Category: NONE

Rogue Fake Codecs on the Rise

Paul

Panda Labs has been talking about Adware/VideoPlay and they are seeing a lot of variants on this.   They even play a game, find the difference in the installation screen:

Now as you can see this look to be the same agreement in all those difference installation.  Some things to consider Never install any software from a website that you don’t know Nothing about about.

Panda Labs also talks about these new variants in regards to what they do:

This file spreads by making copies of itself in the removable drives and it also creates an autorun.inf in order to be run when they are accessed. This file collects the data stored in the browsers, such as cookies, passwords, profiles, email accounts, etc, and connects to a remote address to send the information.
[Via Panda Labs Blog]

[ad#ad2-right]As you can see this makes you have very little security with your system.  I talk about Identity theft, and why you should always worry about your identity.   This however will make your passwords less secure and maybe even compromise you system to the point of having a data breach.   You need to be careful when you come by this, some fake codecs have been know to be scareware.  In which, the fake codecs installs a Trojan to tell you have a virus and try to make you buy a fake program to get rid of the Virus.  In one of my recent posts about Codecs and Facebook, I talked about the K-Lite Mega Codec Pack and how that will prevent you from installing these sociable links from friends and family.  The nice thing about this pack is it install all the really good codecs that you might come across on the web.  If you have this installed and there’s a website that says you need a special codec, you’d know that it is either a fake codec or the author who made the video doesn’t standardize.   In which case you will be more willing to leave that site without installing that codec.

If you follow these steps and also consider installing an Anti-virus and Firewall, you will be in a much better shape then when you first started out. Remember only you can prevent from getting a virus. You should also consider doing the registry edit that will prevent Autorun. As you can tell these new variants also are spread through USB and other removable media. This is the other way these programs are using to infect other systems.

Is Spore Worth 49.99?

Paul

So I been doing a little digging and trying to find out what the heck people are complaining about and I found some great reviews telling me exactly why people hate EA.  They don’t necessarily hate Spore or Will Wright, but the Security around The Spore game.

So In a couple of these comments.  These reviews talk about Creating the creatures and All.  I’ll submit some of the reviews that I thought was relevant and let you decide for yourself.  I would however wonder the one big question?  Is Spore Worth the Money?   Here’s the details that I know of right now:

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  1. You can only install it 3 times before you have to call EA to get an override code.  (Although I heard rumors that if you unistall it, you will get a credit for an Install)

  2. You can not Install new hardware or upgrade your hardware because if you do, it’ll count as an install, According to this one person.

  3. The game only allows 1 login per Install.  So you can’t have more than one character and one universe according to this person.

  4. Part of the Copy Protection prevents you from taking your saved games off your computer and taking it over to your friends house, according to this Person.

  5. On the Mac Version, it tends to breaks subsequent versions of the system services according to this one person.

According to Amazon the reviews aren’t pleasant.  I tend to agree does this mean there are going to be even more people pirating it because they don’t want the DRM or Is EA going to send out a patch to fix this.  I am curious as to see how EA responds to all this NONE TOLERANCE to DRM.

After seeing all these reviews of Spore, I tend to agree with everyone.  I’ll probably wait and see before I buy my copy.  All the reviews however don’t look promising or even makes the games look like it wouldn’t be fun.