@Platypus Man: And I would have gotten away with it too if it weren't for you meddling kids!

I like Gawker's implemented security. If you inadvertently type your password in a post it just prints asterisks...see? ******

@Prairie Moon: I'm still trying to kick my oxygen addiction.

@Midnite1: Not to be a negative Nancy, but recently an update to Bit Defender -trashed- a lot of systems. [www.krebsonsecurity.com]

@johnsonjunk: "Clicking what you're not supposed to" isn't even enough if you hit a booby-trapped website which can download files to your system without your knowledge. Personally, I haven't run across this virus yet but I'm a big proponent of NoScript. I don't know if it has saved me from this virus in particular,…

I decided to give this CD a spin and scan my system. It said one of the files associated with WinRar was infected, "Default.sfx" I seem to remember this issue in the past as being a false positive. Some quick googling also revealed this file as a popular false positive. I scanned the same file with MSE and MBAM…

Since this "Security Essentials 2010" infection seems to be the soup du jour, I'm curious as to which avenue are most victims contracting this? Hijacked websites? Email attachments? It seems like we've already had our pound of cure, how about our ounce of prevention?

@Beall49: I had a friend who just went through this. For some reason she was able to install it when she dl'd it with IE but not Firefox. So, try IE maybe. I know that's a less than technical explanation but I wasn't there so I'm not sure how or why this is.

One funky thing about Secunia is that it uses Flash. So before you uninstall old Flash and reinstall the latest Flash, you need to quit Secunia which is something it doesn't tell you.

@JDavis: Not to worry, it was clearly a professional stunt cat.

The disclaimer "This call -may- be recorded," is actually giving you permission. ;)

@InsanePenguin: To extend this toilet tangent a bit, I always wished there was a big red button to shut off the water in case of a toilet overflow situation, or even better an automatic overflow detection/water shut-off. Sure, if you're a ninja you can dart to the manual valve but those things are usually stiff and…

Whatever you do, don't ask this guy.

One time-saver I discovered was the FEBE addon for Firefox. It backs up your addons, cookies, history, bookmarks, etc. So basically when you restore, your Firefox is as it was. I'd also recommend doing a fresh install of Win7 if at all possible vs. the in-place upgrade.

@BiznessMan: You -should- have to opt in, rather than opt out. I think if Google had tried that approach, people would be less irate.

It might be worth mentioning that Windows 7 is set to defrag once a week by default (search for Disk Defragmenter). I don't think this was true with Vista and XP. Occasionally, I like to run JKdefrag from an OS on another partition so it can defrag my system files (of which many get omitted when you defrag normally).

As a compromise, you can go into your control panel to "indexing options" and select only specific folders you want indexed. However, I've found that Win 7 seems to handle indexing much better than Vista which would endlessly access my HD to index it.

Yet even more reasons to use NoScript. With Firefox, I use Cookie monster which makes it easier to manage cookie permissions (set to reject by default). Better Privacy also deletes flash cookies at browser startup, shutdown or over time, etc. Also, "TACO" gives you opt-out cookies for around 90 major companies and…

Yet even more reasons to use NoScript. With Firefox, I use Cookie monster which makes it easier to manage cookie permissions (set to reject by default). Better Privacy also deletes flash cookies at browser startup, shutdown or over time, etc. Also "TACO" gives you opt-out cookies for around 90 major companies and…

@ddpedersen: I'm not sure how many "power users" use IE.