If you’ve been watching the slow motion train wreck that is Facebook.com’s recent effort to revamp its privacy promises, you may be wondering where to start unraveling all of the privacy “choices” offered by the world’s largest online social network. Fortunately, developers are starting to release free new tools so that you don’t need a masters in Facebook privacy or read a statement longer than the U.S. Constitution to get started.
A number of readers recently have written in to say their banks recently have urged customers to install a security program called Rapport as a way to protect their online bank accounts from fraud. The readers who pinged me all said they didn’t know much about this product, and did I recommend installing it? Since it has been almost two years since I last reviewed the software, I thought it might be useful to touch base with its creators to see how this program has kept pace with the latest threats.
Security experts have long maintained that running two different anti-virus products on the same Windows machine is asking for trouble, because the two programs will compete for resources, slow down or even crash the host PC.
But an upstart anti-virus company called Immunet Protect is hoping Windows users shrug off this conventional wisdom, and embrace the dual anti-virus approach. Indeed, the company’s free product works largely by sharing data about virus detections by other anti-virus products on the PCs of the Immunet user community.
One of the more common questions I hear from readers with computer virus infections is, “How do I get rid of the virus if I can’t even boot up into Windows and run an anti-virus scan?” Fortunately, there are a number of free, relatively easy-to-use tools that can help on this front.
The online version of Technology Review today carries a story I wrote about a government funded research group that is preparing to release a new free tool designed to block “drive-by downloads,” attacks in which the mere act of visiting… Read More »
