Raymond.CC Blog

Yesterday I got an email asking me whether is there any other free anti-virus other than AVG… When people ask about FREE anti-virus, the name AVG will definitely be mentioned. I think the reason why AVG remains number 1 in free anti-virus is because when you search in Google for “free antivirus”, AVG is the first to appear. Well even second appears to be AVG!

Did you know that there are actually more than 10 brands of free anti-virus? Usually free anti-virus is meant for home users. It will state very clearly in their website that it is for home and non-commercial use only. If you want to use their anti-virus in commercial places, you need to purchase license from them.

So here’s a compiled list of free anti-virus I found for your convenience in deciding which free anti-virus you want to use other than AVG.

As you can see from my blog, I am a frequent user of time-limited programs (both Shareware and Commercial). However, I am sometimes so busy that, after installing a program, I don’t have the time to evaluate it properly before the trial period is over. This problem is made worse because some developers use very small trial periods – sometimes 10 days or less. If I am away from work for a week, or have to work on an urgent project, it is sometimes impossible to re-install a program and just start again because the program will have made changes to the Registry or written a hidden file somewhere.

I need to thoroughly test a software before making a decision in purchasing it. If the software is going to lack a feature that I need, it will be a waste of money buying a license for it. Sometimes if I find that the trial software is valuable, I’d request the developer to extend the evaluation period for me to test it for another day or two. If the author agrees, it’s great! But if the developer doesn’t reply my email, and I think the chances of me buying the software is higher than 50%, then I’d use this method to extend the shareware’s evaluation period.

There’s a nagging security feature in Windows Live Messenger file transfer. Let’s say a friend of mine, John Doe transferred a 15MB MP3 file to me. Once it has completed transferring, it will say “You have successfully received C:\music.mp3 from John Doe“. The filename will look like a hyperlink because it is underlined in blue color. By logic we should be able to click on the hyperlink and it should open the music.mp3

But then after clicking the hyperlink, a message saying “Windows found that this file is potentially harmful. To help protect your computer, Windows has blocked access to this file” will appear.

Well, you might think that it might be Windows Live Messenger security features that prevented the mp3 from being executed. I manually looked for the mp3 file and it wasn’t in “My Received Files” folder. I did a complete search but also couldn’t find the MP3 which I just received. Looks like the MP3 file has been automatically deleted!

I was really mad when Windows automatically deleted the file that I just received. Now Windows Live Messenger has really made me mad and I am going to find a way to disable Windows from automatically deleting my files when I click on a “potentially harmful” file.

Keyloggers, a short word for Keystroke Logging, is a very scary system that hackers can use to secretly monitor and capture all keystrokes, mouse clicks, passwords, visited web-pages and launched applications; tracks received and sent e-mails and lots more. It can even takes screenshots of the computer activity! Keystroke logging can be achieved by both hardware and software means. Hardware key loggers are commercially available devices which come in three types: inline devices that are attached to the keyboard cable, devices which can be installed inside standard keyboards, and actual replacement keyboards that contain the key logger already built-in. If you search “keyloggers” in Google, you’ll find tons of results. There are free keyloggers and also paid keyloggers which offers much more advanced keylogging system.

You will not notice the presence of such program. It is invisible in the Task List (when you press Ctrl-Alt-Del). It will not show in Task Bar, let alone your Desktop. It does not make any noise, your system will not slow down as in the case of spyware. But the key logger silently records all the keystrokes and puff — before you know it, your password has been changed and your credit card number has been used to make fradulent purchases.

Some people use keyloggers for good purposes and some abuse it. That’s why we need to learn how to beat the keyloggers in order to protect our information from being stolen. If you think you don’t have keylogger on your system, then it might have one. You can only be sure that you are safe from keyloggers after you’ve read this article.

I’ve just found a a freeware called Net Tools that consist around 175 security and network monitoring tools. It has nearly everything! The author of Net Tools claims that it is an ideal tool for those who work in the network security, administration, training, internet forensics or law enforcement internet crimes fields but I think it is more for computer newbies… It does has nearly everything but the tools are not advanced enough. For example, the built-in Packet Sniffer doesn’t include decoding of packets.

No matter what, it’s still worth trying other utilities in Net Tools.. It’s not easy putting all 175 tools into one.

Day before yesterday I slipped and fell backwards hitting my head real hard. Wasn’t feeling very well today so I couldn’t spend so much time on computer and also writing.

Let’s take a break for a day and watch this cool video that mEtRiX and In-f3st has created! It’s called Take that n00b!!1 – Fraps. Trust me, you are going to love it! I think this video was created because of this Fraps not running problem.

There are some Internet Service Provider (ISP) that has time restrictions in downloading using BitTorrent. That means they stop throttling BitTorrent connections at specific hours of the day. Usually it’s from midnight (12AM) to early morning (7AM). Sometimes even starting at 2AM to 8AM. Imagine if you want to download something from torrent and you had to wake up at 2AM to start the download… If you’re a torrent freak that needs to download torrent everyday, it’s either you have to wake up at 2AM or stay up until 2AM everyday JUST to start the download process.

Luckily there are ways to automatically start and stop downloading torrent process so you can sleep early without having to wake up at early in the morning to do something that is so simple.

I will cover on how to schedule 3 most famous BitTorrent clients, uTorrent, Azureus and BitComet to start and stop downloading torrent.