March 24, 2010

Better Business Bureau (BBB) Accreditation.

Click to verify Better Business Bureau (BBB) accreditation and to see a BBB report.

eAcceleration Corp, a leading antivirus and antispyware company and creator of StopSign® Internet Security software, is proud to announce that we have not only been honored with an “A” rating by the Better Business Bureau (BBB), but we’ve also passed a review of the BBB’s Standards of Trust and have become an official BBB Accredited business.

The name StopSign has become synonymous with complete Internet security, including antivirus, antispyware and firewall protection. It also includes a popup blocker, IM scanner and on-demand scanning for additional security. StopSign also features Custom Cure™ technology, which removes new, unique, and emerging infections if necessary. If a StopSign customer encounters a persistent infection, a trained StopSign technician will develop a Custom Cure specifically for them for no additional charge.

eAcceleration/StopSign is proud of this recognition by the BBB, the leader in marketplace trust, as a reliable and trustworthy business. We’d also like to thank our customers and partners for their continued support.

If you liked this blog post, you may like our Internet security software product "StopSign". If you're tired of paying extra for tech support or to handle difficult malware, or if you want web protection that just works, download & install StopSign and discover why so many people choose us over the other options.

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March 16, 2010

10 Online Safety Tips for Kids and Families.

10 Online Safety Tips for Kids and Families.

You don’t need us to tell you how important online safety for your family is, especially if you have kids still living at home. Local and national news sources help illustrate this point almost every day with stories about online scams, Internet perverts, and worse. But today we’re going to help you prevent any more of those stories by giving out some basic online safety tips for you and your family.

With the proper guidance, you can help make sure that you’ve done everything you can to help your kids surf safely on the Internet. Take a look at the list we’ve compiled below and see if there’s anything here you haven’t tried yet.

  1. Always sit with younger children when they’re online. Keep a few bookmarks that they can easily access to get to kid-friendly web sites.

  2. Help your kids create fun online nicknames that don’t give away personal information.

  3. Keep any computers that are connected to the Internet in an open area where your children can be easily supervised.

  4. Ensure that your kids aren’t sharing personally-identifiable and/or sensitive information with people they meet online. Examples of info to keep private include:

    • his/her real name,

    • the physical address of their home,

    • whether or not their parents, guardians, or other responsible adult are home,

    • any phone number (home or cell), or

    • passwords.

  5. Let them know that it’s not OK to use the Internet to gossip, cyberbully, or threaten anyone online, even if they mean it as a joke.

  6. Let your children know that it’s OK to tell you if something (or someone) on the Internet makes them feel uncomfortable or threatened.

  7. Make sure they know it’s never OK to meet an online friend without parental permission.

  8. Set clear rules for appropriate Internet use. Things you should consider are the types of web sites that are off limits, specific Internet hours, and what (if any) information can be shared online.

  9. Talk to your children about what web sites they visit and who they’re chatting with.

  10. Talk with your kids about computers and be open to their questions.

The online safety tips we’ve listed above are a good starting point for any family with children who are old enough to use computers, but they are by no means an exhaustive list. Monitor how much your kids use the Internet, see what’s working and what isn’t, and stay involved.

If you think we’ve missed anything, or if you have a story about how your family talks about online safety, please leave a comment below. We’d love to hear from you.

Image courtesy of http://www.flickr.com/photos/inferis/ / CC BY-SA 2.0

If you liked this blog post, you may like our Internet security software product "StopSign". If you're tired of paying extra for tech support or to handle difficult malware, or if you want web protection that just works, download & install StopSign and discover why so many people choose us over the other options.

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March 10, 2010

The Importance of Updating Your Software.

The Importance of Updating Your Software.

Many vulnerabilities on a computer can be avoided with a few simple precautions. One of the most important things you can do to avoid infection from malicious software is to keep all of your software updated. Additional benefits to upgrading &/or updating your software usually include bug fixes in the software and new features.

Updating your software on a regular basis is like keeping up with the scheduled maintenance on your car. It keeps all the important parts tuned up, current, and free from defects. Software can be plagued by similar problems, but instead of a pinging sound or a high-pitched squeal you may run into some malware or possibly some data corruption; if you’re lucky maybe you’ll only run into some compatibility problems. In the case of antivirus and/or antispyware software, keeping your software current means receiving the latest definitions on whatever infection is new to the Internet and making the rounds.

Nowadays it’s easier than ever to keep your software updated since many software manufacturers give you the option of automatic or manual updates. It’s usually recommended to allow the software, especially if from a vendor you trust, to automatically update itself so that you don’t have to worry about forgetting to check for updates.

Keep your computer up-to-date and as bug-free as possible by staying on top of software updates.

Image courtesy of http://www.flickr.com/photos/fractal_ken/ / CC BY 2.0

If you liked this blog post, you may like our Internet security software product "StopSign". If you're tired of paying extra for tech support or to handle difficult malware, or if you want web protection that just works, download & install StopSign and discover why so many people choose us over the other options.

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March 3, 2010

Making Facebook Safer for You and Yours.

Making Facebook Safer for You and Yours.

With over 400 million active members at the time of this post’s release, half of which log in at least once per day, Facebook is at the top of the web site food chain. With numbers like that, chances are that if you’re reading this post you’re also a Facebook member, and if you are, there have been a lot of changes in the last few months with regard to Facebook account settings that you may not have updated recently.

You may have updated a few settings when you first set up your Facebook account, but it’s a good time to review what your current settings are and make any changes necessary. We’d like to show you 3 things you can change, update, or do to make your Facebook profile safer and help ensure that only the information you want people to see can be seen.

  1. Account Settings:

    It all starts with a good password. Since Facebook allows you to store a lot of personally-identifiable information, it’s even more important to ensure that the password you use to access Facebook is strong, unique, and known only by you. If you’re not sure how to create a strong password, check out our blog articles “12 Tips for Making a Good Password” and “Bionic Passwords: Better, Stronger, and Faster“.

    To change your Facebook password, click on Account > Account Settings > Password. You should then be prompted to type in your old password (as a safety precaution) and your new password.

  2. Privacy Settings:

    The Facebook privacy settings page has 5 different sections that you can modify, each of which we’ll discuss separately below. For specific details on each section see the actual page itself.

    • Profile Information:

      This section allows you to determine who can see information like your birthday, photos, posts, comments, and information of that nature.

    • Contact Information:

      This section allows you to determine who can see information like your cell phone, home address, website URL, and IM screen names.

    • Applications and Websites:

      If you allow Facebook applications to access your account (including games such as Mafia Wars and 3rd party tools like Twitter), this section allows you to determine what, if any, information those applications can access. You can also select what information your friends can share about you, too.

    • Search:

      This section has 2 very important settings: who can see your search results, and whether or not your Facebook page can be accessed by search engines.

    • Block List:

      Have a virtual stalker on Facebook, or just really tired of someone? You can add them to your Block List and not have to deal with them any more (for the most part).

  3. Watch what information you publish:

    Think twice before publishing anything that is personally identifiable to Facebook or any other web site. Phone numbers, addresses, work locations, and schools you or family members are attending are all examples of things that you might want to keep under wraps. And if you do publish them to your Facebook friends, be sure to double-check all of your Facebook settings (noted above) to make sure that only the people you want seeing them can have access to them.

    Please be especially careful with releasing any information regarding your home address online. Making your home address public isn’t something a lot of people do, but new tools, games, and features on many new phones, web services, etc. allow you to post geolocation data like GPS coordinates, and those can be just as dangerous to make public as your address. Read our blog post “Stranger Danger: Geolocation Features and Internet Safety” for more information.

For more information, check out the official Facebook safety page at http://www.facebook.com/safety/.

Image courtesy of http://www.flickr.com/photos/88526923@N00/ / CC BY 2.0

If you liked this blog post, you may like our Internet security software product "StopSign". If you're tired of paying extra for tech support or to handle difficult malware, or if you want web protection that just works, download & install StopSign and discover why so many people choose us over the other options.

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