AVG Anti-Virus Installation Guide

This video tutorial will show you how to install AVG Anti-Virus.
If you have Norton or McAfee I personally wouldn’t pay their
fees especially when you can have this protection for free.
If you have any other Anti-Virus and intend to install AVG,
please uninstall any other Anti-Virus program that you may
have.
AVG Anti-Virus Free Edition is one of the most popular
solutions to provide basic security protection on home and
non-commercial PCs and is used by millions of people worldwide.

Important

Create a backup of your system or a restore Point before making any changes

Can also be viewed in Windows Media Player by clicking:
AVG Installation

Encryption And Making Your System Secure

What does encryption do for me?
Encryption and cryptographic software has been used in many
different ways to make systems more secure.  This article discusses
only a few ways that such software can make your system more secure,
including:  

1) Encrypting your email  

2) Encrypting your files

Two programs are mentioned that will help encrypt information. There
are many more programs out there that will help, but these programs
are good and a good place to start as any. They have the added
benefit of both being free with source code available. 

Will encryption stop people from accessing my information? 
Encryption simply makes it harder for people to gain access to
important information, like passwords or sensitive information in a
file. The first thing you should know about encryption is that the
algorithm that is used to encrypt can be simple or more complex and
that affects how securely what you have encrypted is protected.
Encryption systems have been broken when the method of encryption is
understood by hackers and is easy to break.  

Why bother to encrypt my email?
It should be noted that email is far less secure than paper mail for
two very good reasons:  first, electronic data can be accessed easily
over an Internet and secondly, electronic data is really simple to
copy. There is a very good chance that someone has snooped around in
your email despite your best intentions to stop it.  

How do I go about encrypting my email? 
There are many programs out there that can help you encrypt your
email.  A very popular one is PGP (Pretty Good Privacy) or its Gnu
offshoot GPG.   

PGP (http://www.pgpi.org/) self-describes itself this way: This “is
a program that gives your electronic mail something that it otherwise
doesn’t have: Privacy. It does this by encrypting your mail so that
nobody but the intended person can read it. When encrypted, the
message looks like a meaningless jumble of random characters. PGP has
proven itself quite capable of resisting even the most sophisticated
forms of analysis aimed at reading the encrypted text.” 

Why bother to encrypt my files?  
The answer to this boils down to what you store on your computer.
If you have financial data with important information like social
security numbers, email addresses, account numbers and passwords,
then you open yourself up to losing very valuable information.  Most
corporate Internet security employees will attest to the widespread
theft of very valuable information. As long as you are connected to
the Internet you are vulnerable. 

How do I go about encrypting my files?
 AxCrypt File Encryption Software  (http://axcrypt.sourceforge.net/)
Self-described as “Free Personal Privacy and Security for Windows
98/ME/NT/2K/XP with AES-128 File Encryption, Compression and
transparent Decrypt and Open in the original application.”

Fighting Spam

How prevalent is Spam?  According to Scott McAdams, OMA Public Affairs and Communications Department (www.oma.org):

“Studies show unsolicited or “junk” e-mail, known as spam, accounts for roughly half of all e-mail messages received. Although once regarded as little more than a nuisance, the prevalence of spam has increased to the point where many users have begun to express a general lack of confidence in the effectiveness of e-mail transmissions, and increased concern over the spread of computer viruses via unsolicited messages.”

In 2003, President Bush signed the  “Can Spam” bill, in December of 2003 which is the first national standards around bulk unsolicited commercial e-mail.  The bill, approved by the Senate by a vote of 97 to 0, prohibits senders of unsolicited commercial e-mail from using false return addresses to disguise their identity (spoofing) and the use of dictionaries to generate such mailers. In addition, it prohibits the use of misleading subject lines and requires that emails include and opt-out mechanism. The legislation also prohibits senders from harvesting addresses off Web sites. Violations constitute a misdemeanour crime subject to up to one year in jail. 

One major point that needs to be discussed about this: 

Spam is now coming from other countries in ever-greater numbers. These emails are harder to fight, because they come from outside our country’s laws and regulations.  Because the Internet opens borders and thinks globally, these laws are fine and good, but do not stop the problem.

So what do you do about this? 

Here are the top 5 Rules to do to protect from spam.

Number 1: 
Do what you can to avoid giving your email address out on
the net.  

There are products called “spam spiders” that search the Internet for email addresses to send email to.  If you are interested, do a search on “spam spider” and you will be amazed at what you get back.

Interestingly, there is a site, WebPoison.org, which is an open
source project geared to fight Internet “spambots” and “spam
spiders”, by giving them bogus HTML web pages, which contain bogus email addresses

A couple of suggestions for you: 

a) use form emails, which can hide addresses or also b) use addresses like sales@company.com instead of
your full address to help battle the problem. c) There are also
programs that encode your email, like jsGuard, which encodes your email address on web pages so that while spam spiders find it, it is difficult or impossible to read your email address.

Number 2: 
Get spam blocking software.  There are many programs out
there for this.  (go to www.cloudmark.com or www.mailwasher.net for example).  You may also buy a professional version.  Whatever you do, get the software. It will save you time.  The software is not foolproof, but they really do help.  You usually have to do some manual set up to block certain types of email.

Number 3:
Use the multiple email address approach.

There are a lot of free email addresses to be had.  If you must
subscribe to newsletters, then have a “back-up” email address. It would be like giving your cell phone number to your best friends and the business number to everyone else.

Number 4: 
Attachments from people you don’t know are BAD, BAD, BAD.

A common problem with spam is that they have attachments and attachments can have viruses.  Corporations often have filters that don’t let such things pass to you.  Personal email is far more “open country” for spammers. 

General rule of thumb:  if you do not know who is sending you something, DO NOT OPEN THE ATTACHMENT.  Secondly, look for services that offer filtering. Firewall vendors offer this type of service as well.

Number 5: 
Email services now have “bulk-mail” baskets.  If what you
use currently does not support this, think about moving to a new
vendor.  The concept is simple.  If you know someone, they can send you emails.  If you don’t know them, put them in the bulk email pile and then “choose” to allow them into your circle.  Spam Blocking software has this concept as well, but having extra layers seems critical these days, so it is worth looking into.

 Bob Matharoo has also written an interesting article on Spam,  check it out here

Computer Viruses that Come a Callin’

Every day new computer viruses are created to annoy us and to wreck havoc on our computer systems. Below are ten viruses currently cited as being the most prevalent in terms of being seen the most or in their ability to potentially cause damage. New viruses are created daily. This is by no means an all inclusive list. The best thing you can do is to remain vigilant, keep your anti-virus software updated, and stay aware of the current computer virus threats.

Virus: Trojan.Lodear
A Trojan horse that attempts to download remote files. It will
inject a .dll file into the EXPLORER.EXE process causing system
instability.

Virus: W32.Beagle.CO@mm
A mass-mailing worm that lowers security settings. It can delete
security-related registry sub keys and may block access to security-related websites.

Virus: Backdoor.Zagaban
A Trojan horse that allows the compromised computer to be used as a covert proxy and which may degrade network performance.

Virus: W32/Netsky-P
A mass-mailing worm which spreads by emailing itself to addresses produced from files on the local drives.

Virus: W32/Mytob-GH
A mass-mailing worm and IRC backdoor Trojan for the Windows
platform. Messages sent by this worm will have the subject chosen randomly from a list including titles such as: Notice of account limitation, Email Account Suspension, Security measures, Members Support, Important Notification.

Virus: W32/Mytob-EX
A mass-mailing worm and IRC backdoor Trojan similar in nature to W32-Mytob-GH. W32/Mytob-EX runs continuously in the background, providing a backdoor server which allows a remote intruder to gain access and control over the computer via IRC channels. This virus spreads by sending itself to email attachments harvested from your email addresses.

Virus: W32/Mytob-AS, Mytob-BE, Mytob-C, and Mytob-ER
This family of worm variations possesses similar characteristics in terms of what they can do. They are mass-mailing worms with backdoor functionality that can be controlled through the Internet Relay Chat (IRC) network. Additionally, they can spread through email and through various operating system vulnerabilities such as the LSASS (MS04-011).

Virus: Zafi-D
A mass mailing worm and a peer-to-peer worm which copies itself to the Windows system folder with the filename Norton Update.exe. It can then create a number of files in the Windows system folder with filenames consisting of 8 random characters and a DLL extension.

W32/Zafi-D copies itself to folders with names containing share,
upload, or music as ICQ 2005a new!.exe or winamp 5.7 ew!.exe.
W32/Zafi-D will also display a fake error message box with the
caption “CRC: 04F6Bh” and the text “Error in packed file!”.

Virus: W32/Netsky-D
A mass-mailing worm with IRC backdoor functionality which can also infect computers vulnerable to the LSASS (MS04-011) exploit.

Virus: W32/Zafi-B
A peer-to-peer (P2P) and email worm that will copy itself to the
Windows system folder as a randomly named EXE file. This worm will test for the presence of an internet connection by attempting to connect to www.google.com or  www.microsoft.com. A bilingual, worm with an attached Hungarian political text message box which translates to “We demand that the government accommodates the homeless, tightens up the penal code and VOTES FOR THE DEATH PENALTY to cut down the increasing crime. Jun. 2004, Pécs (SNAF Team)”