Protecting kids from Kazaa

In the comments to an earlier post, Ken asks:

Is there a way, e.g., a setting from within Internet Explorer, or perhaps his antivirus program (Norton, I think), to prevent his teenage daugher (the real culprit here) from downloading this especially malicious crudware in the first place?

Sure there is, and I’ve done it for neighbors. This assumes, of course, that they’re using Windows XP and that they are willing to enforce some serious rules. Set the daughter up with a Limited user account (LUA). Give Mom or Dad the password to the Administrator account and tell them not to share it with the kid no matter what. A user who logs on with an LUA cannot install a software program that tries to write any files outside of their own user account. They can’t make changes to global security settings, and they can’t install add-ons for Internet Explorer. In other words, they can’t be tricked into installing adware, spyware, or viruses.

The kids will scream when they can’t do what all the other kewl kids are doing, but that’s just too bad. When I set this up at my friend’s house, the deal was that if her son wanted to install any program, he first had to research it and prove that it was safe, reliable, and trustworthy. Needless to say, Kazaa never made it back onto the machine, and I’ve never had to go back and clean up a single piece of spyware. Oh, and he just made the Dean’s list.

Using Norton AV? Get this fix

Earlier this week, Symantec published technical details of a security flaw that affects many of its consumer and enterprise products. (Read Symantec UPX Parsing Engine Heap Overflow for the gory details.)

If you use Norton AntiVirus 2003 or 2005, you’re OK. If you use Norton AntiVirus 2004 or Norton Internet Security 2004, you might need to download an update manually. I don’t have Norton installed here, but if I recall correctly the default settings for Symantec’s Live Update only deliver updates to virus definitions. You may need to run LiveUpdate manually to get the updated program code.

If there are any current Norton users out there who can fill in other details, please leave a comment.

Kazaa mess hits the mainstream

An Associated Press reporter picks up the Kazaa story I wrote about last week. For the most part, the details in the short AP story are the same as those I wrote about, although I hadn’t heard this one before:

Mary Still, a lawyer representing Sharman, said in an interview that users have the option of paying $29.95 for an adware-free version.

Sounds like extortion to me. You don’t like the mess we make of your computer? Pay up. Or else.

I will open a bottle of Champagne the day Kazaa disappears from the face of the earth.

Anyone out there using Prevx?

I ran across Prevx while researching software to protect Windows users from viruses, adware, and spyware. It promises to “prevent attacks on your computer that other security products don’t even see.”

I plan to test it, of course, but am curious whether anyone out there has personal experience they’d like to share. Add a comment here or send me a note.

Update: Several people sent links to this review of intrusion detection software at Tech Support Alert, which calls Prevx, “Best Free Software Product of 2004.” It’s a pretty thorough evaluation from a site I had never seen before. Gizmo, why not add an RSS feed?

Which Windows e-mail program is best?

In yesterday’s Washington Post, Rob Pegoraro has a review of several e-mail programs that left me scratching my head. Let me see if I can give you the short version. Here’s the intro:

One of the two most widely used programs in this category, Microsoft’s Outlook Express, has not had a meaningful update since 1999, save security fixes for its appalling history of vulnerabilities. The other is Microsoft’s bloated, corporate-centric Outlook, normally sold only with its Office suite for $150 and up. These are not exactly programs that inspire love.

OK, there’s the landscape. Now, he says, “ This dormant market is finally waking up.” The contenders are Eudora and Thunderbird. Here’s what he reports:

“Trouble commences with a move from Outlook Express or Outlook.” Eudora mangles address books and settings. Thunderbird doesn’t copy any Outlook settings.
“ Eudora is terrific with POP but slow and clumsy with IMAP; Thunderbird’s near-peerless IMAP performance contrasts with POP support that omits a few options handy when checking one account from two computers.”
Thunderbird “can’t even check your spelling as you type.”
Eudora “ routinely locks up briefly while processing messages and too often crashes outright. The software is confusing to learn … Eudora’s interface – vast amounts of blank space and toolbar icons that appear to have been drawn with crayons – looks ugly.”
Both programs try to filter spam, but neither one nails more than half of it.
Eudora excels in keeping track of messages, Thunderbird has a “slick message-finding system.”
Neither program can compete with Outlook in one crucial way: their address books.

Bottom line: “Considering how Thunderbird has evolved so far, it looks like the e-mail program of the future. But until Thunderbird gains a real address book, I can’t blame users who conclude that Outlook, for all its defects, remains the e-mail program of the present.”

Eudora seems to be a complete straw man here. Why waste half the review on a program that’s ugly and routinely locks up? I would have liked to see a head-to-head comparison between Thunderbird and Outlook, but that wouldn’t have been fair. Outlook is a personal information manager; Thunderbird is a simple e-mail program. What does he mean that Outlook is “bloated”? Does it use too much memory? And as for its “corporate-centric” design, Rob seems to be stuck in 1998. I haven’t worked in a corporate office since 1993, and Outlook is an absolutely indispensable part of my working life. The same is true for my wife, who left corporate life the same time I did and does just about everything in Outlook.

Don’t get me wrong. I like Thunderbird and agree that it’s a worthy alternative to Outlook Express. But I think a lot of the criticism of Outlook, as typified by its quick dismissal in this review, is a legacy of bugs and bad design decisions that plagued earlier editions. Most of the big problems were solved with Outlook 2002 (Office XP). The changes in Outlook 2003 made this a phenomenal productivity suite that does a great job with calendars, contacts and e-mail. In my experience, the program is fast, easy to use, extraordinarily customizable, and rarely if ever crashes.

And Outlook “doesn’t inspire love”? I know a lot of people who don’t work for Microsoft (David Allen, Marc Orchant, Sue Mosher, and a few hundred others) who would disagree.

(Bonus tip for everyone having problems with Outlook 2003 and IMAP: Open the account settings dialog box for your IMAP server and click the More Settings button. On the Advanced tab, slide the Server Timeouts bar all the way to the left, so it’s set at 10 seconds. Previously, I had experienced the same hangs that other people reported,. No longer.)

Why I hate Kazaa (and why you should too)

Ooooooh, I love this! Australia’s apcmag.com has been diligently following Kazaagate, a civil trial now going on in Sydney’s Federal Court. Today, reporter Garth Montgomery reports on a whopper of a confidential document that Kazaa’s owners tried to suppress:

It’s a philosophical rant from [Sharman CTO Philip] Morle, which is printed and packaged to resemble a legitimate academic text, complete with footnotes and the longest title in the history of quasi-academia.

In it, Morle acknowledges what any PC support professional has known for years: Kazaa is riddled with adware and will turn your computer into a doorstop:

“We need to be careful with user resources. Most obvious is in the adware we add to their machine upon installation. This software slows down users’ machines and can affect other activity such as browsing the Internet (as we have seen with PerfectNav). It is reasonable that we show ads in order to create our free software, but I do not believe it is reasonable to place a user in a position where this free software will also make their machine sluggish. Consider how many people that work for Sharman Networks and its partners that hate installing Kazaa on their machines.”

Yep, the people who work for the company that makes Kazaa don’t want it on their computers because it’s such a viper’s nest. Lawsuits are an essential tool, sometimes the only way, to get confirmation of how a company really works as opposed to what it claims to be doing. That was true in the Microsoft antitrust trials and it’s certainly true here.

If you know someone who still uses Kazaa or Grokster, do them a favor and do whatever it takes to help them get rid of it. They’ll thank you.

The history of the Windows PowerToys

Raymond Chen wrote the original Tweak UI for Windows 95. In a post on his most excellent blog, The Old New Thing, he tells the history of the Windows PowerToys. It’s fun reading, especially given that this is the 10th anniversary of Windows 95. But I’m linking to it here because it also includes this most excellent list of all the other PowerToys that have since snuck out of other groups at Microsoft and are available for various Windows platforms:

(Plus, of course, the Windows XP PowerToys, which does come from the shell team. The Internet Explorer team originally called their stuff PowerToys, but they later changed the name to Web Accessories, perhaps to avoid the very confusion I’m discussing here.)

Until I read this post, I didn’t know that Raymond also wrote the original Kernel Toys for Windows 95. Nor did I know that Raymond wrote the whimsical blurb that introduced the original PowerToys. But I’m not surprised, given the cleaver, clear writing and insight that is the hallmark of Raymond’s blog.

Cover your tracks in Firefox

For at least the last five years, I’ve recommended a program called PurgeIE as a way to clean up traces that Internet Explorer leaves behind. Recently, I heard from Jim Lawler, the program’s developer, that he’s released a Firefox-compatible alternative called PurgeFox. I’ve put the program through its paces over the past month or so and recommend it highly.

If you’ve ever used PurgeIE, the PurgeFox interface will be familiar. It doesn’t work as a Firefox plug-in but rather runs as a stand-alone program.

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By selecting check boxes on the Purge Options dialog box, you decide what you want to eliminate. You can wipe out some or all of the following Firefox elements: the browser cache, cookies, history file, and forms history. The program also gives you the option to erase the contents of various locations that aren’t directly related to Firefox, like temp folders, the Windows file history, the Recycle Bin, and the Clipboard.

The program’s biggest strength is as a cookie manager. Like PurgeIE, it gives you the option to designate specific cookies as protected, a setting that it saves in its configuration files. As you go through the list, you can see the exact contents of each cookie and decide for yourself whether to keep it or purge it. This setting is maintained in addition to the Firefox Allow/Block settings. When you run the Purge button, the program zaps all cookies except those marked as Protected.

[Click to see larger image]

PurgeFox has one thoughtful feature designed to keep you from inadvertently deleting more than you intended. After you select a group of settings, click the Preview button to open a window that shows you exactly what will happen if you use those settings. If you’re satisfied with the results, click the Purge button to do the job. For the sake of convenience, you can also save different groups of settings to run on startup and on shutdown, and in response to a Purge Now button that lives on your desktop or on the Start menu. That’s handy if you want to routinely clean out certain settings without having to select options all over again.

Most of the features that PurgeFox performs can be done manually, if you know where to look in the Firefox Options dialog box and in various Windows dialog boxes. Besides being more convenient, this program adds a “secure erase” option, which makes it more difficult for someone to recover files you thought you had deleted. It also supports plug-ins that extend its functionality to other programs, including Adobe Acrobat, the Google toolbar, WinZip, and other elements of the Windows interface, including the Run box and the search history.

The program runs on Windows XP, 2000, and 2003. It also runs on older versions, including Windows 98, Windows Me, and NT 4.0. If you’re a privacy fanatic and you use Firefox, this is well worth the $21.95 license fee. If you already own PurgeIE or PurgeIE Pro, you can get a PurgeFox license for $11. Not sure? Try it out for 15 days.

Organize your photos with Picasa

If you have a digital camera, Picasa is worth a try. I used the software before Google bought the company and fell in love with its slick, simple interface. My favorite feature is the timeline view, which lets you scroll through your photo collection by the date the pictures were taken, ignoring folders and cryptic file names.

Recently, Google released a new version:

Picasa is software that helps you instantly find, edit and share all the pictures on your PC. Every time you open Picasa, it automatically locates all your pictures (even ones you forgot you had) and sorts them into visual albums organized by date with folder names you know. You can drag and drop to arrange your albums and make labels to create new groups. Picasa makes sure your pictures are always organized.

Picasa also makes advanced editing simple by putting one-click fixes and powerful effects at your fingertips. And Picasa makes it a snap to share your pictures – you can email, print at home, make gift CDs, instantly share via Hello™, and even put pictures on your own blog.

Danny Sullivan has an excellent review that compares Google Picasa 2 and Adobe Photoshop Album 2 at Search Engine Watch. I’ve got several thousand digital photos here. I really should get them organized one of these days!

As long as we’re covering flame wars

You want to read a rant? A really great rant? Steve Gilliard is your man. Compared to Steve, Lewis Black is Mr. Rogers.

Steve is angry at Mac fanatics who insist that replacing your Windows PC with a Mac will solve all your problems. I’ve put the excerpt from Steve’s rant in the extended portion of this post, which means you’ll have to click once if you want to read his words and the rest of my remarks. If you’re offended by earthy language, don’t click. Me, I use some of those words on a daily basis, and they seem particularly appropriate here. (This isn’t basic cable, folks.)

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