Rogue

More and more new rogue programs are out there trying to get you. I had a customer bring his machine to me today with a fairly new rogue program infection.There really wasn't much new in this one. The fake scan telling him he had viruses on his computer and the fact that "they seemed authentic" got him to submit his credit card number to pay the $29 for their product. Of course after the payment was made nothing happened.

I suggested that he call his credit card company immediately. He did and they canceled the account and have sent him a new card for a new account.

In the meantime it has taken me 2.5 hours to restore his machine to like new condition: rogue eliminated and machine tuned and cleaned.

Whatever you do folks, DO NOT give away your credit card number, regardless of how authentic their display may seem. While you are at it, check out the Lavasoft Rogue gallery. Notice, after looking at a few, how most of the rogues look alike!

Lavasoft Rogue Gallery

Let me say up front that although this PCWorld article names 29 items, my experience with the programs on the list is limited to 2: Eraser & Youtube Downloader. I can recommend them both, but you really have to be careful when downloading free (or any) programs. Read the fine print, and don't install any toolbars of extra programs that the provider may suggest. These are basically advertisements. As an example, when I look at many of your machines, I see Google's Chrome installed, and when I ask why, the usual answer is "I haven't a clue". Well I do. You have it because when downloading something else you were prompted to install Chrome, and the default answer was "yes", and so you have it but don't know why.

Both of the 2 programs I use, Eraser and Youtube Downloader work just fine without any toolbar or extras of any kind. So be careful not to include any extras. If you have questions about this, please either comment below or write me.

By the way, I use FLV Player (free) to play downloaded Youtube videos.

I should also add that I will be trying TrueCrypt at some point to encrypt files.

Top 29 Laptop Apps, Downloads, and Services

Sorting Through Apple’s Many Announcements

David Pogue of the New York Times attempts to sort out all of the various Apple announcements. That's good, because I haven't a clue. It's tough to keep up with Apple - they move so fast.

"Today, at Apple’s Worldwide Developer Conference (WWDC), Steve Jobs took the stage to reveal what the company’s been up to. Turns out the answer is: a lot.

The announcements and demonstrations covered three gigantic hunks of software: the next version of Mac OS X (“Lion”), the next version of the iPhone/iPad/Touch software (“iOS 5”), and a new online syncing service called iCloud.

Let’s address these one by one."

Read David's Blog Post