10 Free Ways To Keep Your PC Safe

You don't have to spend a fortune to protect your PC from viruses, Trojans, phishers, scammers, and snoops. In fact, you don't have to spend a penny. Here's how.

From the moment you turn on your PC until the moment you turn it off, it's under assault. Hackers try to break into it; viruses, Trojans and worms try to crawl into it; spyware tries to watch everything you do. Then there are wireless dangers, snooping co-workers, and worse.

What to do? You could spend hundreds or thousands of dollars on software and services, and spend countless hours trying to keep yourself safe...or you could instead read on. We'll show you ten simple ways to protect your PC without spending a penny.

While some of these products are free versions of commercial packages, others are provided free of charge by hardworking individuals. If you find their services valuable, you can choose to give them a donation. But that's entirely up to you.

	10 Free Ways To Keep Your PC Safe
	1. Get Free Anti-Virus and Anti-Spyware Protection 2. Check Your Security Online 3. Get Free Wireless Network Protection Software 4. Use A Free Firewall 5. Encrypt Your Data 6. Protect Yourself Against Phishers 7. Disable File Sharing 8. Surf The Web Anonymously 9. Say No To Cookies 10. Protect Yourself Against eBay "Nigerian Scams"

Source: techweb.com

10 things to know about IE7 Security

Internet Explorer 7 is designed to make browsing safer. Here's a quick rundown of some of the new security features, including Active X opt-in, the Phishing Filter, cross-domain security, enhanced privacy protection, and an international character alert.

Some sensationalistic reports of a security flaw immediately followed Internet Explorer 7's final release, but the vulnerability turned out to be in Outlook Express rather than IE. In fact, Microsoft has put a great deal of effort into making IE7 more secure. Here are some of the new IE7 security features and what they can do for you.

1. Default protection from potentially dangerous Active X controls

Active X controls that haven't been checked out and verified as safe no longer run automatically by default; instead they're automatically disabled by the Active X opt-in feature.

2. Per-zone control of Active X opt-in

You can disable Active X opt-in on a per-zone basis. It's enabled by default on the Internet and restricted sites zones for better security and disabled on the intranet and trusted sites zones.

3. Site and zone locking for Active X controls

Developers can now make their Active X controls more secure by restricting a control to run only on a particular site (site locking) or only in a specific security zone (zone locking).

4. Protection against phishing

IE7 introduces the Phishing Filter, which helps protect users from being fooled into entering personal information or passwords that can be collected and used for identity theft. The Phishing Filter automatically checks the Web sites you visit against a list of known phishing sites and issues a warning if the site has been identified as a phishing site. If you prefer not to have sites checked automatically, you can check specific sites when you suspect they might be phishing sites.

5. Cross-domain security

A tactic called cross-domain scripting is prevented by new IE7 security mechanisms that force scripts to run in their original security context even if they're redirected to a different security domain.

6. Locked down security zones

Security zones in IE7 are locked down tighter than before, with higher default security settings, disabling of the intranet zone on non-domain computers, and an interface that makes it harder to select low or medium low security.

7. Better SSL/TLS notification and digital certificate info

Users of IE7 can more easily determine whether a Web site is secured by SSL/TLS and get information on the digital certificates issued to the site. Sites with high assurance certificates cause the address bar to turn green.

8. Privacy protection features

Three new registry keys, called feature control keys, prevent HTML from getting a user's personal information. In addition, you can easily clear out information you've entered in Web pages, as well as the browser cache (temporary internet files), history, cookies and other personal info, with a single click.

9. Address bars

All browser windows in IE7 contain address bars, so it's harder for a malicious site to conceal its identity by hiding the URL of the site.

10. International character alert

IE7 supports international characters, but to prevent spoofing that exploits the similarity of characters in different languages, the browser warns you that the characters are in another language when international character sets are used.

Microsoft Offers One-Year Warranty for Xbox 360

When a new video game platform comes out, there are problems. Whether the issue is games freezing, sound problems, Internet connection or compatibility issues, gamers and consumers can spend hours sorting out these difficulties. Now, Microsoft appears to have taken a step in the right direction to lessen these issues for users of its Xbox 360. On Dec. 22, the Redmond, Wash., company announced that it will change the Xbox 360's warranty from 90 days to one year from the date of purchase in the U.S. and Canada.

By expanding its warranty offer from 90 days to one year, Microsoft will give its North American customers the same guarantees and hardware protection the company already offers to Xbox 360 users in other parts of the world.

Microsoft officials could not be immediately reached for comment about the announcement. The company has said that there have been ongoing issues and problems with some of the hardware used in the Xbox 360.

AMD's new 65-nanometer chips sip energy but trail Intel

Several reviews are in for Advanced Micro Devices' latest microprocessors, and while the new chips don't bridge the gap between AMD and Intel's latest chips, they do run cooler than the company's previous offerings.

AMD's 65-nanometer chips, which started to trickle out of its factories earlier this month, are basically just a smaller version of its dual-core 90-nanometer chips. AMD did not introduce any major new features to improve performance along with its 65-nanometer chips, but the new manufacturing technology does allow it to build chips that use less power and are smaller. Smaller chips mean that AMD can yield more working chips from the silicon wafers produced by its chipmaking equipment, helping to reduce the incremental cost of building a chip.

The new chips are rated for a thermal design power of 65 watts of power, according to a review by the Tech Report. That's the same number attached to Intel's Core 2 Duo chips, although the companies measure power consumption in slightly different ways. In a basic sense, it's the number that system builders should take into account for the processor when designing the cooling systems for their PCs.

How to Redirect a Web Page

301 Redirect

301 redirect is the most efficient and Search Engine Friendly method for webpage redirection. It's not that hard to implement and it should preserve your search engine rankings for that particular page. If you have to change file names or move pages around, it's the safest option. The code "301" is interpreted as "moved permanently".

You can Test your redirection with Search Engine Friendly Redirect Checker

Below are a Couple of methods to implement URL Redirection

IIS Redirect

• In internet services manager, right click on the file or folder you wish to redirect
• Select the radio titled "a redirection to a URL".
• Enter the redirection page
• Check "The exact url entered above" and the "A permanent redirection for this resource"
• Click on 'Apply'

Redirect in ColdFusion

<.cfheader statuscode="301" statustext="Moved permanently">
<.cfheader name="Location" value="http://www.new-url.com">

Redirect in PHP

Redirect in ASP

<%@ Language=VBScript %>
<% Response.Status="301 Moved Permanently" Response.AddHeader "Location", " http://www.new-url.com" >

Redirect in ASP .NET

Redirect Old domain to New domain (htaccess redirect)

Create a .htaccess file with the below code, it will ensure that all your directories and pages of your old domain will get correctly redirected to your new domain.
The .htaccess file needs to be placed in the root directory of your old website (i.e the same directory where your index file is placed)

Options +FollowSymLinks
RewriteEngine on
RewriteRule (.*) http://www.newdomain.com/$1 [R=301,L]

Please REPLACE www.newdomain.com in the above code with your actual domain name.

In addition to the redirect I would suggest that you contact every backlinking site to modify their backlink to point to your new website.

Note* This .htaccess method of redirection works ONLY on Linux servers having the Apache Mod-Rewrite moduled enabled.

Redirect to www (htaccess redirect)

Create a .htaccess file with the below code, it will ensure that all requests coming in to domain.com will get redirected to www.domain.com
The .htaccess file needs to be placed in the root directory of your old website (i.e the same directory where your index file is placed)

Options +FollowSymlinks
RewriteEngine on
rewritecond %{http_host} ^domain.com [nc]
rewriterule ^(.*)$ http://www.domain.com/$1 [r=301,nc]

Please REPLACE domain.com and www.newdomain.com with your actual domain name.

Note* This .htaccess method of redirection works ONLY on Linux servers having the Apache Mod-Rewrite moduled enabled.

How to Redirect HTML

Please refer to section titled 'How to Redirect with htaccess', if your site is hosted on a Linux Server and 'IIS Redirect', if your site is hosted on a Windows Server.

Left Behind: Eternal Forces

What if one day everyone who used to ask you about accepting Jesus Christ as your personal savior disappeared? What if this was about the time someone took power and his name was Ann T. Christ? Okay, that would be a pretty feminine name, so let's go with Nicholai Carpathia instead. Welcome to Left Behind. Seems you should have listened to all of your religious friends, because you're living in the "end times," and there is a battle between the forces of the holy and the rock music of the Satanists. Buckle up: Christian gaming just went mainstream.

The game is based on the ultra-popular Left Behind series of books, and the first book is helpfully included in the box with the game. Because I'm a glutton for punishment, I tried to read the book. I thought it would be helpful for me to know the source material for the review, and it might give me a little insight into the series as a whole. I put it down in disgust after the first fifty pages. The writing is just horrible.

The fact that 65 million hojillion people bought these books and enjoyed them scares the hell out of me. When you start longing for the florid prose of a dime-store romance novel, you know that, stylistically, what you're holding in your hands is pretty bad. There is a huge market for it, though, and the concept of the people left behind post-Rapture fighting the forces of evil is actually quite compelling. The idea of putting the concept into a game is a strong one, and there's a lot you can do with the premise.

It's hard to review a game like this without getting into religious issues, but the one thing you'll want to know from the start is that this game is pushing an agenda. It's not as obvious about it as, say, Kirk Cameron; the game doesn't roam the streets telling people they are going to go to hell because they used to make out behind the Pizza Hut when they were 14. But it does have a few things to say about religion.

Between missions, you can look at a "found clue" and read a little essay about the Bible. Some of the historical facts about the Bible I enjoyed reading and they made me want to research the book further out of historical curiosity. There is also an essay that tries to poke holes in the theory of evolution, and while I don't mind how they went about it in this case, the links at the bottom of the page bring you to other Christian sites for further reading. On these pages you're also listening to Christian music, with a helpful "Buy this music now" button at the bottom of the screen.

So you know that this game is definitely trying to say (and sell) something, and for that reason it has a built-in audience. This is a game that Christian parents can buy their kids, and one that Christian kids can play themselves without any guilt about "questionable content." I had a good friend growing up who was Mormon, and since his family was into computers, they had a nice four-computer LAN in their basement, and we would spend many an afternoon playing Duke Nukem with all the nudity and swearing removed. The gunfire, apparently, was okay. In other news, Left Behind has gunfire.

I'm calling the ACLU as we speak

Pre-release media reports have painted the game as one long exercise in violence that includes vitriol against Jews and Muslims, but were they right? While wondering if we're going to disappear in the next few days, let's play some Left Behind and see what kind of a game it really is.

Technology use invites lying, says survey

All of us have been guilty of telling white lies every so often, but new survey results from UK investment firm Friends Provident says that most of us do it every day, and we prefer to use technology as our lying vehicle of choice. The survey was conducted via online poll during the month of November and counted the results from 1,487 respondents, showing that 81 percent of us tell white lies at least once every day. 72 percent of respondents said that they have stretched the truth via some form of technology, with 27 percent lying via e-mail, 27 percent via SMS ("Ur my 1 & only, 4 real!"), and 18 percent via mobile phone calls.

So who are we lying to, exactly? Two-thirds of us who lie with technology like to lie to our bosses and coworkers, according to the survey, about things like being sick, completing work, or making mistakes. Not exactly news that employers are going to be excited to hear. 41 percent of us also lie to our family members or partners, and the top five things to lie to loved ones about were: buying new clothes or their cost, how someone looks in something (how exactly you can tell someone how they look in something when not face-to-face remains a mystery), what we've eaten, what we weigh, and how much we've been drinking. Despite this, 29 percent of respondents reported that lying about where you've been is among the worst things to lie about to your partner.

And when we lie to our friends, family, and bosses, it seems that we'd really prefer to hide behind technology when we can. Nearly three-quarters (74 percent) of respondents in the survey said that technology makes it easier to lie to others and just over half (51 percent) reported that they feel less guilty doing so via technology.

The guilt factor likely comes from having to look someone in the eye when face-to-face, and no such nerve-wracking lie detector exists for mediums such as e-mail and text messages. Skype recently added a "stress detector" into its 3.0 release for Windows, but our initial lie detecting tests were less than impressive. While the Friends Provident poll was available online and may have attracted a more tech-savvy audience than average, the results are still likely to be used as evidence of how technology is driving us apart instead of bringing us together. Until someone develops a method to detect lies in e-mails or instant messages (which would be a respectable feat, to be sure), it looks as if in order to get the real truth out of each other, we'll have to continue relying on the tried and true method of face-to-face communication.

Sex, lies, and the Microsoft blogger laptop scandal

Sometimes it can be hard to tell if a story has legs because of the story itself, or just because of the actors involved the story. This week there's been no end to the brouhaha over Microsoft's reported attempt to curry favor with so-called "A-List" bloggers by sending them Acer Ferrari laptops loaded up with Windows Vista and Office 2007. To listen to the outcry, one might think that this kind of thing doesn't happen everyday.

Well, it most certainly does. And Microsoft is neither the first nor the best at the fine art of influencing the influencers. You might be surprised to learn this, but this fine art sees thousands and thousands of people employed in its service. It's an industry!

First, the essential details: Microsoft directly contacted a number of bloggers to offer them loaded laptops as "review units" (their language) which bloggers could chose to review, or not. Microsoft said that bloggers had the option of returning the laptop, giving it away as a prize, or just flat out keeping it. Many bloggers jumped at it, because a) Vista has not been released at the retail level yet, and b) having a laptop all ready to go means you don't have to futz with installing it on your own machine (and many of the bloggers were Mac users, to boot). The rest, as they say, is drama history.

This practice is not uncommon. Product developers and manufacturers are often itching to give out freebies to tech influencers because it's smart marketing. Do you really think Walt Mossberg of the Wall Street Journal goes to some secret underground Apple Store to buy his hot new iPod to review a month before it's even announced? Do you think hardware review sites sneak into processor fabs late at night to gain access to hardware samples that won't be on retail shelves for months? Do you really think they're sending all of that stuff back? Some are, some aren't, and to be honest, I have no idea if Mossberg keeps the top-secret stuff he's sent or not. For someone like Mossberg or someone like me, keeping the stuff isn't one-fifth as important as just having access to it in a timely fashion. That whole angle has been largely lost in this discussion, and it's a shame.

"Hey, wanna check this out?" is part of a public relations specialist's job, as is keeping access to such things exclusive (for with exclusivity, there comes a degree of control and influence). For instance, if Company A doesn't like you, you don't get the special offers. If they love you, you won't only get access to the products, but you'll get the royal treatment. Long before the issue of keeping review units pops up, there's the far larger issue of "do we want to play ball with these guys"?

Those of you who have been reading Ars for a very long time may remember the days when we griped about non-disclosure agreements and paper launches. The hardware scene had turned into a contest of who could kiss the most ass to get on the A-list, and we refused to play that game. To this day, we turn down almost anything with an NDA attached to it, unless we are certain both that we're not being cherry-picked and that getting access in some other way is unlikely. And we do not, under any circumstances, accept advertising attached to a review deal. But let's not be naive... the opportunities are plenty, and many publications bite.

In fact, let me suggest where the real concern should be directed: at publications that aren't giving full disclosure when relying completely on PR-provided goods. In this situation with Microsoft, the only faux pas I see would be one wherein a hypothetical author wrote a glowing review without admitting that their access was completely provided by Microsoft. But I ask you, when's the last time you've seen a WSJ or CNET review prefaced with: "this review unit was accompanied by an NDA from Company X"? An editor at a big publication might roll their eyes at the idea of disclosing such things, but I can tell you as someone who has done the "tiny site with no recognition" thing, access can make or break you in a way that any benefits from keeping a review unit simply cannot.

Even though we do not avail ourselves of these unsolicited opportunities when they come our way, this whole debacle has convinced me that Ars needs a disclosure page wherein we list any potential conflicts of interest our authors have relating to the subject matter we cover. Look for it in the next month or so.

Searching for new tours of Mekong Delta

A boat ride in Gao Giong tourist park in Dong Thap Province HCMC-based Young Generation Travel Co., or Y.G.T, has arranged fact-finding trips to the Mekong Delta for tour operators and tourism officials to explore the possibility of organizing new yet unique tours for visitors. These trips took place under an order by the Vietnam National Administration of Tourism and the HCMC Department of Tourism. The first trip from November 23 to 25 took in famous tourist attractions in Ben Tre,Vinh Long, and Tra Vinh Province. The second trip from December 15 to 20 explored some sites in Dong Thap, An Giang, Kien Giang and Ca Mau provinces. Y.G.T used different means of transport such as car, motorcycle and motor boat to take the participants in these trips to places that offer special tourism products of the region. They traveled along the rivers and canals to get a glimpse of mangrove forests, took motorcycle rides to explore Cam Mountain, and visited Tra Su Forest. The participating tourism officials expect tour operators to bring out new tourism products to attract tourists to the region. Interested tourists should contact Y.G.T., 209A Hoang Van Thu Street, Phu Nhuan District, HCMC. Tel: (08) 997 1283 - 8422 432, website: thehetretravel.com

Vietnam student hacker case: minister says no one above law

Vietnam student hacker case: minister says no one above law

With a Vietnamese school student who hacked into a government website still awaiting punishment, a government minister said the law had to take its course.

Bui Minh Tri, a 12th grade student in the Mekong Delta province of Vinh Long, detected a security flaw in the education ministry and broke into it last month, replacing Education Minister Nguyen Thien Nhan’s image with his own. Tri was nabbed later by the police. But in a letter recently to the minister he said his sole intention was to warn the website’s administrators about the security flaw. He also expressed remorse and apologized. Quach Tuan Ngoc, head of the ministry’s Informatics Center, said the website had not been harmed. Ngoc also suggested leniency for the schoolboy. However, asked by Thanh Nien correspondents Wednesday, Minister Nhan said he had yet to decide what action should be taken but said pointedly “no one is above the law”.

Internet access down as Taiwan quake severs cables

Internet access down as Taiwan quake severs cables

A man walks past a monitor of an internet service point in Hong Kong Vietnam Wednesday morning was largely cut off from the World Wide Web after a powerful earthquake measuring 6.7 on the Richter scale shook Taiwan a day earlier, damaging undersea cables.

Vietnamese Internet users said access had slowed dramatically and many websites, including Yahoo and MSN, were inaccessible. But Google and most Vietnamese websites remained accessible. Telecom companies VDC, FPT, and Viettel said the quake had severed at least six international telecom cables beneath the sea south of Taiwan. They were in touch with counterparts overseas to sort out the problem, but could not say when the situation would be resolved. Asia-wide disruption Disruption in service was reportedly Asia-wide, as other broadband service providers complained of similar problems. Taiwan's largest telephone company, Chunghwa Telecom Co, said the damage had disrupted 98 percent of Taiwan's communications with Malaysia, Singapore, Thailand and Hong Kong. Repairs to rectify the problem could take two to three weeks, said Vice-General Manager Lin Jen-hung. Telecommunications companies in Hong Kong, Japan and China were also hit. China's biggest telecoms provider, China Telecommunications Group, reported damage of communications cables to the US and Europe. "Internet connections have been seriously affected and so have phone links and dedicated business lines," said a representative from the telecom group. In South Korea, broadband provider KT Corp said six submarine cables had been disrupted, cutting services to a host of customers, including financial institutions. Foreign exchange trading reportedly suffered as well.