Wednesday, March 30, 2005

Secure ur PC

Today i had a hard job of cleaning up my pc....it was becoming sloow..was hanging up frequently....the internet explorer was taking me to really UNWANTED sites ;).....and more over i felt like someone was tapping my bandwidth...So i realised...its not safe to keep my pc "nude" before the world...i had norton and zonealarm..and google popup blocker...and spybot and adaware...enuf to keep a system in perfect health...But...during gaming sessions i usually close'em all...to save proccessor & memory juice...hmm... so i decided to giv a small guide on online traps to my readers....First of all you should understand what types of threats are there on the net... While most users are aware of virus and worms threat, they usually overlook the other biggest threat ie the spywares. Spywares are programs that get installed on your computer without your knowledge and collect data about your usage patterns like what sites you visit, what programs you run, even your personal details like age, gender and financial details too : all those things that can be useful for a marketing company to send you customized advertising. These programs send this data back to their websites where they are given to spammers and advertisers. All these things happen without the user's knowledge and that is the most ironical point of the story.now we shall look deep into the details...;) We can categorize spywares as... Adwares: Adwares usually monitors your usage patterns and show you ads corresponding to them. Adwares are usually installed as freewares and it is quoted in their EULA (End User License Agreement) that the program will show relevant ads. Many of the adwares are freeware version of programs which are availible as paid versions. Examples of these programs : Opera, Divx, Download Accelerator Plus, Flashget etc. While these programs specifically tells the user that they can upgrade to their paid version if they dont want to get these advertisements but not every adware is like that... Browser Hijackers: This is a broad category in which parasites like home page hijackers and search hijackers can be included. Home page hijackers change the start page of the user's browser to some specific sites and some notorious of these are very difficult to remove. Search hijackers change the search behaviour of the user's browser and when user searches for something on the Internet, these search sites give them the results. Usually both of the hijackers stated above work on clickthrough systems. Here they are affiliates to other companies which give them money according to the hits they recieve through them. So, the ultimate goal of hijackers is to make the users click on the links through which they earn their revenue. As this is a difficult task, the program authors go extreme ways to achieve it and create difficult to remove parasites. Recent examples of such parasite are CoolWebSearch and AboutBlank. And to add to my pain..both of these %#%#% was found on my system...it was really hard to get them outtaf my pc. Dialers: Dialers are programs that promise to make some "premium content" availible to the users by making calls through them. All their objective is to make the users dial the number which are usually long distance numbers of their affiliates. Tracking Cookies: Cookies were meant to be used for customizing the websites according to the user's preferences. But marketing companies found another use of them. This useful feature is being abused by marketing companies by putting "third party cookies". Third party cookies means cookies stored by websites other than you are visiting - most often put through banners and ad rotators. These cookies can keep track of what sites you visit that contains their ads. Keyloggers: Keyloggers arent thankfully installed by marketing companies. Usually they are installed by some trojans or BAD hackers. Here bad hackers refer to those breed of computer users who use such programs to break into other's computers to steal passwords or to destroy those systems. These programs monitor each keypress on your system and keep track of them and send it back to their originators. There are many sophisticated keyloggers which have their own SMTP engine to mail back the tracking records. So How do these programs get installed ? These programs are usually installed as bundled with other programs. While most users dont care to read the Terms and Conditions of the programs they are installing, third party tools such as these are installed easily. Browser hijackers are usually installed as ActiveX controls while the user is visiting their affiliate's websites. The most common source of spywares are porn and cracks websites. These websites promise the user to enable them to view their content if they install these add ons. A new class of them is called betraywares. These programs promise to remove spywares but they are themselves housing many of them. A whole new breed of search assistants, pop up blockers, online form filling tools, password keepers comes under this list. So how and when will u know that you ...ahem...your system is infected?? Usually when spywares are installed on your system, your network traffic increases. If you feel your computer is not behaving the way it was supposed to be, most probably you are infected. You should check what programs are getting loaded when the computer is starting up and what programs are running in the task manager. If you notice some suspicious entries in task manager or startup list, look out what programs are these. If you are on an always on connection, you should monitor the network traffic of your computer. For Adl users check the activity led on your modem..If it blinks continously when you are idle and no downloading is taking place...thats it..Your system is infected.!To remove spywares Programs like Spybot Search & Destroy and Ad Aware can be used. Spyware Blaster is a great utility that will not let the spywares getting installed in the first place. All these program should be updated regularly as new parasites gets discovered daily. And our Trusty microsoft has launched a malware detector.This tool will help to remove specific, prevalent malicious software from infected systems. Because computers can appear to function normally when infected, Microsoft advises you to run this tool even if your computer seems to be fine. In addition to using this tool, you should use an up-to-date antivirus product to help protect your computer from other malicious software.A new version of this tool is released on the second Tuesday of every month These new versions will be available from the Microsoft Download Center—this page—as well as from Windows Update / Automatic Updates. .An online version of the tool is also available. It is recommended that Windows XP users use Windows Update / Automatic Updates to download the tool. If you are using any other version of Windows for which this tool is supported, please download the tool from this page or run the online version of the tool at least once a month to ensure that you are using the latest version of this software. Download: Malicious Software Removal Tool ..i hav checked it and seems like it works!!..But Spybot and adaware is my choice

Monday, March 28, 2005

sell ??? phones

Once i had a cool Phone(atleast it was cool for me!!)..an E700..I bought it at a time when people here were not that aware about the camera phones...it was the time when c100 was rocking the teens...To be honest i'm a true SAMSUNG fan...I just love there craftmanship and technology.First i had one R220. At that time every one seems to have a 3310 wth them..i dont know what those people was having in it.yep..one thing,the snake. Then i switched to C100.It was a cool phone with a slim body... Image Hosted by ImageShack.us i used to keep it in my back pocket!!And had a very good screen a UFB(Ultra fine bright) screen.Then the ringtones. That was the time of reliance intro to the market.And they had polyphonic sets.And it seemed like "only reliance had polyphonic " tones.Cz every time my phone rings , i heard people murmrng .."oh another reliance guy.." i did almost evrything i cud do with that phone. I moded it,tweaked it so that i cud load ringtones which played for 2 minutes. i loaded the whole BOYS song onto it. But later i realized that it was aging...B'cz everyone have a color phone...Then what is next???...there came the Ad where that cute model take selfportraits on an e700.My eyes got stuck on that beauty..(Definetly not on the girl :) )I decided it shud be my nxt phone.I sold c100 to my friend and bought one E700 for 16K. it was defintly a cool phone .Great screen with awesome colr display and rocking sound!. But the point is it has "CAMERA"...The thing other guys lacked at that time...and so i became a HERO!!!....i used to flash it to the people when ever i got a chance and took a LOT of pics...It was then i realized the capabilities of a camera phone...I could take pics of people without their knowledge..how cool it is... Then came the problem of pc connectivity.The datacable for c100 was not a matching one for e700.And to add to that no vendors in tvm or ekm had a suitable capable in stock!!!So what to to do with the photos?? Thanks for the 9 Mb memory....Then i bought an infrared port.But the problem here is u cannot Flash (Flashing is clearing the ROM of the phone and fedding it with new software...just like flashing bios) using infrared port..The phone shud be in Off mode to do the flash and u cannot use infrared when the phone is off...I decided to wait for a few months..But then i got one cable from chennai...Soon i modded my phone and it became the talk of the college!!!..i created a matrix mode and used matrix theme...i dont know how much pics i had taken using that phone...Now my harddisk hv about 500mb of e700 pics... time went on and atlast i had to sell my e700 for a ....ahem..some ..ok i was in need of some money and so i sold my cell..i had no other choice...it was 2 months ago... now e700 seems prehistoric and its the time of video and mp3 cells...I'm waiting for a brand new samsung cell ...........The SGH-I300 ... it offers 3GB(read it?? its GB!!!) of storage space, which is considerably more than that available in any cell phone currently on the market, and is Samsung's second phone to feature a hard drive. The first phone, the SPH-V5400, was unveiled in September last year in korea (and only in korea) and offered 1.5GB of space. That handset was the first cell phone in the world to include a hard drive.The new one features a 1.3-megapixel (i thnk we dont need a 3 mp camera for our basic needs!!!) camera and support for a host of video and audio standards.and supports Bluetooth, IrDA infrared, and USB connections and ...the problem is its not launched here ...its only available in korea..samsung announced thth they will introduce it here in the latest cell expo conducted at delhi...ok ..i trust those guys..i'm ready to wait..but now one thing can any one guess the price????..well..samsung has promised to keep it below 20k!!!!