Useful Links

Web Browsers:

  • Google Chrome – Google’s web browser, much safer and more secure than Internet Explorer

Adblocking:

Not only are ads on the internet intrusive and annoying, they have also become vectors for malware infection Here are a few examples:

Massive malvertising campaign on Yahoo, AOL and other sites delivers ransomware (Oct 2014)
Forbes Visitors Forced to Disable Ad-Block See Malware-Ads (January 2016)
Angler Exploit Kit Strikes on MSN.com via Malvertising Campaign (August 2015)
MSN Home Page Drops More Malware Via Malvertising (January 2016)

Fortunately there is a way that you can simultaneously protect yourself from malvertising and make your web browsing experience more comfortable. Adblocking. Currently the best adblocker out there for both Chrome and Firefox is called “uBlock Origin” and it is Free. Make sure to follow the links on this page to install it as FAKE versions of uBlock often make their way into App stores.

But what about adblocking for Internet Explorer? Don’t use Internet Explorer! It is the least secure major web browser available. With Chrome and Firefox both being free, there’s seldom a reason to use IE and never a reason to use it as your “daily browser.”

Virus Protection/Remediation:

If you have Windows 8 / 10 you already have virus protection in the form of Windows Defender. We don’t recommend Norton/McAfee as they are not much more effective (and often less effective) at preventing viruses, but they do use up a lot of system resources and slow down your computer. If you are on Windows 7 you can download Microsoft Security Essentials, which is the Windows 7 version of Defender.

In addition to Defender/Security Essentials we also recommend Malwarebytes Anti-Malware.  It is available both as a free version that you can manually run each week, or as a paid version that runs all the time protecting your computer from viruses as well as spy and adware.

HitmanPro.Alert is a great product that protects your computer from a wide range of unpatched exploits and vulnerabilities. HitmanPro.Alert uses behavior-based monitoring to protect your system from ransomware that will try to encrypt all the documents on your computer – making them useless – and then charge you a ransom to unencrypt them. The ransom is often $500 – $1000 or even more and for home users those files could include:

Pictures of loved ones

Financial documents

Your email

Every file on your computer

For business users the picture is even bleaker.  Not only could it encrypt all the business documents on your computer, but any documents on other people’s computers in your office that are shared, or even documents on the server. Getting an office infected with ransomware is an expensive proposition. In the best case scenario where you had backups that the infected user did not have permission to access, it could cost you:

  • Several hours to a full day of downtime
  • An on-site visit
  • Many hours of remote support
  • Removal, rebuilding and reinstalling the infected computer(s)
  • Restoring lost data from backups
  • Permanent loss of data created between the latest available backup and the present

If the infected user (and therefore the virus) had permission to write to the backups or if you didn’t have backups you would be forced to pay the ransom or loose your data permanently. Compared to the risk, HitmanPro is inexpensive at only $16/license in packs of 10 at the time of this writing. You can install it yourself or we would be happy to assist you, just give our shop a call at 415.456.6537.

CD Emulation:

  • WinCDEmu Portable – If you have a CD Image (ISO) and just want to mount/use it without burning a CD you can use this