prevention

People can't always be trusted to behave properly on computers that aren't theirs (or, for that matter, on computers that are theirs). Whether you're trying to limit the online shenanigans of your employees or the general public, Public Fox can help. This clever Firefox add-on limits the browser's ability to download files and perform other functions that may pose a risk to security or productivity. We can think of many places where this could be useful, from workplaces to libraries to teenagers' bedrooms.

Public Fox installs easily and is surprisingly simple to configure. The Options menu … Read more

Fifty-one percent of 25- to 29-year-olds live in households that have kicked the landline habit, according to a new report from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

That is the first time that wireless-only households have surpassed landline households among any age group, according to the CDC's report released yesterday. The report, which surveyed 17,619 households over the six months that ended in June, also showed a 2 point rise of cell-phone-only households among late-twentysomethings compared with the previous six months.

Looking at other age groups, around 40 percent of people 18 to 24 and 30 to … Read more

In their never-ending quest to steal your credit card and bank account numbers, passwords, Social Security numbers, and other sensitive personal information, malware purveyors go wherever the eyeballs are. Lately, the bad guys have increasingly been targeting the links served up by Web search engines.

Two computer security firms recently issued press releases touting the dangers of searching for popular terms, such as the names of starlets or items in the news. Barracuda Labs' 2010 Midyear Security Report highlights the risks of entering a popular topic in Google, Bing, or Yahoo. The company entered thousands of search terms in these … Read more

The Internet is a crazy place, and sometimes people--your kids, your spouse, your employees--just can't be trusted to stay out of trouble there. Fortunately for you, there's XPCMonitor Family Safety. This is without a doubt the most comprehensive Internet usage monitor we've ever seen. Whether you're keeping an eye on your children or doing some snooping, XPCMonitor Family Safety delivers.

The program's interface is quite intuitive, with its major features organized in tabs. And my, what features it has. The screen snapshot feature takes a screenshot every 30 seconds (or at intervals specified by the … Read more

This program, like many others, promises to clean your Registry, make your computer run faster, and, if you're lucky, do your dishes, too. At least when it comes to cleaning your Registry, Advanced Registry Optimizer seems to do a pretty good job.

The scan process was easy to initiate and was done in about 3 minutes, although don't forget that the scan time depends on the computer system. A smart-looking row of five tabs and their labels makes navigating the program options stress-free, and the lack of lag on the system was much appreciated. The user interface has … Read more

When my husband came down with H1N1 a few weeks back, I was certain I'd get it. As he sweat through a fever that climbed to almost 104 degrees, I took care of him, slept 10 hours a night, and didn't leave the house so as not to spread the virus. And yet the only fever I felt was of the cabin variety.

I thought I'd somehow avoided the highly contagious strain of influenza, but new research indicates that, thanks to my daily habit of biking and/or climbing, I may have gotten away with a barely … Read more

If you're worried about surreptitious key-logging software recording your every keystroke, Keystroke Interference could be the handy security utility you've been looking for. Instead of trying to detect or disable keyloggers, it interferes with what they record as your keystrokes, inserting a random sequence of additional characters based on a proprietary algorithm.

Keystroke Interference has no interface, and is visible only as an icon in your system tray and Start menu. To get it to run at start-up, you must manually place it in your Startup folder. It also offers no configurable options. However, we didn't notice … Read more

Maybe I'm alone in this, but I have a suspicion that the inventor of this Anti-Stab Knife has seen one too many crime shows.

Designed to prevent the kind of injury that makes it onto the front page of the local newspaper, the knife sports a blunted edge that blocks the knife from being plunged into...um...inappropriate media. Don't worry about your fruits and veggies suffering, though: there is still a perfectly good cutting edge to cut those.

What I'm struggling to figure out is the target audience for a kitchen gadget of this nature...is … Read more

One problem with most of today's Internet safety messaging campaigns is that there is only one set of messages for the entire population of youth and parents. But, an extensive literature review conducted by the Internet Safety Technical Task Force Research Advisory Board found that "not all youth are equally at risk" and that "those experiencing difficulties offline, such as physical and sexual abuse, and those with other psychosocial problems are most at risk online."

To be effective, the Internet safety community has to find ways tailor its messages based on particular risk factors. Not … Read more