideshow comes with a small navigation menu that the user can use to start/pause the slideshow. When used for web publishing, Flash Album Creator can also create the HTML page, including custom title and background. The result is an attractive Flash presentation of your images. The software can only handle images properly that are larger than 640x480 (most digital camera images are). Other can also be processed but may be stretched to fit.

PhotoAlbumStudio is from exapower, PhotoAlbumStudio allows you to manage and distribute your digital pictures. It provides an interface to catalog your pictures (jpeg and gif) in virtual albums that can be placed on your hard drive or burned on a CD (burner not included). Since the presentation is HTML/Java based, you can also upload it to your web site and offer it for online viewing. Each picture may be provided with a comment or a short story. A number of albums may be managed in the project or catalog - they are displayed on an initial index page, so the viewer can choose an album. A project may be saved for later editing and published on a local hard disk along with JavaAlbum viewer. No extra program installation is required to view the published albums. PhotoAlbumStudio is very easy-to-use, all you need to do is select the images to be included, and generate the nice-looking photo album.

Photozig Albums Express is a Photo Album product from photozig, Photozig Albums is the complete solution for managing digital photos and short videos in the desktop computer with web connectivity. Photozig Albums software is the ultimate digital photo album and photo organizer software for consumers, consisting of digital camera/scanner transfer, album organizer, picture viewer, image editor, slideshow software, generator of free animated screensavers, and much more. You can also send free online photo albums to the internet and email your digital photos to your family and friends easily.

Centico Photo Album is from centico, Organize your photos in rich albums that contain both photos and text. Ordinary albums that show only photos are ok, but not very interesting. By adding text directly inside the album you will create attention-grabbing albums that your friends and family will love to see. This is a outstanding way to immortalize your child's antics, or what happened during the vacation.

JAlbum is a Photo Album product from datadosen, get 5 Stars SoftSea Rating, JAlbum allows you to create nice looking photo galleries for the web. You can simply select or drop drag/drop folders containing images or movie files onto JAlbum and it will create thumbnails and HTML pages to publish your images as a gallery or picture slideshow. JAlbum also includes a small web server that enables you to share images directly from your PC, without the need to upload any files to a web host. The galleries are based on various template designs and appearance can be further customized by advanced users. Additional features include support for EXIF data, URL encoding of file names, style sheets, lossless image manipulation, optional Shutterfly integration, (built in FTP client, UPnP support, and more.

What Is Spyware Software And What Does It Do?

If you own a computer and are connected to the internet then you will almost definitely have heard of spyware software and will also be at risk. The purpose of this article is to inform readers as to the risks of spyware software and explain exactly what spyware is and what it does.

Spyware as the name suggests is software that spy's on you and collects information on your internet usage. The computer user will be unaware that this is happening as spyware software applications are usually hidden components in both freeware and shareware programs that can be downloaded from the internet. Spyware is installed without your knowledge or consent and poses some very real threats.

Once spyware software has been installed onto your computer it will actively begin monitoring your activity on the internet and will transmit all the information it gathers onto its owner which is usually an advertiser of some sorts.

Spyware software is very dangerous and this illegal software can record your internet history, passwords, and keystrokes, and some spyware can also record other confidential and private information. The only proven and successful way to get rid of spyware is to install a spyware blocker or anti-spyware software. These are available in both free and paid software versions.

If you use the internet, for whatever use, you should also use a spyware blocker or spyware removal software. It is also essential that you run this spyware removal software daily to remove any threats to your personal information. Doing this will not only help to keep your internet usage and private information safe but it will also help to keep your computer running efficiently.

Spyware software is as mentioned very dangerous and allowing your personal information which can include passwords and bank details to get into the hands of the wrong people can prove detrimental. Act now and install anti-spyware software and keep your information safe.