Are you addicted to Facebook? Beware!

Because MX Lab, a security firm, detected a new variant of Bredolab Trojan horse attached to a fake “Facebook Password Reset Confirmation” email. Some users claim that the e-mail comes from “The Facebook Team” where the sender’s e-mail address is displays as “service@facebook.com.”  Unfortunately, the address and sender were disguised.

The said e-mail is accompanied with an attachment named “Facebook_Password_4cf91.zip”, also includes the file Facebook_Password_4cf91.exe” and contains the new Facebook password of the user. When you run the file, it could cause destruction on your computer. According to MX Lab, Trojan horse Bredolab executes files from the Internet such as rogue anti-spyware. It is a malicious Malware that injects its own code into legitimate processes svchost.exe and explorer.exe to bypass firewalls. It also contains anti-sandbox code which allows Bredolab to quit by itself when an external program investigates its actions.

M86 Security, another security watchdog, said that Bredolab don’t just sneak into the computer of the user but also downloads a bot called Pushdo. Pushdo will immediately start spamming out more Facebook password reset e-mails. Facebook explained that the e-mail containing the virus is not coming from them. According to them, they will never send users a new password as attachment. They advised the users to immediately have their computers run a virus scan. Facebook users should be careful with a fake e-mail disguising as a Facebook password reset e-mail containing an attachment of the new password but in reality, contains a virus.

How Can Techie Now Help?

Facebook is one of the most popular social networking sites worldwide. With these fake and infected Facebook e-mails spreading around, users must be careful in opening and downloading malicious e-mails and attachments. If your computer has been infected with Bredolab Trojan horse, contact Techie Now. We are willing to solve your problem. With our virus removal services, Techie Now will treat your computer right and everything will be alright.

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Do you know what social engineering is? Social engineering is the act of manipulating people into doing actions or exposing confidential information. It’s trickery or deception to gather information, fraud, or computer system access where in the hacker never comes face-to-face with the victim. Here are some of the social engineering techniques:

The hacker steals passwords through guessing the victim’s password reminder question with the help of gathered information from his or her social networking profile. One incident was when Hacker Roll was able to guess the password and broke into an e-mail account of Twitter’s administrative assistant using the Google’s password reset feature. After this, Hacker Roll was able to forward hundreds of pages of internal Twitter documents to different websites including TechCrunch which has published some and referred to others. Another college student also broke into Gov. Sarah Palin’s Yahoo e-mail account using Yahoo’s password reset questions.

People should be careful in creating passwords for their accounts. They should not disclose personal information on services like Facebook, Twitter and any other social networking sites because it will be easy for hackers to know your passwords. With the information available in your social sites, it’s easy to crack and discover your passwords. It’s like you are giving away your passwords or inviting hackers to have an access on your account.

The hacker befriends an individual or a group to gain their trust. And if the victims already trust him, he will make the victim click on links or attachment infected with Malware which can weaken a corporate system. There’s nothing wrong with meeting new friends in the Internet but it is very dangerous because you don’t really know the people who you are dealing with online. It’s not advisable to receive, accept or open links and attachments to unknown source. The hacker also pretends to be an insider to get information from the employees. If people think that you work for the same company, they will trust you a lot including the information that you need. This will be a big advantage on your part.

The hacker also impersonates you or your friends, even other people. He can message you anytime using the name of your friend. He will ask you a favor like asking for data from your office. Since you are not aware that you are talking to a stranger and not your friend, you’ll give him what he needs. After this, he can manipulate the data that you have given to him and this will really put you into trouble. A hacker can also call any company and claim that he is from technical support. In this situation, he can pretend that he is part of the technical support, help solve the problem and be able to have access from the victim’s computer and launch Malware.

Hackers and social engineering techniques can devastate your business or personal life. Include spoofing or hacking IDs for private e-mails, social networking sites or chat histories, phishing credit card account numbers and their passwords, and hacking websites of companies to destroy reputation. With the growing of numbers of hackers nowadays, it’s important to protect your system and company at the same time. You should be careful enough when dealing with unknown person because they might deceive or manipulate you. Remember, the only purpose of the hackers and social engineering techniques is to exploit human weaknesses to get personal benefits.

How Can Techie Now Help?

Hackers use social engineering to trick people and reveal passwords or information that will weaken the security of an individual, group or company. Social engineering really relies on human weakness than weakness of the computer system (hardware, software, network design, etc.) itself. If you have been victimized by hackers and your computer gets infected, worry no more. Techie Now can give a solution to your problem. Contact us now and we will remove the infections of your computer. Techie Now will work on your PC right away.

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Keyboard shortcuts are important to computer users. They are also called accelerator keys or hot keys. They are a combination of two or more keys that will perform an operation when pressed. They are very useful because it can help you finish your tasks easily in a shorter time and increase your productivity. Using keyboard shortcuts makes it easy for you to interact with your computer minimizing the use of the mouse. Windows Vista and Windows XP have almost the same keyboard shortcuts. Windows 7 has many new keyboard shortcuts to offer.

Here are the lists of the old and new Windows keyboard shortcuts as published by Microsoft:

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Peer to Peer progras

Many of us have been using peer-to-peer (P2P) file-sharing applications in our home for a while now.

What is peer-to-peer?

A peer-to-peer network, also called P2P, is composed of participants who share a portion of their resources directly available to other network participants without the need for servers or stable hosts. It was popularized by file sharing systems like Napster. It allows users to connect and transfers or shares files directly with each other’s machine.

Nowadays, P2P applications are very popular. People often use P2P to search for and download songs and movies that they like. P2P has a big impact to the people socially and economically.

File sharing is not the only type of P2P application, most of the instant messaging applications are P2P too like Skype. Forums and distributed databases are some of other examples and so on. Here are some the popular peer-to-peer applications:

• BitTorrent – One of the most popular peer-to-peers file sharing used on the Internet involving a significant amount of traffic. It distributes large files, popular files and files available for free which includes films, videos, music, television shows, computer applications, etc.

• LimeWire – The free, simple and popular P2P file sharing program which offers unlimited simultaneous searches of MP3s, documents, software, videos and more. It also has family filters and integrated chat. Other features include improved privacy features, elimination of spyware, and support for podcasts, BitTorrent, iTunes, parental controls and extended file information.

• Kazaa – The single most popular P2P file sharing system of all time which is very easy and fast to use. It has been said that it causes more network compared to any other application.

• Morpheus – A safe and secure file sharing tool that permits you to search multiple P2P networks for MP3s, documents and videos.

• Bearshare – A file-sharing program that connects you with other users letting you to find, download, share and publish audio and video files.

• Tribler – A social community which helps the users to find, enjoy and share content such as videos, audio, pictures and more.

• Pando – A free P2P software which offers a fast, easy and fun downloading, streaming and sharing of large media files.

• Babelgum – A free revolutionary Internet and Mobile TV platform supported by advertising that professionally produces content and prevents piracy.

• Joost – Using P2P, it distributes TV and other video shows for free over the web.

• LiveStation – Runs on a peer-to-peer software created by Microsoft which delivers live TV and radio news as it happens.

• Mashboxx – The peer-to-peer software currently unreleased which promises to be the first to be authorized by major record labels, Sony BMG Music, and EMI Music.

• Ares – A free and open source P2P file sharing program that allows you to search the shared folders of other users for documents, images, sounds, videos and more.

P2P applications have been facing some issues dealing on how dangerous it can be to everyone. Since P2P allows the sharing of files with other peers, your computer might take the risks of being infected or damaged. A user might send you a harmless file, like a music file, only to find out in the end that it is a malicious program. One example of this situation is when Kaspersky Lab discovered the Worm.Kazaa.Benjamin virus. It is also known as Kazkaz which overwrites any file that is sent to Kazaa. Through P2P, files are everywhere and people can share and distribute them to everyone without asking the permission of the person or company who has the copyright on it. It is a violation of the law to download or provide available download for copyrighted files. Music files are one good example of these copyright protected files.

How Can Techie Now Help?

Nowadays, transferring of files is normally done by people every day. That’s why so many people are hooked using different peer-to-peer applications to exchange music, video and other files over the Internet. Even though many are taking advantage of these P2P applications, it is still risky to use because it might infect your PC. You have to configure your peer-to-peer applications correctly to prevent others from accessing you. You might be surprised one day that the world is accessing your PC and downloading your files.

If you encounter problems and gets your PC infected with viruses and other Malware while using P2P applications, Techie Now is here to give you a hand. Contact Techie Now and we will give you fast and safe services that will keep your PC protected from everything.

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LimeWire pros and cons

There are many people downloading and sharing files using Peer to Peer (P2P) applications in the Internet every day.  Using Peer to Peer applications is not illegal but downloading copyrighted files is against the law. There are many peer-to-peer applications available in the web. one of the best is Limewire.

Limewire is an excellent P2P file-sharing released in 2000 allowing you to download different types of files which include audio, images, movies, games and documents. It’s easy to install, run and search. It is the first free peer-to-peer file sharing (P2P) which supports firewall-to-firewall file transfers. It’s a lot cleaner than any other network. It comes with a multiple search register interface. Even though there are so many malicious files spread in the web, not all files in LimeWire are infected. It has installed a security device that can track most viruses in files. A warning from LimeWire will appear on your screen before starting the download.

Limewire is user-friendly. You will be able to know who downloads files from your computer. The program is completely normal because you can monitor what you are downloading or stop the download if you want to. It is also includes BitTorrent support though limited. LimeWire also has an instant messenger where users can enjoy chatting while sharing files to their buddy list. Recent versions of LimeWire now prevent unintentional sharing of documents or applications with others. Searching audio files is easy using LimeWire because you can specify the artist, album and song title. In this way, you will surely get accurate results. You will able to get good quality music from LimeWire. Some of its features are proxy-support, even faster connection to the networks, preview files and iTunes integration. If you are into iTunes, this is really for you. Everything you download from LimeWire will go straight to your iTunes library. The best thing about LimeWire is completely free! There are also paid versions of LimeWire available.

One challenge with Peer to Peer sharing is that there’s a lot of adult content. It makes it unsafe for children who should use traditional search engines. Using Peer to Peer is very risky because you never know what you are going to get. You can get any file that you want but you will also be able to get different virus and spyware that could harm your PC in the process. It is advisable that you always do a computer virus scan after using it or on everything you download from there. Be careful in downloading files. Some files seem to be harmless at first but you might discover it to be infected in the end. Honestly, LimeWire will not give you viruses but it is the files that you get from it that might damage your PC down.

Typically Peer to Peer program enable others to have an access on your important data. Be careful in choosing the folders that you will share and letting others to have accessed to it. So, don’t put private information in your PC because you might be victimized of identity theft if your PC gets infected. Peer to Peer has played a major role in some of the computer identity theft cases, such as the case of a man from Denver, Colorado who was able to get important documents of twenty-five (25) businesses in the United States.

How Can Techie Now Help?

It’s easy to download files using peer-to-peer applications like LimeWire. It’s quick and easy but the risk of getting viruses is high. If you are using these type of applications in a regular basis, make sure you have a firewall installed in your PC to scan everything you download, detects the threats and have it removed automatically.

But if you don’t have a firewall or your PC gets infected, Techie Now will help you all the way. We can do a lot of anything you need, be it virus and spyware removal, installation, configuration, general repair services and more. With Techie Now, your PC is in good hands.

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