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Question from Phillip W.: Rick, I have a Dell laptop with Windows 7 on it and I need your help fixing a problem I’m having with it.
I downloaded a game from a free games website and now some of the keys on my keyboard produce strange characters when I press them.
The letters look normal but they have various punctuation marks added to them almost like I’m typing in a foreign language. How can I fix this?
Rick’s answer: [Read more…]
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Ransomware is a very dangerous type of malware, but luckily most new strains are quickly mitigated thanks to the extra resources the antivirus companies have dedicated to eradicating them.
But that being said, the WannaCry Ransomware cyberworm is still going strong years after it was first discovered.
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One of the great things about modern smartphones and tablets is their ability to run apps that perform a wide variety of useful tasks.
If you can think of something for your device to do on your behalf, there is probably an app for it.
In reality, smartphones and tablets are in fact tiny computers, and the apps they run are actually computer programs, and there’s a downside to that…
Any device that can run a computer program is subject to being attacked by hackers. [Read more…]
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Question from Garland L.: I recently noticed there’s a process called “Runtime Broker” always running when I load Task Manager.
My McAfee antivirus doesn’t flag it as a virus, but it still sounds fishy to me.
I called Office Depot and asked the tech guy about it but he refused to give me an answer about whether this is a virus or not. They said I’d need to bring my computer in and pay them to run a virus check on it.
I ran across your website on Google and saw where you answer people’s questions.
So what’s the deal? Is “RunTime Broker” a virus or not? [Read more…]
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Regular readers of this blog know I often warn against installing apps from any repository besides the Google, Apple and Microsoft app stores because third-party app stores are typically riddled with malicious and malware-laden apps.
The big three mentioned above generally do a pretty good job at ensuring that the apps offered via their app stores are safe, but they are far from perfect.
To that point, a recent discovery by researchers for Dr. Web Antivirus has resulted in Google booting a total of nine malicious apps from the Google Play Store.