security

Antivirus Scan caused Heart Machine to crash

May 9, 2016 by computerera

Healthcare sector uses the technology in the form of various equipment while treating the patients, maintaining case sheets and preparing medical bills.

Merge, one of such healthcare devices manufactured by IBM crashed suddenly because of anti-virus scan when it has been used in a critical condition.

Doctors use Merge Hemo unit to monitor the patients in heart catheterization. Suddenly, in the middle of the operation, the device lost its communication with the main PC with which it runs Merge’s software.

Doctors immediately noticed the incident and rebooted the host computer. Luckily the five mins downtime didn’t lead to any dangerous consequences.

Last year the health care sector faced a high amount of ransomware attacks which demanded huge amounts to decrypt the crucial data. In this context, malware scanning became mandatory in the healthcare industry. But the system administrators have to schedule the scan routines according to the critical operation timings. Otherwise, similar incidents may happen.

IRCTC Site compromised – 1 Crore Passenger data sold for Rs. 15000

May 5, 2016 by computerera

Here is a panic news.. IRCTC site which we were regularly using to book train tickets got compromised this morning. But IRCTC didn’t officially announced the news. More than 1 Crore users personal information got theft by the hackers.

IRCTC is evolved as the largest e-Commerce site in India. People all over the country are using IRCTC. In this context, Credit Card and Debit Card details and other personal information like PAN number, name, and passenger addresses are in risk with the security breach.

People got confused whether the site hacked or not, IRCTC PRO Sandip Dutta denied hacking attempt and expressed that there is no hacking attempt made on the site.

But the govt. Confirmed the hacking attempt and the data hacked is sold for Rs. 15,000 on a CD.

Facebook demands Court Order to remove objectionable content in India

May 3, 2016 by computerera

Facebook changed the way it honors content removal requests from various laws enforcing authorities in India.

People all over the India post a huge amount of content ranging from personal opinions to political views. There is a lot of scope for crime and criminal activity on Facebook.

Earlier Facebook considered content removal requests from the police department and other legal bodies just with the official letter signed by the concerned officer.

Now Facebook has decided to follow a different approach, now onwards it only remove the content only it gets the government or court order. This is because of the misused section 66A of the IT Act of 2000, which Supreme Court of India dismissed last year.

Section 66A has its own advantages personally I treat this section as the remedy for various online issues. But as I already said above, this section got misused a lot.

Without any proper base celebrities and popular persons in politics started to abuse the section and it finally stroked down by the Supreme Court of India.

Making Laws is not sufficient in any country, strictly following those laws with common sense is what’s needed for the better society. Here in India most of the sections in IT Act are outdated, and sometimes they have a broad meaning which can be easily abused.

Today we are seriously talking about the Facebook only, but there are a lot of social networks and other platforms emerging into the Indian technology market which becomes the platform for antisocial activities.

So as a lawmaking establishment, the government should set up expert team consists of lawyers and tech people. Otherwise, solutionless tech crimes will increase.

Facebook follows its Community Guidelines if they applicable for the content removal without the court order.

Android Backup Apps Before Factory Reset

April 24, 2016 by computerera

Since the days the Android has become the part of our lives, the usage and integration of the smartphones in our lives has increased. These day smartphones are coming with a lot or memory on board and support to greater amounts like 128GB and 256GB. There are even phones that support the memory expandability up to 2TB. This elevated the need of backup apps before factory reset, because a factory reset would wipe off the data in a blink.

The following are list of best backup apps for Android that are seen on Google Play.

1. App Backup & Restore

Our phones would be installed with a lot of apps that we don’t even count. We may not remember all those app names to install later after the factory reset. This application creates the backup of all installed apps to the external SD card and allows you to restore the same.

Tip: Remove the memory card while doing a factory reset.

2. Super Backup : SMS & Contacts

Super backup stores your backup data on to the external SD card, Google Drive and Gmail. You can backup your contacts, SMSs, bookmarks, calender entries. Set your default backup folder on to external SD card or move the entire backup folder to SD card.

Tip: As Android Marshmallow doesn’t allow to restore bookmarks from 3rd party applications, you may not get the bookmarks restored with this app.

3. Easy Backup & Restore

This app, as the name suggests, is the easiest backup application for android. This application offers more options to save the backup. You can save the backup to external SD card, Gmail, Google Drive, Dropbox, OnceDrive and Box. Along with contacts, SMS, MMS, calender entries, bookmarks, call logs, apps, this application also saves dictionary entries that we have saved while typing.

4. CM Backup – Safe,Cloud,Speedy

CM backup is the most loved backup and restore application for android users. Rated 4.7/5, CM Backup rules the backup and restore operations on 100 million android devices. This app features, Contacts backup & restore (Avatars, birthdays etc.), Messages backup & restore (SMS, MMS, text messages and Hangouts), Call logs backup & restore (Phone only), Photos backup & restore, Web Browser Bookmarks backup & restore, Calendars backup & restore, Alarms backup & restore, Dictionary backup & restore (Input methods)

5. G Cloud Backup

G Cloud Backup helps you backup your contacts, photos, videos and calender entries from phone to phone irrespective of its operating system. Files backed up using this application can be restored on to any other device with this application installed.

6. SMS Backup & Restore

Any important message lost could be a loss for you. SMS Backup & Restore is a dedicated app that backsup all the messages and call logs from the android phone and restores them after factory reset. This app hae the aerage rating of 4.5/5 with 50,000,000 installations so far.

7. Titanium Backup

Titanium Backup backs up the data, apps and market links on to the SD card. But, you need to have your phone rooted for this. This application is the top backup root app with a lot of options available.

Tip: Don’t risk to root your phone unless it is needed at most.

These backup apps are chosen based on their rating about their functionalities. These will give you better features and options to secure your data.

Beware of These Dangerous Potentially Unwanted Apps

April 22, 2016 by computerera

The adoption of technology into the daily routine have also increased the security threats. Our digital life is becoming vulnerable year by year, month by month. This post is to bring your consciousness of the dark side of the digital technology that we are using now. A shot list of potentially unwanted apps is given in this post. Beware of them and get rid of the as far as possible.

In this regard, we should pay thanks to the organizations like Symantec, the security software and services corporation, for constantly educating us about the threats and possible solutions. If you are using their Norton Anti-Virus software on your computer, the security solutions for these potentially unwanted apps would come easy for your computer with traditional updates.

The following list of apps are newly identified in this year of 2016. You will be shocked to see the programs names and possibility of threat that they are causing. Have a strong heart and read further.

1. Drive Doc

Driver Doc by Solvusoft Corporation has been identified as the potentially unwanted software that shows false performance statistics and manipulates users to pay to fix them. If you have this software on your computer, remove it and scan the computer against threats and vulnerabilities.

2. Optimum Install

This application will hack the registry files and changes the values thereby affecting the performance of the computer. Additional toolbars will be installed on the browser as well. Better remove this software and perform a scan after that. Restore the registry backup if you have any or restore the system of a whole to reduce the risk completely.

3. Web Searcher

This program is purely a disguise to its name. It displays unnecessary advertisements on the web browsers spoiling the website layouts in them. You will regularly be notified about the web searcher while installing some software on the computer. The better solution is to avoid it. If you have no advanced idea about computer, leave the software installations to administrator and use a standard account.

4. System Healer

This is also a deceiving program that displays wrong system performance stats and manipulates the user to purchase the fixing methods. Use uninstallers like ‘Revo’ to get rid of such apps completely.

5. PC Speedup Pro

This programs also shows under-rated performance stats on the computer and finally concludes the user to buy the solutions for the false fixes.

6. PC Repair Kit

As it sounds the software won’t really help you repair the PC problems instead, it pulls the user to pay for the solutions and ends up cleaning up the junk files at last. Do not get tempted to buy this software. It may not only snatch your money but also can harm you.

7. Best Social Feed

This software, instead of serving its purpose as its name suggests modifies the browser settings and causes inconvenience to the browser experience with unwanted ads and layouts on the websites.

Conclusion:

These don’t make the complete list. But beware of the software that you install on your computer. Always keep your antivirus definitions updated, scan your computer frequently or set weekly scan schedules. If you have no advanced knowledge of using computer, do not use administrator account.

Be safe!