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We all know that we should test our websites once we’ve developed them, and that we should test them in multiple different browers, but how easy is it to actually do this?  I have Firefox 3.0, IE6 and IE7 at my disposal, and I could probably install Flock and Safari, but what about SeaMonkey running under FreeBSD, or what about running on a Mac platform???  Read more…

One of the nice features of Worpress (used for this blog) is that people can register as a user which lets themreceive notifications whenever I add new content.  Whenever this happens, I receive an email notification that they’ve registered - and as you can imagine, I like receiving emails like this.

Today though, this all changed!  Read more…

As an IT professional, I consider myself to be more careful than your average Internet user when it comes to things like viruses.  I only download things from trusted sources, I have a virus scanner running all the time and I try to restrict myself to known, safe sites.  This last point though, becomes more difficult whe you’re using something like Entrecard.

Like many Entrecard users, I have around 300 bookmarks that I use in order to maximise the number of sites that I visit, and to restrict myslef to those that I’ve visited before that I deemed both “intersting” and “safe”.  This allows me to open the sites in blocks of 10 and quickly scan them for new, interesting content and to drop my Entrecard on their widget.

This worked really well until yesterday, when one of my regular sites suddenly hit me with a full-screen popup ad, which bypassed my Firefox popup blocker!  By the time I’d closed the popup, there was a new window open telling me that I needed to install some new XP Antivirus software, which had only a “Accept and bgein install” button!

From the task manager, I found that this was a real program that was running so I quickly killed it, only to find that I had a new desktop wallpaper, with a replica of a dialog showing that I had a virus threat!  At this point, I tried to put my original wallpaper back, only to find that the tab on the dialog box had been removed!

Further investigation revealed a whole host of new applications, with seemingly random names, and some new entries in my registry.  I cleaned the PC by hand, but it was too late and the damage was done - my PC was useless!

Facing the prospect of delivering a training course next week from my laptop, but being in Birmingham at a client, I had no choice but to change my plans and make the 2 hour drive to my office to re-image my laptop.  This process was relatively painless, but has left me wary and missing a few key applications.  FUrther research seems to suggest that some form of trojan made it onto my PC, which tried to then install the XPAntivirus virus.

I would urge you all to be ultr-cautious at the moment, and to watch out for some research that I’ll be doing into personal firewalls!!!

I used to work for a with a guy who was paranoid about keeping his laptop secure - even amongst friends.  He was also a heavy smoker so was forever needing to run out of internal meetings for a quick smoke, and every time he went, he’d lock his laptop (Ctrl-Alt-Del, then click on “Lock Computer”).

Now, one day, he’d been running a session that had over-run making him wait longer than normal for his cigarette.   When we did finally break, he hit Ctrl-Alt-Del and went out - leaving the menu visible to be canceled and the PC unlocked!  Our boss spotted this and found it quite amusing, so he went into the guys email and sent a message Read more…

One of the most common questions that people these days ask me regarding their home PC’s is how to have it startup and go straight to the desktop.  This used to be the only option, and when Microsoft did us the favour (!) of allowing us to have multiple accounts, very few people embraced this enhancement. Read more…