Protect Yourself – A Black Network of Corporate Vigilantes Are Connecting to Your PC, and Stealing Data, To Incriminate You

There is a gap between today’s technology and legislation to protect your privacy. Technology has moved so quickly that the Internet is a largely ungoverned place, and most of us would prefer it to stay that way. However, this new frontier may expose computer users to an invasion of our privacy that could end up costing us a bundle or possibly even land us in jail. It is likely that today your computer will be queried by over a dozen computers who are downloading copyright data (and who knows what else) from your computer without your knowledge or permission. But these are not hackers or criminals, at least they are not organizations that you would normally consider hackers. I was shocked when I saw who the corporations that owned the list of blocked IPs. It is a who’s who of the computer industry and it bothers me that they are taking establishing what I would call a “covert connection” to my PC and downloading data from me. I’m willing to bet that nearly every PC has a few files on them that technically belong to someone else and contractually speaking, are illegal for you to have. You might not be using these files or you might not even be aware these files exist on your PC but you are responsible for having them and if they get redistributed you could be on the hook for more dollars than you care to think about. I’m not comfortable interpreting this “movement” or “trend” as being related only to copyrighted music either. It could reach into video clips (Youtube, Google…) , software evaluations and shareware programs, pictures, articles… anything that has the potential to be copyrighted. When the going gets tough, cash is tight, and companies will look to whatever source of income they can find. But the real issue isn’t whatever scenario I can come up with or whether you think you could possibly be liable for something, the real problem is the invasion of privacy and the question if search and seizure laws apply. I consider the data on my PC as my personal property. I’ve taken measures to lock it down and secure it. It disturbs me that corporations can establish a “hidden connection” to my PC and steal my data. But the straw that “breaks the camels back” in this situation is that they can use that data to incriminate you in a court of law! It is unthinkable that our society considers this process legal and it has to change. An equivalent example in the physical world would be if a private organization (not even the police) could break into your home and look for information to prove that you are guilty of something against the law and use that information in a court of law to incriminate you. In the real world this isn’t just trespassing and a violation of your privacy but it is a criminal activity and in most cases it would be classified as a felony. Our privacy laws exist to protect you from a person or an organization, which may have self serving motives, from becoming too powerful. As discussed, in cyberspace organizations are breaking into your private area (your computer) and gathering whatever data they can (without your permission or knowledge), with the intention of using that data to incriminate you in a court of law. Unfortunately it is perfectly legal for them to gather this data now because our laws have not caught up to the unique environments the Internet has created.

So we need to protect ourselves and luckily there are organizations working to keep track of these issues and building programs to enable users to stop the offending sites from connecting to your PC. I tried several programs and the best solution I found is Peer Guardian2. These programs work from a large list of IP addresses and the need to update and process those lists can be resource intensive. Most of the other programs I tried took an enormous amount of resources to run but Peer Guardian2 ran well and didn’t max my system out even when it was updating the lists (which is the most intensive cycle). There are some issues in compatibility with some of the popular firewalls (specifically Outpost and Macafee’s Black Ice). However, it runs well with the Sygate firewall which is my Best of Breed pick. If you have questions about compatibility you should check out their FAQ. Peer Guardian2 also has a lite version that takes even fewer resources to run. Regardless of the resources I’m recommending that everyone download, install, and run Peer Guardian2. If you need to use a different firewall, make the change. If you need to spend 70 bucks and add some RAM it’s worth it (you probably need it anyway). It would probably be pushing it to run Peer Guardian on a PC with only 512k of RAM on it and I’m guessing it would choke on a CPU with 256k. However, If you’ve got more than 512k you will be fine.

One minor issue: I am currently having trouble getting the primary P2P list to update but I hope to resolve the issue and I don’t want to my readers to wait. Protect yourself! We all owe the developers working on Peer Guardian2 a thanks for developing the software. They do accept donations so if you really value the work they are doing please support them.

You can download Peer Guardian2 from the link below. It is in BETA but it is working well.

http://phoenixlabs.org/pg2/

If you are interested in reading about copyright infringement or if you have received a letter from a recording company you can check out this FAQ.

http://wiki.phoenixlabs.org/wiki/Infringement_FAQ

When it Comes to Firewalls – Tried is True – Sygate Returns

I checked out Comodo, ran it for over a month, and in that month I had to de-install it 3 times and I went through at least one Comodo required reboot every week and when I was having trouble sometimes I would do three in a day, but today I was in a rush and had to get some things done so when I got the dreaded message about my session being reset I’d had enough and I quickly de-installed it and reinstalled Sygate.

Maybe Comodo is technically a better firewall at keeping out everything you could possibly run into on the net but maybe the effort that goes into attaining that rigid level of security is too much. You have to draw the line somewhere and Comodo requires too much management. Those tasks eat into productivity and spending all day working on your firewall defeats the purpose of being secure. I really wanted Comodo to work and I tried very hard to stick to my selection but I wouldn’t want my readers going through the hassles that I’ve had to. I’ve never had a problem from Sygate letting something bad through and I’ve never had to de-install it because I’d answered “no” to one of it’s approval prompts. I’m going to keep looking at firewalls because Sygate has ceased development on the product but for now I’m going back because it works 99.99% of the time and that is good enough for me and just about everyone else too. The thing that is really annoying is that Comodo’s GUI tells makes it look like I’ve corrected the issue and things should run but the only way to get my Internet connection up and running again was to de-install it and that just isn’t acceptable.

I’ve had a long history with Sygate, for those of you who are new to my issues with Firewalls please continue to read below. Or if you just want the to download the most practical Firewall I’ve been able to find you can just download it from this link.

Pirate Talk – Avast Ye Matie – The Best Anti-Virus Package in The World

I am truly amazed and appreciative of the quality that Avast provides to it’s home users free of charge. The Avast suite is a “first class” anti-virus package. I know no better and I’ve seen most. Being an anti-virus vendor, you must establish and continually provide a vigilant relationship with your customer and Avast constantly updates their virus database and they do it as transparently and efficiently as possible for both fee and free customers. I can’t thank Avast enough for the value they provide to us free users consistently. Every home and business user should run Avast. I have no doubt, they are the best, so install their software and put your Virus troubles behind you.

More information from Avast
http://www.avast.com/eng/programs.html

‘Breedlink’=1click download
Breedlink: Download avast! 4 Home Edition FREE Download.

Wipe Your Disk Free of Clingons

SpyBot Search and Destroy

Spybot is a very popular adware and virus scanner. Spybot is an essential part of any home computer system. The GUI is pretty intuitive so download it, learn what it does, and your computer will benefit. I don’t spend much time protecting my PC from all the crap that is out there. If you take a few precautions (running spybot 1 time a month is one of them) you shouldn’t have any trouble either.

The latest version (1.4) of Spybot has a ‘tea-timer’ which is a process that runs in your system tray and notifies you of any changes to the registry and allows you to approve or deny them. It’s a small process that is worth the cycles. Spybot also ‘immunizes’ your system against a lot of the spycode that is out there. It’s common sense to for any computer connected to the Internet to be running Spybot.

http://www.safer-networking.org/en/download/index.html

Great Walls of Fire!

I decided it was time to take another look at the free firewalls. I found an article on LifeHacker and then an article on ‘Freeware Genius’ (both great ‘Market Sight’ resources) and they led me to a product named Comodo, which I’d never heard of before. I was suspicious but impressed to find a review by PC magazine, which named it as one of the top firewalls (bar none).  The research eventually led me to this report by MatouSec, which lists every firewall in the market, evaluates their performance, and identifies which products are free. I was blown away to find Comodo Firewall Pro, which was tagged as freeware, at the top of the list. That sealed the deal so I downloaded and installed it and now I’m a firm believer in Comodo Firewall Pro. 

It uses about the same amount of resources as Sygate and Zone Labs, so no surprises there, and I was very satisfied with the simple and straight forward GUI they provide.  Now I can say with Confidence that this is the best Firewall on the market, and it’s freeware and that makes it a crucial part of our ‘best of breed’ suite of products.   You can download it at the link below!

http://personalfirewall.comodo.com/

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As a side note, that report by MatouSec also provided a table that included link’s to all the firewall companies it reviewed.

What’s Connected to My PC?

CurrPorts is a great program that lets you see what ports you have open and what they are connected to. I’m running this most of the time, mostly because of my own curiosity rather than any real need. I do think it is a good idea for everyone to keep a tool handy that allows you to see what your computer is connected to and gives you the power to kill any of the connections. Have you ever worried that someone with bad intentions was connected to your computer? CurrPorts will show you what ports are open and if you run it often enough, you’ll be able to identify a connection that is suspicious. CurrPorts gives you the IP address, tells you if the port is TCP or UDP, gives you the path of the process that is running, and it provides other information that will help you investigate an open port. You can shut down any of the ports by right clicking on them and choosing that option. You’ll be surprised how many different connections your computer maintains. I highly recommend that everyone keep CurrPorts on hand and run it sometimes. It’s good to be familiar with everything that you are usually connected to. It will take a while for you to recognize all the connections that are normal. However, Currports does mark a suspicious connection with a pink highlight and it does provide a way to filter the displayed connections. I’m still working to get mine configured well.

Currports does not need to go through an installation process on your computer. Once you download it, it creates a file with a CurrPorts executable. You can put the file anywhere you want (I still put mine in c:\program files) and run it.

Want more information on Currports, see Nirsoft

Download Currports