prevent

An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure, and that's especially true when it comes to spyware; wouldn't you rather protect your system than spend hours trying to rid it of malicious visitors? SpywareBlaster is a simple program that provides protection from ActiveX-based software and unwanted cookies for both Firefox and Internet Explorer users.

SpywareBlaster has a simple interface that will be easy for even novices to navigate. The main screen shows the protection status for Internet Explorer, restricted Web sites, and Firefox. By default, protection is disabled for each of these, but you can easily … Read more

Review: Symantec has moved Norton 360 to the same release schedule as Norton Internet Security and Norton AntiVirus, making them into a three-tiered strategy for consumer security. Norton AntiVirus is the entry-level product, with Norton Internet Security occupying the middle rung and Norton 360 aimed at people who want the most bang for the most buck.

Notoriously slow to respond to trends, the consumer security field is surprisingly not taking Windows 8 lying down. Norton and many of its competitors are optimizing their suites for Microsoft's new operating system ahead of its release, and Norton is combining that strategy … Read more

If you're under the age of 25, there's almost an even chance you have lost your cell phone or had it stolen at least once. According to a Pew Research Center survey conducted last April, 45 percent of cell phone users between the ages of 18 and 24 have had a phone lost or stolen.

The survey also found that 3 out of 10 cell phone users between the ages of 35 and 54 have misplaced their device or had it stolen, as Kashmir Hill reports on Forbes.com.

There's nothing new about cell phones being popular … Read more

When it comes to certain diseases -- think heart disease, diabetes, and various cancers -- some basic lifestyle changes are the best preventive medicine.

And while most of us know to eat a balanced diet, exercise, and abstain from smoking, it can be far more motivating to make healthy changes if we also know we're prone to certain diseases.

Enter Zuum, a free new iPad app that estimates your risk of common diseases and personalizes tips to prevent them and improve your overall health.… Read more

Tough economic times are a boon to the crooks who prowl the Internet looking for their next victims. They know how eager (desperate?) so many of us have become in our quest to remain solvent.

It seems not a day passes without the appearance of some new Internet scam. Unfortunately, many of the ruses people fall victim to are older than the Internet itself.

Wiring money and Internet purchases don't mix Take, for example, the bogus cashier's check. In last week's Santa Rosa Press-Democrat, Cathy Bussewitz wrote about Bart Edson's disastrous attempt to sell an antique … Read more

SAN FRANCISCO--Ever click a link to a Web site and discover that while it looks like your banking site, or Facebook, the URL didn't match your expectations? That's called phishing. Kaspersky revealed a new feature at a reviewer's conference here yesterday that the company says can stop such credential-stealing attacks before you get hooked.

Automatic Exploit Prevention, as the feature is called, is expected in the Kaspersky 2013 security suites due in August. The premise behind it is simple: Phishing attacks are on the rise, due in large part to the plummeting cost of entry to the … Read more

Families share: meals, money, space, telephones, computers, you name it. Depending on the circumstances, the sharing can be a source of joy or of conflict -- frequently it's a little of both.

If there's a computer in your household that more than one person uses, you can minimize the chances that the machine will breach the family peace by configuring the system to meet the unique needs of each user. If one or more of those users is a teenager, you owe it to all of us to help prevent malware from spreading by implementing some basic safety … Read more

Windows ships with an effective suite of security tools, including a firewall, but third-party firewalls are popular with many users. Many are free, and the most popular ones do a good job keeping millions of users safe from cyber attacks, hackers, and other intrusive threats. Privacyware's Privatefirewall has all the features and most of the extras that most personal firewall and host intrusion prevention freeware (HIPS) offer, like its Process Monitor and Port Tracking tools. Its chief advantages are its intelligent tracking feature and its extensive explanations. Privatefirewall monitors your online activity privately to learn your usage patterns. It … Read more

Tabbed browsing is a huge convenience for looking at lots of different web sites at the same time.

Whether you're researching or adding distractions in other tabs, it can be frustrating when you accidentally close them all at once. For Chrome users, Window Close Protector is an extension that won't win points for creativity for its name, but definitely delivers the ability to prevent you from closing all of your active tabs. This extension mimics the behavior seen when closing a Gmail tab (or similar) during the sending process.

Step 1: Install the … Read more