safe surfing guide Archives

Microsoft security update flags google.com as a severe, exploit-filled threat

Daily digest, Safe Surfing Guide, The Proxy Free

It is not a joke. Micro$oft did it again. Last year, Microsoft Security Essentials tried to Google Chrome by deleting it.

According to some reports, Microsoft Antivirus and Security products ( Microsoft Forefront and Microsoft Security Essentials) started to mark google.com as being a severe threat called Exploit:JS/Blacole.BW on Valentine’s day. A V-day gift for Google.

Surely, Microsoft quickly (4 hours) fixed the issue, and as usual, explained this is another technical issue.

Of course, I was not affected because I am using Avast!, one of the best free antivirus software. We used it for many years without major issues.

I just feel a bit sorry for those who are still using M$ antivirus or internet security software. If you are using Windows (90% of our readers are still using it on the desktop), you need antivirus for safe surfing as explained in a previous post.

But you … Read the rest

Firefox 8 cracks third-party add-ons

Daily digest, Safe Surfing Guide

Everyday millions of third-party add-ons are installed for Firefox. Some of them can impose serious privacy and security holes for the computer.

Finally, in the latest release, Firefox 8 disables third-party add-ons. This is a correct step among so many mistakes in recent releases.

According to the official Mozilla Add-ons Blog:

These add-ons installed by third parties present a number of problems: they can slow down Firefox start-up and page loading time, they clutter the interface with toolbars that often go unused, they lag behind on compatibility and security updates, and most importantly, they take the user out of control of their add-ons.

So, in Firefox 8, users must opt-in to add-on installation. This means Firefox will disable the add-on until the user has explicitly opted into the addition.

Anyway, this is a positive move. What do you think about this?… Read the rest

Why Chrome is the safest web browser?

Daily digest, Safe Surfing Guide

In our safe surfing guide series, I mentioned one important thing for safe surfing is dumping IE and choosing a better browser.

One of the safest web browsers is Google Chrome browser, which is becoming more and more popular. The security features include:

Sandboxing. Almost all browsers now have tabbed browsing, even IE has it for a long time. But Chrome differs itself from others by implementing sandboxing. The tabs have individual processes with sandbox capabilities which restrict privileges for third-party apps. This (sandboxing), according to Google and security experts “prevent malware from installing itself on your computer or using what happens in one browser tab to affect what happens in another. The sandbox adds an additional layer of protection to your browser by protecting against malicious web pages that try to leave programs on your computer, monitor your web activities, or steal private information from your

… Read the rest

What a Joke! Internet Explorer 9 Crowns the Browser Security

Daily digest, Safe Surfing Guide

After the post on “How to surf safely? Dump IE, choose a better browser” was online, a reader pointed me to a so-called research report that IE 9 crowns the browser security.

According to the report, IE 9 can block 96% socially engineered malware; while the distant second (Chrome) can only block 13.2%. The full report is freely (anyway, nobody is willing to pay such so-called reports) available here.

It sounds like a story told on April 1. And it actually is.

If you happen to read the report, you will notice their research was based on “NSS Labs has developed a unique proprietary “Live Testing” harness and methodology”. So, we have no idea how reliable the test was. Who knows?

Secondly, the report did not say how many false blocking generated by IE 9. Remember, if Microsoft Security Essentials can treat Google Chrome as a … Read the rest

How to surf safely? Dump IE, choose a better browser

Daily digest, Safe Surfing Guide

This is part 4 of the Safe Surfing Guide series. You may check other parts as well to read the complete safe surfing guide.

To surf safely, your browser can also play an important role. There are so many choices for browsers now: IE, Firefox, Chrome, Opera, SeaMonkey; all are freely available. But unfortunately, most users are still using the crappy piece of IE, simply because it is bundled by M$.

You should dump IE when you get your new PC. Most computer viruses or malware reply on IE, because M$ tightly integrate IE with the Windows OS.

In addition, IE is notorious for ignoring the web standards and trying best to drag the advancement in HTML standard. Although M$ changed gradually changed the strategy since IE 8, it is too little, too small.

Sadly, if you are not using Windows 7, you cannot disable or … Read the rest

How to surf safely? use webmail

Daily digest, Safe Surfing Guide

This is part 3 of the Safe Surfing Guide series. You may check other parts as well to read the complete safe surfing guide.

Malicious code and malicious link can be easily hidden in emails. When you open emails, the execution of the malicious code may be triggered. Or, the malicious link may open automatically and download nasty things to your local computer.

Another security issue for your email is phishing. The sender pretends to be someone else, e.g., Facebook, or your banker. If you follow the link, you are trapped.

If you follow this Safe Surfing Guide series, you may wonder how this can happen after your install antivirus and anti-malware software already. The reason is simple.

All antivirus and anti-malware software can only find “known” threats, although some software can use certain patterns to find new threats. Most of the time, only after the virus … Read the rest

How to surf safely? Anti-malware

Anonymous proxy, Daily digest, Safe Surfing Guide

This is part 2 of the Safe Surfing Guide series. You may check other parts as well for a complete safe surfing guide.

After reading the part 1 of this guide, you installed the antivirus software (hopefully, it is Avast), you may still expose yourself to something named malware occasionally.

Malware includes all malicious software. Some examples are: computer viruses, worms, trojan horses, spyware, adware, and rootkits. The purpose of malware is to steal some information from your computer or to gain unauthorized access of your computer. Normally, in the computer security industry, we classify them into virus and malware.

Just like antivirus software, there is anti-malware software. Most antivirus software has some capabilities to scan and remove malware, especially rootkits, worms and trojan horses. But for adware, spyware, most of the time, you need anti-malware software.

For anti-malware, I usually recommend the free Malwarebytes Anti-Malware Free, … Read the rest

How to surf securely? Antivirus

Anonymous proxy, Daily digest, Safe Surfing Guide

The No.1 threat of safe surfing is computer virus. Unless you are using UNIX or Linux, you are facing computer virus on websites almost every day.

In the DOS era, the computer virus was mainly spreading through floppy disks. At that time, it was cool to bring a box of floppy disks around, just like nowadays bringing an iPad around.

The ever-increasing threat of virus in the last 3 decades was the result of the dominance of M$ Windows+ the proliferation of the Internet. The Internet is a good innovation: it changes the way how information is propagated, and make information sharing is so easy and fast. Unfortunately, it also accelerates the spreading of computer viruses. The security vulnerabilities in Microsoft Windows were, are and, will be the hotbed for computer viruses.

The dominance of Windows, as well its security vulnerabilities, will not change anytime … Read the rest