Updates and Excel Vulnerability Warning

Windows Update

Tuesday, January 8, was Patch Tuesday. Hopefully by now everyone has updated their Windows system and other Microsoft products. 
There was one "critical" update and one "important" update for Windows operating systems.


Excel Vulnerability!
To highlight just how important patches are, today Microsoft release a warning about an Excel exploit that could be populated across the Internet. Be sure you trust the source of any Excel documents you receive until the next patch release (Feb. 12), when hopefully Microsoft will release a fix for this exploit.
In short should you receive a malicious Excel document, you computer could become compromised.
More can be read about this vulnerability at: 

http://security.itworld.com/4345/new-excel-vulnerability-080116/page_1.html
and 
http://www.microsoft.com/technet/security/advisory/947563.mspx

Disk Cleanup

Windows Users

I never realized just how much junk Windows computers keep! Recently I was working on a computer and I discovered gigabytes of downloads in various temporary directories.

So, in addition to the other recommended maintenance tools to run on a regular basis, I will add running the Disk Cleanup Tool.

All Windows Users should make sure that they run the following tools on a monthly basis:

1. Windows updates
2. Disk Cleanup
3. Defragmentation
4. Virus scan
5. Spyware scan

You need not perform these actions in the order above. The main thing though is that you DO THEM.

I got PHISHed

Yeh, it's true. They got me! I got phished on MySpace. 
I've decided to come clean about it in hopes of helping others to not fall prey to a PHISHing scam.

What happened was this: 
I got a message from one of my "friends" on MySpace. I decided to view the message. The message told me that he had read some negative about me on another person's MySpace page. Whereas the "friend" in question is a good friend and whereas he's kind of a joker, I thought it was an inventive way for him to get people to his website to views some new changes he had made. 
So, I clicked on the link to the other site and here's where I should have been suspicious! MySpace wanted me to log on to view the information. But I thought I was logged in? Well, I was and somebody got my password.

The lesson of the day is: Be very suspicious of pretty much anything you do on the internet. If something just doesn't seem right, it probably isn't.

AVG Anti-Virus Program

Although this newsletter is intended for users of AVG anti-virus, all Windows users may find some of the information contained herein with respect to anti-virus programs useful. That is, I would encourage everyone to read it.

I have noticed on several computers with AVG (both the free version, as well as that for paid subscribers) that the AVG icon in the lower right side was black and grey. 

[Picture: Note black & grey icon to far left.]


This is an indication that there is something wrong. In fact, AVG would time and again bring up a balloon saying that the database was out-of-date. Windows itself even put a red shield icon with a warning to the affect: You may not have any anti-virus protection. Click here to resolve this issue.

In this case, the problem was that AVG was not up-to-date. Apparently one of the recent updates required a reboot, but on the computers in question, they were never rebooted.

I found that one particular indication that the computer needed to be rebooted was the fact that trying to update AVG manually was ineffective. AVG would say there were no updates available.

I will be posting instructions on using AVG on my website in the near future. If you ever have any questions about AVG, you may ask me, go to ACSS's website and look for the solution there, or go to AVG's website (www.grisoft.com) and read the manuals available there.