Mike's Mostly Tech blog

Improving productivity and fun with browser add-ons and scripts

I spend all day working online and managing information systems.
I was asked again how come I don’t have the same ‘bad experiences’ others do when browsing the internet. Why I don’t get things like getting ‘drive by Trojans’, bogus Anti-virus pop-ups, and obtrusive music or videos that play no matter what.
I mentioned that besides the obvious of keeping all of my systems AND applications(browsers, Acrobat etc.)up to date with the latest security patches, always making sure I have the latest Anti-Virus/anti-spyware updates and not going places I know I shouldn’t or clicking on suspicious links, the most likely reason beyond that is the web browser and add-ons I use that make my browsing more productive and fun. I also spend a great deal of time furthering my education, catching up with friends and family and just plane wasting what little free time I may have being entertained online.
I have put together many tools and configuration additions that make all of the things I do with my systems way simpler and easier.
I hope these may help some of you be more productive and provide for a more pleasurable internet experience.
I work with lot’s of different people with varied technical skill sets from absolute newbie’s all the way to the guys with lot’s of CC’s and MS’s after their names, and when they see how much I can ‘just do’ from the browser they are often just amazed.
I am a believer in ‘Kaizen’. Why not try to do everything better if you can. Work, play, rest, worship and just plain life in general. So I hope some will take the time and try and use some of these tools and tips and have some more fun and a more pleasant and rewarding internet experience.
First off I must start off with the ‘machine’ with which I connect to the internet with 90+% of the time.
That is Mozilla’s Firefox browser.
I use Firefox not because it is not any more secure than IE (compared to IE8 it is definitely not, but that is news for another post.), Safari, Chrome or Opera, but I use it because the ‘browser is the machine or portal’ that gets you to all of the ‘stuff out there’ and Firefox has ALL these custom tools and add-ons available to make just about everything I do easier, faster, funner and more efficient.
I use IE only when absolutely needed; usually with custom built applications that require some of IE’s more integrated Windows ‘hooks’. I actually like the way Internet Explorer renders pages better than Firefox. But the lack of add-ons stop me from using it.
Google’s Chrome is a fast simple browser but all of the extensions for Firefox have not been ported yet. AND I really dislike how the ‘Google updater’ is continuously running and connected to Google. As much as I like lots of things Google, especially Gmail and Google Docs, I try to restrict some of the information they are gathering on me.
[While I do love my Gmail, Google is getting more like big digital brother than imagined.]
I used to recommend the Google Toolbar for Firefox and IE but I have now removed it from ALL of my machines. I now recommend that everyone do the same. Seems Google is being even more sneaky and still tracking you even when you disable ‘sending of usage statistics’! I realize it is for ‘marketing’ – to provide you with targeted adds. People forget Google is in the ADVERTISING business; and they are very profitable at it. But I just don’t need that much data collected on me. Here is one article describing the issue. And here is another.]

I was recently asked about these tools and items so I just updated the links and information and added a few items. I hope you all enjoy.
Here are the Firefox Extensions I use:

After the Deadline
After the Deadline checks spelling, misused words, style, and grammar using artificial intelligence and natural language processing.
Now you can use it in your browser. Write better blog comments, tweet with correct grammar, and compose professional messages.

Better Gmail 2:
Developed by the founder of Lifehacker.com Better Gmail 2 compiles the best Greasemonkey user scripts for Gmail into a single package. Adds useful extra features to Gmail, like hierarchical labels, an unread message icon on your browser tab, file attachment icons, and more.

BetterPrivacy
Super-Cookie Safeguard (protects from LSO Flash Objects, DOM Storage Objects).

DownloadHelper:
I use this A LOT. Just surf the Web as you are used to, when DownloadHelper detects it can do something for you, the icon gets animated and a menu allows you to download files by simply clicking an item. It is also possible to capture all the images from a gallery in a single operation.

Adblock Plus:
Ever been annoyed by all those ads and banners on the internet that often take longer to download than everything else on the page? Install Adblock Plus now and get rid of them.

FaviconizeTab:
Alows you to right click on a tab and ‘Faviconize’ it.

FireFTP:
FireFTP is a free, secure, cross-platform FTP client for Mozilla Firefox which provides easy and intuitive access to FTP servers.

gui:conif:
Adds a graphical interface for Firefox about:config tweaking. Useful for the non-geek crowd.

Ghostery:
Ghostery allows you to detect trackers on the sites you visit, learn more about the companies behind them, and control their visibility into your online behavior.

Firesheep:
A Firefox extension that demonstrates HTTP session hijacking attacks. Nice to know if someone is ‘sniffing’ your wireless browsing!

IE Tab 2
Allows you to use IE to display web pages in a tab within FireFox. This updated version includes support for FireFox 3.6 and will continue to be updated with new features and enhancements.

MultirowBookmarksToolbar:
Multi Row Bookmarks Toolbar.

PDF Download:
Use PDF Download to do whatever you like with PDF files on the Web. Regain control and eliminate browser problems, view PDFs directly in Firefox as HTML, and use the all-new Web-to-PDF toolbar to save and share Web pages as high-quality PDF files.

Perspectives:
Perspectives is a new approach to help clients securely identify Internet servers in order to avoid "man-in-the-middle" attacks.

RightToClick:
Defeats a wide varity of javascript annoyances like disabled right click (contextmenu) , disabled text selection, disabled drag&drop and many more.
Enables right-click, text selection, context-menu, drag&drop and much more where it is disabled by Javascript.
Puts little ‘Arrow’ in bottom corner allowing you to enable, then highlight and right-click and/or copy text!

StopAutoplay:
Disable the autoplay of the embedded music and movies. User action (clicking on the play arrow) is then required to hear or see ‘active content’. Some people don’t like this because the want to click on a YouTube link and have it play right away. I DON’T. Being the control freak I am I want things to play ONLY when I choose them to. I would rather go to the page and use DownloadHelper add-on mentioned above, to download the file and view it with out all the buffering and such. Most web videos are ‘Flash’ video format, and can be played back via a freeware flash player like the one from Martijn de Visser his site is here and the actual player download is here.
I love this one! Stops that lousy music or videos from playing automatically playing on certain sites.

TinEye Reverse Image Search:
TinEye is a reverse image search engine. It finds out where an image came from, how it is being used, if modified versions of the image exist, or if there is a higher resolution version.

User Agent Switcher:
The User Agent Switcher extension adds a menu and a toolbar button to switch the user agent of a browser. The extension is available for Firefox and will run on any platform that this browser supports including Windows, Mac OS X and Linux. Helpful for sites that require specific browsers and versions.

Download Context Menu:
Shows the Explorer context (right click) menu of downloaded files in the Downloads list.

Open Bookmarks in New Tab
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/13784

Vacuum Places:
Defragments your Firefox "Places" database (history/bookmarks). This greatly reduces the lag while typing in the address bar and the start-up time.

BetterPrivacy:
Better Privacy serves to protect against not delete-able long-term cookies, a new generation of ‘Super-Cookie’, which silently conquered the internet.

VTzilla:
VTzilla is a Mozilla Firefox browser plugin that simplifies the process of scanning Internet resources with VirusTotal. It allows you to download files directly with VirusTotal’s web application prior to storing them in your PC. Moreover, it will not only scan files, but also URLs.

WiseStamp:
WiseStamp Email Apps enable users to bring social functionality in every email they send.

Greasemonkey:
Greasemonkey is a Firefox extension that allows you to customize the way webpages look and functions by adding additional scripts.
Hundreds of scripts are already available for free. And if you’re the tinkerer sort, you can also write your own.

[ultimate greasemonkey repository – if there is a script it is here:http://userscripts.org/ ]

Remove Facebook Ads:
http://userscripts.org/scripts/show/46560

Greasemonkey scripts I don’t use but have heard good things about:
I don’t go on Facebook much but if I were a real ‘facebooker’ I would use this one too:
UnFuck Facebook:
http://userscripts.org/scripts/show/11992

Another one I don’t use but for people who would like to have ‘folders’ in Gmail:
Folders4Gmail:
http://userscripts.org/scripts/show/8810

Now to keep all tidy consistant in all places.
I use MS SyncToy to synchronize my Mozilla Firefox profiles from machine to machine too:
http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?displaylang=en&FamilyID;=c26efa36-98e0-4ee9-a7c5-98d0592d8c52

Pretty good Tutorial:
http://www.pchell.com/support/synctoy.shtml

Location of your Firefox profiles for synching:
Windows/Mac/Linux:
http://support.mozilla.com/en-US/kb/Profiles#How_to_find_your_profile

Lastly even more geeky.
I have a portable version of Firefox on most of my usb flash drives so I can work on machines that might have had their browsers ‘compromised’ by maleware and virii.
To get more information on ‘Portable Firefox’go here:
http://portableapps.com/apps/internet/firefox_portable
Here the more technically savvy will find out how to install, configure and update your portable edition.

Electronic Pickpockets

This is some pretty scary stuff.

Many new credit cards carry an RFID chip for ‘fast pay/swipe pay’.

RFID stands for Radio-frequency identification. RFID is a technology that uses communication via electromagnetic waves to exchange data between a terminal and an electronic tag attached to an object, for the purpose of identification and tracking.

Here is a video showing a technique of stealing your information with out you even knowing it. Sadly this has been known for quite a while and not publicized much. I have seen many security related articles on this but I guess the public is just now being made more aware of it. And I think that is good. Be careful out there folks.

Another reason to use Firefox and Add-ons/Extensions

As I’ve previously written more than a few times I use Firefox as my primary Internet Browser because of extensive amount of add-ons and scripts available. This helps to make the browser a ‘super tool’ for me. With Firefox I can block unwanted adds and scripts, stop annoying ‘auto play’ music and videos, download just about any video, picture or file, FTP from within my browser, download/convert to PDF nearly any web page and many other cool and productive things.

Now I can add virus scanning files BEFORE I download files to that list.
The VTzilla Firefox extension adds a Scan with VirusTotal option to Firefox’s right-click context menu and file download dialog that allows you to scan any file for a virus before you commit to downloading it to your computer.

VirusTotal is a service that analyzes suspicious files and URLs enabling the identification of viruses, worms, trojans and other kinds of malicious content detected by antivirus engines and web analysis toolbars.
It’s a brilliant web service that scans any file you send it against 42 of the best malware scanners available.

They now have an add-on for Firefox that let’s you scan via a simply ‘right-click’ on a file you intend to download.

Get Started

The first thing you must do is to install the add-on itself, you can do this by clicking on the following this link while visiting this site with Firefox.

Note: By default, VTzilla turns on a new toolbar in Firefox. To disable it, navigate to View -> Toolbars, then uncheck VirusTotal Toolbar.

After installing the component you will have to restart Firefox to start making use of it, below you can find some examples of use.

Scan suspicious links with VTzilla

Imagine you have logged into your Gmail account and you have received a suspicious email from your bank. The email is informing you about an unauthorized access to your account and is asking you to follow a link and provide your credentials to view the account access log.

Since you are a smart guy, you know that this mail is probably a phishing case. Even though you know that this is a scam, you are committed to help others, hence, you right click on the suspicious link and select the Scan with VirusTotal option from the context menu:

This will open a new tab in the same browser window, such tab will show the report for the requested URL scan. Note that the scanning process will also download the file/site of the target link, so do not forget to click on the View downloaded file analysis link.

Scan downloads before storing them

Let us suppose your good friend John Doe has sent you an email with a slide presentation. You know that very often these slides contain exploit code that will compromise your computer. When you click on the slide presentation in your webmail a download dialog appears, you are a cautious user, you therefore decide to scan the file first with VirusTotal:

Once you have checked the file, you will decide whether or not to download it to your PC.

Simple.

Warning!!: VirusTotal is not a substitute for any antivirus software installed in a PC, since it only scans individual files on demand. It does not offer permanent protection for users’ systems either.

Security Threat News

I have mentioned many times before of the need to update your computer Operating Systems, Anti-Virus and Anti-Spyware applications.

But I also must mention again to please update your applications as well – ESPECIALLY ADOBE PRODUCTS.

A 2009 Global Threat Report from ScanSafe, a Cisco company, shows that in the 4th quarter of 2009 80% of all web-based exploits were malicious PDFs! It’s not surprising that the PDF number is large, but this number is so large it’s hard to believe, especially in as much as Flash exploits were 18%!
Those are some frightening numbers!

PDFs and Flash are ground zero for malware on the web these days. Just by keeping up to date on your client software you can protect yourself against almost all of it.
Here is the advisory from Adobe.

Users should update to versions 9.3.1 or 8.2.1, the links to which are in the advisory. Alternatively, you can “Check for Updates” in the Help menu.

Here we go again – Spyware and bogus Antivirus

Folks,
I can’t stress enough the importance of keeping your Operating system patched, up to date and running the latest versions of available applications – especially web browsers!
Several new threats are emerging that are taking advantage of the fact the people are running outdated and un-patched software. Some of the latest hacks have involved un-patched Adobe Acrobat and old un-patched web browsers – IE 6 and Safari. There is no reason to NOT have the latest web browsers and have them patched. I run Firefox primarily myself, as I have mentioned, but always keep all of my browsers (IE, Firefox, Chrome and Opera up to date)

As I have said before never, never and never..
Download supposed toolbars or video player or helpers…that a site says are ‘required’ to…whatever..
These are nearly always ‘trojanware’.
If you need to ‘install’ a special toolbar to ‘play games’ or ‘view a file’ or what ever you can be assured that someone is using that download to ‘view/own’ your system.
Are those ‘smileys’ worth having your entire system compromised or corrupted? I don’t think so.
If you use P2P software Limewire, Gnutella, KaZaA, Napster, BearShare, MySpace, torrents or even some Facebook ‘Apps’ you can expect, repeat EXPECT, to get infected by malicious software! There is no such thing as free ‘premium’ software. If software that normally cost from a vendor somewhere else is ‘found’ for free, you can expect you’ll get what you pay for. We don’t get it in the ‘real’ world why do people continue to believe that it will occur in the cyber world?
Here is an article on some people tricked by the old ‘social engineering’ scam to do just that.
Here is a good article on ‘Scareware’ – essentially it is a ‘social engineering’ tick to get you to install actual spyware/trojanware!
People are hit with this from many sites all the time, and end up screwing themselves to the stoneage.
Please take the time to read this information and how to protect yourself.

The one thing this article doesn’t really explain is how to ‘get out’ of the pop-up hell.
It is simple.
1st.

DO NOT CLICK ON ANY POPUP

WARNING WINDOW TRYING TO

CLOSE/EXIT!!!.
This will infect you!

Press the Ctrl+Shift+Esc keys at the same time (all on the left hand side of the keyboard).
This will bring up the ‘Windows Task Manager’ see attached screen capture.

From here click on the Microsoft Internet Explorer or Mozilla Firefox running ‘Task(s)’ and then click on ‘End Task’. It is wise to End Task ALL of them.

This kind of ploy gets MANY users!
I just the week have had three – count them 3 different people get caught by these methods!!
After closing the pop ups via the task manager run CCleaner BEFORE you open any browser again. If you have followed my previous advice you already have this installed and run it everytime you close your browser.
Please re-read these posts for more information on protecting yourself from malicious software.

Here

And Here

Anti Virus/Anti Spyware Suite Shootout Results

Here are the results of a very well done study on the effectiveness of current anti-virus/anti-spyware suites.
Review of the review here.
The top of the current list is Nortons latest suite.
They did not test Microsoft’s new/updated foray into this arena – their Freeware solution;
Microsof Security Essentials.
As I have mentioned previously I have been a fan of Norton for a while. They have done a good job of reducing the memory and process footprint compared to previous editions.
I am however very impressed with Microsoft’s Security Essentials application.
I recently had a collegue who’s systems was infected and Norton AND Trend Micro could not effect a solution.
But Security Essentials DID!
I think it is a good free solution and worth checking out.
Keep safe out there.

Back ups and System restores

Folks, please back up your data.
Once again I have been involved with a system meltdown where there was NO valid back up available.
I was able to salvage some data only after many, many hours and lots of aggravation.
Please don’t let this happen to you.
If people would create, and more importantly follow an effective back up strategy, they (and I) would live a much less stressful life.
There’s one simple rule about backups that everybody needs to fully understand:
Your files should exist in at least Two places, or it’s no longer a backup! Too often people delete files from their primary PC, assuming they are backed up or worse have their back ups located on the same hard drive on the same PC. A different partition of the same physical drive does NOT count. When hard drives fail they usually take the whole drive down including all partitions.
You data must exist in TWO, separate places at once or it is not a back up.
The simplest way is to purchase an external drive that you back up your data to by creating (and appending) disk images (see below for more) on a regular basis. I believe the most effective backups are Images(Clones).

Large external drives are very inexpensive these days. You can pick up a 1TB drive for around $100 or less just about anywhere.
But remember when backing up your data that you can’t delete it from your main system once it’s been backed up to an external drive. By doing that, you’ve left yourself with only a single copy of your important files, on an external drive that has just as much chance of dying as your internal PC hard drive.
So if you have only one external drive remember that.
Or you can go to my paranoid – but outrageously safe, route:
And use at least TWO external drives for image rotations.
I do.
I believe in the ‘grandfather/father/son’ method of backups.
[This is a method for storing previous generations of master file data that are continuously updated. The son is the current file (the one on your pc or data drive for home users), the father is a copy of the file from the previous cycle, and the grandfather is a copy of the file from the cycle before that one.]
I don’t want to be the guy who lost 25 years of family photo’s or my QuickBooks file with 15 years of business data because I didn’t want to spend a little money and time up front to be safe.

Imaging or cloning is the procedure by which you create a backup that is identical to a bootable system either to another (separate) internal or external drive. This is the ultimate backup! Should your drive fail you can just ‘pop in’ your cloned drive or ‘restore’ that clone image to a new (replacement) drive and your are up and running.
Image software makes a full, exact copy of your hard drive— a mirror image of the operating system, software, data, file organization—everything.
Good description here.
The go to software for me is Acronis or Ghost
Both have home and enterprise solutions. I have used them for many years, and continue to use both of them extensively.
For the price it is inexcusable to not have this software and use it regularly in your back up strategy.
For OS X creating an image is very simple process that can be done without any 3rd party software although I do like using SuperDuper. I have covered that in a previous article here.

Some of you may be happy just having your ‘data’ backed up to an external or online storage solution like Dropbox, Mozy, iDrive or Carbonite. There are others search ’em out.
That is fine and good for immediate back ups or access to current documents while traveling. I sometimes do this to between my image/back up schedule or when I am traveling and I know I will not be able to use a secure system.
I also use Microsoft’s SyncToy to mirror my working folders at home to one of my external drives and at work for my working documents and files. This tool has just been update to increase it’s speed and robustness, especially with network attached storage devices (NAS). You can find it here.
Well that’s all for now.
Please people save some grief and back up your data then back that up!
Peace.

Bogus and Malicious emails

Here is a reminder.

Let’s all keep ourselve and our data and systems safe.
I have just recently seen numerous emails comming in supposedly from UPS containing trojan/infected files!!
If you are not expecting and ‘EXPLICIT’ file in an email from a TRUSTED person.

DO NOT OPEN/RUN OR DOWNLOAD IT!!
Info on some here.

Legitimate vendors – eBay, ups, fed-ex amazon etc. will send you notice that you have invoices, receipts, shipping info etc. ready for you viewing.

BUT do not click on links provided in emails requesting personal information – they can contain links to bogus/phishishing sites! [sites that mask as legitimate but instead ‘steal/get you to give them your personal information]

If the email is from a true valid vendor you should be able to go to the appropriate vendor site by typing in the web address into your web browser and logging into your account and checking ‘messages/status etc.

I have spent a lot of time recently cleaning up systems that people inadvertently infected with spy ware/malware. And by trying to ‘fix’ the problem by themselves many of these folks have only infected/wrecked their machines more dramatically.

There are LOADS of malicious emails out there claiming to be ‘security updates/upgrades’ or Outlook system updates etc. that are cleverly (dastardly actually) masked (spoofed) as comming from within your organization, or some other trusted entity (often Microsoft).

Here is a good article on what some of these look like. Here is another. And still another.
You get the idea I hope.
They vary but the result is the same – you infect your system and your entire network with a ‘backdoor’ trojan.
These types of emails are very dangerous ‘phishin’ attacks designed to place a trojan silently onto your machine.

Once again please NEVER click on a link with in an email! From anyone.

The safest thing to do is call the person suposedly sending the email and verify it’s validity, or simply type the address directly into your browser.

As always I hope that any of you who read this have current Antivirus and Anti spyware software installed and most importantly keep them updated daily. And have them currently running.
While there may be advertisements listed on my site for anti-spyware and anti-virus protection, I can’t always control who or what they are for. I can however, recommend the links below.
My recomendations are as follows:

For a very, very good Antivirus and spyware solution (and free at that):

http://free-antivirus.eeye.com/

Their solution – Blink is fantastic.

You may also have Symantec/Norton, McAfee or AVG installed – Great!! but is it updated daily?

http://www.symantec.com/business/security_response/definitions.jsp

http://us.mcafee.com/virusInfo/default.asp?cid=45702

http://www.grisoft.com/us.download-update

Another super free and great anti-spyware is Spybot Search and Destroy (Spybot S&D;).

I have used this to successfully fix/repair dozens of machines.

Beware though there are many ‘bogus/extortion’ appliations that are trying to trade off the ‘Spybot’ name.

The home to the one and only freeware SpyBot Search & Destroy is:
http://www.safer-networking.org/en/spybotsd/index.html

And a very highly rated anti-spyware package by PCWeek is Spyware Doctor. Not free but worth the price:
http://www.pctools.com/spyware-doctor-antivirus/

Portable tools for Procuctivity and System Recovery

I have a few custom bootable USB recovery sticks containing Hiren’s Boot CD, UBCD4Win and ERD that have recovery consoles along with a WinPE (Mini XP) environment that I use to recover and repair all sorts of Windows issues.
On my USB drive I have loaded hundreds of applications; some for use in the WinPE/Recovery mode (AV/Antispyware system and Troubleshooting apps) and many, many more for use in ‘tweaking/setting up’ a proper secure system.
I also use both of these two tools listed below; sometimes in the PE environment and also in Windows.

Even if you don’t have (need or want) a bootable USB recovery stick, these two utilities – Liberkey and NirLauncher – are fantastic tools to have on a USB drive.

Both give you tons of ‘portable applications’ you can bring with you to any Windows machine. Just plug in your USB drive and you can access loads of portable applications.
Liberkey:
http://www.liberkey.com/en/les-atouts-majeurs-de-la-liberkey.html
Download:
http://www.liberkey.com/en/download/6-liberkey-ultimate/
Nirsoft Download and integration information:
http://blog.nirsoft.net/2009/10/04/beta-version-of-nirlauncher-package-is-available-to-download/

Hiren’s:
http://www.hirensbootcd.net/
To creat a bootable USB drive with Hirens:
http://www.hirensbootcd.net/usb-booting.html
UBCD4Win:
http://www.ubcd4win.com/
UBCD4Win to USB:
http://techacs.blogspot.com/2008/10/putting-ultimate-boot-cd-for-windows-on.html
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jdIKHdcMA0Y

http://ubcd4win.com/forum/index.php?s=11a797e9a1ce62fe41be3e3f6b14237a&showtopic;=10411

Please note if you are going to create and use Hiren’s or UBCD4Win and create a bootable USB drive you must read and follow the directions from Hiren’s and/or UBCD4 Win’s sites.
The have listed the how to’s now in great detail. And there is plenty more info available by just checking their forums and of couse Google.
If you don’t understand all of what is required or just ‘can’t do it’ – do not even attempt it.
You may end up doing something real silly like formating your hard drive or worse some one else’s!!
Also beware if you are not sure what you are doing or are not COMPLETELY versed in all of the the recovery and system tweaking applications listed you may also kill your macine or someone else’s.
If you do hose something DO NOT CRY TO ME!
YOU ARE WARNED!

Conflicker Worm is here!

Yes folks, it looks like the worm is very active again.
Please take the time to protect yourself and your data. A few minutes of safety can save hours or days of frustration and money.

The worm started spreading late last year, infecting millions of computers and turning them into “slaves” that respond to commands sent from a remote server that effectively controls an army of computers known as a botnet.

The Worm is quietly turning personal computers into servers of e-mail spam, flooding users with malicious emails that in turn can spread the worm again.
It is loading more malicious software onto computers under their (botnet creators) control.
According to Russian-based security researcher Kaspersky Lab.
“Conficker installs a second virus, known as Waledac, that sends out e-mail spam without knowledge of the PC’s owner, along with a fake anti-spyware program.
The Waledac virus recruits the PCs into a second botnet that has existed for several years and specializes in distributing e-mail spam.
Conficker also carries a third virus that warns users their PCs are infected and offers them a fake anti-virus program, Spyware Protect 2009 for $49.95.
If they buy it, their credit card information is stolen and the virus downloads even more malicious software.”

Please don’t be one of those who get scammed, lose control of their system or lose their data altogether.

Microsoft has some good resources here:
http://www.microsoft.com/protect/computer/viruses/worms/conficker.mspx

And offers a great free scan that I recommend here:
http://onecare.live.com/site/en-us/default.htm

For further steps you can take read my two previous posts:
http://mycraniumdrain.blogspot.com/2009/03/conflicker-protection.html

http://mycraniumdrain.blogspot.com/2009/03/more-conflicker-check-for-infection.html

Peace and safe computing