DygiScape

How to Uninstall RealPlayer

RealPlayer has been labeled Badware and they’ve advised that you uninstall RealPlayer. However, understand that uninstall is not enough to remove their software. This media player will reside in your computer even after uninstalling. I’ll describe below how to completely remove RealPlayer from your computer and provide some great free alternatives to it.

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Tags: badware, realplayer, Safety, Security, spyware, Tips, tutorials

Laptops, National Security and You.

Wow. If you think we’re safer when it comes to information security, think again. I don’t mean this in as bad of a way as you might think. Before I go in to details, let’s have a look at these headlines:

• Stolen laptop prompts Administaff to alert 159,000 of possible breach
• 10,000 Employees’ Data on Stolen Laptop
• Theft Of Gap Laptop Puts 800,000 Job Applicants At Risk
• TJX theft tops 45.6 million card numbers
• Laptop Stolen From D.C. Home

I could go on and on … but how many times does a mistake have to happen before it sinks in. Employee-issued laptops are a hot item these days, as they have confidential company information, personal information, customer information, and more. Information security starts with you, not the enterprise virus scan or the corporate firewall (but those are important, too.)

Trying not to sound like an anti-drug PSA, but it’s easily possible to take people’s information, fraudulently create accounts, false identification, and possibly use in the purchase of weapons. In essence, one laptop theft can result in domestic terrorism. A stretch, I know, but it only encourages it.

Here’s a detailed guide for protecting your work-issued laptop, and I don’t even work in risk management:

• Guard your laptop like it’s your next unborn child. Never leave it unattended in your car, house, coffee shop, or a friend’s house. Not that they will necessarily steal it, but you want to be accountable for where your computer is at all times.
• Going away for a while? Leave your work laptop in a secure location at work. You can’t steal something if it isn’t there, and it will be one less worry. If you’re on vacation, make it vacation and disconnect. The world will not stop if you don’t respond to your e-mail.
• Trust but verify. In downloading attachments, performing various troubleshooting, and responding to peculiar requests, trust it — but verify it. That means even though you regularly talk to someone, and they said something like “send me those records,” when you aren’t sure, take it offline and verify it with them via telephone or in person. (Credit: Junkyard Willie for the phrase.)
• Do not install “gateway” software. What is gateway software? P2P applications, simply. Anything that can download and/or share files from the computer to the rest of the Web. You really don’t want your financial document to be posted on Frostwire, do you?
• Periodically re-image your machine. While we all don’t want our laptop stolen, testing the reliability of recovering backed up data is good to familiarize yourself with types of information your laptop carries. In addition, re-imaging will ensure that unknown programs installed or collected over time are removed and don’t pose as a risk.
• Make frequent, Network-based backups — Don’t store locally. As tempting as it is to keep all your documents on your computer, it’s wise to store it over the network (at work), so you can find the files you need from any machine. In addition to adding this ability, it will also allow you to perform damage control by accounting for what files are on your computer and what’s not.
• Using Public Wifi? Don’t connect to “Free Public Wifi” or similar SSID names in a public area. Often these are other computers, and could be used to easily connect and circumvent your firewall. If you use wireless, make sure it’s encrypted, and if you’re doing work, connect to your VPN so you can guarantee a secure link and no sniffers can pick up your data.
• Engage yourself in security discussion. Don’t wait to be a victim, listen to the security folks at your work and listen to their advice. They know their stuff, they understand your frustrations and can help you work around them easily. Likewise, be sure you check for updates for your software, as that is another hole.
• Never write down passwords. When we were signing onto AOL in the early ’90s, having passwords written down on a piece of paper was acceptable, not these days when we’re all fighting embracing information security risks. Often the easiest way to defeat security, [sic] is often the easiest way.

Now that you are guarding your laptop like a paranoid conspiracy theorist with tinfoil on your head, take a moment to just step back and combine the information you know now along with reality. It’s acceptable to not follow all the above steps, just understand the risks involved and manage those risks accordingly.

Tags: information security, infosec, IT, national security, stolen laptops, tech, Tips, tutorials

How to Quickly Remove MSN Messenger

I reinstalled a copy of Windows on my other computer and like clockwork I remove the junk from the installation. One of the things I like to permanently remove is MSN Messenger. Personally, it’s annoying and serves me no purpose. With this tip you can quickly uninstall MSN Messenger with total success!

How to Uninstall MSN Messenger

1. Ensure MSN Messenger is completely closed out, and exit from the system tray icon. Alternatively, you can end the process “msnmsgr.exe“.
2. Click onto Start Then Run
3. Next, simply copy and paste this command:
   RunDll32 advpack.dll,LaunchINFSection %windir%\INF\msmsgs.inf,BLC.Remove
4. Finally, click OK. Wait a moment for it to finish. Reboot to verify it’s uninstalled.

Want to reinstall MSN? Never fear, Microsoft definitely has that option. Just navigate to Microsoft’s MSN Live Messenger website and redownload it.

[tags]MSN Messenger, Uninstall, Geeky, Tips, Windows, Microsoft, Software, Bundled Software, Do it Yourself[/tags]

Tags: Help, Lists, Tips, tutorials

How to Properly Tag Netscape posts

I’d like to share some tips for others on how to properly tag Netscape posts properly. The benefits of tagging is that it benefits everyone for finding their information and related articles easily. I will highlight good examples of Tagging and examples of what not to do.

What is tagging? Tagging is the term used to classify something, such as a story. Tagging is also known as Meta Data, like the extra details. Tagging itself is designed to link related things together with one link. I’ll let Wikipedia help me here:

A tag is a keyword or descriptive term associated with an item as means of classification by means of a folksonomy. Tags are usually chosen informally and personally by the author/creator of the item — i.e. not usually as part of some formally defined classification scheme. Tags are typically used in dynamic, flexible, automatically generated internet taxonomies for online resources such as computer files, web pages, digital images, and internet bookmarks (both in social bookmarking services, and in the current generation of web browsers - see Flock and Mozilla Firefox 2.0x). For this reason, “Tagging” has become associated with the Web 2.0 movement.

Typically, an item will have one or more “tags” associated with it, as part of some classification software or system. The software will provide links to other items that share that keyword tag, or even to specified collections of tags. This allows for multiple “browseable paths” through the items which can quickly and easily be altered by the collection’s administrator, with minimal effort and planning.

Now how do we properly tag?

Tagging involves the classification of items. So topics can include the specifics, then the niche, then the general category. Personally, I like to tag from detailed to general. Tagging should mainly consist of one word, a keyword if you will. It’s like you are writing the index of a book, and you want to think of one word that will be related to this story.

Here’s a good example of what I used to tag a story:

Net simul-attacks expose US security holes
Simulated internet attacks in the US have uncovered gaps in the nation’s cybersecurity defences. In particular, cyber-defenders struggled to understand if simulated hack attacks were isolated or part of a more co-ordinated assault.The four-day cyber-war exercise, conducted in February and the biggest such exercise to date, tested the US government’
Channel: Technology | Tags: Security Vulnerability Government Hacking Simulations

I posted a story that was about government security and simulated hacking attacks. I tagged with general terms like Government, Hacking, Simulations. See how I tagged with fairly general terms. Now if people click one of those tags they will find all stories with the same tags. Nifty, eh?
A poor example of tagging:

Firefox 2.0 Beta 2 unleashed
Mozilla released a second beta version of its upcoming Firefox 2.0 browser on Thursday. The release is targeted at developers and intended to generate more feedback while also incorporating a number of bug fixes contained in the Beta 1 version of the code, released in July.

Channel: Technology | Tags: Firefox

I posted a story about the new Firefox 2.0 beta. I had a lack of tags, although accurate with “Firefox”, I could have improved the tagging and list “Mozilla, Web Browsers, Internet” as well. The reason this is not good is because there is not enough tags to classify the story. Sometimes I forget to tag a lot and just submit the story; but overall the more tags, the better. A further example of tagging again, is my Technorati tags down below.
So now that I shared a good and bad example of tagging. I think top contributors should tweak up on their Tagging abilities and offer better tags for stories so we all can read up on related stories. Tagging will increase the relevance of the tags themselves when they are tagged properly.
‘Scape on

[tags]Netscape, Tags, Tagging, Web 2.0, Internet[/tags]

Tags: Help, social news, Tips, tutorials