Hey All ::

As we all know, hackers just love the opportunity to take advantage of anything you have on your machine - from rootkits and trojans to attempting to take advantage of outdated versions of applications you have installed.

Introducing Secunia PSI ( secunia.com/products/consumer/psi/ )

This FREE program will scan through all of your windows applications and check them against their centralized databases and provide a series of quick links to get yourself updated to the latest and greatest versions to minimize your vulnerabilities.

I've used it on the machines here in the house and it's really pretty spiffy. I like to think I keep things up-to-date and it was sure happy to point out that I had a few outdated apps.

Give it a stab, it's worth far more than you'll pay for it! =)

--Micah

I'm always skeptical of free-ware from websites. Someone try this out and reply back on how this works. As for me, I'm pretty set, I don't need anything. I got Kaspersky Internet Security 2012, it's a paid license, but it's amazingly easy, and gets the job done.

Yeah I am the same way, I will wait and see it people start blowing up or anything before I try free stuff.

I work for a pretty big company that uses it at a corporate level for any machines on their networks that are not part of the Domain / Automatically Managed it is a requirement - and it's been GREAT. Once I saw they had a free version for home, I took it and ran with it there and wouldn't have wasted either my time nor yours with the post.

But I understand your concerns - stuff like AVG, Avast, Microsoft Security Essentials, anything Google, etc.. yeah all those free things that just kill people.. =)

If you took the time to click a link instead of just responding blindly you probably could have saved three posts! =)

Happy Cynical Monday, All! =)

--Micah

Oh I'm not scared of links Mr. Akkim, I poked around their website enough, just the actual fact of once its on your machine, does it screw with stuff like the registry, etc.

It's not a Mr. Fix-it Tool in and of itself - the only things it does ::

1) installs itself
2) provides you the option to launch at startup (so it's in your systray)
3) provides you the option to scan periodically to keep your software list up-to-date
4) scan your system to find applications installed and what version they are
5) connects to their central database to compare what you have installed to what's out there
6) provides you a list of available updates to various applications they monitor

For example - one that I thought was funky.. I use VMPlayer because I'm too cheap to pay for VMWorkstation. It caught that they'd released an update (May 3rd) and I hadn't installed it so my little icon had changed from Green to Yellow. I clicked on the "click here to update" option in their report and it brought me straight to VMware.com's page for the updated download (instead of having to make a few clicks myself).

If I click the links for .NET v4 being out of date, it kicks me into Windows Update where I download it directly via Microsoft Windows Updates.

As far as I've read and experienced, it does nothing more on it's own.. it just basically pays attention to what you have installed and keeps tabs on things better than I do to keep me informed and updated as best as possible.

I know there's a few folks here in BBF who freely admit they're not all that Computer Savvy.. so I figured offering people up a little protection wouldn't hurt. Anti-Virus tools are good for preventing you from being hurt by viruses once you get them.. but there's nothing wrong with making sure you're running the latest and greatest (and hopefully exploit-free) versions of programs that're out there.

--Micah