Comodo Offering a Wide Array of Freeware Security Products for Windows Users

Comodo, a company that has seemingly come out of nowhere, has released a suite of applications for Windows end-users that are completely free and do a variety of security related tasks that other companies charge a great deal for. One of their most popular products is their firewall, which is well received due to the recent halt in production of several free firewall products, such as Kerio and Sygate. They also have a suite of other security products that are free for Windows users.

Comodo Firewall
Free lifetime license

Comodo Firewall, rated by PC Magazine Online as an Editor's Choice, constantly monitors and defends your PC from internet attacks. It's easy to install and use and passes the industry's most stringent firewall "leak" tests. Unlike some other 'free' firewalls, this is not a stripped down version but is the full, completely functional product. This free solution comes complete with continual updates that are free forever!

Comodo AntiVirus
FREE lifetime license

Eliminates Viruses, Worms and Trojans from Windows XP and Windows 2000 computers. Features on-demand & on-access scanning, email scanning, process monitoring, worm blocking, full scheduling capabilities and more. It's easy to install and configure; will not slow down your PC by hogging system resources and the full program is free for life to the end user.

Comodo BackUp
FREE lifetime license

Comodo Backup is the straightforward and powerful utility that allows users to quickly and easily create backup copies of critical files. Free of charge, it includes complete file and folder-duplication to local network drives and FTP servers, intelligent incremental backups, e-mail reporting, extensive report logs, real time back ups with “synchronization” mode, advanced rule-based filtering, flexible scheduling of backups, space-saving archiving capabilities, and more.

Comodo Verification Engine
FREE for life

VerificationEngine anti-phishing and identity assurance tool for Microsoft Windows offers an extremely simple way to differentiate legitimate web sites from fraudulent ones. Place your mouse cursor over a site logo. If it is authentic, a green border will appear around your browser. So if you really wish to be sure you are looking at the real www.paypal.com site rather than a clever imitation created to steal your identity, install VerificationEngine now!

Comodo AntiSpam
FREE license

Install Comodo AntiSpam for free and reclaim your inbox. Our powerful challenge-response technology authenticates the sender of every mail – a system that automated spam bots can’t get around. This is the full product, not stripped down ‘cripple ware’ and is free forever to the end user.

Comodo iVault
FREE license

iVault saves time by providing instantaneous logins to any username/password secured web pages such as online banking and email account sites. It also doubles up as a 256 bit secure storage for private and confidential information such as credit card details and social security numbers and protects against the very latest key-logging Trojan Horse viruses.

Their anti-virus software seems to have subpar ratings from most, and is probably not recommended for most people. So far, one of the best free anti-virus solutions is still Grisoft's AVG Anti-Virus. I also have not tried their backup software. Since AOL has been on it's spree of giving everything away, they have developed XDrive as a free online backup option for anyone who has an AOL screenname. You receive 5GB of online space with free desktop software that allows you to have the system as an extra drive letter (X:\). Still, Comodo's intentions seem well placed, and any free suites of security software are always welcome, even if it needs more time to develop. Comodo's main way of making money looks to be by selling Enterprise solutions and SSL certificates. Feel free to post any comments on how the software works for you.

Comodo Free Desktop PC Security

More Proof of the Benefit of Testosterone Therapy

A new study from the Archives of Internal Medicine finds that men older than 65 with low testosterone levels have increased chances of falling. In senior citizens, falling can be quite traumatic and lead to major bone fractures, especially breakage of the hip bones, which become more fragile with age.

Endogenous Testosterone Levels, Physical Performance, and Fall Risk in Older Men

Eric Orwoll, MD; Lori C. Lambert, MS; Lynn M. Marshall, ScD; Janet Blank, MS; Elizabeth Barrett-Connor, MD; Jane Cauley, MD; Kris Ensrud, MD; Steven R. Cummings, MD; for the Osteoporotic Fractures in Men Study Group

Arch Intern Med. 2006;166:2124-2131.

Background: Gonadal steroid levels decline with age in men. Whether low testosterone levels affect the development of common age-related disorders, including physical functioning and falling, is unclear.

Methods: This longitudinal, observational follow-up study sought to determine whether low testosterone levels are associated with physical performance and fall risk in older men. A total of 2587 community-based men aged 65 to 99 years were selected using a stratified random sampling scheme from a study cohort of 5995 volunteers. Bioavailable testosterone and estradiol levels and physical performance measures were determined from baseline. Incident falls were ascertained every 4 months during 4 years of follow-up. Generalized estimating equations were used to estimate risk ratios for the relation of sex steroids to falls.

Results: Fifty-six percent of the men reported at least 1 fall; many fell frequently. Lower bioavailable testosterone levels were associated with increased fall risk. Men with testosterone levels in the lowest quartile had a 40% higher fall risk than those in the highest quartile. The effect of low testosterone levels was most apparent in younger men (65-69 years) (relative risk, 1.8; 95% confidence interval, 1.2-2.7); testosterone level was not associated with falls in the oldest men (≥80 years). Lower testosterone concentrations were associated with reduced physical performance. However, the association between low testosterone levels and fall risk persisted despite adjustment for performance.

Conclusions: Falls were common among older men. Fall risk was higher in men with lower bioavailable testosterone levels. The effect of testosterone level was independent of poorer physical performance, suggesting that the effect of testosterone on fall risk may be mediated by other androgen actions.

Source

Reuters has reported that the authors of the study recommend HRT (hormone replacement therapy) for elderly males. They have also suggested that testosterone might possibly be involved with vision, thinking and coordination.

"Like women on hormone replacement therapy, many older men are turning to testosterone therapy to regain some of what has been lost physically and mentally in the aging process," said Dr. Eric Orwoll, a professor of medicine at the school.

The study, appearing in the Archives of Internal Medicine, said that testosterone decline is a normal part of aging in men. It also said previous studies have shown that older men with reduced testosterone who got shots of testosterone experienced an increase in muscle mass and strength.

CNN: Old-age testosterone decline leads to falls, study says

Solutions for Web Sites that Force Registration to Access Content

We all come across pages online that require you to register. Sometimes these are straightforward, just asking for your email address and a username so you can post on a messageboard with other information being optional. But some sites want more, like your name and address, date of birth, and lots of other details you might not want to give out. Even if the site says it won't sell or give out your details, how do you know they won't? There is no obligation for web sites to follow or even implement a privacy policy. While most sites will ask if you want to sign up for their newsletter, sometimes they automatically subscribe you without your authorization, forcing you to opt-out, or worse.

So what can you do to bypass these forced registrations?

The first and easiest solution is to use bugmenot.com. Bugmenot is a community oriented site that stores usernames and passwords for websites that require users to register to read content. It's a public database that anyone can access, and when you come across a page that asks you to register, all you do is find the link indicating that you have already registered and that you want to login. Lookup the site on bugmenot and input one of the usernames and passwords. They also have a voting mechanism to get rid of old or invalid logins. Making the whole process even easier is the BugMeNot Firefox Extension that automatically retrieves the data from bugmenot.com and inputs it into login forms. Just right click on the empty login field and choose "Login with Bugmenot" and it goes at it. It will even continue to input usernames if one or more fails and prompts you to go and get more if all the ones it tried have failed. If you've come across a site that doesn't have any logins, you can contribute your own username and password for others to use.

The best way to create a new login for bugmenot, or any other site that requests your email address that you don't want to give is to use a disposable email account. Since most sites often require you to activate your account by sending an email to the account you specify and clicking a link within the email to ensure less abuse of their registration system. Disposable email addresses are simply email addresses that are created on a system that have no password, but a username with the domain as the @ extension. So, to login, all you do is go to the site and put in the username, and the email will show up. One might think that this would obviously be the opposite of private, but the object is not to create an email address for you to use permanently, only temporarily. These accounts can only receive email and not send them, so you simply use them to get the validation email and, depending on the requirements of the site you are attempting to register for, the email address itself becomes the username.

A few services that provide disposable email addresses are:

• mailinator (I haven't had much luck with this)
• jetable.org
• tempinbox.com
• sneakemail.com
• spamgourmet.com

You can also find a directory of disposable email addresses at about.com and dmoz.org. Among the several email addresses I use, I have a commercial Yahoo account that came with my DSL connection, which includes a feature called AddressGuard. This feature allows a user to create up to 500 disposable email accounts. All the accounts have the same beginning, such as abc123, followed with another word or phrase that you can use to associate with the site you're using, and ends with the @yahoo.com address. So, for example, if I wanted to create an account on CNN, I could use abc123-cnn@yahoo.com. I can send and receive from the email address, and specify a color I want to show when an email from that address comes to my inbox. Other email providers, like Gmail, allow you to add a plus (+) onto your email to track where your email would be coming from, such as janeroe722+cnn@gmail.com. Unfortunaly, many sites do not parse the plus symbol properly and when you attempt to register using an address in the above example, it will come back with an error asking you to submit a valid email address after you submit the form on the server.

Finally, if a site requires you to put in your name and address, there is a site to remedy this problem, without having to pull a random name out of a phone book or create a completely bogus address. The Fake Name Generator will create a fake name, address, city, state, and a selection of countries, along with a phone number, a mothers maiden name, birthdate, email address, and even credit card number. The last feature I cannot see what the purpose is. In any case, the credit card that it outputs would not work on any modern system for the intention of fraud that I am aware of. According to the site's FAQ, the data it generates is essentially random, so you won't hopefully put some total stranger's name into a database of potential spammers.

All of these concepts were originally created out of the needs I describe, essentially in order to bypass annoying and cumbersome web registration when a user simply wants to look at a news article or something related. One of the first people to put this concept into practice was Marc Majcher, with his Random NYTimes Login Generator. This was created of a need to read articles on the Nytimes site without having to register and give out private information. It has evolved into sites such as bugmenot, so it can benefit both groups. The NYTimes will not be overloaded with bogus info in their database, and users who know about these functions and don't want to give out private info can use public accounts for this purpose.

What about the potential for abuse?

With things like this will come the potential to be abused. Bugmenot allows sites who don't want to allow logins with it to request it using an online form. Of course, there will always be methods to attempt to break the rules anywhere one goes. A user can use a proxy to login to a site and post abusive messages, or use a proxy to post anonymous information about a legitimate topic that they might not have otherwise. So, the potential for abuse is always there with systems such as this. It is just up to the community and site operators in general to decide on how best to work around problems and find solutions that will work out best for everyone. If a website operator finds that most of it's registration data is bogus, then they can either disable the need to register to access an article or completely remove access to those articles. Obviously, decisions like those and the discussion of abuse is beyond the scope of this article. If you have any comments to add, feel free to post them.

Too little testosterone causes ignorance

In a widely misinterpreted study, the media and the authors of the study have concluded that "too much testosterone kills brain cells".

Tests on brain cells in lab dishes showed that while a little of the male hormone is good, too much of it causes cells to self-destruct in a process similar to that seen in brain illnesses such as Alzheimer's.

"Too little testosterone is bad, too much is bad but the right amount is perfect," said Barbara Ehrlich of Yale University in Connecticut, who led the study.

So how much is too much and how much is the right amount? What is the object of this study if we have completely vague results being shown. The average man produces around 10-20mg of testosterone a day. However, individuals who receive hormone replacement therapy receive a larger dose, and of course the implication being directed at steroid users is that "too much is bad".

"Next time a muscle-bound guy in a sports car cuts you off on the highway, don't get mad -- just take a deep breath and realize that it might not be his fault," Ehrlich said in a statement.

This comment smacks of pencil neck scientific bias towards "big muscle bound guy[s]". What kind of response is this from a person claiming to report on legitimate science? However, what is most clear about this study is how it was performed.

Tests on brain cells in lab dishes showed that while a little of the male hormone is good, too much of it causes cells to self-destruct in a process similar to that seen in brain illnesses such as Alzheimer's.

So, we have a completely in vitro study being equated with the common mythology of the foaming mouth, muscle man steroid user - a totally unfair analogy. Anyone with any amount of critical thinking should draw the obvious conclusion that this same test would need to be performed on healthy adult males using testosterone therapy in a double blind peer reviewed study in order to make any correlation with reality. For now, this is just more hype brought onto a meaningless study by a scandal hungry press and a researcher who seems to have reveled in her 15 minutes in the lime light. If anyone wants to look up some sensible studies would have to consult Pubmed. Unfortunately, there are very few real world studies involving steroid use in humans. So, now we'll have to endure the stigma of people equating testosterone usage with smoking marijuana. If another study were conducted that showed testosterone to be beneficial, it's highly doubtful it would make front page news or a top story on CNN.

CNN.com - Too much testosterone kills brain cells - Sep 27, 2006

Happy Birthday Greta

Today, September 18th, is the birthday of film legend Greta Garbo. If you were to stop anyone on the street and ask them who she was you would probably get a variety of guesses. She's probably most known in contemporary culture from the phrase "[she's]... the next Garbo", referring to anyone who believes the latest actress on the scene is the next big thing - Greta Garbo was (and still is to some degree) the standard to which movie actresses are held up to. Still, Garbo that made only 34 movies during her short career (many of them silent), she continues to be regarded as one of the most acclaimed actresses of all times.

Her films often imitated her life - loneliness, seclusion and heartbreak. She shunned the press and media and essentially stopped all public appearances after the early 50s - the Sphinx answered to no one. Yet, over 100 years after her birth, we are still fascinated with her.

What is it about her that makes us interested in her? Was it her reclusive lifestyle and secrecy, her incredible beauty, her unfulfilled talent? Greta Garbo is the stuff of legends, and legends of the best kind, America's royalty: the Hollywood film star.

Garbo, herself, would have never appreciated any news blurbs about her. She believed her films would stand the test of time and speak for her. So, if you have TCM you're in luck. They're having a Garbo movie marathon running all day. If you don't get the channel, I recommend the Garbo Signature Collection DVD Set.

AOL Offers Free Streaming XM Radio

AOL, in a move to offer more free services and cut back less on it's dial-up internet subscriber base, which has been losing significant amounts of money since the introduction of widespread broadband use, causing a drop in AOL dialup subscribers.

AOL, or America Online, has become a culture icon in the years since its inception. Both lamented by some for it's excessive mailings of unwanted software CDs, to being the premise for a title of a movie. In 2000 the company was purchased by media giant Time Warner and has never been the same since. Still, AOL has maintained a large presence in the online world, being one of the largest internet service providers in existence, it has tried an enormous variety of tactics to keep itself alive. It has seen the purchase of Netscape and it's open source spinoff, Mozilla, Nullsoft, makers of Winamp, and other companies providing a laundry list of products and services, sometimes related to the companies goals, and sometimes not. At one time, AOL was rival only to Microsoft in it's battle for internet dominance, and there was talk of it purchasing RedHat to create an operating system to directly compete with Windows.

With AOL's recent decline in providing paid internet services, it has modified its business model to allow for a large variety of free services. Billing itself as "The New AOL" it has begun to offer a free version of it's internet software, that includes a free AOL email address and a Security Suite. However, the client has brought significant skepticism from privacy advocates, akin to other so called "free software" that comes with hidden adware not mentioned anywhere except in the pointless EULA. It's been well known that most of the recent versions of it's AIM Instant Messenger client include built in spyware and adware that cannot be removed easily, leading many to opt for alternatives like GAIM or Trillian. For those wishing to use the official AIM client, a free AIM Ad Hack is available to not only get rid of the banner ads, but completely strip it of all the unwanted addons. AOL has also recently come under fire for publicly releasing search data from all it's subscribers. A public relations headache for AOL as it's still unveiling all it's new services from its "free AOL" concept business strategy.

Even before AOL offering up their free services, they allowed anyone with an AIM screenname a free webmail address at aim.com with 2GB of space and antivirus/antispam functionality to rival Yahoo and Gmail. These accounts seem to have been, at least partially, converted over to the newer Free AOL Mail accounts, so it appears that they can be used and possibly even created without installing the new AOL software client. When I went to open my mail, a rogue window of Windows Media Player opened for some reason and then Firefox crashed.

Now, AOL has unveiled their video service, AOL Video, an attempt to mirror services like Google Video and YouTube. Even better, AOL Radio offers anyone with a freely available screenname to listen to streaming XM Satellite radio, virtually uninterrupted by ads, and with a long list of stations, previously only available to people who paid for an expensive and cumbersome radio unit & receiver, along with a monthly fee for the service. Yahoo! Music, which plays ads unless a subscription is paid, also allows skipping songs (to some extent in the free version) and the creation of customized stations based on listeners preferences. AOL's XM Radio doesn't allow any skipping, and rating songs data supposedly only goes to the stations DJ's to "help them choose music". One problem with both AOL Video and Radio is that they require installation of their own players into the users browser. When I attempted to use these services in Firefox, I was prompted to load a "Mozilla ActiveX Plugin" that never worked and does not show up under my Extensions list, making me wonder if it just didn't get installed, or if it installed on my system somewhere without my knowledge and not having the ability to remove it. I had far better luck using the AOL services in Internet Explorer, but still, other services do have an advantage of using preexisting players to stream media, such as Macromedia Flash or Windows Media Player.




It's hard to understand how this new business model for AOL is expected to work. The Dot Com bubble that burst in the late 90s was a model that was somewhat similar, relying on converting high traffic to view advertising and paid subscriptions. The days of AOL may truly be limited now, but it's demise has been predicted many times in the past, and part of AOL's legacy is it's longevity and ability to act as a chameleon in constantly changing landscapes. At least we can all enjoy the free radio while we're waiting to find out AOL's fate.

XP-AntiSpy Now Includes WGA Disabler

Windows Genuine Advantage, or WGA, is a tool that has met which much scorn since it was first released a few months back. WGA is a background utility that is required to be installed on all Windows XP machines in order to download manual updates. The program checks to determine if the copy of Windows is properly registered and has a valid license key. If it doesn't have the proper credentials, it won't allow the user to run Microsoft Update and in some instants nags the user that they are using an invalid copy of Windows and they should purchase and install a correct one. This can happen to not just people who are knowingly pirating copies of Windows, but individuals who might happen to buy a computer from a non-licensed Microsoft Partner or one that includes a copy of Windows on a retail PC that comes with a false OEM version of Windows .

The other main concern about WGA is from privacy advocates. WGA purportedly sends data back to Microsoft on each boot of the machine and it is unknown what this data is or why it does this. It has clearly annoyed enough people that the main discussion on WGA is how to disable or crack the program. One site which was mentioned in a article on C|Net News was forced by Microsoft to remove the links to the cracks they had posted, but a simple Google search will turn up others.

However, now, a popular program for removing background and foreground annoyances in Windows XP, XP-AntiSpy, has included a function for a work around to the WGA issue. The program now has an option included in it's latest version to "Disable [the] WGA check at logon" which it describes as:

If you see this setting it means you installed the WGA check utility through a windows update. This check utility contacts the microsoft website everytime you logon to your Windows OS. If you don't want that to happen, disable this setting. If you want to get this setting back to work you have to install the WGA update again.

I'm unsure exactly what it does to disable the WGA check, but it is either a registry hack or it somehow uninstalls the utility. XP-AntiSpy has many other useful functions for privacy and security, such as disabling the automatic sending of data back to Microsoft in the form of error reports, Windows Media Player data, and it's time server. It allows users to completely uninstall MSN Messenger, which is otherwise unremovable.

Hopefully, Microsoft won't pressure the publisher of the software (who seems to be located in Germany) to remove this feature of the program, as it is an extremely needed one.

Download XP-AntiSpy 3.96-2 English

UPDATE 9/5: I've come across another program that has a similar function to disable the WGA Notifications. It's called RemoveWGA and simply disables the data that the WGA tool sends back to MS, but doesn't have any effect on the authentication of XP's validity.

Enables you to remove the Microsoft "Windows Genuine Advantage Notifications" tool, which is calling home and connect to Microsoft servers every time you boot (pilot version), or every two weeks (current release).

Once the WGA Notification tool has checked your OS and has confirmed you had a legit copy, there is no decent point or reason to check it again and again every boot. Moreover, connecting to Microsoft brings security issue for corporate networks, and privacy issues for everyone. It is also unclear which information are transmitted (Microsoft published an official answer, but an individual study brought some questions). All of that, along the fact that Microsoft used deceptive ways to make you install this tool (it was told you it was an urgent security update, whereas it is a new installation giving you no extra security) makes me calling this tool a spyware.

Also, Windows Genuine Advantage Notifications is different than Windows Genuine Advantage Validation. RemoveWGA only remove the notification part, phoning home, and does not touch the Validation part. As the time I'm writting this, the Validation part is mandatory for some not critical downloads from Microsoft, but the Notification part is not mandatory at all, and you are able to install all of the security updates without installing this one. This may change in the future thought, I don't know what are the Microsoft plans.

Note : once the WGA notification is removed, the Automatic Update will bug you about installing the update again. This is normal, and out of the scope of RemoveWGA (since at this point, the WGA notification is uninstalled from your system). If you are concerned about tweaking Automatic Update to prevent Microsoft trying to push the update on your computer.

Source