By Dameon D. Welch-Abernathy, CISSP, Check Point employee, a.k.a. PhoneBoy Facebook recently introduced a new feature called Facebook Places. Using your GPS-enabled Smartphone, you can “check in” to a physical location to let your friends know where you are. Competing services like Foursquare and Gowalla have offered this capability…
By Consumer Security Chick Some of my best friends are gamers and they’ve been telling me about their need for speed. They feel it is not acceptable to be killed by a troll or bane spider because: · Some sort of malware is draining your PC and slowing you down…
By the ZoneAlarm Team In our last post, we highlighted what a new 2010 security report tells us. It highlights some trends that antivirus alone can not stop. What can PC users do to stay ahead of these threats? Some good options: 1. At a minimum, use an excellent two-way…
By the ZoneAlarm Team Hackers are getting more sophisticated all the time, but are consumers keeping up? A new 2010 M86 Security Labs report illustrates that there are a number of trends that antivirus alone will not protect us from: 1. Cybercriminals are focusing on multi-pronged tricks to outsmart…
Yes, the average user has at least 25 accounts that ask for a PIN or password…
To avoid the maddening frustration of not having access to a site or bank when you need it, you should keep a very safe backup copy of your passwords. I say “safe” because if the wrong person finds your login passwords, you are up against all kinds of financial risk, identity theft risk, and even reputation risk if someone impersonates you. The big question is “what does safe look like?”
By the ZoneAlarm Team Last Friday, we released a minor update to our ZoneAlarm Free Firewall. The main reason for this was to include two patches from Microsoft that fix some of the issues on Windows 7 64bit. The update also includes improvements in network support and performance with…
By the ZoneAlarm team A year and a half ago, one of the largest online bill paying sites in the United States was hijacked by hackers. If you were a customer at that time, you may have been redirected to a malicious Web site that tried to install…
By Doctor Security Recently, a friend of mine had her email account compromised and it was being used to spam everyone on her contact list. I received the email (as did multiple contacts per the header). It had an odd subject line: “Huluky Dakay” and the message was “Check…
By the ZoneAlarm team Good news, ZoneAlarm Free Firewall users: if you are running the latest version, you are seeing 97% fewer pop-up alerts! Some of you will say, “Good!” and stop reading right there. Others want to know more. “Does that mean ZoneAlarm isn’t controlling who sends data…
By Doctor Security If you’re like me, you probably have friends who are struggling to make ends meet in these challenging economic times. Some of my buddies save money by using free antivirus software. This is not something I recommend for most people, because the old adage is usually…
Doctor Security In nature, animals are provided with different forms of defenses to protect themselves from predators. Some creators can fly away, others can run super fast, and many have sharp horns, tusks, or beaks to wield aggressively against an attacker. If your PC were an animal, none…
By Doctor Security Hey, kids, it’s back to basics today. Welcome to Firewalls 101. Here are some frequently asked questions about firewalls with clear answers so in the future you can pontificate like the best online security experts. Question #1: What the heck is a firewall? My dictionary…
By Doctor Security A couple of weeks ago, The Internet Crime Complaint Center (IC3), a partnership between the FBI and the National White Collar Crime Center (NW3C), released the 2009 Annual Report about fraudulent activity on the Internet. The stats are alarming. Reported cybercrime complaints jumped 22% from…
By Doctor Security Don’t you hate it when a free offer turns out to be “too good to be true”? Or worse, the no-cost offer is actually some kind of come-on that leads to spyware or malware being downloaded on to your PC? Now, for something completely different: a…
By Doctor Security Yes, my fellow Americans, it’s the time of year we all love…April 15 is the deadline to file our income tax returns. In the old days, like in 1990 B.I. (Before Internet), people used to stand in awfully long lines at post offices just to…
By John Gable, Director Microsoft just released an emergency security update that closes the iepeers.dll vulnerability. Get it by running a Microsoft Update or Windows Update (name depends on your operating system) on your PC. Click Start > Programs > Microsoft Update. For more information regarding this critical Microsoft update, read…
By Doctor Security Recently, I read a great article about how important it is for private citizens to keep their computers secure not only for their own protection but for the good of their country. Yes, it’s your civic duty to have security software on your PC and…
By Doctor Security Looking for a new job or a new significant other? If you don’t want to lose out on a good one, you need to make sure your “online reputation” doesn’t sabotage your efforts. Welcome to the über-connected world of the 21st century. It is pretty…
By John Gable, Director of Consumer Product Management Often companies have FAQs (Frequently Asked Questions) that have more marketing speak than useful information. Well, here are some real questions we got from press and reviews last week when we were giving them a preview of our new ZoneAlarm…
By John Gable, Director of Product Marketing AV-Comparatives.org, a highly respected anti-virus testing organization, recently released its 2009 summary report and awards (also see PC Mag article). Congratulations to the winners: Symantec, Kaspersky, and ESET (note that ZoneAlarm integrates Kaspersky technology for its anti-virus). Anti-virus (which generally also…
By Doctor Security Travel and Thanksgiving go together like turkey and stuffing. So if you’re like millions of others and going to be on the road or in the air this holiday season, we suggest you take some precautions to prevent the loss or theft of your laptop….
By Liam T, Security Advisor, SecureTec Australasia We all know that a Wi-Fi hotspot is great for accessing the Internet in public places such as the airport or a coffee shop. But we should all be aware that Wi-Fi hotspots can also be a security concern since a hacker…
By Jordy Berson, group product manager, ZoneAlarm products Gumblar!! Is it an outrageously fun new board game that combines Jenga and Cranium to test your right brain, left brain and "Parkinson's-proneness" all at once? No. But this fun-sounding little guy could test your computer security, your identity theft protection and your ability to reformat your…
In response to the economic hard times, we wanted to create a give-away promotion because some people may consider PC security a luxury they can’t afford. April 14 Only: ZoneAlarm Suite for Under $10—Supports Charity too!
DNSSEC is a proposed protocol (introduced in RFC 2065) that would secure the DNS protocol using public key encryption, but its adoption has been slow due to many factors.
The general idea is this: You’re surfing the Internet, you land on a Web site, and BAM! Malicious software secretly downloads to your PC.
By John Gable ZoneAlarm Director of Product Management Hardly anyone knew about it. The Los Angeles Angels website was recently hacked overnight with a drive-by download. It tried to download “AntiVirus 2009”, a well known fake security program that actually installs malware, onto visitors' systems. The Angels fixed the…
Waledac Valentine’s Day attack stopped by ZoneAlarm ForceField. Are we the only ones?
by Laura Yecies Today, I’m very excited to announce the launch of ZoneAlarm ForceField. We first released ZAFF into beta last fall, and now it’s now ready for primetime. On behalf of the entire ZoneAlarm team, I’d like to extend a very sincere thank you to everyone in the ZA…
We don’t normally put promotional stuff here, but since this is a 24 hour opportunity, we thought you might want to know. You can download and use ZoneAlarm Anti-Spyware for free. And it’s not just anti-spyware freeware, but our full product that won top billing at CNET which has the…
We like using analogies here to explain security principles. For example, to explain why your firewall must truly protect every port and pass every leak test, we point to a car with only 3 of its 4 doors locked. How safe is that? That also works for pointing out why…
I’m sure you’ve seen them — those pop-up ads that make scary claims: YOU MAY BE INFECTED!CLICK HERE TO CLEAN YOUR SYSTEM NOW! I just ran across one, a friend hit this site, was convinced he was infected and asked how to remove the infection. My friend wasn’t infected. It…
The Z100G has a built in function that allows you to connect to a PC behind (and protected by) the Z100G through the management interface. Here’s how it works: First you enable the remote desktop on the target PC (under Control Panel | System) Next you connect to the target…
We know that home PCs are often hijacked to send spam. We know they are often pilfered for personal data. Did you also know home PCs are sometimes used as "middle-men" or proxies to help hide the source of an attack? It works like this: An attacker decides on a…
The recent AOL search record disclosure caused quite an uproar — much of it directed at AOL for releasing what many people consider "sensitive" search information. The New York Times even put a face to the number, figuring out who searcher No. 4417749 was and interviewing her about her search…
Some people leave their WIFI open to allow neighbors and others to use it; other people think that’s stealing. Instead of securing their WIFI to prevent unauthorized access, some see it as an opportunity to get some laughs by placing the offenders on an untrusted network and serving them an…
Attackers load drive-by download on Circuit City Message board New virus infects OpenOffice/StarOffice (OpenSource alternative to MS Office) Consumers overconfident about ID’ing phishing scams? Plugin to Encrypt your Gmail Drop in virus activity signals change in tactics Why steal SSN numbers when you can get them for free? Tracking large…
We all hate spam — many of us use filters to find and block it, web based email services use sophisticated pattern analysis to detect it, and that leaves you and I to delete what’s left. But, where does all this spam actually come from? Believe it or not —…
SecurityFocus has a nice checkbox system to let you score your own PC security level. Each checkbox item has a link to get more information. Using this sytem, you can check the boxes you know are ‘ok’ and follow-up by reading more information about the items which you are unsure….
So you want your data to survive 1,550 degrees F? Better get one of these (this is not a product endorsement, it’s just cool):
Someone asked me how much spam comes from home PCs that are hijacked and turned into spam zombies, this is an email I sent in reply: "There are differing reports on the exact figure. There is a good study about this from a University (which I tend to believe a…
The New York Times has an article about people "borrowing" WIFI from their neighbors. What it shows is that if you aren’t expecting to share your WIFI network, you ought to secure it. I say "expecting to share" because here in San Francisco, people do share their WIFI — but…