Erik Larkin - Author - Good Gear Guide

Stories by Erik Larkin

Article | 8/05/2010 Customize hard drive searches with Agent Ransack

Agent Ransack (free) allows for creating customized searches that go well beyond basic Windows searches. Its most powerful features are aimed at progr...

Article | 29/04/2010 Bugs and fixes: Security fixes for all major browsers

Whatever you use to surf the Web needs a fix. Developers of all five major browsers--Chrome, Firefox, Internet Explorer, Safari, and Opera--recently r...

Article | 29/04/2010 New threat: Undetectable Facebook scams

I recently received two Facebook e-mail notifications that set my security spider-sense tingling. Nothing was obviously wrong with the e-mail messages...

Article | 28/03/2010 Browser fingerprints: A big privacy threat

Forget cookies -- even the ultrasneaky, Flash-based "super cookies." A new type of tracking may identify you far more accurately than any cookie -- an...

Article | 19/02/2010 Firefox 3.5.8 Closes Security Holes

Mozilla yesterday released updates for its Firefox Web browser to shore up vulnerabilities in the 3.5.x and 3.0.x browser versions.

Article | 19/02/2010 Blue screen reboots after patch could mean malware

Redmond announced today it has found the cause of reported rebooting problems after some Windows users installed a recent patch: The systems were inf...

Article | 28/01/2010 Will Cloud Computing Kill Privacy?

As cloud computing speeds ahead, privacy protections are too often being left in the dust.

Article | 8/01/2010 The low-down on low-level rootkits

Rootkits, a type of stealth technology used by malware malefactors, attempt to hide in the dark corners of an infected PC and evade detection. A new p...

Article | 23/12/2009 Privacy guide for Kindle, other E-Book readers

If you're concerned about the privacy implications of reading digital books, take a look at a nice guide put up yesterday by the Electronic Frontier F...

Article | 13/01/2010 Serious flaws patched for Adobe Reader and Windows 2000

Today's post-holiday Patch Tuesday included just one bulletin, which is rated critical only for Windows 2000, but Adobe also released a must-have Read...

Article | 5/01/2010 New year, new attacks against Adobe zero-day

Crooks are once again exploiting the zero-day hole in Adobe Reader and Acrobat to install a remote-control Trojan on victim machines.

Article | 2/01/2010 Watch Facebook friends without a browser in Fishbowl

The experimental Fishbowl for Facebook application connects you with all your Facebook data without a browser. Its layout differs somewhat from what y...

Article | 28/12/2009 Good Guys Bring Down the Mega-D Botnet

For two years as a researcher with security company FireEye, Atif Mushtaq worked to keep Mega-D bot malware from infecting clients' networks. In the p...

Article | 20/12/2009 Google's Dashboard approach to privacy

If you use Gmail, Google Calendar, Google Docs, or any of the ever-growing array of Google services, you may have cringed at the trove of personal dat...

Article | 20/12/2009 Bugs and fixes: zero-day patch for Internet Explorer 6 or 7

A dangerous vulnerability in Internet Explorer 6 and 7 became publicly known before a fix was available, raising the specter of a high-risk zero-day a...