Category: Security

Encrypting your files or folders becomes necessary if you want to hide some of your secret documents from the eyes of strangers. If you have your files encrypted and some hackers break into your computer, even then they will not be able to get any information because its all encrypted. The free Challenger program can help you encrypt files and folders easily. It has a drag-n-drop interface that makes encrypting files a piece of cake.

A strong password is a password that is not easy to be guessed, is very tough to be cracked using brute force techniques and gives a hacker a very hard time trying to break into your online accounts. Although you can manually create strong passwords by following some basic rules, it is always better to let a program like Awesome Password Generator generate random strong password for you. The Awesome Password Generator is a free program that can create very strong passwords in bulk.

My friend contacted me with a problem – her employees were using the Tor browser to visit some objectionable websites. I came up with a simple solution – blocking the Tor related applications from being run. This can be done easily using a freeware application called Process Blocker. The Process Blocker software monitors your system for specific programs and blocks them from being run even when you rename them or change their file path.

The svchost.exe program is a genuine Microsoft program that helps run various system services like Windows Updates, Network Connections and more, only and only if it is located in the C:\Windows\System32 folder (or whatever folder your %windir%\System32 points to). If this file is located in a folder different from this, then most probably it is a virus, trojan or some other malicious object.

Everyone has some secret documents, if not from their secret love life then from their financial life. You can use all sorts of programs from encryption software to folder hiders to keep your secret documents safe, but the subtlest way is to use steganography techniques provided by freeware called DeepSound and hide your secret documents inside another audio file. Nobody would suspect that your MP3 files are actually a shelter for your private documents.

The WebRep plugin from avast! is a browser add-on for Internet Explorer, Google Chrome and Mozilla Firefox. It is similar to WoT plugin and tells you about the reputation of a website. If a website is known to be malicious in nature, then it warns you so that you can avoid visiting it. avast! WebRep is automatically installed in your browsers when you install any of the avast! security products including avast! Free Antivirus or avast! Internet Security.

Many of the malicious files use different tactics to stay hidden from the user. One of the basic trick they use is to switch on the hidden file attributes so that for most of the users they are not visible. The freeware program Hidden File Finder makes it very easy for you to search for hidden files and folders on your PC and delete them.

The most common way of malware infection these days is through infected USB keys. The infected USB keys have a malicious autorun.inf file on it that is specially written to run the malware as soon as you insert the key to a USB port on your PC. Once your PC is infected, it keeps infecting the new USB keys that you plug into your computer. Antirun is one of the tools that can protect your PC against autorun virus and remove the malicious autorun.inf files upon detection.

The participation of teenage children on social networking sites has become a norm in modern life. On the social networks they not only interact with their friends but also sometimes with strangers. They may talk about inappropriate matters, approached by cyber criminals and also can be bullied online. To prevent these things from happening, you can use Avira Social Network Protection which scans the social network of your children and alerts you when a suspicious activity occurs.

You can hide folders and files by changing their hidden attributes in Windows File Explorer, but this way of hiding files is very insecure. Just about anyone can reset the file attributes or change the File Explorer settings to view all files irrespective of their attributes. A better and more secure way to hide the files is through the free WinMend Folder Hidden software. It can hide folders and files quickly from local partitions and removable portable disks drives.