To clean your screen, start with a dry, microfiber cloth. Move it in circular motions. Be gentle, but apply slight pressure on particularly stubborn spots.

If that doesn’t clean the screen, use your cleaning solution. Turn off your laptop. Spray the cleaner lightly onto the, not onto the monitor. Wipe as described above, then wait ten minutes before booting up.

You can find additional tips on cleaning your other electronics by clicking on the following link.

The Proper Care and Feeding of Your HDTV, Phone, and Camera.

via HP Expands Recall of Notebook Computer Batteries Due to Fire Hazard.

Mark Gorton, LimeWire’s founder, could see a federal court decision force his company to shut down operations possibly very soon.

On Wednesday, CNET broke the news that U.S. District Judge Kimba Wood granted summary judgment in favor of the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA), which filed a copyright lawsuit against LimeWire in 2006. In her decision, Wood ruled Lime Group, parent of LimeWire software maker Lime Wire, and founder Mark Gorton committed copyright infringement, induced copyright infringement, and engaged in unfair competition.

“It is obviously a fairly fatal decision for them,” said Michael Page, the San Francisco lawyer who represented file sharing service Grokster in the landmark case, MGM Studios, vs. Grokster and also represented Lime Wire’s former CTO in the company’s most recent copyright case. “If they don’t shut down, the other side will likely make a request for an injunction and there’s nothing left but to go on to calculating damages.”

With an injunction, the RIAA can force LimeWire to cease file-sharing operations.

via Legal experts: LimeWire likely doomed | Media Maverick – CNET News.

“Although there is no forensic method to determine with certainty how often images stored on the LANrev server were viewed, we found no evidence that any District 3 personnel surreptitiously downloaded images from the LANrev server. Rather, the collection of images from laptops while they were in the possession of students resulted from the district’s failure to implement policies, procedures and recordkeeping requirements, and the overzealous and questionable use of technology by IS personnel without any apparent regard for privacy considerations or sufficient consultation with administrators.“

By and large the study places the lion’s share of the blame on school IT folks, most of whom were already forced to retire. It does seem rather convenient that the district was allowed to hire their own law firm to investigate (at least when lawyers weren’t working with plaintiffs to allegedly help keep evidence out of the hands of federal investigators). That’s of course the first thing the lawyer for the district’s former IS director Virginia DiMedio complained about. While the IT folks certainly appear oblivious and culpable, there seems to be plenty of incompetence to go around. Hopefully higher level administrators aren’t entirely immune to the ultimate fallout, given they failed to pay any attention to the fact their district was busily building a little Macbook surveillance state with little to no accountability.

via Laptop Scandal School’s Own Law Firm: Aside From Those 58,000 Spy Photos, There’s No Evidence Of Spying | Techdirt.

As Adobe investigates this, you must use the following method to disable this risk.

Open up Adobe Reader. Click on Edit on the upper menu bar and then click on the Preferences option at the bottom of the drop down. Click on “Trust Manager” in the left pane. Clear the check box “Allow opening of non-PDF file attachments with external applications”  Click Ok to exit the screen.

For Mac users, the Preferences option can be found under the Adobe Reader name on the upper menu bar.

Researchers from Symantec are reporting on an ongoing targeted malware campaign using a FIFA World Cup 2010 theme, in an attempt to trick end users into executing a malicious PDF file, exploiting a recently patched flaw in Adobe Reader.More details on the campaign:The attackers have downloaded Greenlife’s PDF document, and changed it to include malicious code. They then attempted to email the malicious PDF to a user in a major international organization that brings together governments from all over the world. We should emphasize that downloading the PDF from the Greenlife website is perfectly safe at the time of writing this blog.The attack makes use of a recently patched vulnerability in Adobe Reader – CVE-2010-0188. The patch for this critical rated vulnerability was released by Adobe on February 16, 2010. Since then we have observed a large number of targeted attacks attempting to exploit this vulnerability. Proof-of-Concept exploit code is available in the Internet which is contributing to the large number of observed attacks. The exploit makes use of a flaw in the TIFF file parsing in Adobe Reader. In particular, a stack overflow is caused by inserting a TIFF image into the PDF with a specially crafted “DotRange” tag.

According to recent reports, malicious PDF files not only comprised 80 percent of all exploits for 2009, but also, represent the preferred infection vector for targeted attacks in general, for the first time ever surpassing the use of malicious Microsoft Office files.

Users should not just update their Adobe products, or perhaps even consider an alternative PDF reader, if truly paranoid. They should take a comprehensive approach when dealing with all the 3rd party applications and browser plugins, currently installed.

via FIFA World Cup themed malware campaign spreads malicious PDF files | Zero Day | ZDNet.com.

The FTC complaint alleged that the firm’s identity theft protection and data security claims were false.By Thomas ClaburnInformationWeekMarch 10, 2010 11:19 AMThe Federal Trade Commission on Tuesday announced that identity theft protection company LifeLock has agreed to pay $12 million to the FTC and 35 state attorneys general to settle charges that its service doesn’t work as advertised.The agency says the payment represents one of the largest FTC-coordinated settlements on record. The settlement forbids company principals from making further deceptive claims and requires the company to take measures to protect customer data.

“While LifeLock promised consumers complete protection against all types of identity theft, in truth, the protection it actually provided left enough holes that you could drive a truck through it,” said FTC Chairman Jon Leibowitz in a statement.Since 2006, LifeLock has been charging customers $10 per month to protect them against identity theft. The company rose to prominence as a result of its advertising campaign involving the public display of CEO Todd Davis’s social security number on the side of a truck, ostensibly as proof that its identity theft protection service worked.

The FTC charged that the fraud alerts LifeLock placed on customer accounts weren’t effective against most types of identity theft, that its service claims were false, and that its data protection claims were false.

In 2008, LifeLock was sued in a civil lawsuit that made claims similar to the FTC’s allegations. That lawsuit alleged that “the statements by LifeLock’s CEO regarding the ability of LifeLock to protect his own identity are deceptive because his identity was stolen while he was a customer…”

via LifeLock Settles FTC Charges For $12 Million — InformationWeek.

Scammers are taking advantage of every hot news story out. Do a search for an issue and the results may contain poisoned links that lead to malware. The malware could be in the form of rogue antivirus software, which looks like a professional looking antivirus program and warns you of non-existent infections. The fake apps then push you to buy a license for the software to clean up the fake malware it finds. Once you’ve clicked on that link, look out. Some of the things the downloaded malware will do is steal passwords and logins by recording your keystrokes. It can install programs that will turn your computer into  bot to be used in future infections of other computers. It could be used to hold your data for ransom, where the owner of the malware charges you in order to receive the removal information. In many instances,  you’re reformatting your hard drive and reinstalling your programs.

So, how do you really know that the link you’re clicking on is safe? My preference is to install W.O.T. (Web of Trust) in your browser. When you do a search, W.O.T. will place a circle next to the link and it will be Green for safe, Yellow for caution, and Red for stay-away. The other thing you can do with W.O.T. is to right-click on a link on a website and choose View WOT Scorecard. That will take you to a page that shows you the ratings of the page before you actually visit it. The latest browsers are trying to help keep you safe as well, with built-in phishing and malware protection so it’s recommended that you update your browsers to the most recent versions. You can find the latest version of Firefox here, Internet Explorer here, and Google Chrome here.

Now and in the future, it’s really important to be careful about your browsing. Make sure the links you click on are going to be good for you.

I came across Dial2Do the other day. I’m signing up for the 30 day trial period and will let you know my thoughts, but what it proposes to do is great for those of us on the road a lot.

Not only can you  send texts, but you can create reminders, and even listen to and send e-mail – all while keeping your hands on the wheel and your eyes on the road. For those using Twitter, you can send your tweets verbally. The reminders are transcribed and sent to your listed e-mail account. You can send thoughts and ideas to your Evernote account. You can get local weather, and listen to news feeds, and much more.

The cost? $40/year or $4/month. The cost of a cell phone usage ticket? Around here it’s $275.  I’m going to try it. I’ll report back in a few weeks.

If your laptop computer’s webcam could talk about what it sees, what would it say?

Students of a Pennsylvania school district are hauling educators to court over allegations that administrators remotely activated the webcams on school-issued laptops and used that remote access to spy on students and their family members. (Techmeme)

The civil suit (PDF) was filed last week against the Lower Merion School District in Ardmore, PA, its board of directors and the Superintendent. It alleges violations of the electronic Communications Privacy Act, The Computer Fraud Abuse Act, the Stored Communications Act, the Civil Rights Act, the Fourth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution, the Pennsylvania Wiretapping and Electronic Surveillance Act and Pennsylvania Common Law. In part, the suit reads:

Unbeknownst to Plaintiffs and the members of the Class, and without their authorization, Defendants have been spying on the activities of Plaintiffs and Class members by Defendants’ indiscriminant use of and ability to remotely activate the webcams incorporated into each laptop issued to students by the School District, This continuing surveillance of Plaintiffs’ and the Class members’ home use of the laptop issued by the School District, including the indiscriminant remote activation of the webcams incorporated into each laptop, was accomplished without the knowledge or consent of the Plaintiffs or the members of the class.

The suit notes that there are about 1,800 students in the district’s two high schools and that students were each assigned a laptop computer that was purchased, in part, through state and federal grants secured over the past few years. The suit also notes that all of the written documentation that accompanied the laptop made no reference to the district’s ability to remotely activate the embedded webcam.

The issue came to light in November when an assistant principal informed a student about improper behavior in his home and produced a photograph captured from the laptop’s webcam as proof. The suit did not specify the type of activity the student was engaged in.

Because the webcam would capture images of anything in its range, including the actions of other household members and their guests, the plaintiffs in the case extend to family members, as well as the students themselves.

Sam Diaz

Sam Diaz is a senior editor at ZDNet. See his full profile and disclosure of his industry affiliations.

via When webcams go bad: Students sue school officials for remote spying | Between the Lines | ZDNet.com.