SECURITY PROGRAMS – BACKGROUND

Many people have strong religious convictions about antivirus and security programs for PCs. I’m guilty of that too but let me try to step back and give you a reasonably unbiased overview of where we are in 2009. For the last few years, I’ve been recommending...

UPDATE – .NET FRAMEWORK 3.5 SP1

Many of you are seeing an update for “.NET Framework 3.5 SP1” that isn’t installed automatically; the little gold shield or Vista update icon appears by the clock looking for you to click the OK button manually. .NET Framework is a programming environment that...

SECURITY UPDATE 2009

Several people have asked me about the most recent variations on old, old themes. Email warnings about dangerous messages, like the one on the right. Newspaper articles about the latest virus. Nothing is new. The latest threats are the same as the old threats. Let’s...

MALICIOUS SOFTWARE REMOVAL TOOL

Microsoft’s recent announcement that it will distribute free antivirus software was unexpected but in some ways it’s just an expansion of efforts by Microsoft that have been ongoing for years. In 2006 Microsoft began including the “Malicious Software...

ANOTHER IE PATCH

This morning Microsoft released a patch for Internet Explorer to prevent an exploit that became publicly known in the last couple of days. The fear is that the bad guys will quickly come up with ways to demagnetize your credit cards and kill your pets if you...