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Hi Affiliate.
First up, a critically important news flash.
** THIS IS VERY SERIOUS -- IGNORE AT YOUR PERIL **
If you don't follow the technology press you may be unaware of
this, as it has been largely ignored by the popular news media.
I won't go into a lot of detail, but in brief this doesn't relate
to any sort of an attack in the normal sense. Rather, a potentially
very serious flaw has been discovered in the underlying
architecture of the Internet.
I know, sounds like an April Fool's joke, right? But I assure you
it's no such thing.
Fortunately for the billions of us who use the Web, the problem was
discovered by a good guy first. For a change the bad guys were
beaten to the punch and, so long as you do your small part, they
are forever locked out of using it against you.
Readers of The Hacker's Nightmare should be very familiar with the
various aspects of a phishing scam. In a way the end result of this
problem is similar, in that you can be taken to a website that is a
fake copy of the one you think you're visiting. For that type of
phishing scam to work you have to be tricked into following a link
that, for example, you think will take you to your online banking
site, whereas in reality it takes you to the scammer's copy of the
real site, where the scumbag can extract your login credentials
from you.
One excellent precaution against that sort of ploy is to type your
bank's URL into the browser's address line, rather than follow a
link to get there.
This recently discovered problem is much worse, in that online
criminals could completely control the flow of Internet traffic, so
that even typing your target URL into the browser would be no
defense. No matter what you typed into your browser you would be
taken to wherever the crims wanted you to end up.
It's no exaggeration to say that, left un-fixed, the resulting
chaos would effectively ruin the Internet as a useful resource.
Unbeknown to us all, this problem was discovered some six months
ago, and a small group of experts has been working feverishly and
in secret ever since to fix the problem before the black hats got
wind of it.
Now they've done their bit, it's up to you...
***********************************************
YOU ABSOLUTELY MUST APPLY ALL AVAILABLE UPDATES
TO YOUR OPERATING SYSTEM IMMEDIATELY.
***********************************************
As a subscriber to this newsletter, that means you must apply the
patches now available from Microsoft. The recovery team that has
been working on the fix has supplied the necessary information to
all Operating System vendors, who in turn have produced the
necessary patches that will nullify this threat.
The Hacker's Nightmare contains everything you need to know about
patching, so don't delay -- bring your Operating System up to date
NOW.
If you want to know more of the story just do a Google search for
the phrase:
Internet critical DNS flaw
Just like that, don't enclose in quotes. You'll get plenty of
articles but they'll all read much the same.
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THE GOOD NEWS: I've finally finished editing and correcting my
latest book "Spam Warfare: Home & Small Business Edition" and it
was my intention to pre-release it into The Hacker's Nightmare
Member's Area today. Then, subject to any amendments engendered by
feedback from members, it would be released for sale to non-members
within the week.
THE BAD NEWS: Right at the very last minute I discovered there may
be a supply problem with one particular hardware product. If that
turns out to be correct it will mean either the complete revision
of one chapter or pulling that chapter completely. This product
would only be relevant to business operators, and the book is still
highly relevant and just as useful without it. But until I discover
exactly what the situation is and what action I have to take, it's
on hold. I'm hoping it won't take more than a few days to sort out,
but now we've got the weekend coming up to add another couple of
days to the wait.
-----------------------------------------------------------
For the past couple of weeks I've been looking at Registry
cleaners/optimizers.
Although I've never had any problems with, or complaints about, the
Registry cleaner that is discussed in both my books "The Hacker's
Nightmare" and "Seven Steps to a Clean PC", as time marches on new
products appear and I like to reassess periodically to see if
something better is available.
I discovered a very likely candidate and have been testing it
fairly thoroughly on three of my PCs, two of which are running
Windows XP-SP2 and one Windows 2000, all patched right up to date.
Despite daily use for almost a fortnight it's never given me even
the slightest hint of trouble, and it consistently finds and fixes
more Registry anomalies than its predecessor. It's also cheaper, a
no-brainer to install, and dead easy to use.
In short, I've jut about decided that this is my new Registry
Cleaner. I'll show you what it is in a moment, but there's an
interesting little story here that illustrates how you can be put
off a good product through misinformation.
One of the things I do when I'm testing a product, especially
software, is to run a lot of Web searches to see if others are
reporting problems and under what circumstances.
One thing you always have to remember when you're researching
products via Web searches is that, no matter how good a product
might be, you will always find (a) some people who will knock it
for any of a number of reasons, legitimate or otherwise, and (b)
some people who are knockers with a vested interest.
With the (a) group you can usually spot if they're the sort of
people whose problems are most likely to be self-inflicted. I don't
mean that in a disparaging way, just that inexperience can result
in inappropriate actions and unreliable results.
The (b) group is a bigger obstacle to the researcher, because often
they can sound like they know what they're talking about, and yet
be sprouting complete nonsense which, unless you detected it, could
turn you away from just the thing you're searching for.
Overall I found no reports of problems with this Registry cleaner
that would give me pause, but there was one particular batch of
comments I came across that is the topic of this story.
I stumbled across a review of this Registry cleaner at the PCMech
website. The reviewer, obviously no beginner, came to the same
conclusion that I was rapidly forming -- that this was a quality
and reliable product worthy of attention.
And that's when the fun started, because this was a blog-type
article where site visitors could add their own comments.
I won't comment on the comments, I'll just send you there to have a
look for yourself. It's a real education in how easily people can
be misdirected by misinformation, and how difficult it is to help
some people.
There are so many comments there now that you may be tempted not to
bother, but I would ask you to at least spot read a few and then
head to the very bottom where you will see two long contributions
from me. They are clearly marked: "Bill Hely said:"
My posts are followed by a couple of rather harsh responses to the
free advice I offered to a number of people who clearly needed to
be steered in the right direction.
Just goes to show how hard it is to help some people.
When will I learn?
As the cynical old saying goes: "No good deed goes unpunished".
By the way, I don't suggest YOU start using this Registry cleaner
just yet. As one of my subscribers you get more help than that.
I'll be preparing an article on this product which will contain
some useful safety hints. I anticipate being able to give you the
all-clear in next week's newsletter, if not before.
Now here's the URL to the dog-fight:
http://clicks.aweber.com/y/ct/?l=Ml13p&m=1gjLeUsHVVZTAn&b=zDMLVRnyBqKFC79.Kjg8Pw
-----------------------------------------------------------
That's it for this week Affiliate.
Again I'm sorry for the ongoing delays with "Spam Warfare" -- I
know a lot of you find spam a real burden, and I do have the
solution for you. If it looks like dragging on too long I may
release the book into the member's area as-is with a warning that
the contents of one chapter may be in doubt. But as I said, that
chapter only affects businesses.
And PLEASE... don't delay in getting those patches applied to your
Windows. It's really important.
Until next time, Stay safe! And remember...
The human brain is the first line of defense;
keep it engaged when online.
Best regards,
- Bill Hely
- Author: "The Hacker's Nightmare"
- "How to keep hackers, worms & other germs out of your PC"
FOR ALL CORRESPONDENCE & SUPPORT PLEASE USE THIS FORM:
http://clicks.aweber.com/y/ct/?l=Ml13p&m=1gjLeUsHVVZTAn&b=CyNt7lKvIanpXMgrjgUH1Q
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Subscription Date : July 4, 2008
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