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Leo Laporte A technology journalist, author and broadcast personality. His specialties lie in computers, the Web, video games, digital music and consumer electronics. |
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Amber MacArthur An experienced Web content and usability strategist, Amber is also a tech journalist who specializes in Internet, software, and gadget trends and tips. |
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Spyware Infestation
Calvin, Lac Du Bonnet
Q: I keep getting pop ups even when im not on internet explorer.i also get a pop up in my windows tray that says “Your Computer is infected! Critical System error!system detected virus activities.This may cause critical system ailure.Please, use antimalware software to clean and protect your system from parasite programs.Click here to get all available software.”How do i get rid of these pop ups.I use Zone Alarm Pro as my anti-virus and anti-spyware program.
Zone Alarm has failed you. You have a spyware infection. Download Microsoft’s Defender, from microsoft.com/spyware, it’s free. See if you can use it to figure out what you’ve got. Then Google the name. You’ll find manual removal instructions for nearly any infestation there. Make sure to use the most recent instructions since spyware mutates rapidly.For more information on spyware and its removal visit http://spywareinfo.com.
Drive Monitoring
Sachit, Mississauga, ON
Q: Is their any software I could use that will be able to moniter my second hard drive to ensure that the data is not harmed by anything.
If you’re worried about spyware and viruses getting onto your system, you’re safe if you already have anti-virus and anti-spyware programs on your system, so long as your computer is able to read that drive from your main operating system. We recommend Microsoft’s OneCare (onecare.live.com).If you’re more worried about physical damage to the hard drive and the data on it, the only program I recommend for this is not free. It’s Steve Gibson’s Spinrite, from grc.com. You can run Spinrite to maintain your hard drive. It will also give you information about how your hard drive is performing and you can use this information to detect deterioration over time. Unfortunately, this process is not automated. You’ll have to run Spinrite every few weeks and compare results from previous runs. In particular, watch the error correction rate. Any significant increase is a sign of impending trouble.
There are free S.M.A.R.T monitoring tools. If you have a SMART drive they purport to warn you of trouble, but I’ve found SMART to be a less than reliable indicator.
You can get a free SMART monitor from http://sourceforge.net/projects/smartmontools/. There are shareware tools like the $20 Smartcheck, http://www.urltoy.com/asc.htm, as well.
Secure Web Pages
Lyle, Ripon, CA
Q: I started to buy an episode of CFH, but I noticed that the page where I would enter my credit card info was not secure. (IE http://s). I will not enter any credit card info on a non secure page, and why don’t they offer a PayPal option.
Looking for https:// is not the only way to judge a page’s security. You’re right not to want to submit payment on an insecure site, but Google’s page is completely secure. If in doubt, right click on the page, select Properties and click the Certificate’s button.Sean’s note: According to Google Video’s FAQ, all purchase information is transmitted securely using SSL encryption. That’s not immediately obvious from the page where you’re buying, as there’s no security shown at the browser end. If you dig into the page source, however, you’ll see that the form calls https:// URLs
