Security Applications: Why are they important ??
Having a security application installed on your computer is very important, you probably face many situations everyday that could harm your computer with malicious content without you knowing.
If you're a regular web surfer, or you download frequently, or even share CDs or portable drives with friends or family, then your chances of getting your computer infected has just increased.
The absense of a security application is like having unprotected sex, you're just playing with the odds, it might happen, or not. It's always better to be safe than sorry. with either!
Fortunately, there are a lot security applications available, some of them are even free, so if you don't have the budget to pay for one, just use a free one.
Everyday, a new virus, trojan or any type of malicious files are created, we'll never know why, it's just one of those "human mystery behavior", but they do exist, and if you're not cautious then you might lose all your computer's content or even have your personal information revealed and used without your knowledge.
For example, a malicious technique called "
keylogging
" can be used against you to log every key stroke you make with your keyboard, this means all your passwords, chats.. then easily sent to the person that infected you with that file to use the information without your knowlege.
Also, if you frequently download files online, or share files with your friends, you're faced with a possibility of infection, malicious files are "covert" that means even your friend that you shared files with might get infected without him/her knowing about it.
There are a lot of arguments that none of the security applications are perfect, however that doesn't mean they are not necessary, they decrease the chance of your computer being infected by at least 70%.
Here is a list of security applications that we recommend for you to use: (Pick one only)
After you install the security application you chose, always make sure that you keep it up-to-date to better protect you from new malicious files.
Clean Downloading:
Guide to clean downloading
If you frequently download files from websites then you need to be more careful when downloading, you can face many bad situations when downloading a file.
For example, there are a lot of files out there that are fake, you could be downloading an application then it turns out it's just an archive with some wallpapers in it, or even worse, malicious files.
To avoid the hassle of downloading something that you did not want, base your downloads from websites that have "comments" or "reviews by users", this way you'll know what you're downloading is what you want if all comments are positive.
Thankfully, there are users out there dedicated to find fake files and report them or leave their comments in the website to help other users.
Try to not download anything that sounds or looks "cool", do some research first, Google is your friend, just search for the name of the file you're downloading to find more information about it, after you're done researching and you still feel that you need the file, then go ahead and download it.
Be careful of misleading downloads, there are some websites that offer "mirrors" or "fast download links", most of the time they are real files and the poster is really offering more options for the user.
However, there are some people that take advantage of that and use misleading links, when you click them it might redirect you to a website that asks you for your credit card information or to pay a certain membership fee.
If you're willing to pay for what you want to download then go to the original source, for example, if you want to buy "Winamp", don't buy it from a third party website, go to their official website and buy it, this way you're making sure what you're downloading is real, and your money is not being wasted on fake or bad files.
Strong Password:
Having a strong password
We use passwords everyday, when we want to read emails, login to MSN Messenger, post in a web forum or a blog and many other password protected systems, if you're online a lot then I bet you have at least four places you go to that needs a password.
The idea of having a password is to protect your information or your account that is solely used by you, and that is very important, to make sure that you protect your information.
Using an easy password can jeopardise your account, a lot of people use their birth date, phone number, or even their real name as passwords, and that is a big mistake because anyone that knows you can probably guess that password.
Your password should not reflect or be similar to any information available to public audience, if you have trouble remembering a complex formatted password, then just play with the letters and numbers.
For example, let's say that your name is "John Smith", if you're password is just "johnsmith" that means any of your friends can guess that password, or if a hacker with a bit of patience can brute force it.
If you use a mutli character password then you just gradually decreased the possibility of a friend gussing your password or hacker decrypting it, if we turn "John Smith" to "JOHn+smiTH!" then you just made the job very hard on both your friends and the hacker.
Passwords are case sensitive, meaning that "man" is different than "MAn" that simple switch from only lower case to a mix of lower and upper case makes the password very strong, let me elaborate, here are the possibilities of a multi character password:
- abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz
- ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ
- 0123456789
The possibilities of that are endless, the longer your password and the more complex it is then you virtually made it impossible for anyone to hack or guess that password, unless the password is being saved as basic text without encryption, most password protected systems use encryptions such as MD5 or SHA1 or even both.
If a hacker tries to brute force your password, he first has to figure out how many characters you're using, let's say four, if you use a complex pass, here is a 0.00001% of the list he has to go through before remotely coming close to the password:
- aaaa
- aaab
- aaac
- So on and so forth...
Keep in mind the list above only shows the lower case, the hacker will have to check all, lower, upper, numbers, symbols..etc, which can take centuries to figure out! a well developed password system also has even more complications to better protect you such as "salted passwords" or let's say using a specific "key" but you don't have to worry about that, just feel better that there are people out there trying to make the online world safer for you.
Just remember to always make your password hard to guess, use a complex format and if you're having problems thinking of one, you can always use our Password Generator page to make one.
Spam, it exists:
Spam. Yes, it exists!
If you have an email address or you frequently visit web forums then the chances are you already faced a couple of spam posts.
Spam, it's annoying, no one likes it, thousands of spam emails and posts are made everyday for the purpose of desperate advertising or scamming others, most people delete those spam from their inbox, however, some don't, this article is aimed at the "don't" audience.
Most spam emails are harmless, just some guy trying to get users to sign up with an affiliate link to buy viagra! those are easy to spot, just mark and delete, but there are other spam emails that could be harmful to you if you believe even one word from it.
The type of spam I'm talking about is when a Nigerian prince emails you and offers you a big chunk of cash to help him, the cash is obviously something everyone wishes for, that's why (sadly), few fall for these scams.
Live by this term, "if something is too good to be true, then it probably is", those scammers send a lot of emails, hoping for just one to fall for it, then they ask you to send a small amount of money to get things moving, I don't know the details of the scam, but I know it's idiotic.
If you receive any email from a prince, king or superman, then just delete it, don't even think about reading it unless you want to have a good laugh, spamming a link to advertise is something, but scamming people with ridiciolous fantasies is just a new low.
Google, Hotmail, even the web forum you visit frequently spend a lot of time "fighting" those spammers, help them and don't fall for it.
Phishing, it's bad:
Phishing, it's bad
Wikipedia's definition of phishing is "the criminally fraudulent process of attempting to acquire sensitive information such as usernames, passwords and credit card details by masquerading as a trustworthy entity in an electronic communication."
There are a lot of phishing and/or phishers reported every single day, phishers virtually target anything they can profit from, any means to obtain access to accounts, such as "web money processing" services, basically any type of information they can use to resell or drain it from content. (money, points..etc)
They create a fake page that looks exactly or almost like the original service provider, then they add fake form fields, such as username and passwords, credit card fields, once you submit the form, instead of you logging in as you expected, your information gets sent to the phisher and later on used as explained before.
The most common phishing use in the "download world" is Rapidshare phishing, it doesn't matter which service you're using, what matter is that you need to learn how to avoid such incidents.
Always make sure that the website you're logging in to or purchasing an item from is the original website, try to avoid clicking on the service provider's links from other websites, type the URL yourself in the address bar, also, make sure that what you're purchasing is real, not a fake page with fake items, use Google, do a little research first.
A lot of people took that for granted, and as a result they're victims, money and accounts stolen, thankfully there are a lot of websites out there that provide similar articles to help users understand what phishing is and they even sometimes provide detailed information.
If you see a phishing link in a web forum, a blog.. report it to the website's owner or staff, help make the online world cleaner and safer.
Video Files:
Video files and codecs
If you downloaded a video file before and tried to view then only got audio (sound), you probably didn't have the required codecs to play that video.
Most videos available online to download require codecs because they are compressed, basically to provide the same quality with less size, examples for video compressions are DivX, XviD, or just a video converted to FLV (flash video), usually FLV videos have poor quality but the file size is very small.
The reason most people use such compressions is to save time uploading the video and make it available online, which is great for the downloader.
There are a lot of codec packs available, most of them are free, from our experience we found K-Lite Mega Codec pack to be the best one, it installs all the required codecs you need to play almost any video file, and it's very easy to use.
Some people don't like to install codec packs, they prefer to install each codec by itself, for example they download the latest DivX and install it, then XviD, so on and so forth, if you're just looking for a way to enjoy watching videos without any hassle, then we recommend K-Lite, they frequently update their codecs and they provide a free media player with the package.
You can also install VLC Media player, it's free, and it plays almost all video files without having any codecs installed.
If you're a Linux user, the process of playing videos is a bit easier for you, when you try to play a video and a codec is required, the media player automatically notifies you of the missing codec and asks you if you would like to install them, then all you have to do is accept, after that the codecs are downloaded and installed automatically for you.
Manage Archives:
AlwaManage archives
Most sources that offer downloads have their files archived, common compressions used are Zip and RAR, most operating systems support Zip management without installing any application.
Files are compressed/archived to basically save a bit of space and to add a group of files within one, which saves a lot of time when uploading, so instead of uploading 40 files one by one, now you can archive them into a single file and upload only one.
Compression is used also to upload large files to free filehosts such as Rapidshare.com, they have a 100 MB limit per file, with applications such as WinRAR you can split a single 300 MB file into three 100 MB files.
There are a lot of applications available to manage archives, such as WinZip, WinRAR..etc, WinZip supports most common compression extensions but not RAR, so WinRAR is a better choice for you if you want to buy an archive management application.
If you don't want to buy one, there are other applications that basically do the same job as WinRAR for free, such as 7-Zip, it supports most common compressions extensions, even RAR, so if you have that installed, you probably won't need any other applications to manage archives.
Another useful thing you can do with archive management applications is to password protect your archive, for example let's say you archived some family photos and you don't want anyone viewing that file, with most archive management applications, you have an option to add a password, so only the one with the password can access the file.
Forbidden Names:
Use Forbidden names
We create new folders and files everyday, naming and storing them to be able to easily find what we're looking for later, however, in Windows, you don't have the full freedom in naming files and folders, some terms are forbidden!
Let's do a little test, create a folder or a text file, and try to rename it to any of the following terms "con, nul, prn, aux, com1, com2, lpt1, lpt2", you'll find that naming a file with these terms is impossible, well, not impossible, but not easy to do.
Some people think it's a glitch in Windows that needs to be fixed, but it's not a glitch, these keywords are used by Windows internally and are reserved, con for console, prn for print..etc
The reason Microsoft made it hard to create files or folders with these terms is to avoid conflict, as you can see those are being used within the system, of course you won't have that problem with Linux, but it's hardly a problem, if you really want to use one of those terms as a file name, just add another word next to it, such as "con file".
You can also use CMD to create folders with those terms (MD command), but as I said, why go to extreme measures when you can do it with an easy solution.
Regards
E-Store
Want UR PC To Be Xcellent !
