No One Can Hack Your Account Unless You Commit A Mistake

No one can hack our accounts unless we allow doing so without putting necessary and preventive security measures in place. Although it's a never-ending game of cat and mouse for black hat hackers and security professionals, I will have to say that popular sites like Google, facebook and twitter etc, are providing all the required security settings to efficiently fight against snoopers, spy, social engineering and hackers etc., but without being aware of them and enabling them is like getting into trouble. 

For instance, to efficiently defence your facebook account security,

1. enabling secure browsing (https) and
2. login approvals
is recommended.

Login approvals send security code and notifications to your mobile device during facebook account login and it also supports sending of alert messages to email and mobile when an unauthorized computer is logged-in to our facebook account. Also for the enhaced security of facebook users, recently facebook security team has announced integration with the security firm Websense which works to protect people using those links on facebook that mislead them to malicious websites. And evidently facebook security team efforts are fruitful as each day it prevents at least 600000 attempts by hackers to break into user accounts.

New Viruses on Facebook that Can Be Harmful - Virus Alert

Thousands of online accounts are hijacked every day and Facebook is no exception. Recently on Facebook, users have been encountering stuff that is suspicious of being called a virus, posing threat to their account security and privacy.

Given below are 4 new such type of viruses responsible for harming or slowing down your computer and possibly hijack your Facebook account, and thus should be protected against such elements being alert and aware on Facebook. 

1. Be aware while clicking on any pop-ups from Facebook as malicious users who spam online mask their web pages use these pop-ups for URL redirection to redirect users to malicious sites.
2. If you get a notification that a friend of yours reported your account for offensive behavior, just discard it.
3. Videos saying the lines - '99% of People can not watch this for more the 15 Sec' or similar, do not play/open it as it is a survey scam that directs you to external websites for completing a survey which is an absolute waste of your valuable time.
4. Discard all messages from your friends via chat saying click this link. These are suspicious links sent by malicious apps that can infect your timeline, messages, and even your friends' walls. If anyone is sharing a link on chat, always confirm with the sender that the link is safe and then proceed.

Always be careful while using Facebook and stay away from virus infections!
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Losing Data is No Longer the End of the World

Data recovery is the last thing on our minds when we are busy.

Data Recovery Equipment

We've all been there. Despite knowing that we need to save our work at regular intervals and backup everything, there is always going to be that time when you're engrossed in what you're doing and have ploughed on regardless with that complex spreadsheet, calculations or report. You've almost finished, 5 o'clock is in sight, and backing up or saving your data is the last thing on your mind. But you can guarantee that will be exactly the moment when you have a power cut. And suddenly the screen is blank and everything has gone. 

Even when you have been as careful as can be and saved every last meg on your external hard drive, you can never guarantee that your dog won't decide to make a tasty meal out of it and have a good old chew.

Well breathe a sigh of relief as this no longer means the loss of all your hard work. Thankfully there are now expert data recovery organisations out there who can not only retrieve data you thought that you had lost, but can offer you a wealth of information and advice about how to stop it happening again. Both the emergency services and the GP of data recoveryall-in-one.

These guys can also advise you on which of the wide range of data recovery systems and equipment are the best value for money and meet your individual needs.

Unfortunately they weren't able to advise on how to tempt my dog into eating dog food instead of electrical equipment.

How To Delete Undeletable Files In Windows

It happens quite often that you want to delete a non-required file and it does not get deleted by normal method. When you try removing it by the normal delete method a message saying 'Error Deleting File or Folder' pops out saying that it cannot delete the file as the file is already in use. In such case you need to make sure that the file is not being used by some other program or it is not write protected.

The other variants of this error message include:

Cannot delete file: Access is denied
There has been a sharing violation.
The source or destination file may be in use.
The file is in use by another program or user.
Make sure the disk is not full or write-protected and that the file is not currently in use.

If your are certain that the file is not write protected then here is the how you can safely delete the file: 

1. Go to Start-->Run... and type CMD (or) COMMAND and press OK which open the command prompt window. Leave it open and make sure you close all other running applications.

2. Go to Run dialog box again and type TASKMGR.EXE and press OK to access the task manager. (alternatively you can also use the keyboard shortcut Ctrl+Alt+Del to go to task manager)
Now go to Processes tab and End Process named 'explorer.exe' by right clicking on it and choosing End Process.

3. Shuffle back to Command prompt without closing the task manager window. (Use Keyboard shortcut Alt+Tab). Now using DEL command, delete the file.

Syntax:
--> At the command prompt if you are in the same directory as of the file you wanted to delete, just give the following command at the command prompt

DEL    (filename).(extension)

--> And if you are in the other directory, you have to specify the entire path of the file to delete it.

DEL   (path of the file)\(filename).(extension)

For example, if you want to delete a file named 'movie.flv' in your G: drive, and at the command prompt you are in the C: drive then the syntax to delete the file is

DEL    G:\movie.flv

4. Now, use Alt+Tab to go back to Task Manager and from the file menu choose New Task(Run...) and type explorer.exe and click OK in order to restart your Windows shell.That's it!! You have successfully removed the unwanted file from your PC.
If you find the above method of deleting the file a bit difficult, then you have to use an amazing software called 'Unlocker' which can easily kill the processes that are using the file and unlock the file so that you can easily delete or edit it.



Hope this helps...

Try it yourself and post in your valuable comments.

Block Viruses From Entering Your USB Drive

USB drives are the most popular virus carriers these days. Here is the simple yet powerful command prompt trick with which you can create a dummy file that can block any incoming virus to your Pen drive.

1. Note down the free space in bytes left in your USB drive. To do that, just right-click with your mouse on your USB drive and select properties where you can find the Used space and free space shown in bytes.

2. Go to start-->Run... and typecmd and click Ok to open the command prompt(DOS) window.

3. At the command prompt type the command having the syntax as follows:

fsutil file createnew [USB drive path\filename] [free space in bytes]

for example, if the drive letter for your USB drive is 'K', the free space available is 1528864758 bytes and filename you want to use is dummyfile then the command you have to type is:

fsutil file createnew k:\dummyfile 1528864768 

As soon as you press ENTER after giving this command a file will be created in you USB drive occupying all the free space available.

Now your USB drive cannot accommodate any incoming viruses as it has zero free space. You can check that from your drive properties. As you can see in the image below the free space left is zero as we have created a dummy file with all the free space available in the step above.
And whenever you want to copy files to your USB drive from secured sources, just delete that dummyfile created and copy the data you wanted and again create a dummyfile that occupies the remaining free space.

This command prompt trick is the best preventive measure to block any virus form entering your USB drive.

Hope this helps...

Try it yourself and post in your valuable comments.

Desktop.ini Trick to Apply Image to a Drive Icon Area

With this simple yet wonderful trick you can set your favorite images as background to the icon area of any of your disk drives.

Step by Step process: 

1. Open any of your disk drives and right-click with your mouse to create a new text document.

2. Type the below code in the text document created.(Better copy and paste)

[ExtShellFolderViews]
{BE098140-A513-11D0-A3A4-00C04FD706EC}={BE098410-A513-11D0-A3A4-00C04FD706EC}
[{BE098140-A513-11D0-A3A4-00C04FD706EC}]
IconArea_Image-=
IconArea_Image=path of jpg,jpeg,bmp,gif file

replace "path of jpg,jpeg,bmp,gif file" in the code with the path of the file where your image is located.

For example, if your jpg image is located in g:\wallpapers with the name Vista, set the path as g:\wallpapers\Vista.jpg


3. Now save it with the File name desktop.ini and hit Refresh

Note: Make sure to change the Save as type field from Text Document(*.txt) to All Files.

That's it! Now your favorite image is set as the background.


Try it yourself and post in your comments.

Why Microsoft Word Is Used?

Getting back to history, before the advent of computers and software applications, typewriters are used to prepare official text materials.

Photo by xlibber

But these typewriters lacked many features and the following can be attributed as major disadvantages of preparing text materials using a typewriter:

• Corrections cannot be made because whatever the user presses the character key will be appearing on the paper directly.


• We can take limited copies only.


• It cannot be used for future purpose.


• The process of typing on typewriter is a stressful job.

To avoid all these inconveniences we use computer basic system to prepare text materials which is done efficiently by word processing applications. Word processing is nothing but arranging of data in meaningful form and among the various word processing software available, Microsoft Word is well known for its wide range of interactive features and ease of use.

General Features of Microsoft Word

1. Speed

   Microsoft Word provides special features to move around the prepared text by using the keyboard keys and we can modify the text according to our like whenever we need. Here are the most commonly used keyboard shortcuts to instantly move to our desired location:
   

   Move to Previous Page

   

   Move to Next Page

   

   Move from one paragraph to another paragraph

   
   
   
   

   To move from one word to another word

   
   
   
   
   
   

2. Better Editing Features

   Microsoft Word provides standard editing features like cut, copy and paste. And unlike in the manual typewriter it identifies a single character. MS Word will recognize a character or a word or a sentence or a paragraph or the entire text in our document.




3. Better Format Features

   Microsoft Word will provide different formatting features to change the look of the text attractive and reasonable like font type, style, size, color and so on.



4. External Support

   In Microsoft Word we can interact with any other application either available offline on our PC or online using the internet.




5. Support for Adding to Documents

   It is a special feature provided by this application which is well known as mail merge. It is used to merge or club two documents and the result is obtained in a new document.




6. Security

   Microsoft Word provides the required security options to restrict the documents so that any user cannot modify or make corrections in the document.

The 12 Best and Most Useful Utility Software Tools

It is known that free software utilities are available in the internet. Some varieties of utility software are big in size and some utilities are in small size not more than 2 MB to 5 MB but even-then, while using those are most useful. The big size software which gives burden to system is called bloatware. Besides these there are freely available various kinds of small and best utility software in the internet useful to all. Among those, here's about some important software utilities.

SpaceSnifferThe freeware utility SpaceSniffer is a disk scanning utility using which, in a system having so many files stored, you can know how files and folders are structured and where it was stored.

After scanning the drive through this, how space was occupied on your disks can be viewed visually.

f.luxYou may get some sort of eye problems due to sitting before computer screen and working for long. This problem is due to monitor color temperature.

The f.lux software application will match the room temperature lights with monitor color temperature. Through this, depending on the room lights, there is a possibility to adjust monitor.

CPU-ZIt is a most important tool being used by many for maintaining the system. It will reveal total status of CPU.
CPU-Z will inform about CPU (clock speed and more details), motherboard, RAM, GPU and other system devices. This freeware application will help to inform about the working capacity of CPU.

TeraCopyThis free utility considerably reduces the time of copying or moving files on your Windows computer.
At the time of copying files and folder using TeraCopy the interface will give useful information and copy status. In the same way another utility is in use by name FastCopy.

EverythingWhen compared to Windows XP the indexed searching given in Windows 7 will be very speed. Better that this, Everything tool from voidtools.com will give more speedy indexed searching that locates files and folders by name instantly. Even-though there's searching facility in Windows, there is every possibility to do searching as needed through this utility.

TMonitorThe processors Core i3, i5, i7 are very strong and will handle elegantly the thermal and power loads. Even though it is very important to know and understand to monitor speedily working clock speed of these chips. Through TMonitor software the Core i-series chips can be monitored.

Darik's Boot and Nuke (DBAN)Through internet you'll face some troubles and to save the PC from those troubles Book and Nuke utility will help. After download first you've to write it into a bootable CD and at the time booting the system using DBAN can remove viruses and spyware and can also prevent hard disk forensic analysis or identity theft by deleting the contents of hard drive.
EraserGenerally everyone delete files and there's possibility to recover the deleted files with file recovery software. Due to this, at the time of selling hard disk, you should be careful in regard to the recovery of sensitive data. This small security software tool Eraser can completely remove sensitive data and will do unrecoverable the deleted data on your hard drive.

µTorrentBitTorrent client µTorrent is being used largely and is having very less size (free utorret.exe is just 946.39KB). Through µTorrent bulk downloads of any file size can be done.

KeePass Password SafeAfter the internet came into practice, passwords number had been increased more. From your e-mail account to Facebook login, for every necessity online user ID and password is compulsory. In this process everyone will be having more than one password for security purposes and to keep that important information at one secure place KeePass will be of great help.

This small password manager utility will keep carefully all your passwords in a totally 256 encrypted database with one single master password which only has to be remembered. Using this all your important data like online banking info, ATM PIN numbers, passwords and User IDs can be kept very safe and secure.

Gmail NotifierThe new Gmail messages received are displayed through Gmail Notifier which resides as your system tray icon. Without the need of web browser, you can view your unread Gmail messages, Gmail chatting messages and other social network messages through Gmail Notifier.

Nail it!For those of you who open various types of windows (folders, readme file windows) at a time, to keep any window stay on top Nail it! is helpful. Once one window is needed and next another window is required. In this process, without closing any of the windows, you can do nail. To say, by doing Nail to any active window it will be on top in the screen. If not required you can UnNail it. After running this application, it runs as icon in the system tray and allows you to Nail windows so that they stay on top
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Massive bank cyberattack planned

Security firm McAfee on Thursday released a report warning that a massive cyberattack on 30 U.S. banks has been planned, with the goal of stealing millions of dollars from consumers' bank accounts.

McAfee's research upheld an October report from RSA, the security wing of IT giant EMC Corp (EMC, Fortune 500).

RSA startled the security world with its announcement that a gang of cybercriminals had developed a sophisticated Trojan aimed at funneling money out of bank accounts from Chase (JPM, Fortune 500),Citibank (C, Fortune 500), Wells Fargo (WFC,Fortune 500), eBay (EBAY, Fortune 500) subsidiary PayPal and dozens of other large banks. Known as "Project Blitzkrieg," the plan has been successfully tested on at least 300 guinea pig bank accounts in the United States, and the crime ring had plans to launch its attack in full force in the spring of 2013, according to McAfee, a unit of Intel (INTC, Fortune 500). (McAfee was founded by John McAfee, who is wanted for questioning as part of a Belize murder investigation, but he no longer has any ties to the company.)

Project Blitzkrieg began with a massive cybercriminal recruiting campaign, promising each recruit of a share of the stolen funds in exchange for their hacking ability and busywork. With the backing of two Russian cybercriminals, including a prominent cyber mafia leader nicknamed "NSD," the recruits were tasked with infecting U.S. computers with a particular strain of malware, cloning the computers, entering stolen usernames and passwords, and transferring funds out of those users' accounts.

The scheme was fairly innovative. U.S. banks' alarm bells get tripped when customers try to access their accounts from unrecognized computers (particularly overseas), so banks typically require users to answer security questions. Cloning computers lets the cybercriminals appear to the banks as though they are the customers themselves, accessing their accounts from their home PCs -- thereby avoiding the security questions.

And since most banks place transfer limits on accounts, recruiting hundreds of criminals to draw smallish amounts out of thousands of accounts is a way to duck those limits. The thieves could collectively siphon off millions of stolen dollars.


As terrifying as that sounds, the fact that the project is out in the open is a huge deterrent. RSA first uncovered the scheme in the fall, and independent security researcher Brian Krebs linked the report to NSD in the following days. Since then, the project appears to have gone dark.

NSD has effectively disappeared from chat forums, Krebs told CNNMoney.

"I can't find him anywhere," Krebs said. "Either bringing this to light scuttled any plans to go forward, or it's still moving ahead cautiously under a much more protective cover."

In either case, knowing what they're up against could be a blessing for banks. McAfee said it is coordinating with law enforcement officials and working with several banks to prepare them for the potential attacks.

The financial industry is accustomed to fending off skilled cyberthieves. It gets hit every day by thousands of attacks on its infrastructure and networks, according to Bill Wansley, a senior vice president at Booz Allen Hamilton who specializes in cybersecurity issues.

Those are just the attacks that get discovered. Not a single financial industry network that Booz Allen examined has been malware-free, he noted.

"If you catch something early on, you can minimize the threat," Wansley said. "It's definitely worthwhile to get a heads up."

For example, in September an Iranian group claiming to be the "Cyber Fighters of Izz ad-Din al-Qassam" announced that it would launch a major denial-of-service attack against the largest U.S. banks. Few took the threat that seriously, but Booz Allen took advantage of the heads-up to work with some of the targeted banks.

What followed was the largest direct denial-of-service attack ever recorded, preventing the public from accessing the websites of Chase, Bank of America (BAC, Fortune 500), Wells Fargo, US Bank (USB, Fortune 500) and PNC Bank (PNC, Fortune 500) -- intermittently for some, and as much as a day for others. The banks that were better prepared were the least affected, he said. (Who actually sponsored the attacks remains a subject of debate. Security experts believe the Iranian government had a hand in them.)

The Cyber Fighters are at it again, declaring that they will be launching attacks on banks' websites this week as part of "Operation Ababil." The banks are preparing.

"Security is core to our mission and safeguarding our customers' information is at the foundation of all we do," said Wells Fargo spokeswoman Sara Hawkins. "We constantly monitor the environment, assess potential threats, and take action as warranted."

"Protecting Citi and its clients from criminal information security threats is a critical priority for us," said a Citigroup spokeswoman. "We have a focused information security strategy and dedicated resources to execute it."

Chase and PayPal did not respond to requests for comment.

Still, the war against cybercriminals isn't going so well for the financial industry. In July, threat detection software maker Lookingglass found that 18 of 24 of the world's largest banks were infected with popular strains of malware that the industry believed had been eradicated, suggesting that banks are prone to re-infections. In June, McAfee uncovered "Operation High Roller" -- a cyberattack that could have stolen as much as $80 million from more than 60 banks.

Since consumers are federally protected from taking the hit when funds are stolen from their accounts, the banks eat the loss. And as the attacks grow more sophisticated, their annual price tag keeps rising.

"There are absolutely attacks going on right now that we don't know about, some of them minor, some major," Wansley said. "There's a lot going on out there, and frankly, we're only seeing the frequency and severity pick up."

/ cnn.com source 

Google chairman declares victory in Android vs. Apple

Google chairman Eric Schmidt says Android is dominating Apple's mobile system like Microsoft once dominated the company on PCs.




Google chairman Eric Schmidt has declared Android the winner in its mobile war with Apple.

In an interview with Bloomberg, Schmidt said Google's mobile platform is widening its lead over Apple in the mobile-software market. He compared its success to the way Microsoft dominated the iPhone maker in the desktop business two decades ago.

"This is a huge platform change; this is of the scale of 20 years ago -- Microsoft versus Apple," he said. "We're winning that pretty clearly now."

Recent statistics support Schmidt's optimism, with Android capturing 72% of worldwide market share in the third quarter, while Apple took 14%, according to Gartner, which conducts information technology research.

Unlike Apple, Google does not make its money on hardware; for this reason, it is willing to give away Android because the OS' widespread use helps the company make more money from ads.

"The core strategy is to make a bigger pie," Schmidt said. "We will end up with a not perfectly controlled and not perfectly managed bigger pie by virtue of open systems."

Despite his confidence, however, other reports suggest that Apple is gaining ground in the U.S. smartphone market, particularly since its release of the iPhone 5.

During the interview, Google's chairman also called social-networking service Google+ a "viable competitor to Facebook."

Which company do you think is winning the mobile war: Android or Apple? / cnn.com source