Today a client of ours rang to ask us to help them sort out a serious problem. When you visit their website, http://actioninspections.com.au, you get a warning that their site is probably going to harm your computer. (I’m worried now by linking to it Google might block us too, but we’ll see)

The Google Safe Browsing page for the problem said that Google had never found any malware on the site of any kind. So you can imagine how my frustration started to rise at this point; Why block a site that is perfectly safe?

The suggestion was to use the Google Webmaster Tools to check into it, but there too, I was told there was nothing wrong with the website; The aforementioned safe browsing page suggested I could use the webmaster tools to request a malware review, which would seem to be the way foward, but because Google never found any malware, there is no option to request a review!

A scan with the AVG Website Scanner reveals no malware present either.

Internet Guru @northirid (via twitter) pointed out that there was some spurious javascript being called from kollinsoy.skyefenton.com; That’s clearly the problem that tripped the warning in the first place, but we are still left with no way to have Google stand down, despite having fixed the problem.

Hours after Google began blocking access to the site, it’s tools are only now reporting that in fact there IS malware on the site (even though right now, there isn’t). Now we have access to the Google review process, but we can only guess how long it will take before someone fixes the problem;

Despite that progress, the Google system never tells you what the malware is, or where it was found. It seems pretty stupid not to give people that information, as larger sites could have thousands of pages and take days to check each one. If Google were serious about helping people, this information would be immediately provided.

Yesterday McAfee sent out an update to their virus definitions (update 5958), which caused McAfee to detect a critical windows file, svchost.exe as a virus; In many cases, this leads to the file being deleted, which, when you reboot, leads to your computer not working.

Of course, McAfee’s support forums collapsed shortly afterward under the weight of unhappy customers wondering what happened. The good news is that the problem will be fixable without a complete reinstall of your computer, but the bad news is, you’re probably going to need some technical help to make it happen.

If you are using McAfee, and your computer has problems, give us a call and one of our tech’s will get you back up and running, and while you’re at it, consider switching over to ESET.

With all the hype about the conficker worm, and now this new threat, now would be a great time to have your computer serviced and updated, ensuring you have the best protection against these threats.

Computers are already infected with the worm, so your PC is either already compromised, or its not and either way, nothing much will change today.

The vast majority of infections are in Asia and Europe, not here.

A well maintained PC with good anti virus protection should be safe from infection.

If your computer hasn’t been serviced in the last 12 months, now would be a good time to book one of our engineers to come and give it a once over, ensuring it is secure as possible.

Then, you point out that the list of websites you are going to protect us from needs to be kept a secret, after all, if everyone knew where to find the list, they could take steps to get to those sites, and you would in fact be facilitating this illegal behaviour, right? Sure, we say, go ahead and keep the list a secret.

But here’s the problem; Once the list is a secret, nobody knows what else you have put on the list. Now you have a secret censorship tool which you can use to silence anyone you like, not just the porno peddlers.

But what really bugs me about this is the fact that our government seems to think that censorship is the solution to child porn. How about finding and prosecuting the people involved, and shutting down their sites? Shouldn’t that be the solution? How is letting them continue to operate and simply blocking access to their sites at our borders helping?

It’s not.

If you haven’t already, sign the petition on our home page to help stop this madness before it starts stuffing up our internet and our country!

It’s a good thing nobody thinks Facebook is a critical service; Or do they?

It is similar to previous scams and uses the Tax Office logo and the words ‘Notification – Please read’ or ‘Australian Taxation Office – Please Read This’ in the subject heading.

There may also be more variations to these subject headings.

The email asks people to click on a link which directs them to a bogus website that looks similar to the Tax Office website and asks for credit card and personal details.

The Tax Office never sends emails asking people to provide personal information including credit card details.

Tax Commissioner Michael D’Ascenzo said anyone who receives the email should delete it immediately.

“People should be wary of unsolicited emails claiming to be from the Tax Office.

“As an extra precaution we recommend you type internet addresses directly into your internet browser rather than clicking on links embedded in emails,” Mr D’Ascenzo said.

These websites are often set up in multiple jurisdictions making them difficult to trace and to effectively shut them down.

If people have entered their credit card information on the website, they should immediately report it to their credit card provider.

It is thought that about 3 percent of users have been tricked into paying for these fake programs, generating about A$19.5 Million for the scammers every month.

Anyone reading our site regularly who doesn’t already have our recommended anti virus solution should get in touch immediately, and from then on be sure you are running a legitimate and quality product.

This isn’t the first time Trend have had this kind of problem, with reports back in April of a similar problem. Norton Anti Virus has also suffered from similar faults in the past.

We continue to recommend users of these packages consider upgrading to a more robust solution; Give us a call for more information.

Next time you are speaking to one of our technicians, get them to tell about our recommended anti virus package, and why it continues to trump the big names.