A federal judge has fined a Belize-based company $8,000 for each day it continues to flout his order to halt a major internet operation alleged to have duped more than 1 million computer users into buying bogus malware protection.

US District Judge Richard D. Bennett wrote in a ruling late last week that Innovative Marketing is in civil contempt for failing to comply with a temporary restraining order to stop its scareware campaign and turn over financial records. The judge imposed the fines after Sam Jain, the company’s chief executive, and four other defendants failed to appear at a hearing.

The rulings come in a case filed by the US Federal Trade Commission. It outlines a scheme that’s breathtaking for the degree of treachery and sophistication the defendants are accused of sowing to plaster the net with ads designed to trick viewers into paying $100 to install malware masquerading as anti-virus protection. The ads, which appeared on high-traffic websites, pimped a variety of rogue titles including WinFixer, WinAntivirus, DriveCleaner and ErrorSafe.

Keep reading “Accused Scareware Mongers Held in Contempt of Court” »

Well have you?

DVD’s and CD’s are useful for backing up data or transfering data to another computer, but what do you do once you are done with them? Do you just leave them sitting around or throw them out hoping that no one will take the disk and see what’s on it? A CD/DVD shredder could be the answer for you.

If you are like me and are wondering how a CD/DVD shredder works, take alook at the following video.

No ones going to be reading that CD.

Take alook at NextTag to see CD/DVD shredder prices.

First off I have to say that Norton Antivirus and Norton 360 do a good job. If you have either of these programs on your computer, it has some good protection. The problem is the computer resources Norton Antivirus and Norton 360 use.

If you enjoy playing games or using programs that require alot of grunt from your computer, Norton is not for you. In fact, don’t consider Norton Antivirus or Norton 360 unless you have a fast computer.

Norton programs have also had installation and uninstalling issues which can cause problems with people’s computers. This doesn’t happen all the time but I have seen machines where a previous version of Norton’s has caused hassles with newer version. Norton Antivirus and Norton 360 don’t play nice with other antispyware and antivirus programs so if you have one on your computer, you may have problems.

Norton Antivirus and Norton 360 do their job very well but require more out of your computer than other antivirus programs. Before you buy, use the free Norton Antivirus 2009 trail version or free Norton 360 trial to see how well it behaves on your computer.

Please note that Norton 360 v2 is now available. I have only seen the original Norton 360 and Symantec has made a number of fixes in Norton 360 v2 which could impact my thoughts on it.

More importantly, have you ever lost your USB pen drive?

For those of you still using floppy disks, USB pen drives, or flash drives as they are sometimes called, are little devices the size of a pack of chewing gum that plugs into your USB port and lets you store files on it. You can transfer the files to other computers that have USB drives as well, which is why they are so popular.

The problem is that pen drives are so small, they are very easy to lose. I’ve already lost two them. Unfortunately whoever finds it will have access to whatever you have put on the pen drive so I hope you haven’t stored nuclear launch codes on yours.

Luckily there are pen drives for sale that have fingerprint readers on them so they will only open to your touch. They are more expensive then you normal pen drive but if you are carrying around sensitive material, they are definitely worth getting.

If you are interested, type fingerprint pen drive or biometric pen drive into Google and so do some price hunting.