Currently in congress there are two anti-piracy laws called SOPA and PIPA getting ready to be voted on. These bills are dangerous legislation written with malcontent for digital pirates and for the internet in general. In their basic form, these bills would give law enforcement the ability to shut down a web site for suspected piracy infringements, without due process.

For example, suppose that Louis Vuitton, the famous high end clothing designer see’s what they think are black market versions of some of their hand bags on eBay. They then could potentially file a complaint and within minutes of hearing the case, a judge could rule in Louis’ favor shutdown the country’s ability to get to eBay. This would disrupt the lives of millions that make their living off eBay or simply use eBay as a market place. Did I mention this is all without proper due process toward eBay?

In an impressive move against these bills, Wikipedia went dark in the US today for 24 hours. Google.com also staged a public protest via “blacking out” their Google doodle.

“Two bills before Congress, known as the Protect IP Act (PIPA) in the Senate and the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) in the House, would censor the Web and impose harmful regulations on American business. Millions of Internet users and entrepreneurs already oppose SOPA and PIPA.

The Senate will begin voting on January 24th. Please let them know how you feel. Sign this petition urging Congress to vote NO on PIPA and SOPA before it is too late.” Google’s stance on SOPA and they also give you a way to easily put your name on a petition to Congress. We would like to encourage you to take a moment and send a note to congress urging your representative to vote no to SOPA.

Doctor Kevin
Chief of Computer Medicine
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.

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.

This is a red alert:  We here at The Computer Doctor of Richmond have been seeing a large outbreak of numerous fony antivirus and antispyware programs that are actually the virus/spyware/trojan etc….   Some of these include Windefender 2008, Antispyware XP 2008, Pro Antivirus 2009, Spy protector, Security 2009, PC defender 2008, and on and on and on.  If it looks semi legit, yet you don’t remember installing it on your computer, it is likely fake.

In many cases it will pop up not long after booting to your desktop and you’ll be prompted that there are 1-bazillion threats, pay $50 for a registered software that can remove these threats.  DO NOT DO IT!!! Not only will it not remove the real threat, you will have just wasted money and put yourself at risk for possible identity theft and or credit card fraud.  We had one customer who did pay for one of the products above, and she believes that is how her credit card number was stolen.

These fake security programs do a good job of looking legit, but are actually a threat to your security themself.  In many cases they are not only spyware, they are a trojan and open the door to many other rouge programs.  Unfortunately many of the legit antivirus programs like norton don’t do a very good job of removing them.  They may be able to remove portions of the threat, but often leave behind corruptions in your opperating system.

If you experiance any of these, we can help.  We have a perfect record of removing these threats at our crazy low prices!

Below are a couple of screen shots of what some of them look like: