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Don’t fall for the new Facebook stalker scam

Dave Farquhar security July 22, 2011antivirus, Bit Defender, firefox, spam

According to trusted antivirus vendor Sophos, there’s a rogue Facebook application, posing as an app that claims to reveal a way to see who’s been secretly viewing your profile.

It’s a scam. And it’s spreading rapidly. It posts messages on your wall and tries to get you to visit a spam site. Don’t fall for it, but if you already have, delete the fake messages it posts.

Here’s a real app I want you to install instead: Safego.
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Dave Farquhar

David Farquhar is a computer security professional, entrepreneur, and author. He started his career as a part-time computer technician in 1994, worked his way up to system administrator by 1997, and has specialized in vulnerability management since 2013. He invests in real estate on the side and his hobbies include O gauge trains, baseball cards, and retro computers and video games. A University of Missouri graduate, he holds CISSP and Security+ certifications. He lives in St. Louis with his family.

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Maybe 64-bit Firefox is on the way?

Dave Farquhar Software July 18, 2011April 17, 2017firefox, Pale Moon, windows 7

Mozilla is looking hard at questions regarding a 64-bit Windows build of Firefox. This is progress. This is good.

Dave Farquhar

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Don’t take free software from a stranger

Dave Farquhar security July 16, 2011firefox, journalism, malware, SEO, United Kingdom

And there’s this. Some people are taking popular free, open-source software, planting malware in it, and distributing it to unsuspecting people.
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Dave Farquhar

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More help is on the way for high Firefox memory usage

Dave Farquhar Software July 6, 2011July 6, 2011chrome, firefox, keyboard shortcuts, Task Manager

After years of workarounds, and even sometimes denying there was a problem, Mozilla has identified a fix for Firefox’s sometimes out-of-control memory usage.

The culprit appears to be the Javascript engine, which probably shouldn’t be much of a surprise.
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Dave Farquhar

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Firefox needs to adopt the Ubuntu model

Dave Farquhar Software June 25, 2011June 25, 2011chrome, firefox, ubuntu

Firefox has an identity crisis.

Used to being the #2 browser and eroding share from IE, Firefox sees its share eroding slightly–or not growing as fast as it used to, depending on who you ask–and the upstart Chrome gaining.

What Firefox has done is tantamount to panic.

Dave Farquhar

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And that didn’t take long: Firefox 5 is out

Dave Farquhar security, Software June 22, 2011firefox

Firefox 5 was released yesterday with comparatively little fanfare. Firefox 4 only came out 3 months ago. And realistically, this is more deserving of a version number like 4.1, not 5.0. It’s a marketing decision more than a technical one. But it contains 8 critical bug fixes, a few stability fixes, and a few rendering fixes, so it’s worth grabbing, and treating like a point release, not necessarily with the usual trepidation that accompanies a major release.If your browser hasn’t already grabbed it and prompted you for installation, I recommend you go get it.

And a new version, most likely to be called 6.0, is expected in another three months.

Dave Farquhar

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Removing the Windows XP Repair scareware

Dave Farquhar security, Windows June 21, 2011antimalware, antivirus, Bit Defender, CA, firefox, firewall, malware, Microsoft Security Essentials, Open Office, oracle, Standalone System Sweeper, Windows XP

Windows XP Repair is a fake system optimization and repair tool. It takes over the computer almost completely, and it’s a pain to remove. Worse yet, there’s at least one version floating around right now that standard no antivirus/antimalware tool I threw at it recognized.

Here’s how I removed it for someone.

Dave Farquhar

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Disadvantages of Windows 98 and 98SE

Dave Farquhar Windows May 21, 2011July 3, 20181990s, antivirus, firefox, spyware, vista, windows 2000, windows 7, windows 98, windows 9x, windows me, windows nt, Windows XP

Many years ago, I wrote about the disadvantages of Windows 3.1 because I started noticing people searching for that. Now, I see people asking the same question about Windows 98. I spent 9 months of my life ripping Windows 98 apart and putting it back together again and writing about it, so I know it well.

As much of an improvement as Windows 98 was over Windows 3.1 and even Windows 95, it, too, is feeling the effects of time. Windows 98SE was the best of the Windows 9x series (better than its successor, Windows ME), but there are better things to run today.

Dave Farquhar

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How to find out what add-ons are slowing down Firefox

Dave Farquhar Software April 4, 2011antivirus, firefox, malware, Malware Domains

Here’s a site worth bookmarking. Add-ons are the big thing Firefox offers that the other browsers don’t, but it sometimes comes at the price of performance. And I guess Mozilla is tired of that, so now they’re testing add-on speed and publishing the results at https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/performance/ .
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Dave Farquhar

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Firefox 4 is out

Dave Farquhar Uncategorized March 21, 2011chrome, firefox, vista, windows 2000, Windows Vista

And although Firefox 4 isn’t officially released until tomorrow, copies have leaked out via FTP staging servers. I grabbed a copy from betanews to do my upgrade early.

I’ve played with pre-release versions, so no real surprises. It’s quick. The look changed quite a bit, but you can easily configure it to look like older versions if you want. I did on my desktop; on a netbook I might not.

If you’ve liked Firefox all along, you’ll like Firefox 4. If you’ve preferred IE or Chrome up to this point, I don’t think Firefox 4 changes enough to change your mind on that. It has a faster Javascript engine and makes better use of graphics hardware on Windows Vista or 7, but aside from that, it’s still the same basic browser. IE9 has all that too, and Chrome has fast Javascript and isn’t far behind with graphics acceleration of its own. Of course Firefox and Chrome have the advantage that they’ll still run under XP. I think Firefox 4 will even run under Windows 2000, if you’re still using that for some reason.

I like it, but I was using it when it was still a side project called Phoenix. Then it was Firebird. Then it became Firefox.

Dave Farquhar

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