Free Computer Consultant ………. Daily Insights

There have been scores of articles in the mainstream media about Conficker.C, April Fool’s day, and cleaning Conficker off your PC.

Problem is, the only people who can navigate to the links they give in these articles are those who have PC’s WITHOUT Conficker on it.

Conficker BLOCKS access to most any website that can be of help to you, like the one they always point you to – Microsoft.com for updates or safety.live.com for a conficker removal tool. (I dislike live.com anyway.)

www.BDTools.net MIGHT work for you as of this morning. It is a brand new domain setup by BitDefender for the very purpose of being a domain that you can get to if you are infected with the Conficker virus (worm, whatever).

There is a great list of tools at the ConfickerWorkingGroup site, unfortunately you can’t get there either if you are infected because the malware will block a domain with conficker in its name.

Hint: If you can access the Conficker working group site and one or more removal tools linked there, it is almost a certainty that you DO NOT have Conficker on your PC. But why not run the removal tool anyway, just to be sure.

What do you do if infected with Conficker?

The best thing you can do if your PC is infected with Conficker is to find an UNINFECTED PC, perhaps even at a library, take a USB device with you, and download a cleaning tool from one of the links at ConfickerWorkingGroup.

Then take the USB device home and clean your PC.

After that, check out this tip-of-the-week archive and get your PC caught up to where it should be.

Yesterday I was trying to buy some computer hardware (see my recommended vendors page for where to buy), and the Google Checkout was giving me an error on the SSL certificate with an alert message.

I tried several times to no avail, and was frustrated at the waste of time; I needed the hardware.

So I thought, hey, why don’t I try it through GoTrusted secure vpn? So with a quick right click on the icon in the system tray followed by a click on “connect session”, I was surfing anonymously but more importantly, securely.

Sure enough, I tried Google Checkout once more and it went right through.

Do I pretend to know exactly why? Nope. But I do know that there really isn’t any reason for me NOT to access the web with GoTrusted all of the time.

Why don’t you check it out with the GoTrusted Free Trial.

Panda Security products continue to get good reviews.

Here are some coupon codes to save you some money:

Buy Panda Antivirus Pro 2009 for $32.47. Save $17.48!

Buy Panda Internet Security 2009 for $51.97. Save $27.98!

Get protected, but do it at a discount!

April 15th is creeping up on us again, only 3 weeks to get your tax return filed.

If you are using your computer to do your taxes, which I highly recommend, here are some helpful links.

Complete your taxes with software on your computer:

Use TurboTax Software for your 2008 taxes

Use H&R Block TaxCut Software for your 2008 taxes

File your 2008 tax return online (maybe even for free):

File Online With TurboTax

File Online With TaxCut from H&R Block

Don’t procrastinate, get your taxes done, out of the way and your REFUND ON ITS WAY TO YOU!

Special note to WiFi users:

If you use a laptop with a WiFi connection and public or non-encrypted WiFi, be sure and protect your internet connection from eavesdropping and potential identity theft. A secure VPN tunnel will not only provide anonymous internet surfing, but more importantly it will protect you from WiFi sniffers capturing your personal information.

Check out a Free Trial for GoTrusted Secure VPN. It’s Fast, unlike Tor, easy to use, unlike Tor and worthy of your trust.

Cleaning out some files the other day I found this proposal to a client for a new workstation. I thought you might get a kick out of it:

April 30, 1992

Workstation Configuration:

• 386DX/33 w/ 64k cache
• 2MB RAM
• 40MB 28ms hard drive
• 5.25 & 3.5 floppy drives
• SVGA video w/ 512k on video card
• Keyboard & Mouse
• SVGA 1024×768 .28 dot pitch monitor
• MS-Dos 5.0
• Surge Protector

Workstation Price: $1475

Options:

• 4MB RAM – Add $60
• 85MB 18ms hard drive – Add $90
• 105MB 18ms hard drive – Add $125

Extras:

• WordPerfect 5.1/Dos – $260
• PCTools v7.1 – $ 99
• Windows 3.1 – $40

Notice that the hard drives and RAM are in MB (MegaBytes) NOT GB (GigiBytes)

Now for the good part:

A legal secretary could turn on her computer and be in WordPerfect, starting her work, in under 20 seconds. Try doing that with your new Vista PC and Microsoft Word 2007.

Not much genius to this post; just want to pass on some coupon codes for all-battery.com

Here they are:

Battery Saving Kits

All Lithium Polymer Li-Po Batteries 20% off with code “lispecial”

All-Battery.com Free Shipping Code Use Coupon Code: tenergy2008 Expires: 12/31/09 Minimum $25.00 purchase required.

All-Battery.com – Site Wide 11% off Coupon Code: battery2008 Expires: 12/31/09 Minimum $25.00 purchase required.

Is anything more frustrating on the web than trying to print a web page and getting pages and pages of ads, navigation menus, links and other garbage you don’t want – and sometimes the material you DO want to print never does?

I found a free online service today that promises to help you with that. Simply open a new browser window or tab and go to http://www.printwhatyoulike.com/ and paste in the URL of what you are trying to print (may or may not work with online receipts… post your results as a comment below please!).

Once PrintWhatYouLike pulls up the page, you have some options on formating, font size, etc.

Hopefully, you can get the information you want printed without killing a forest or two, draining your ink or toner cartridge  and wasting YOUR money in the process.

When it rains it pours. I recently found my dream solution for Anonymous Web Surfing and then my friend Peter Grandich had this video on his blog. (The secure tunnel I’m using is a product of GoTrusted.)

Now I’m not ordinarily aligned with the ACLU on much; unfortunately that has changed since 9/11.

The video pretty much says it all. But if that wasn’t enough, Bruce Schneier had more privacy eroding news in his monthly newsletter this month too.

For instance, do you think pressing *67 before making a phone call will hide your caller ID? Not if it’s going to an 800 number (because they pay for the call they get to know). There are many services that easily allow you to forward your calls to an 800 number of yours and voila’ – there’s the caller ID. Now a service allows you to program that in automatically.

(The same company offers a fee service that will offer up a phony caller ID to protect you.)

Anonymous Web Surfing not only protects your information when surfing over open WiFi (airport, cafe, school, etc) but also hides your real IP address (which can tell approximately where you are located) and the content of your surfing.

My previous post covers more advantages of a service such as this and why I do NOT use Tor.

Past is prologue; start today protecting the amount of data you “litter” for others to capture, store forever, and maybe use against you.

Start your GoTrusted free trial now.

There are a number of reasons why a person (with nothing to hide) might want to surf the internet anonymously. Let’s take a look:

• You are using open WiFi either at home, airport, cafe, school. It is very easy to snoop on internet traffic going through open WiFi networks and is done all of the time.
• Your legitimate work or hobby may entail your surfing web pages with words or phrases, which, taken out of context, could result in attracting unwanted interest from TLA’s (three letter agencies) with a propensity to send black outfitted employees with jack boots kicking in doors at 3 am.
• Perhaps your surfing needs are blocked by corporate or family filters that prevent you from the information you need (think “breast cancer research” to name just one).
• You don’t want to trust your local ISP and everyone working there to not “accidentally” monitor your instant messaging, email or surfing.
• You desire to add one more layer of protection to your online banking and brokerage activities.

The list above is not all inclusive as to why you might be interested in a very low cost anonymous surfing solution, but it’s long enough to get the picture.

For quite some time users with a flare for adventure have at one time or another tried to download, install, configure and use the widely known “free” internet anonymizer called “Tor”. Tor is free, getting a bit easier to use than in the past, and does do a reasonable job of providing internet surfing anonymity.

Tor uses volunteers to offer their computers as Tor servers, sacrificing some of their own bandwidth, to allow Tor clients such as yourself to mask their online identity.

Here are a couple of reasons why I think Tor falls short and you should look at a pay service (although I consider $5.99 per month for a quality service that WORKS to be reasonable):

• Tor is not for the average everyday user to install and trouble shoot
• Tor, every time I have tried it, reduces my internet connection to a CRAWL
• Tor servers are volunteers, unknown to you – certainly many of them are provided by the aforementioned TLA’s (three letter agencies with bloated “war” budgets and propensity to dress employees in black – head to toe)

Here is the anonymous surfing solution I use

Whenever I buy something, if possible, I try it before I buy it. That’s why I love free trials. GoTrusted offers a 7 day free trial of their anonymous VPN service for safe WiFi use and internet anonymity and I signed up.

What I expected was a solution that was semi difficult to install and would slow down my internet connection.

NOT!

What I found is a phenomenal service that is:

• Simple to setup
• Easy to use
• FAST! – Not only did I see ZERO decrease in web pages loading, but I ran many tests with SpeakEasy’s internet speed test. My download speed was not decreased measurably at all; and my upload speed is actually FASTER!
• Bonus spam protected email address

I originally expected I would use the GoTrusted secure tunnel only when I specifically had a need for it. But since it is every bit as fast on the downloads and actually measures FASTER on the uploads, why not use it all of the time?

This is one of the few products in recent memory that actually EXCEEDED my expectations and I cannot give it a high enough recommendation.

Get your FREE Trial here and start Anonymous Web Surfing right now.

Everyone loves the ASUS Eee PC; but everyone has probably wished at one point that it had a DVD drive. External USB DVD drives can be bulky, cumbersome, and be one more thing to plug into a surge protector.

I have found the perfect USB DVD drive to use as a companion to the Asus Eee PC.

It’s the Samsung Slim Super Writer.

Features:

1. Slim – ie, small, lightweight
2. Requires only a USB cable to the Asus Eee PC. No Power Adapter Required!
3. Inexpensive
4. 8x DVD +/- RW

The Samsung Slim Super Writer doesn’t draw excessive power either. We have used it to watch a 2 hour DVD movie on the Eee and had battery to spare.

Want to upgrade the lousy Windows XP Home Edition to XP Professional? How about just go Ubuntu? Then this is the drive you want.

You can pick it up here at Newegg.com