Leo’s Answers #270 – February 15, 2011

Hi Leo, In my local free paper I read a headline "Internet full, please try later..." and they basically say they have run out of IPv4 numbers and (to quote directly) "Consumers using older software such as Windows XP and many household broadband modems cannot read IPv6 ... and websites with new-style addresses may not be accessible to many users." What do you know about this?

At work, we still have a couple of windows 9.x and windows me computers. I also have an older game machine with windows 98, will all three still work when ipv6 arrives?

My local adviser tells me I have a virus in my bios which cannot be removed; at least, not by Norton. Proof of the virus, he insists, is that I have two green columns in the dialog box of my disc defragmenter. He further insists that the green will continue to expand until my pc fails completely. Second advisor insisted the second green column could be eliminated by going to Systems, Performance, Virtual Memory and clicking "no page file". Tried several times. As soon as I restore the page file, the second green column reappears. Then he suggested Page Dfrag.zip. It also failed to eliminate the second green column. At that point his confidence failed and he too leaned to the virus as a most probable. Is this a situation which should worry me? My pc is five years old and is running fine. I have Norton 360 v4 on Windows XP. My C drive has 290 GB cap and 280 GB free space at present.

I have a friend who is a photographer. A few years ago, a publisher decided to publish a book using his image without his permission. When he saw the book on Amazon up for pre-order, he contacted them and they modified the book, claiming that they never printed any with his image. But, his image shows up all over the web as the cover of the book. We've called around to the bookstores that are selling the book and it always turns out the image is wrong and the book they have is the one without his picture.

My question is: how much info is stored in those images? Could we find out where they came from and who made them?

I have two laptops and three PCs: two Windows 7, two Vista, and one Vista Pro 64 bit. I want to back up all of them on one two-terabyte external hard drive. Can this be done and how should I go about it? The external drive is not a network type: it's a USB drive.

I have a new smartphone - the HTC T-Mobile My Touch 4G Android. Somehow, while attempting to download an app, I received the following screen, "Choose a Connection Type." 1. Charge only. Charge phone over USB. 2. Disk Drive. Mount as a disk drive. 3. USB Tethering. Share phone's mobile network with PC. I don't understand the ramifications of each choice. Can you give a more detailed explanation of the choices and maybe an example of when each choice would be preferred?

NewDimTech writes:

I remember the day when a virus was a virus. Avoiding email attachments from unknown senders was your best defense. As the internet has successfully ingrained itself into our everyday lives, and especially with the advent of broadband, there are so many new ways to get into trouble. As a twelve year bench tech, the majority of "infections" that I see now are self inflicted, many by our customers who still believe that you can get something for nothing. We carry a laundry list of utilities, all freely available, to perform our cleanup and repair, but the most important tool in our arsenal is still education. No anti-virus/malware tool out there can defend against bad judgment.

Bob K. writes:

I worked 7 years for a major AV company. All AV firms rely on customers sending them samples of malware/infected programs. And ALL the major players first develop the 'fix' for that item - then within a day or two, swap their sample malware/infected sample with each other. So there is minimal delay for adding detection to their products. A month or more is far out of line, and I don't believe it for a second.

Major firm's anti-virus 'hunters' meet yearly for conferences and exchange information and papers. Though their companies are competitors, the better ones encourage their AV people to cooperate with each other. So going with a minor 'freeware' program where the developer isn't involved with this group is not a 'cheap' solution, but an 'iffy' one.

Some of the sneakiest malware being devolped today is web pages with Java script allowing that web page to 'steal' all sorts of information from your computer. I.E. cookies (containing useful information), your Contact list, to annoy your contacts with apparent requests from your ID, and who knows what else can easily be lifted off your computer.

You've seen those "Click here to send your friends a request to join XXXXXX". I was stung myself by LinkedIn due to an accidental click on their 'tiny' "click me" box!!

As so many of the comments state, YOU are the best defense. In addition to the inane action of downloading an unexpected attachement from anyone. - DO NOT go to 'suggested' websites from 'strangers' (and be cynical about those from your friends, they could've had their contact list stolen too)

Not a question, comment on your last point about backups. I recently saw a "rule" posted by Steve Gibson. It is the "3-2-1 Backup Rule"

For a "good" backup, you should always have:
- At least 3 copies of every file
- At least 2 different media
- At least 1 copy stored Off-site

It very neatly sums up the best practice backup principles I have seen in the best shops I've worked in.

Joe writes:

Being a Realtor, I'm used to typing abbreviations for things like St., Dr., Rd., etc. Well, after two years of trying to delete a file I noticed the "." at the end. This was the reason it would not delete as windows was looking for something like "com or exe" after the "." and never found it. Went into DOS, renamed the file, and it deleted just fine after that. Be careful of the evil "."!

"TechTV's Leo Laporte and [Steve Gibson] take 30 to 60 minutes near the end of each week to discuss important issues of personal computer security. Sometimes we'll discuss something that just happened. Sometimes we'll talk about long-standing problems, concerns, or solutions. Either way, every week we endeavor to produce something interesting and important for every personal computer user. "

My friend's husband has been getting into her email even though she's not given him her password. He has confronted his sister about an email and when asked how he got into the email he says that where he works (A large hotel chain) they have a program that searches emails for keywords and brings info up. Could that be true?

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