Our office will be closed tomorrow - 07/03/09 in honor of Independence Day weekend. This means that we will not be answering the phones that day, but we will still have support available.

If you are in need of assistance email support will still be provided by emailing support@betterantivirus.com - and we will still be processing orders as well over the weekend. Our office will be open again on Monday July 6th. We apologize if this causes an inconvenience to anyone.

Everybody have a fun and safe 4th of July!

Posted by Kyle Reiners at 12:15

Spammers are pumping out an increasing number of garbage messages as they regain their capacity to send spam through hacked PCs, according to the latest statistics released by Google on Wednesday.

Google releases quarterly statistics from its Postini antispam group. For the second quarter, spam volumes are up 53 percent over the first quarter of this year, said Adam Swidler, product marketing manager for Google Enterprise.

Compared to the same period a year prior, spam volumes are up 6 percent. Google posted more information about spam on its enterprise blog.

Google filters around 3 billion to 3.5 billion spam messages a day for its 50,000 or so customers. Spam volumes have been increasingly erratic as some ISPs notorious for allowing spammers to use their infrastructure have been taken offline, Swidler said.

Last month, the U.S. Federal Trade Commission persuaded a federal court to issue a temporary restraining order to shut down Pricewert, an ISP that did business under the names 3FN and APS Telecom. The FTC said Pricewert was entwined with child pornographers, hackers and malicious software developers.

Swidler said Google immediately noticed a 30 percent drop in spam following the shutdown. Pricewert's closure cramped spammers' capacity to send spam through compromised home computers that form botnets.

Posted by Nancy Pursley in Virus & AntiVirus News at 08:32

New versions of ESET Smart Security and ESET NOD32 Antivirus have been released, with additional languages and trial versions to follow.

4.0.437.0 - Danish (DAN), Norwegian (NOR), Swedish (SWE)
4.0.438.0 - Slovenian (SLV)
4.0.441.0 - Chinese Simplified (CHS), Chinese Traditional (CHT)
4.0.447.1 - Finnish (FIN)

Despite the differences in build numbers, the only changes in these releases are localization of the user interface and online help. They all have the same functionality and feature set as version 4.0.437.0. For information about changes in version 4.0.437.0, see the changelog.

Copies of the software can be downloaded from the ESET Download Center. For more information or to request an evaluation copy, contact your local reseller, distributor or ESET office.

Posted by Kyle Reiners at 17:22

The settlement must still be approved by a court

The Federal Trade Commission has suspended the majority of a judgment levied against two defendants accused of selling bogus security software to up to 1 million consumers.

James Reno and his Web hosting company, ByteHosting Internet Service of Ohio, now have to forfeit $116,697, just a fraction of the $1.9 million the judgment had originally required Reno and the company to pay. The settlement must still be approved by a court, the FTC said.

The rest of the penalty was suspended because the defendants wouldn't be able to pay it all, the agency said. However, if it is found that Reno and the company misrepresented their assets, they will have to pay the full amount.

More than $100,000 in assets were frozen after a federal court issued a temporary restraining order in December following the FTC complaint. Among other conditions, the court ordered six people and two companies to stop advertising so-called "scareware" security programs under the names WinFixer, WinAntivirus, DriveCleaner, ErrorSafe and XP Antivirus.

The applications are sold via deceptive pop-up ads that falsely alert people that their PCs have security problems, badgering them with warnings until they buy the software, which can cost around $40.

The FTC complaint asked hosting providers to prevent people from accessing the Web sites that host the programs. The FTC asked the court to force the defendants to forfeit money from the scam and compensate consumers.

Posted by Nancy Pursley in Virus & AntiVirus News at 09:44