Many of the major security software vendors offer some form of an online scanner which allows you to take advantage of their respective anti-malware engine to detect threats without installing the client on your machine. This is a great tool because it allows you to get a "second opinion" on your system if you suspect a threat. Microsoft now offers...

Unlike standard cookies which can easily be controlled and cleaned by your respective browser, cookies set and used by Flash are a different animal altogether. Because Flash works outside of your browser, it has the ability to store cookies (aka LSO’s) in various folders throughout your system which is the foundation of how the "super cookie" you...

In a relatively unadvertised event, Microsoft released version 2.0 of their anti-virus product, Security Essentials. Ars Technica has a write up on the release but the primary change is that the detection engine is now heuristic based in addition to signature based. In a nutshell, signature based protection can only detect known threats which have a particular...

I originally wasn’t going to write about this but decided to anyway because it will be useful to those who use password managers like KeePass, LastPass, RoboForm and so on. My advice on how to generate passwords would be considered bad by any security expert, however security experts are not necessarily up-to-date on web site compatibility with...

If you are a user of Internet Explorer, on thing you must be constantly aware of are ActiveX controls. While they have the ability to provide great functionality, they are also a great way for malware to exploit your system. To help protect against known ActiveX threats, you can use AxBan. AxBan is a free tool which will prevent known malicious ActiveX...

If you have browsed the PCMech Forums, you probably see the occasional HijackThis log uploaded to a post. Another program similar to this which you might want to take a look at is Runscanner. This freeware program is very similar to what HijackThis offers: RunScanner is a freeware windows system utility which scans your system for all running programs, autostart...

As with any major upgrade of a program, there are usually several customizations and settings you have to review to get the program to behave the way you are accustomed to. AVG Free version 8 is no different. The new version boast a new interface as well as new features which included the controversial (rightfully so) link scanner component and the infamous...