New MSN phishing problem

I use several instant messengers. There's a new phishing / trojan (?) program floating around on MSN Messenger. If you get the following message you should not click this:

Hey check this.. http://very.c00l-stuff.com ..brb !!

In fact, as a general rule, don't click on stuff unless you have a good reason.

The scary thing is that the message came from a family member on my contact list. That implies that my family member has an infected PC. So, watch out for unsolicited links to websites and downloads, even from trusted sources. Always double-check.

Internet Health Report

This is a cool tool for us geeks. Internet slow? You're sure it is not your fault? Check your ISP's performance at Internet Health Report.

Our office's Internet was partially sucky this morning. We concluded it was our ISP, XO, was having problems. While waiting on hold, we confirmed our suspicions.

DO THIS!! Block Scams & Porn for Free

Amazingly enough, I have never spoke about OpenDNS on this blog. Your should start using this immediately. Here is their Wikipedia entry.

It's really easy to set up, just so long as you have configured your router before. To start using OpenDNS today, just change your router's DNS servers to 208.67.222.222 and 208.67.220.220 (if you are not sure how, there's a dozen configuration examples of the most common routers on their web site here).

What you'll get immediately is anti-phishing protection and typo protection. There's an example site at www.internetbadguys.com, which looks like this screenshot when you are using OpenDNS. It has helped my mother-in-law out in the past.

To also set up the adult site blocking, see these instructions. There's no signup for the basic anti-phishing, but for adult site blocking you need to give them your IP address some how. This would be the slightly more complicated part, especially if you have a dynamic IP address for your Internet connection. However, OpenDNS supports dynamic IP addresses, too.

I've configured this for church, and it was easy and free. Totally worth the 30 minutes it'll take you to read and configure this. Even if you don't go for the porn blocking thing (if dynamic DNS is too complicated for you), use OpenDNS anyway for the anti-phishing.

Some important links:
Common router configurations
Adult Site Blocking
Dynamic IP address configuration