ZoneAlarm Blog: Information and news about internet security, virus protection, spyware removal, and more...

Two Interesting Credit Card Reports

I came across two interesting posts regarding credit cards in the past two days and wanted to pass them along. The first is regarding credit score calculations (FICO Score). As you probably know, this score determines many things:

• How much interest you might pay on large loans (mortgage, auto, boat)
• Your credit worthiness as seen by other agencies
• Prices for auto/homeowner insurance

The first article explains what types of activities impact your FICO score and looks at some common mistakes. These mistakes include:

• Canceling old credit cards
• Staying current on “most” of your cards
• Having too many open lines of credit

The second article provides 50 Fun Facts About Credit Cards (credit cards and fun? Paying interest on borrowed money is not my idea of fun ;) and contains both good information for credit card users and some interesting trivia. Here are a couple very important points from the article:

• If you have multiple balances with different interest rates on one card, payments are generally applied to the balance with the lower interest rate. You will have no choice in the matter and you cannot request it be made to the higher balance. So if you have a $100 balance at 19.99% and a $5,000 balance at 4.99%, your payments apply to the $5,000 at 4.99% first. A note about this will be in your agreement.

• Each American household receives approximately 6 offers a month. The typical response rate is .33% (one third of one percent). You can opt out of these mailings via OptOutPrescreen. [plus, this reduces junk mail, prevents bad guys from getting the offer and submitting it]

Since it's the start of the new year, it might be a good time to commit to closer management of your credit information, including a review of your current credit report.

ZoneAlarm Security Suite 7.0: New AV Engine

ZoneAlarm 7.0 has been released and is available for download. One of the major improvements for 7.0 is the new AV engine. I wanted to provide some extra details about why this improvement is so important.

The Extended Database:
The new AV scanner will scan not just for Viruses, but also Trojans, Keyloggers, Remote access tools (in case someone attempts to install VNC server on your system without your knowledge). This is all done in the AV scan itself and also extends to the on-access scanning. Most other AV scanners limit the on-access scanning to virus-only -- they don't provide on-access scanning for trojans, keyloggers, etc.

This means that if a keylogger (or other malware that isn't specifically a virus) gets loaded on your system and attempts to start, the on-access scanning can catch and quarantine it. After you conduct a scan, in the scan results window, you may see malware with "not-a-virus" pre-pended to the virus name. This usually means it was detected by the Extended Database.

If you have installed a remote access tool like VNC, and it's getting picked up by the scanner (remember, bad guys use these tools on compromised machines as well), you can use "Ignore Always" in the scan result window. This adds that program to the "Exception list" and the scanner will ignore it during subsequent AV scans.

To enable or disable the Extended Database entirely, go to Anti-virus | Main and select Advanced Options. In Advanced Options, go to Scan Options and deselect the check box that says "Enable extended database".

ZoneAlarm products also provide the Anti-spyware scanner which still operates as it did before -- this new function of the Extended Database expands coverage and adds on-access protection for spyware contained in the Extended Database. It's almost like having two independent spyware scanners on your system -- these two powerful, complimentary anti-spyware technologies provide the best protection possible.

Read more about other significant changes in ZoneAlarm Internet Security Suite 7.0.

 

Using the Z100G Remote Desktop

The Z100G has a built in function that allows you to connect to a PC behind (and protected by) the Z100G through the management interface.

Here's how it works:

• First you enable the remote desktop on the target PC (under Control Panel | System)

• Next you connect to the target PC through the Z100G. The Z100G uses a dynamic DNS service to allow you to connect when you are away from home.

• Last, you select the "Remote Desktop" link and it launches a new window with your remote PC desktop

The login to the Z100G and all communication with the remote PC is encrypted using an SSL tunnel.

Here are more technical details from the Z100G PDF:

The Remote Desktop Protocol (Microsoft RDP) uses TCP Port 3389. You do not need to create specific firewall rules to open this port on the gateway: the port is opened dynamically between the remote desktop client and the server host as needed. This means that the port is not exposed to the Internet, and you can use the remote desktop feature without compromising your security.

Tearing up Your Credit

What happens if you tear up a credit card application, tape it back together and send it in? Someone did just that to see if it would be accepted -- read on to find out what happened.