Over the years I have really heavily used Malwarebytes to start the diagnostic process for a lot of my clients. If their machine seemed to be infected or was just slow, that was the tool I pulled out first. Let’s take a closer look at why that is. In my field I could use pretty much any diagnostic tool out there, and I have a large arsenal from which…
It seems that we are hearing almost daily about security breaches and ransomware attacks. Most of the time these are large corporations and government agencies, so how can we possibly keep ourselves protected when they can’t? To start with, we don’t need to be as secure as these other targets because we don’t have as much to protect. No hacker organization is going to expend massive resources attempting to…
There are a lot of threats out there today, and they get smarter and smarter. While no software will protect you from yourself, it does go a long way to help things out. The problem is that there are so many different pieces of software out there, how do you figure out which one is right for you? Let’s dive in and I will show you how I choose…
Is it me, or are the names for bad things getting weirder? After I had been into computers for a few years we started having to deal with viruses, now we have spyware, malware, ransomware and cryptojacking. I have visions of a Count Dracula sneaking out of his crypt and carjacking me. Crypojacking simply is someone using your computer to crunch numbers which earns them money. This is often…
Today there are more smart devices (phones and tablets) than computers out there. It seems for every person who has a desktop or laptop computer, they have at least two smart devices (I’ll just call them devices from here on out). People who write malware and viruses (I’m going to lump everything into malware from here on out) want to get the most people possible with the least amount of…
I see an increasing number of people who have been scammed either by a pop-up that appears while they are online telling them to call someone for assistance with their infected computer, or that call them on the telephone saying they have received messages from their computer and are calling to help….for a fee. Now what? Once you realize you have been scammed, what do you do? This article…
Many people believe that if you install antivirus, only go to the more well known websites, and don’t do things people shouldn’t do online that you are fairly well protected. Those people are wrong. Sure, all of those things will help, but they are not most important way to protect your computer, knowledge is. There are two major ways I see that people get infected with today: through email…
There was a time when I would not connect a computer to a network or the internet without a current subscription to a paid antivirus product. Today however none of my computers have a paid antivirus program installed on them. Why is that? Let’s start with the fact that I can not remember the last time I had to remove a virus infection, neither can the other techs I…
Cryptolocker and other ransomware is the single biggest threat to your data today. If you are a business, it is doubly as big a threat. I have seen people lose years of their family photos on their home PC, and multi-location corporations all but shut down. This is nothing to take lightly. So what is ransomware and how does it work? Ransomware is a type of malware (unwanted software…
A lot of people today think that security software such as antivirus is not as important as it once was. We reviewed that idea in another post so if you are interested take a look there. If you do decide to run a security package, which one should you choose? In the past, starting with the MacAfee for DOS days, antivirus packages have swapped places as far as detection…
