Google to the rescue

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Postby butch » Mon Aug 07, 2006 5:50 pm

http://www.techtree.com/techtree/jsp/artic...5056&cat_id=643


Google has launched a new feature that warns the users with a pop-up when they are about to visit a website hosting spyware or other malicious program.

This new feature is a collaboration between Google and Stop Badware, a nonprofit organization backed by Google, Lenovo Group and Sun Microsystems.

Reportedly, the warning will be given to the Google search engine users when clicking on the website that has been identified as malicious by the Stop Badware. The warning will be displayed on an alert page with the option to go back to the results page or continue on to the questionable website.
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Postby butch » Mon Aug 07, 2006 6:24 pm

personally I can't wait until the internet is cleaned up a bit.. The freedom is great
but the bastards out there trying to get into your mind or puter equipment is not ethical.

if you block popups - then I guess you won't get a warning. Lets wait and see
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Postby PMC » Mon Aug 07, 2006 6:44 pm

Ogopogo wrote: personally I can't wait until the internet is cleaned up a bit.. The freedom is great
but the bastards out there trying to get into your mind or puter equipment is not ethical.

if you block popups - then I guess you won't get a warning. Lets wait and see

Cleaning it up is a good thing, but it will take many years because as time passes more people get computers and a small percentage are the greedy and stupid...ie: spammers being a classic example, and each day another decides to be a spammer.

Spammers believe they are the only one doing it, they don't understand the math... one spammer sending a message is one message, ten thousand spammers sending one message is ten thousand pieces of spam targeted to one person.

I run my own mail server, and over the three day long weekend, 287 pieces of spam were blocked thus far... all of which came from about 30 individual machines... some mail server software doesn't allow the filtering of spam, so these spammers flooded many with their Viagra or cheap watch ads.

There is robot software used by spammers that reads webpages, including this site and PSR looking for e-mail addresses to spam.... never put your address in a message etc.. use the word AT for the @ sign if you need to put an address in the content.

Spammers being only one issue... there are many more as the networks have become a toilet of virus traffic. Anyone that reads their router logs will see the dozens of connections per hour that are attempted to pass on virus or take control of a machine... which is why I wrote up on the need to use a NAT router to block all this traffic.
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Postby Jack Bennest » Mon Aug 07, 2006 7:12 pm

Glad to have you on board PMC - as yourself and jonedmonton seem to bring a techo nerd wisdom to this board

Here is my story:

I get email about four different ways

through city hall I get a fair amount of unsolicited mail - can't control that
I have given up on yahoo as it allows all forms of viagra spam - wanna a better penis?

I just set up gmail for my website and that works well with no spam getting through

on my telus account I admit I have put it out on various websites and boards and do get some span - mainly from apple - generally telus does a good job with preventing spam

what bugs me most is target ads (thats what they are called) that pop up every time I look away from the screen - no joke - usually just when you are going to a new site or page. It only happens on one of my computers...the other one is free of all bad things - better XP (legal), on the end of my network LAN - no spyware period.

My next computer will replace this one and hopefully it will fix many of the probs I have now.
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Postby jon » Mon Aug 07, 2006 9:21 pm

About a year ago, there was a great CNN piece on just that topic. They were covering the trial of one guy who single-handedly delivered the majority of spam worldwide for a period around the turn of the century. Under multiple names, he provided a spam service to many. Plus, creating a large amount himself, his most popular providing body part enlargement.

Between the two (selling spam and doing his own spam), he made close to a million a year.

What makes spam pay is the fact that very, very small percentages of very large numbers still is sizable. For example, if you sent out 12 millions spams per day and got a 1/100th of 1% buy rate, you'd sell 1200 items per day. If you made $40 profit per item, that works out to $17.5 million per year.
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Postby PMC » Mon Aug 07, 2006 9:42 pm

Top Dog wrote:

what bugs me most is target ads (thats what they are called) that pop up every time I look away from the screen - no joke - usually just when you are going to a new site or page. It only happens on one of my computers...

You did not mention which web browser you are using on the machine that does the popup ads... I am guessing that it is Microsoft's IE.

If so, go here http://www.mozilla.org/ and download the Firefox web browser. Install it, and then go into the settings, and uncheck or disable popup windows... problem solved if it is this... if not then give more info on the browser and the system itself.

If you are using Firefox already, then see the `Options' menu item and turn off popups, you can also turn off hidden java or VB script installs and downloads....and also those tracking cookies... but you need cookies to log into radiowest... there is a check off for `for the orginating site only' which is good to use.

Avoid using software add on's like search bars.... use the Google website http://www.google.ca/ to search rather than a search bar within a browser... some of the add on search bars are spyware and/or get cracked to add spyware.

There is a term of hacker and cracker... hackers are usually great programmers, while crackers are users of software that like to break into or destroy systems. I mention this to define the reality, since the commercial media dumps on hackers as being negative when most hackers are not.
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Postby PMC » Mon Aug 07, 2006 9:44 pm

jonedmonton wrote: About a year ago, there was a great CNN piece on just that topic.

About six months ago, a russian spammer was found dead... nobody knows who, but everybody knows why.

If a few more found their demise, spammers would become a thing of the past.
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Postby Jack Bennest » Tue Aug 08, 2006 7:18 am

I have mozilla on the puter in question - where do I find settings?


By and By - the best behaved puter is using IE
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Postby PMC » Tue Aug 08, 2006 11:59 am

Top Dog wrote: I have mozilla on the puter in question - where do I find settings?


By and By - the best behaved puter is using IE

Follow the above instructions and install Firefox or get the latest Mozilla suite, since you did not say how long the browser has been on the machine or which version.

There is a menu item called `Preferences' in Mozilla or `Options' in Firefox, bring up the dialog and go through each item and look for the labels/check marks for disabling/enabling.

The Mozilla suite is Netscape.

As for IE, good luck with it, because it still allows hidden installs and cookies.
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