New virus for Android found

Backdoor.AndroidOS.Obada.a is the name of the virus that is made specifically for Android devices.

Kaspersky Labs last weekend has advised Android device users to be wary of the new Trojan virus that is spreading.

The virus is exploiting an unknown bug in the operating system to be able to get administrator access, embeds itself to become impossible to remove. Kaspersky Labs said that it is does far one of the most sophisticated virus it came across as the code was written obscurely so it is harder to decipher.

The Trojan can replicate itself to other devices as well as it can make copies of other malicious programs after the device has managed to establish a connection via Wi-Fi or bluetooth.

It was also noted that the new Trojan is much similar to Windows malware than to other Android Trojans in terms of complexity and the number of unpublished vulnerabilities it exploits.

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Becareful of using site:http://www.yoursite.com to tell if your site was indexed

The short answer is, the command site:http://www.yoursite.com does not indicate  if your site got indexed by Google.

Too often, you see people respond to queries like "How to check if my site got indexed by Google?" with typing the above phrase in Google's search bar. That is just misleading. Because such a querry will bring up all the URLs that have been crawled by the spider but not nescessarily mean that it has been indexed already.

To support this point, let us look at the difference between the cache and index in Google's perspective. The cache contains a snapshot of what a URL looks like at the time Google spiders it. An index on the other hand is basically a database of all URLs where it gets its results when someone makes a querry (a search). Therefore, if a site is on the list, it is easier to be included in the search results. But it does not mean that all crawled URLs are indexed.

If you really wanted to know if your whole site is indexed, use the free tool provided by Google which is the Webmaster Tools.

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Page rank suffers due to redesign or change in domain
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Page rank suffers due to redesign or change in domain

Consider this, you set-up a web page. You worked hard on it, wrote original content, worked even harder to get those very hard to get back links and after several weeks or even months of hard work, all your labor paid off and now are enjoying a very good page rank.

You continue to work hard to maintain your hard earned rankings. Meanwhile, as what normally happens, some if not all of your original work have been scraped off or copied by other "webmasters" into their site. But of course being the originator of such a content, Google through its search algorithm see this and affords you all the credit and in turn gives your site a high page rank.

Fast forward to the future, 5 years from now. You decide to redesign your site including your sites structure or you wanted to move your domain. After your new design is done or changed your domain you put it up, waited and watched while Google crawled your site

But results is not as you expedt it to be because your rankings starts to slide down and you are no longer enjoying a high page rank as you used to.

Why? Because now Google thinks your content are duplicate from your own page or from others. That is because with the new structure, Gogle creates a new index for your site and this time it thinks that those articles are newly created and seeing that such articles already exist in its index it thinks they are duplicates which we all know is not.

As a result of this you get penalized by either having those pages that are thought to be duplicates deindexed. Consequently, your page rank suffers.

There is also the matter of your inbound links becoming useless because they will all become broken and as such their link juice will not flow to your site to help boost your rankings.

It is unfair, I know, but that is how it works. Of course, you could try to appeal to Google by making a reconsideration request or inform them through some other means but you may not get as high page rank as you did prior to everything for one thing, probably all your back links will no longer be working for you.

Think about it and tell me what are your thoughts.


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Microsoft Windows XP is near obsolete
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Microsoft Windows XP is near obsolete

Actually it is more of Microsoft ending its support for Windows XP and Office 2003.

I was browsing Microsoft's support pages when I came across this reminder from Microsoft

Microsoft XP SP3 and Office 2003 Support ends April 18, 2014.

Based on Microsoft's policy, their busines and developer products, which includes their Windows operating system and Office products, only receives a maximum of 10 years. It was further explained that this  10 years is divided into 5 years mainstream and another 5 years extended support.

This means that after April 18, 2014 all support to these products will cease. No more security updates will be provided and therefore it will be vulnerable to attack.

Actually, this is already apparent. While I was looking for the Windows XP SP3 download, I keep getting a 404 page. I have landed on several pages linking to a Microsoft download page of the said service pack but keeps getting a 404 page or an error message on the page. This is also true to a Microsoft page link to a download page.

How does this affect specially Windows XP users? Well, very big. One thing very clear is that Windows XP users' machine may not be capable of handling the newer released operating systems from Microsoft which may be the reason they are still on XP.

For one thing Windows 8 is designed for a 64-bit structure and most probably these machines running on XP is still running on 32-bit.

In such a case, it is advisable not to upgrade your existing machine and buy yourself a new one that is capable of Windows 8 or 7. But if you are to ask me, I'd go for Windows 8 since it has a longer support period compared to Windows 7.

What are options left for these "old" machines? It will still function beyond this support period however it may be more vulnerable to intrusions therefore, it is best to look for a third party software that can help you prevent such an intrusion. One I can recommend is the DeepFreeze. Try searching for deep freeze on this blog to give you an idea on what it can do.

There are also other operating system out there that you may want to try like Linux, Unix, Ubuntu and now Google rolls out an OS called Chrome. This are just a few, there are still others that you may want to try just search them and they are not that difficult to find. What is great about these OS is that they are also secure and not as prone to attack as Microsoft's Windows.

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Proxy servers, do they really hide your IP?

Be careful using proxy servers

When you enter the search term free proxy servers, a lot of results come up. But do they really perform as you intend them to? Many of us are looking to mask our IP while browsing the internet for anonymity.

My search brought me to this site that continuously updates
lists of servers offering free proxy servers. I choose one
(hilighted in blue)

But beware because many of those servers offering free proxy don't actually hide your IP. What's more, they might be getting your secure information like passwords and bank account.

Here is my IP address before adding a proxy.

Here is my proxy after adding a proxy, close my browser,
opened my browser and checked my new IP. There is no
change whatsoever!

I had this experience where I used a proxy server but failed to take it out before opening my Yahoo! mail account and in just minutes, my Yahoo! Account has already been compromised. I had to report this to Yahoo! And got control back to my mail the next day. Good thing I don't have sensitive information on my mail.

Yahoo! account compromised and can't log in. I got
control back to my accounta day after reporting it.

What do we get from this experience? Never use proxy server when transacting with your bank or using a credit card or similar things. Doing so will certainly bring desaster on your part.

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