The hackers won today..

Adobe announces a zero-day exploit for Adobe Flash, Reader and Acrobat today.  The exploit is almost the same exploit that was patched a month ago.  It is back.  Also, Facebook has announced a virus on the site that is spreading.  Your only real danger is if you are a Twilight movie fan.  It is based in the game Breaking Dawn that followers have been passing around.  If given an invite to play the game, pass on it.  Adobe will be releasing a fix soon, we hope. 

This is in addition to the 64 fixes Microsoft will be issuing tomorrow with Windows Update.  Keep your systems updated.  Finally, a new ransomware program is circulating.  If you get it you will get the screen shown here:

This ransomware is particularly nasty.  It locks you out of windows completely (normal and safe mode).  You can only unlock it by calling a phone number to activate your copy of Windows again.  The number claims to be toll-free and to Microsoft, of course, neither are true.  You would be calling an expensive International number.  Your only recourse is to do a clean install of your system.

Windows 7 finally passes Windows XP

According to Pingdom, a tracking group, Windows 7 has passed Windows XP in usage for the first time.  Seems like the folks at Microsoft may finally have reason to celebrate.

Huge Windows Update on Tuesday

64 patches coming on Tuesday in what Microsoft is calling their biggest update to date.  Check Windows update starting on Tuesday

Firefox 5 coming in June

Now, I must admit that I am a bit confused.  It took Mozilla over two years to get us from version 3 to 4, and now they are moving to version 5 in 2 months.  Mozilla has announced that Firefox 5 will be coming out June 21, 2011.  They intend to hold to a more frequent release schedule, preferably about every 6 months.  This is similar to Google Chrome.

Episilon, who are they?

Well, if you have any online relationship with any business, you probably have received an email from that business telling you that there was a data breach, blah, blah, blah.  So what is the short answer to the question?  Episilon is a third party company that pretty much handles much, if not all, of the email marketing that big companies engage in.  For example,  If you have a Best Buy account, signed up for email correspondence from them, any email you get from "Best Buy", really comes from Episilon.  Yes, we even outsource email in this country.   So somehow hackers got a hold of the email databases of all of the companies they represent.  No, allegedly no personal information was attained.  As far as we know now, they have your email address, but do not necessarily know who you are specifically.  So what you will most likely see in the upcoming weeks, if not months, is a dramatic increase in phishing attempts.  You will get an email from "insert company name here" trying to get you to click on a link to their fake website in an attempt to get you to give up personal and/or financial information.  It will be more persuasive now because they will now know what emails actually are associated with specific banks, credit cards, retailers and the like.  This will result in many more people being fooled.  The same rules apply in regards to protecting yourself from this scam.   Do not respond or click on links in emails that are telling you that your account is in danger or those that try to scare you.  If you are concerned, go to your address bar and enter the address to the website yourself, do not click on links in emails!  This post is dedicated to the 4 email alerts I got in the past two days from my accounts telling me about the goof.

Carbonite over Mozy by a landslide

In my backup section, I speak of different online backup solutions.  The two industry front-runners have always been Carbonite and Mozy.  For the past couple of years, they have been almost identical as far as what they offered and how much it cost.  Not anymore.  Mozy has recently raised prices and lowered storage size, making Carbonite, hands down, the better solution. 

Carbonite is $54.95 a year with unlimited storage.  That comes out to a cheap $4.57 a month.  The longer you sign up, the cheaper that price gets.  Two years is $99.95 (or $4.16 a month).  Three years is $129.95 (or $3.61 a month).  By comparison, Mozy is $5.99 a month for 50GB of storage (or $71.88 a year).