PC security

Windows 7 beta is available for download, but you must install antivirus software to protect and secure windows 7 from viruses, worms, trojans and malware. 3 popular software companies have release Windows 7 compatible antivirus software for immediate download.

Kaspersky Lab has released a technical preview of Kaspersky Anti-Virus for Windows 7. The technical preview is a complex solution for securing computers running under Windows 7 and the prototype includes an antivirus component with a fully functional firewall and anti-spam filter. Its also includes a heuristic analyzer, which detects and blocks as yet unknown malicious programs. There is a direct software link out there.

Symantec has released Norton 360 Version 3.0 Beta, which claims to be compatible with Windows 7. It is free to try out after you fill a form with your country name, email and accept the terms of usage; a product key reaches your email inbox instantly.

AVG has released special antivirus versions for Windows 7 for both AVG Internet Security ($54.99) and AVG Anti-virus ($34.99), but both cost money. I prefer AVG free, but it still does not support Windows 7, but I hope it will soon.

If you downloaded Windows 7, download antivirus software too to keep your computer free from viruses.

Lavasoft AdAware is a popular anti-spyware software that provides real-time protection against spyware, trojans, rootkits, hijackers, keyloggers etc. Now download Ad-Aware Anniversary Edition for free!

Celebrating 10 years of advanced malware detection, they have released Ad-Aware Anniversary Editions - Free, Plus (1 Year License $26.95), and Pro (1 Year License $39.95) versions, all of which provide comprehensive malware protection without burdening computer resources, and help you stay safe online.

Lavasoft AdAware Anniversary Edition promise to be significantly lighter and faster than previous versions. They use 74% less memory than Ad-Aware 2008, only uses 18% of the CPU during scans (which they say is much less than competitor products like AVG, Kaspersky, Norton, and PC Tools) and scans 36 MB per second which is like 4 times faster than AVG. See more comparative performance charts.

Download Ad-Aware Free Anniversary Edition now and protect your computer. Runs on Windows Vista (32 and 64-bit), Windows XP (32-bit), and Windows 2000 Pro. Old version users must know that after starting installation, the previous version (Ad-Aware 2008) will be automatically uninstalled before installing Ad-Aware Anniversary Edition.

I have been using Ad-aware for many years now on all computers and it is a must have antispyware software for any computer. You can give these new editions a try, after all its free…

Today United States, Canada, and 27 European countries are celebrating Data Privacy Day together for the second time. The important goals of Data Privacy Day is to promote privacy awareness and education among teens across the United States and help in international collaboration and cooperation around privacy issues.

In January 2009, data privacy events will be taking place across the United States, Canada, and Europe on topics related to national security, data transfers, social networking and information security, data privacy and how to protect your personal information. Intel has compiled some good resources and educational materials to to help educate teens about how to protect the privacy of their personal information online.

The IAPP (International Association of Privacy Professionals) is encouraging privacy professionals to give presentations about privacy—in their own organizations or at local high schools, colleges and universities—on or during the week of January 28.

Download Squad share their 20 great Windows downloads for Data Privacy Day 2009, which includes file and disk encryption tools, password vaults, proxy tools, web browser privacy addons etc. which you can check out to protect your privacy.

If you use Google search for any search term right now, it is marking them all as “This site may harm your computer“. Basically clicking on any of these search results will lead users to a malware warning page and you cannot access the site from Google search results anymore making all links practically useless to visitors.

I observed this when trying to start the Yahoo! front page

Then I realized this issue was affecting all websites on the web and Google Search had even marked all its own Google properties in search results as Malware. This was making all links going out from Google Search not reachable without warning.

The problem is whenever you try to visit any site marked with this warning, you are taken to a Malware warning page, which either advises you to visit the Google’s Safe Browsing diagnostic page for this site, or if you are the owner of this web site, to request a review of your site using Google’s Webmaster Tools. This is an StopBadware.org initiative to protect unsuspecting web surfers from dangerous websites and harmful malware software downloads online (incidentally StopBadware is not loading up right now).

Something has gone wrong on the Google Search marking algorithm, as it is marking all sites as harmful and warning users that they are prone to infect their computers with viruses, trojans and worms via infected malware downloads from such web sites. But this is basically making Google search useless until the issue is fixed. Are you also noticing the same phenomenon in Google Search?

Update: More users are noticing the same issue via Twitter

Update 1: Google seems to have fixed the issue now. But it would be interesting if Google let us know why it happened and what steps they have taken to ensure that it does not happen again. The huge drop in outgoing google search result statistics would also be interesting at look at.

Update 2: Google has issued the official reason why it occured.

StopBadware carefully researches each consumer complaint to decide fairly whether that URL belongs on the list. Since each case needs to be individually researched, this list is maintained by humans, not algorithms. We periodically receive updates to that list and received one such update to release on the site this morning.

Unfortunately (and here’s the human error), the URL of ‘/’ was mistakenly checked in as a value to the file and ‘/’ expands to all URLs. Fortunately, our on-call site reliability team found the problem quickly and reverted the file. Since we push these updates in a staggered and rolling fashion, the errors began appearing between 6:27 a.m. and 6:40 a.m. and began disappearing between 7:10 and 7:25 a.m., so the duration of the problem for any particular user was approximately 40 minutes