The Computer Doctor of Richmond

Let’s face it, the internet is a wild, fun, remarkable and dangerous place. On one hand it is the most amazing tool ever created that can open doors for research and worlds that would never have been seen by billions of people. But like any tool, it can and is used for hostile reasons by evildoers everywhere. We have seen too many customers lately that have been infected by those nasty fake anti-viruses we are trying to help them keep it from happening again. The first step is to get an antivirus if you don’t already have one, or get rid of Norton or McAfee and get a good AV like Vipre. Keep reading below for step two.

We recently started examining a program called Web Of Trust (WOT for short). WOT is a web community program that “plugs into” your Internet browser. WOT installs into your Internet Explorer and/or Firefox and gives you guidance. It is kind of like a traffic light for cruising the information highway. Meaning when you google/yahoo/bing or whatever something, you get a little red, yellow or green light beside the links letting you know if you’re safe to cross the road or if you should run away.

WOT traffic lights

These are google sponsored links and you’ll notice several of them are not exactly on the up and up

These “traffic lights” are based on a community of millions of other WOT users that have already rated these links on a 4 distinct qualifications. These four qualities are trustworthiness, reliability of the vendor, child safety and privacy. Trustworthiness includes if the site has been known to be hostile or infectious. WOT uses a very sophisticated algorithm and gets data from the users on each link rated. It then averages many user ratings to create the WOT rating you see. You can create a WOT account if you’d like to start rating sites if you’d like to help give back while surfing.

WOT blocked site

So you’re thinking, “there is no way WOT has a rating for every web page out there in the world.” Well of course you are right. If WOT has not created a rating for a site, it gets a grey light, so proceed with caution. And then you may want to rate the site yourself. In fact, if you google Computer Doctor of Richmond you will see a grey light. Meaning we have not been bestowed with a WOT rating. After you’ve installed WOT, we’d appreciate it if you’d give us a good rating (we’re safe, trustworthy, help keep your private data safe, and very reliable!).

WOT unrated site, The computer doctor of richmond

Our site is currently unrated. Wont you help us get a rating?

After testing it on numerous computers in our office and having a handful of customers try it out, we are confident in our recommendation for all to use it. This is by no means a replacement for an antivirus or firewall. This is simply one more GREAT tool to put on your computer to help prevent infections before it even starts. Any tool that can “foreshadow” your risk before clicking on a link it worth putting on your computer, especially since it is free! WOT works very well with no adverse side affects or performance issues like some similar pay services or the ones that come with some anti-viruses.

So how do you get it? Go to their site at mywot.com and click on the free download button. Then simply go through the quick installation. This works on both Internet Explorer and Firefox (safari is in the works and chrome is just around the corner). It also works on both Mac and PC.

A few other things you can do to help keep yourself safe is make sure you popup blocker is turned on. If you use firefox, you can also install an additional plug in called adblock plus that will block 99.9% of annoying web based banner ads. This will help speed up your browsing and keep the garbage off your screen.

If you hover over a WOT light, you’ll see what it was rated the way it was. This is “safe” adult site.

McAfee and Facebook team up
Recently Facebook announced that in an effort to try and stem the tide of people getting infected while facebooking, they’ve teamed up with McAfee to offer free antivirus suite. While a great and innovative way to try and keep their users safe, it is far from a perfect solution.
Users wanting to take advantage of this deal will simply need to sign into their facebook account, click on McAfee page link and become a fan of McAfee. You will then be able to download and install it (after giving a credit card). For more info on the Mc-fbook deal click here.

You’ll receive a free 6 month subscription to their full security suite and a discount after the 6 months is up. However, this is not an end all be all solution and you must still exorcise caution while facebooking and tweeting. Phishing scams to steal your facebook account info is still very prominent. Moreover, social media like facebook are one of the most common ways to get infected with a fake antivirus like we’ve warned about before.

We also see many customers on a weekly basis that are “protected” (notice the “quote” thingy’s?) by McAfee, Norton and the rest of the big names. These customers say, “but i thought i was protected.” In the end all you can do is be smart, don’t click on links without being careful about what you’re doing. If you’re not sure, just don’t do it. Same goes with email. Safe surfing is key to keeping your computer clean. It is also very important to take steps to make sure your computer is updated with microsoft security updates and you have a good antivirus. Lately, with all the computers we see that have been infected while being under the “protection” of McAfee and others we just can’t qualify them as adequate. In fact we’ve found that the latest free Microsoft Security Essentials free antivirus is in many ways a better level of protection than many of the big name AV’s.

However, if you want the best AV we’ve found, then follow the bread crumbs to Vipre AV. Take a look at our post here to learn more. We have had tremendous success and so have all of our customers that have made the smart decision to protect themselves with Vipre antivirus.

Have you had a great experience using The Computer Doctor of Richmond?  Have you had a bad experience using The Computer Doctor of Richmond (hah, like that could happen!).  If so, do you want to tell the rest of the world how great we know you know we are?!  Well then by all means, don’t let us stop you.  In fact here, we’ll make it easy for you to brag about how fantastic we are.  Below you’ll find links to our Google and Yahoo review pages.

We know we’re good.  You know we’re good.  But don’t you want to tell every Tom, Dick and Harry about how super-duper we are?  Come on, everyone is doing it!

Google Reviews

Yahoo Reviews

Become a face book friend

If you haven’t had enough of us by now, then you can follow us on twitter:

Thanks for your years of continued support Richmond, we love being just a small part of a wonderful place to live.

Microsoft’s free antivirus, “Security Essentials”

Microsoft released their free antivirus, Security Essentials a few days ago.  And to make a long story short, it aint half bad!  It is a decent replacement for other free solutions or the option of simply going naked with not AV software at all.  It is relatively fast at scanning and has a small foot print (meaning it doesn’t require a lot of horse power like some other brand name AV’s).  It also does an ok job of finding infections when compared to other AV’s.

We here at TCDoR.com have started testing it to see how it stacks up against some of the big dogs like Norton, McAfee, Vipre and others.  However, our initial tests have been relatively positive as with much of the rest of the industry.  In fact techreview.com agreed and said it is quite good.

If you’re interested in trying it out, go to www.microsoft.com/security_essentials/ and download it.

Does this look familiar?

personal AV

If it does, then you or someone you know has likely been infected by a fake antivirus.  We have seen a huge surge in infections of these fake AV’s over the past few weeks.  We’ve posted about them before and they are still very nasty and constantly evolving.  These fake AV’s infect your computer many different ways, one of the most common being peer to peer programs like limewire.  However, once you’re infected they typically will try to get you to “register” their product in order to clean your computer of whatever viruses it says you have.  The problem is that it is the virus and those viruses it says you have, you don’t.  It simply wants to hold your computer hostage for ~$50.  But whatever you do, don’t pay!  You’ll likely have your credit card number stolen and used on other purchases.
These fake AV’s are known to cause all kinds of problems, starting with killing your real antivirus and then slowing your computer to a crawl and in many cases disabling the internet followed by computer death (failure to boot).  If you see a screen like the one above of one similar (remember, there are tons of different variations of these fake AV’s) call us right away.  The longer you wait the more damage it will usually do to your system.
Not only can we help clean your system, we can educate you and give you the tools so this hopefully won’t happen again.