Kim....Intrusion Alert !!!

Last Friday I'm setting idle on YtMag while messing with some new play toys Santa broght me when I get a Intrusion Alert from McAfee Firewall 8000 askng if I want to allow or deny the intrusion. Of course I choose to Deny. I get a second request ten minutes latter, same response.

I have XP home set up with a Adminerstator with user accounts. I'm on YtMag with a user account. User accounts doesn't have premission to change system settings.

So I brag to the wife that McAfee firewall 8000 just saved me a huge headache. I then logged off as a user and logged on as the administrator and found that this intrusion had set up there own user account with administrator rights!!!

The account was named APY.net, I tried tracing apy.net but got no where as it just kept coming back as my own ISP.

So far I think thats all that was affected as I deleted the bogas user account then did a cold boot with no ill effects upon reboot, so far thats is!

Needless to say I'm disappointed in XP and McAfee firewall 8000!

Just wanted to give a heads up and see if anyone has heard of apy.net ?

T_Bone

Mark

My firewall of choice is ZoneAlarm. There is a free version and a 'Pro' version which cost me about $29.00 U.S. last year for renewal. I'm running Pro. See the link below. There is also now a free on-line spyware scanner at the ZoneAlarm home page. The free version of ZoneAlarm is at the bottom right of the Home/Office Products page. Or you can spend a few bucks and make your PC that much safer.

I also run a program called Registry Mechanic that scans your registry looking for changed entries, alerts you to them and allows you the option of repairing them or not. Good stuff and I think it too is still a 'freebie' although I think you do have to register to get it to repair anything. You DO have to run the program to get it to do a scan and then tell it tell repair the entries you select. I just tell it to repair everything it finds. To find it, run a search for 'Registry Mechanic'. Or go to Downloads.com

I also run anti-spyware/adware programs called, Spybot Search And Destroy, Ad-Aware and Spyware Blaster. The first 2 are scan-and-remove tools while Spyware Blaster sets up dummy look-alikes on your PC that make spyware/adware programs think they have already been installed on your PC so they don't bother to install themselves. You DO have to run the scan-and-remove tools yourself once or twice a week but it doesn't take long, will work in the background while you are doing other things and keeps your PC clean and running quicker without leaving 'muddy' footprints all over the 'net. I think these 3 are also available at Downloads.com or search the 'net.

I also run Norton's Anti-virus and keep it fully updated. I don't trust Macafee since one of their anti-virus programs caused a whole heap of my friend's computers to self-destruct a couple of years ago. One of them was a real estate agent. I'll leave it to your imagination to visualise the havoc that caused.

Norton's also have a Hoax Page where you can go to check if somebody warns you about a virus or Trojan Horse or tells you to do something to your registry to stop a virus. I always check there before taking any notice of anybody else's virus warnings. That also has saved me some grief.

It also helps to regularly run Disk Clean-up and Disk Defragmenter from Start - Accessories - System Tools to keep your little electronic marvel in good health.

Hope this helps.

You all have a wonderful day. Best wishes.
Deas Plant.

• ZoneAlarm

On Mom's PC, she got something called "wkscal.exe" out of the blue a while back, from??? Everytime started her PC, processor would peg out at 100% and could do nothing unless went to task manager (Windows XP), shut it down, then could navigate. I did search on "wks" then deleted everything that had "wks", now ok. I assumed "wks" was related to Microsoft Works, which she doesn't have, nor never did. The thing that makes me upset is that I went out and bought a license for XP and loaded on her PC, then registered on-line with Microsoft, but when went to Microsoft for help, found out that I could post questions on a Microsoft "user board" to see if anyone there could help, but couldn't work with Microsoft tech support directly. So why the h... even bother registering with Microsoft in the first place? They just wanted to be assured that they got their money, so now Bill Gates can sleep comfortably. But for support are on your (our) own? Maybe next time will buy a MAC.

Mark

MS UK will let you talk to texh suooprt but there is a charge at the start of the conversation of £96, then you have to pay for the amount of time that you talk to them!

I mean for gods sake! £96! Thats nearly as much as they charge for there rip off crappy software. I agree with who ever said it - change to linux. It very rarely crashes, runs faster, and you can run a GUI to make it look exactly the same as windows if you dont want to learn a new system.

Mark

I have some more new info that will have to wait until latter so I don't let the cat out of the bag.

One thing I wanted to point out is I could have been sitting idle on any website and had the problem so it's not connected to the YtMag website and hope I didn't imply that it was.

T_Bone