files

Can Digital Steganography be used with good intent? Recall -- Last week, I wrote 2 articles on Digital Steganography (pronounced "Stay-Gan-Aw-Gra-Fee"). By definition, Steganography is simply the art of hiding plain data from sight. In the same ... respect, Digital Steganography is the ability to hide a file inside of another file, called the "carrier file". Both articles focused on a question sent in from Infopackets Reader John B., who proposed the question, "If I downloaded a jpeg image file from the Internet, and it has a virus hidden inside ... [can the virus execute ... (view more)

Continuing our conversation on Steganography from Tuesday's edition of the Gazette, Infopackets Reader Mike D. exclaims how he downloaded a .WAV sound file that also contained a Trojan: " Hi Dennis, As part of a talk I gave some time ago on IPSec ... [the IP Security Protocol Working Group], I wandered into the area of Steganography. The topic was of particular relevance to me because I had only just discovered (thanks to PestPatrol ) that a Star Trek sound file that I downloaded from the Internet contained a Trojan!" Side note: Digital Steganography is the ability to hide a file inside ... (view more)

If you think you might be getting a new computer during the upcoming holiday season, make sure you bookmark this review! The one dreadful thing about upgrading to a new computer is the process of having to transfer all your applications, data, and ... files from the old computer to the new one. Fortunately, there is a program called "Move Me" which can make upgrading to a new computer completely hassle-free. What is Move Me? Move Me is an application to simplify the process of configuring the settings from your old computer on a new computer. Move Me transfers all Windows preferences to ... (view more)

I received a fascinating question the other day from Infopackets Reader John B. He writes: " Dear Dennis, I just read about a new privacy program which is able to hides files inside jpeg image files. My question is: If I downloaded a jpeg file from ... the Internet, can it have a virus hidden inside? The reason why I ask is because I found a jpeg image file in my temporary Internet file folder. When I tried to open it, I was told that the file .exe could not be located. I immediately deleted the jpeg and am worried that my PC is now infected. What do you think? " My response: What you ... (view more)

Infopackets Reader Ric J. asks: " Dear Dennis, If I [load Internet Explorer and then] go into Tools -> Internet Options and clean out the History, Temp Files, and the Web Cookies, will that take care of things I might not want [others to] trace ... or pull up [on my computer]?" My Response: Unfortunately, clearing out your Internet History, Temp Files, and Cookies aren't enough to 'clear your tracks', per se. Virtually anyone can hop on your PC and trace where you have been by accessing your Most Recently Used Files history (MRU), such as: Media Player history, Document history (MS ... (view more)

Malcolm C. from Sydney, Australia writes: " Hi Dennis! First of all, thanks for the great Newsletter. It is very helpful and informative. And, now for my problem: I was reading an article in Microsoft Knowledge Base about 'How To Share the same ... email Store Folder among multiple Windows XP users [for a family PC, for example]' ( KB 317031 ) and thought that might be a good idea. Unfortunately, it seems somewhere I have made an error. I have 4 email accounts under my Windows login; now, all but 1 has lost all the emails and folders. The folders have been replaced with the standard Inbox, ... (view more)

Just recently, I discovered another totally cool screensaver. Quebec based Esm Software makes Active Media Player Screen Saver, an application designed to play streaming video while your computer is idle. What is Active Media Player Screen Saver? ... Active Media Player Screen Saver (AMPSS) is a screensaver application capable of playing live video streams in MPEG, AVI, ASF, WMV, or QuickTime format. AMPSS also plays full motion video from your hard drive, giving you unlimited choices for video playback. Active Media Player Screen Saver: Features Play local or remote files: Play video files from ... (view more)

On October 2nd, 2003, I asked Infopackets Readers for some Freeware Picture viewers: Missing Picture Viewer for Windows 98? I am happy to say that I received many responses. In fact, a great deal of readers highly recommended a program called ... IrfanView. From the web site: " IrfanView is a very fast, small, compact and innovative freeware (for non-commercial use) graphic viewer for Windows 9x/ME/NT/2000/XP. It is ... simple [enough] for beginners, and [yet] powerful [enough] for professionals ... Some IrfanView features: Many supported file formats, Multi language support, Thumbnail/ ... (view more)

Editing home movies with a PC is possibly one of the greatest achievements of modern computing. Over the years, families across the globe have collected untold hours of video footage. Until digital editing became affordable, an easy way to share ... those movies didn't exist. Only a few years ago, the software and hardware required for video editing cost thousands of dollars, which didn't include additional costs for training. Prices for entry level video editing apps are now well under $100, but product quality varies greatly. One of the best and most affordable video editing apps for beginners ... (view more)

According to a recent IDC report , "more than 300 million business PCs have a combined 109,000 terabytes of data that is not backed up regularly -- which is about half of all the data on corporate PCs and laptops." That's 10 times the quantity of ... information in the entire Library of Congress! Unfortunately, I know first hand what it's like to lose important data. I never used a backup application until I had a hard drive containing hundreds of hours of writing, music, and video which all vanished in a blink of an eye. If it can happen to an "expert" computer user like me ... (view more)