The Windows Fix » Security

Network Solutions Provides the Perfect Solution for Private Domain Registration

T.J. Mininday — Thu, 09 Jun 2011 18:53:02 +0000

If you have own your own website, then you will be required to register a domain name. However, there are a number of advantages to be had from investing in domain private registration.

When you register the domain name of any website, you are required to provide a certain amount of information for the WHOIS directory. Being registered can have a number of benefits in terms of enabling internet security. This can be particularly useful if you own a business website, as the WHOIS directory can help combat the risk of fraud, and build your customers’ confidence in your online shopping facilities.

However, this form of public registration can have its drawbacks. Making contact information public can make you a target for spam and even identity fraud. If you’re keen to avoid receiving a lot more junk mail and telesales calls, you might consider private domain registration instead.

Private domain registration is usually a quick and straightforward process which allows you to gain the same control over your domain name as you would have with a publicly registered address. The personal address and contact details which you would usually use to register your domain name are replaced with those of the registration company.

This allows your personal information to stay much more private, while your site will continue to benefit from the verified status gain through registration. This can be a great way to avoid spam emails and as well as junk mail, which can actually have a negative effect on the efficiency of your business.

It can also help help to protect your company from fraud and ‘data miners’. Data mining is the process of extracting personal data (as might be found on your WHO directory entry) for statistical analysis or marketing precision. However, both processes can prove a hindrance, or even detrimental, towards the efficient functioning of your own business.

Many private domain registration providers also offer a service by which they are able to filter the emails that are sent to the email address you have provided. So, although you will be withholding your personal email address within the WHOIS directory, this doesn’t mean that you will miss out on messages from those who are genuinely attempting to contact your or your business. Emails which are not spam or junk mail will then be forwarded to a designated email account for you to read.

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Run Applications on a Virtual Hard Drive with Sandboxie

T.J. Mininday — Sun, 10 May 2009 02:44:04 +0000

With any new application that’s installed on your computer, there’s always a worry that it’s going to possibly infect your system with something. Some worry more than others, but why should this be such a worrisome. It would be nice if you could isolate any application from the rest of your critical programs. You can run them in a complete virtual environment with VMWARE or Microsoft’s Virtual PC, but that can be time consuming and time is something a lot of us don’t have. There is another great alternative though.

Sandboxie essentially runs all applications in a isolated protected environment, away from the rest of your precious Windows programs. Secure Web Browsing, Enhanced Privacy and Secure E-Mailing are the app’s main protective measures. The program places any installed application that you specify, into a completely separate area of your hard disk. The below animation gives you a better idea of how exactly it works.

So if you want to try out some free applications, but worried about infecting your system, this program is perfect for you. Check it out…Sandboxie.

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Backup and Monitor the Windows Registry with SpyMe Tools

T.J. Mininday — Wed, 11 Mar 2009 21:44:42 +0000

Any time a new installation is needed on any version of Windows, people tend to hold their breath or cross their fingers, hoping that it won’t screw up their computer. And as we all know, malware can really screw up your system as well, especially when it does so without your knowledge. It would be nice to see any modifications made to a system in real-time. SpyMe Tools does just that.

SpyMe Tools is an application to monitor any registry and disk changes to the system. If anything is installed your PC, SpyMe is able to detect such modifications. Which can become particularly handy when it comes to adware, spyware and just about every other file change at any given point and time.

They do this by constantly looking for changes in your computer and “dumping” them during the various states that it is in. The type of procedure it uses, also makes it work very well for registry backup purposes as well. The dump files are encrypted so that any authorized access cannot look at the specific changes made to the system.

SpyMe Tools

via Lifehacker

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Password Protect any Windows Folder from Anyone

T.J. Mininday — Tue, 10 Mar 2009 03:49:21 +0000

Protecting confidential data is highly important in today’s world. In a life scammers, identity thieves and many other crooks. The built-in security in Windows sometimes just isn’t enough protection when it comes to protecting tax documents and confidential data. If your PC is left on and someone wants to walk in and peruse your folders, it can easily be done. Having password protection on folders even against the administrator account is necessary.

My Lockbox can password protect any folder from any user account on your computer. It has the ability to require a password from even the administrator and even in safe mode. Almost any folder can be protected.

As you can see above, protecting folders is as simple as browsing to its location, selecting it, and setting your password of choice.

Just another added piece of security, in a every growing insecure world.

My Lockbox

via Techie Portal

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Fix SVCHOST Errors and Problems with SVCHOST Viewer

T.J. Mininday — Fri, 27 Feb 2009 00:52:23 +0000

Whenever your PC begins problems, most people try the infamous CTRL-ALT-Delete>Task Manager and determine what processes are running and where. Of course since the beginning of “Windows Time”, we haven’t seen much come about from the Windows Task Manager. A simple display of all running processes, their CPU ID and the memory that they are consuming. A lot of the time we don’t recognize a process and we resort to “Googling” what exactly one of them is. One of the most common processes you will always see is the SVCHOST.exe.

The problem with SVCHOST.exe is that it typically contains hidden processes within it. And you have no idea what processes these are without some type of third party utility like SVCHOST Viewer.

SVCHOST Viewer is a simple, single file executable file that can display what each of the SVCHOST files are and what is running within them. This can come in handy if you are trying to diagnose a problem with a particular exe attached to the SVCHOST process. This will display each of the files in a Windows Explorer like tree form, which you can expand individually.

Checkout SVCHOST Viewer

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Use CurrPorts to Check Open Ports on your Local Computer

T.J. Mininday — Wed, 25 Feb 2009 05:25:55 +0000

Whether you know it or not, for every application that access your internet connection or network in some way, uses some type of network port. Some examples include port 80(http/web) or port 443(https/ssl), which you use regularly with your everyday PC. Along with that includes many applications that access various other ports that you may not know about. And in order to serious these various used ports, you typically need some type of application to monitor it.

CurrPorts from Nirsoft is a free application that you may run on your Windows PC to monitor TCP/IP and UDP ports locally. The display includes actual process information, protocol, local and remote IP addresses, and the actual location of the executable application. Along with monitoring capabilities, you also can kill each of these processes if need be. You may then also export this information to HTML, XML or tab delimited files.

Get CurrPorts from Nirsoft

via

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Encrypt Your Keystrokes with KeyScrambler

T.J. Mininday — Tue, 24 Feb 2009 06:06:33 +0000

One of the scariest malware applications that people rarely seem to fear are key loggers. A simple key logging application that installs onto your machine and can record every keystroke, including usernames, passwords and credit card numbers. These types of apps really should be the most feared set of malware apps on the web. Fortunately there is protection.

KeyScramber Personal is a browser add-on for Firefox, IE and opera that can encrpt your keystrokes as you type. It simply encrypts all of your browser keystrokes as you type. It works on sorts of web forms and applications, including all types of login boxes and credit card numbers.

Get KeyScrambler Personal

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Optimize your Windows PC Easy with Glary Utilities

T.J. Mininday — Sun, 22 Feb 2009 05:47:47 +0000

There are several utilities out there that advertise that they can clean-up your temporary internet files, your Startup applications or quickly clean-up your registry, but usually they come in separate programs and each require their own scan. Having something all inclusive with the whole ball of wax, that works without any lingering problems, is the ultimate solution. That’s why I’m recommending Glary Utilities today, from Glarysoft.

Glary Utilities is an all-in-one Registry Cleaner, Shortcuts Fixer, Startup Manager, Temp files cleaner, Tracks Eraser and Spyware Remover. Although each may not be as in depth as some of the dedicated cleaning tools, it does a great job of cleaning up all of the items in each of these categories.

The entire scan on my computer lasted only about 5 minutes and it found several dozen issues that it recommended be resolved.

Along with the scanning tools, Glary Utilities also includes the following:

Clean Up & Repair

Uninstall Manager

Optimize and Improve

Startup Manager
Memory Optimizer
Context Menu Manager
Registry Defrag

Privacy & Security

File Shredder
File Undelete
File Encrypter and Decrypter

Files & Folders

Disk Analysis
Duplicate Files Finder
Empty Folders Finder
File Splitter and Joiner

System Tools

Process Manager
Internet Explorer Assistant
Windows Standard Tools

As you can see there really isn’t an area that Glary Utilities doesn’t cover. All of administrative tools you need, all rolled into one package and all free.

I personally like the Startup Manager more than anything. It essentially takes the poor included MSCONFIG startup manager and injects with a nice, easy to read GUI interface.

Get Glary Utilities Here

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TrueCrypt is the Easiest way to Encrypt Your Hard Drive

T.J. Mininday — Fri, 20 Feb 2009 02:02:04 +0000

Keeping your data safe from the outside can prove difficult these days. There are already so many tools out there that can easily bypass the Windows administrator password. And with that your files are immediately open to the entire world to browse and peruse.There a few options out there to protect yourself against these types of offenses, but none quite as easy as TrueCrypt.

TrueCrypt creates a virtual hard drive on your PC for you to store confidential data for no other to look at without the encrypted pass phrase. It’s all done on the fly and automatically, without any user intervention.

The virtual drive can be buried deep within your system away from anyone even being able to identify between random data and the virtual encrypted disk. It’s truly an amazing product if you are specifically worried about keeping your data safe away from a laptop thief.

Other features include:

Encryption of an entire drive such as flash or any other drive.
Two levels of “Plausible Deniability”.
Unidentifiable volumes. Drives cannot be distinguished from random data.
Encryption algorithms include: AES-256, Serpent, and Twofish.

Check it out, it’s the easiest, quickest and cheapest encryption solution out on the web today.

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Hide Your E-Mail Address From Spam with HTMLEncoder

T.J. Mininday — Tue, 17 Feb 2009 01:17:14 +0000

Spam, spam, spam…the more the internet grows, the more spam grows. Anyone that doesn’t get spam into their mailbox doesn’t really don’t have a true mailbox. Over time and your e-mail address gets spread across the web, you never really know where it starts, but it begins to happen.

There protective measure put in place for many ‘spam starters’, but unfortunately very few work perfectly. One that appears to be perfect is what I’m here to describe today. It’s called HTML Encoder from SiteUp Networks.

HTML Encoder takes your e-mail address and converts it to what almost appears as an encrypted address. It will display properly on a website, but in the source code, where spam bots search, you’ll only see the encrypted text.

After inserting your e-mail address, you’ll receive the encrypted html text in the e-mail address that you inserted.

via

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