Archive for the ‘General’ Category
Texas premium proxy scheduled maintenance
Wednesday, June 2nd, 2010
Dear Customer:
On June 2, 2010, our Network Engineering team will be performing maintenance on our Texas premium proxy. So please feel free to use our Canadian or Germany premium proxies as a temporary replacement during the maintenance period.
If you have any questions about the maintenance, please feel free contact us
We highly appreciate your patience and understanding
Sincerely,
Giant Matrix Team
Say Goodbye to SPAM for Good with Disposable Emails Addresses!
Wednesday, February 3rd, 2010
Many websites, forums and blogs require you to register using your email address before you can download files, songs, movies or post a reply to a forum or blog post
Before you know it, your inbox is filled with tons and tons of SPAM email from people or websites advertising strange products and services. Later you start to find emails containing viruses, Trojans horses or phishing emails trying to capture your bank login information!
Looks like you need to start frantically searching for your wallet so you can buy Anti Spam software to filter as much spam email as possible. But we all know this will never block 100% of those messages. As hard as Anti SPAM programmers work everyday to find best algorithms to block SPAM messages, SPAMMERS work just as hard trying to invent new ways to get around those bullet-proof algorithms!
Hold on. Let me take that last statement back. There is this one way we all can block 100% of those SPAM messages, simply by following the old proverb, “An ounce of prevention is better than a pound of cure”.
Disposable email addresses can help protect your inbox and save you all the money you might invest in Anti Spam software. Disposable email addresses are addresses you can use when registering to comment at websites, forums or blogs you like. After a month or two if you find that this website, forum or blog is worthy of your trust then you just update your contact information with your real email address. If not then you simply drop the disposable email address and generate a new disposable address. That’s all it takes! And that’s all you need to do to keep your inbox literally 100% clean from any SPAM emails.
iSurfer Shield’s – Disposable Emails feature helps protect your inbox from SPAM and also saves you the money you might invest in other Anti Spam tools. With the iSurfer Shield Disposable Email feature you can now generate and use as many disposable email addresses as you want to register at any website, forum, or blog
Now you’re ready to join forums, comment on blogs and sign up anywhere for anything. Give a site a test drive, so to speak, to see if you like it without having to worry about people tracing the email back you. Have fun
Posted in Anti SPAM, General, Online Privacy, Security
A picture can be worth a whole lot more than a thousand words!
Saturday, January 23rd, 2010
Everyday we hear about how important it is to protect our data and online identity especially with the dramatic increase in cybercrime percentages and the consequences of being a victim of one of those crimes! We buy firewalls, track erasers, anti-virus applications and more to protect our identity and data from hackers and pirating eyes…but what if the PC or laptop itself is stolen?
Thanks to encryption tools we can now fully encrypt our financial records and important files so that no one—at least theoretically—can access those files and data. I had to say theoretically as nothing in the world is “unbreakable”…what is created by a human can be broken by another human. It’s all about the motive. Only a hacker knows how important it is for the cracker to crack the encrypted file!
Way back in time, even before computers were invented people had to find a way to hide their data from intruders, and this is when steganography, the art of hidden messages and data protection, was invented. Back at this time, one of the most interesting ancient reports of steganography involved tattooing a message on a slave’s bald head. When the slave’s hair grew back, the message was completely concealed. Thank goodness we don’t have to go to those extremes these days!!
Using steganography today, digital data is concealed in something totally innocent looking like a picture or audio file. So if your computer is stolen, you really don’t have to worry since no one will ever think that a picture of your dog includes your bank account login information!
Anti Tracks 7 an all-in-one online and offline user security tool that can help hide your data and important files securely in pictures and audio files steganographically. This way not only your files are hidden in your pictures and audio files but they are also hidden securely. Let me demonstrate how to use Anti Tracks to hide your important data and files steganographically
1. If you haven’t already installed Anti Tracks on your PC, download and install Anti Tracks
2. After installation, run Anti Tracks. The Anti Tracks main window will appear after installation
3. From the Anti Tracks main window, select Hide Files and Folders from the File menu located on the left side of the main window
4. Select the files and folders you want to hide by clicking the browse button OR by dragging and dropping your files and folders from Windows Explorer to the Hide Files and Folders window. After adding all files and folders you want to hide, click Next to proceed. Note that the file sizes will affect the size of the final picture or audio file used in hiding your files. You don’t want to have a picture or audio file with a strange file size that might attract attention
5. In this step, you can choose to encrypt files and folders before hiding them. To do so click the Encrypt box, select your preferred Cipher, Hash and enter your password. Remember to select a strong password. The stronger the password, the harder it is for hackers to crack. After selecting your encryption preferences, click Next to proceed
6. Select your target container. The container is the picture or audio file where you will hide your files
Now your files are fully protected and hidden from prying eyes!
Protecting your information is important. Even though steganography started out being used by the military and intelligence communities, it is one of the most widely used and important methods we have to protect vital information. I know it’s hard to imagine that identity theft or just plain theft can happen to you. Most people feel that way until it’s happened to them. Think about it now and let us help protect you and your future
Posted in Encryption, General, Security
Afraid that someone is monitoring your PC?
Thursday, January 7th, 2010
Afraid that someone is monitoring your PC or installed a keylogger to record every single keystroke? Find out which tools you need to get to make sure you are protected
Ad-Aware
What is there to say about Ad-Aware we haven’t said before? We’ve been known to give this venerable antispyware utility a fair amount of print, and the attention is well-justified. Simply put, Ad-Aware is extremely effective at finding and removing the Web’s most notorious spyware components, as well as the newest and deadliest threats. Bells and whistles are not this program’s thing, but Ad-Aware keeps the focus where it belongs: on rock-solid protection.
HijackThis
Anyone who’s been in the ring with spyware knows some opponents just refuse to go down. If your arsenal of spyware-removal tools has failed to eighty-six a particularly devious intruder, this program could be one of your last hopes before reformatting. But unless you’re a serious computer surgeon, you’ll probably need to consult a Web-based forum to make sense of the program’s scan results. (For more information, read our HijackThis tutorial.) Though you won’t use it every day, sooner or later you’ll be glad you have HijackThis
Posted in General, Online Privacy, Security
The spy who robbed me. What you need to know about spyware
Thursday, January 7th, 2010
With the exception of those who are competing in reality TV shows, who wants to be watched? Who wants to be seen in their most vulnerable and private moments? Who wants to be deprived of his privacy and his freedom to keep things for himself?
Most importantly, who wants to jeopardize his security by unwittingly exposing the things he should be keeping a secret to someone who’s watching from afar?
Before you start thinking that we’re referring to a psychopathic voyeur who is observing you from the building adjacent to your house, let us clarify that we’re going to discuss about spyware. Yes. Spyware: a program which has been the bane to Internet users for the past three years
Spyware is one of those things that were invented for a good purpose, but was eventually exploited in time. Spyware was originally meant as a tool that would allow you to monitor the usage of your PC terminal while you’re away from the keyboard so that you can prevent illegal access to the same
Eventually, it found other borderline uses, like catching a cheating spouse or significant other, prying on your daughter’s liaisons, and watching over your children’s Internet activities from a remote computer
From pure to gray to black, spyware has now become a backdoor to high technology security protocols. It does this without hacking any system, rather, by deluding a user into unwittingly installing the spyware program on his PC
From there, the program would work invisibly, sending key logs, or log files of the characters you have punched on your keyboard, to someone else on a remote terminal. This is why spyware is also called as a key logger program
Eventually, spyware evolved into more damaging forms. Today, you would have invisible scripts redirecting you to certain websites which you have not chosen to view, or pop-ups that keep sprouting left and right even if you’re viewing a pop-up free website
This has led the Anti-Spyware Coalition, a group of industry giants who are adversely affected by this digital malady as well, to define spyware as something that “impairs users control over material changes that affect their user experience, privacy or system security; use of their system resources, including what programs are installed on their computers; or collection, use and distribution of their personal or otherwise sensitive information
But it is the violation of your rights that is the biggest issue. With spyware, your freedom of choice and to feel secure about your personal effects is deprived of you. This has no room in a civilized society
Indeed, spyware is a modern day disease that should be curbed. It now comes in a variety of forms aside from the aforementioned key loggers:
ADWARE – Is an invisible program that sends specific banners for you to see. It may sound innocent, but this program actually compels your PC to send personal details to the mother source so that the latter may know which ads to display
HIJACKERS – These are programs that take control of your browsers, opening up pages which you do not choose to view
MALWARE – These are programs which are not spyware per se, but operate under the same principle. They are persistent scripts that don’t seem to stop until your data are destroyed. Examples of these programs are Trojans and worm viruses
There are a lot of tools in the World Wide Web that would allow you to rid your computer of these malicious programs. The maxim “an ounce of prevention is worth more than a pound of cure” seems to be the best policy against spyware. Always update your anti-virus system, tracks erasing program so that spyware may not be allowed to incubate in your hard drive