Rogue Fake Codecs on the Rise

Panda Labs has been talking about Adware/VideoPlay and they are seeing a lot of variants on this.   They even play a game, find the difference in the installation screen:



Now as you can see this look to be the same agreement in all those difference installation.  Some things to consider Never install any software from a website that you don't know Nothing about about.

Panda Labs also talks about these new variants in regards to what they do:

This file spreads by making copies of itself in the removable drives and it also creates an autorun.inf in order to be run when they are accessed. This file collects the data stored in the browsers, such as cookies, passwords, profiles, email accounts, etc, and connects to a remote address to send the information.
[Via Panda Labs Blog]

[ad#ad2-right]As you can see this makes you have very little security with your system.  I talk about Identity theft, and why you should always worry about your identity.   This however will make your passwords less secure and maybe even compromise you system to the point of having a data breach.   You need to be careful when you come by this, some fake codecs have been know to be scareware.  In which, the fake codecs installs a Trojan to tell you have a virus and try to make you buy a fake program to get rid of the Virus.  In one of my recent posts about Codecs and Facebook, I talked about the K-Lite Mega Codec Pack and how that will prevent you from installing these sociable links from friends and family.  The nice thing about this pack is it install all the really good codecs that you might come across on the web.  If you have this installed and there's a website that says you need a special codec, you'd know that it is either a fake codec or the author who made the video doesn't standardize.   In which case you will be more willing to leave that site without installing that codec.

If you follow these steps and also consider installing an Anti-virus and Firewall, you will be in a much better shape then when you first started out. Remember only you can prevent from getting a virus. You should also consider doing the registry edit that will prevent Autorun. As you can tell these new variants also are spread through USB and other removable media. This is the other way these programs are using to infect other systems.

Tech Journalist breaks the silence -- Journalist got Pwned!!

It was another ordinary day for this tech journalist. He had just waken up from his lovely dreams and hadn't realized that he was being baited with Phish. Yes that is correct he actually gave out his password to an Phish site and didn't know it.

I have to admit that he didn't hide it, in fact he decided to post about how he got Pwned and what happened.

The Face Of A Facebook Phishing Scam
[Click Picture to see the full story]

[ad#ad2-right]As you can see the site : Facebookcom.awardspace.com is a phishing site and should never give out your information to third parties.   Some things to remember if you get an email with a link sometimes won't send you to the real link.  This can be easily done just like blogging.  You don't know where you will end up when you click an email link.   One thing to remember is if in doubt log into facebook the old fashion way and see for yourself.

You could be the next person to have your Identity taken away from you.  So what should you do to prevent this type of phishing attacks, assume any email you get from Facebook, Myspace, Twitter, and Any other Social Sites to be a possible phish email.   These are always going to be a problem for these sites.  The spammers want access to be able to spam your friends and family with links, or to make you look foolish.  This is the reason they do it for Money or just for laughs.

One thing to remember is having a strong password will make it that much harder for you to be phished because if you can't remember it you will be more careful.  I will keep preaching this having a good Firewall and Anti-virus will also prevent you from getting viruses from these type of phishing attacks.  It will also make it much more harder to go to sites that smell like Phish.  Remember only you can keep your identity a secret.

Twitter Spam bots are hot to trot: http://gentai.com/revenge1

Ok so I was curious why I all of the sudden got people joining my list. each one I look at just to see who these people are have only one twitter message saying this from two different accounts:

and this one also

and once you click that link it takes you to this website and see what they want you to do:

These people are trying to get you to click on there links and [ad#ad2-left-1]get you give them email accounts.  This has been socially engineered to look like it is real.  I gave them a 10 min email account to see what they sent me.  It was a link to there porn site.  Wanting me to give them my credit card or checking account information and to join there site.  I don't think so, not this old dog.   Anyways if you get this spam from a user you might just want to block these people.  Some of these people have followers.  Hmm I don't know about these people.  I guess they want you to send an email to other people to spam them also.  How nice of them to social engineer this scheme so you can make your friends and family mad at you and probably not even talk to you.   So that is why it is good not to auto-follow people when they subscribe to your twitter account.   Some people have that set.  Some people just don't learn. I am sure some people will like this site for other reasons but please don't spam people with this little site. Please don't put people on that list.

Cricket Broad Band Modem Extended Review 12/23/08

The UM100c is No Longer Available, Please check out the Cricket [intlink id="3059" type="post"]A600 Modem Review[/intlink] Or the [intlink id="4523" type="post"]UM185 Broadband modem[/intlink]. The UM185 modem might be a replacement to the UM100.

after the last fiasco of the troubles, I had with Cricket.  I wanted to talk about some of the performance of the Broad band that I experienced going from one City to another major City.   I thought I'd explain how well this went from one City to another.  While on the road we had to watch for sleet and ice conditions of the surrounding area.

I had the system going through the whole part of this travel and thought I'd share my impression of the speed and reliability of the service.  This is my expressions:

• A few times I've had to activate the modem -- During the trip I had to activate at least twice from once city to the other but that created no major problems and took relatively short time to activate.


• Got comparative speeds all on highway --  This is due to distances and where the cellular towers are and how they respond to incoming and outgoing request.  Although there were many hills it seemed to keep about the same all through the drive.


• Connected until I got out of Coverage area -- This was due to us traveling outside of the coverage area and ended my use of the modem, but until that time it seemed to be very good at keeping me up to date on current weather conditions and other important information during the drive.

Update 12/26/2008

As you can see, On my way home, I decided to run the test to show you how different it can be on parts of the highway.  These show you just how much of a difference you will experience on different areas of any given city.  You see it all comes down to Hills and Valleys and also the location the tower.  You will never be able to get the best speed possible while driving but you will of course be able to surf the web and check email.   I also was able to use Twitter with this to test that feature out.  It seemed to work well with Twitter web update with out much trouble.  Please see below to see how you can get this service for yourself.   If you like this service, please recommend my review to others so they can determine if this is available in there area.   Please remember this will only work if you are in the coverage area.   This was done on the way home once I got into the Cricket Service area and you can see what type of speeds I got.

To see my other review of this modem you can click here.  I had problems with speed until after I did the activation of the modem the first time around.   After I activated the modem, the speed really increased to what it should be.  When it comes to the reliability of the modem and the ease of use, I'd give it a 4 out of 5 stars due to the problems and understanding of the problems associated with a broad band modem.  I will for the time recommend this to friends and family because after the activation of the modem, I've had really good speeds and want to remind people that the modem is only as good as the source, so you must remember where the towers are to better help you get the speed you want.

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