Tag: SAFETY

Google Chrome already sports a number of security-minded features, from Incognito mode to a software sandbox which makes exploiting the browser a Herculean task. Now, Google has announced additional protection for Chromium and Chrome users. Built upon the Safe Browsing API, the new feature introduces protection against malicious downloads. If a download link appears in the Safe Browsing ...

Email scams, or phishing, aren't going to disappear any time soon. As much as we'd like to think that people we know aren't taken in by messages like the one in the screenshot above, chances are good that you know of someone who has taken the bait. It's easy enough to recognize a scammy email message if you know what to look for, so let's break it down. Take the jump and we'll dissect this ...

Though the Windows Phone 7 Marketplace is growing steadily, the platform is still lacking plenty of marquee apps. You can now cross one off the list, however -- popular password manager LastPass has arrived! Log in to the app, tap a site in your list, and the WP7 browser opens and LastPass logs you in automatically. Right now, LastPass for WP7 is read-only, meaning it can pull down all your ...

Over at the Lookout Mobile Security blog there's news of a sophisticated new trojan spreading on Android devices. Dubbed Geinimi, the Trojan has been injected into legitimate versions of Android games (primarily) and apps, and distributed via third-party app stores in China. While Lookout isn't certain of Geinimi's intent, the company believes it to be capable of receiving commands from a ...

Facebook's immense popularity has made it a prime target for cybercriminals. Malicious (or 'poisoned') links, spam, and malvertising are all too common -- and it's far too easy for an unsuspecting Facebook user to be taken in. Hey, if one of your friends sends you a link to what seems like a hilarious picture, there's a decent chance you'll click through, right? ... And that's how the bad guys ...

Google's not the only company rolling out the family safety information today. Microsoft, too, has a new resource available. It's not a website, though, it's a 17-chapter e-book -- and it's exactly the kind of thing I've been wishing I could pass out to customers for a decade. Own Your Space [Google PDF viewer link] is presented as a series of stories. You'll meet Eric, Braden, and a host of ...

Google -- along with several partners -- has just unveiled their new Family Safety Center. It's a collection of resources designed to help people better understand things like cyberbullying and abuse, malware, and controlling access to inappropriate/explicit content. The site focuses on information like videos and tips from parents who work at Google -- the only actual "tools" provided are ...

Dell, via recently-acquired KACE Networks, has just released a rather sexy Web browser called... Secure Browser. It clocks in at a massive 75 megabytes (?!), and essentially provides a sandboxed version of Firefox 3.6, with Flash and Reader plug-ins. Before you get all excited: it only works on 32-bit systems. Using technology from Computers in Motion, a company that specialized in application ...

There's one thing pretty much all of my retail customers could use: a little extra help avoiding malicious websites and links while browsing the internet. Sunbelt Software -- who develop a handful of very capable antivirus and firewall apps -- think so too, and are offering a new service called ClearCloud to provide that help. ClearCloud operates just like OpenDNS and Google Public DNS. Simply ...

Back in March, Google added a very neat feature to Gmail that warns you of suspicious activity on your account. In essence (and I'm sure there's more to it than this), it simply checks the 'geolocation' of your IP address against any other logins on your account. If I log in from 'near London', and 30 minutes later someone logs in from 'near New York', an alert is produced. Today the same ...

Last week I (and a bunch of other sites) ran a scandalous-sounding story about the Android Market and how 'up to 20% of its apps could be malware'. Google actually contacted us and asked for a retraction; I refused. Instead, I decided to explain the Android Market permission system. If you don't own an Android phone, the permission system is fantastic. Every app has to define which resources it ...

Phew, what a week we've had here in the dark, dank Download Squad bunker! Not only has it been a good week for Firefox, but for all browsers everywhere! This week we saw the release of IE9 preview 3 -- and while it's by no means complete (it doesn't even have a GUI!), we can now be certain that hardware acceleration, along with HTML5, is the wave of the future. And... Firefox is leading that ...

OpenDNS is a great service for a number of reasons, and today there's one more. If you're a concerned parent, they're now making it super-easy to block porn from all the computers in your home. The new offering is called FamilyShield, and it's just as easy to get working as the original OpenDNS service. Full instructions are provided on the official site, and they'll walk you through setting ...

digg_url = 'http://downloadsquad.switched.com/2010/04/13/extensions-to-make-google-chrome-safer-more-secure/'; Google Chrome is already an extremely secure Web browser. Armed with its exploit-thwarting sandbox, Chrome remained untested at Pwn2Own this year, while other browsers were hacked within minutes. Still, it never hurts to bolster your defenses, and there are plenty of good options ...

The security pros at Sophos Labs and McAfee have noticed a disturbing increase in Facebook phishing attacks lately. Facebook is a juicy target for this type of attack. Why? For starters, there are 350 million + users to go after. On top of that, many are less computer-savy users (like your parents and mine, teenagers, etc.) who may not be familiar with malware and how to protect themselves. ...