If you were computer conscious in the 1990s, you probably remember these often laughable but inevitably highly dangerous e-mails that would come in with amazing regularity from Nigeria, which was at that time, one of Africa’s richest countries.  At that time of considerable security upheaval in the country, it became a common fact that the government had decided to freeze international bank accounts of the families and friends of former Nigerian dictator Sani Abacha.  The e-mails would come from individuals who were  claiming to be  family members  of the dictator himself or high ranking members of his government who were no longer with us, and who had left  millions of dollars  in Swiss bank accounts so that the Nigerian authorities could not get their greedy hands on it. All that was required was to pay  a few dollars for the information on how the fund and those successful in releasing it, could earn a finders of fee of 15% of the sum, which could add up to a few hundred thousand dollars, pounds or whatever. Needless to say no one ever saw the finder’s fee, as the money never existed.

Luckily all but a very stupid or very greedy few fell victim to this highly unsophisticated scam, known as an “advance fee fraud,” However the proceeds must have been well invested because over the years Nigeria has become a mini world center for phishing scams, some of them fairly sophisticated, using fake sites that steal e-mail login information and send distress calls to contacts.

Nigerian phishers are reported to have focused their attention on the social-networking sites to find potential victims for their advance fee scams evolved targeting the more naive people that might use instant messaging and online social networks and seem to be more likely to answer such a call

The Nigerian Government’s Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) are well aware of the bad reputation that they have built up over the years and in 2009 launched an awareness campaign to warn citizens of the country of the bad reputation they were earning Nigeria and the punishment that would be meted out to those caught in such nefarious activities. The EFCC also conducted raids on cybercafés in Lagos and other Nigerian cities, and made a few arrests, but the problem has not only not been solved it appears to have gotten worse.

 In one of the latest scams, e-mail accounts have been compromised and messages are sent to everyone on the contacts list, saying that e-mail account owner has been the victim of a robbery in Nigeria needs money to sort out local expense before they can fly home.  Needless to say, someone with the right anti-virus software in place need never fall victim to a Nigerian phishing scam.

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Tags: Anti Virus, Digital Download Products, Mcafee, Phishing Scams, Spam, Trojan Horses, Viruses

It may be difficult to believe but Napster has been around now for more than a decade. A lot has happened in that decade, to the internet as well as to the music industry, and you can even say that Napster is responsible for some interesting developments in both. One thing for sure is that when a young university student named Shawn Fanning first thought of the Napster he had no idea where it might lead. Most people believe that his idea was pretty innocent, and all that the young Fanning wanted to do was to allow thousands of people who had legally downloaded their favourite music to their hard discs to share it with others. Little did anyone would realise how popular the idea would become, and the shockwaves that it would cause throughout the music industry, who claimed, and it appears rightly, that file sharing was illegal, because it was depriving them with the royalties that they needed to earn to fuel future investments and to pay the artists.  

Eventually the Napster issue hit the courts with Fanning and his representatives complaining that they were merely acting as brokers without charge and that the actual file sharing was taking place between people who were not part of the Napster network. However what shot their argument in the foot was the discovery that Napster had stored eight million songs on their servers, and had paid little or no royalties on them.

Napster lost their case and had to close down their website, but in their short life they had changed forever how people looked upon the internet and copyright issues. The music industry were also alive to the fact that change had to come, and the approached the people who had taken over Napster after Fanning with a very clever offer, and one that is regarded as being the ideal compromise situation.   

The compromise was that Napster would pay $10 million in damages, which would be apportioned to the various music publishers whose songs Napster still held in the drivers, as well as a form of royalty for the use of the songs in the future.  That meant that Napster’s activities are not only entirely legal but also the leading source for legally downloadable music anywhere in the World. 

Through Napster’s UK subsidiary the public can listen to any of the ten million tracks that Napster hold for just £5.00 a month. In a classic everybody wins situation, and one that is regarded as a precedent for other downloading sites for the future.

Tags: Digital Download Products, Downloading music, Music Piracy, Napster, napster music downloads

The digital music scene has changed the habits of those who enjoy listening to music, and not just the kids. Today anyone can access their favourite music and for a few pennies a track. At one time, there were LPs, EPs and later CDs. These things took up an awful lot of space, gathered a lot of dust and were difficult to keep track of what was on them. Single discs were OK in the days of the old fashioned record player, but the most you can stack on top of each other on your old record player was maybe three or four. Inevitably they would fall and one would get scratched, and it was only good after that for being made into an ashtray. LPs were less problematic in that way but, apart from a few notable exceptions, only about one out of three of the tracks were worth listening to, and truth be told, CDs were much of the same.

That is is probably why when Napster first appeared on the scene, they were so popular. Music lovers could download all their favourite tracks and transfer them to portable devices  to listen to them in the  car or at home, in fact everywhere they needed to be. The problem was that the music industry took exception to the concept of  file sharing, and if it was allowed to continue would eventually signal the death of the music industry.

Downloading music began to be regarded as  a serious offence, causing  the people whose concept Napster was to temporarily withdraw their service and regroup. They were well aware of the  tremendous demand for easy access music  and began friendly discussions with the music publishers to see if a compromise situation could be reached. Thankfully it was and today  less than ten years later Napster is not only entirely legal but has become the World’s largest online record library,

Music lovers can now take a subscription that averages  £5.00  a, month ( if paid quarterly in advance) or £7.00 if paid monthly. For that sum, subscribers to Napster UK can take advantage of on-demand streaming of the 10 million tracks in the Napster catalogue, all legal and virus free,

This has proved to be a win-win situation for everyone concerned, and signals an end to CD racks, album tracks and vinyl records spread out across the floor. 

Tags: Digital Download Products, Downloading music, Music, Napster, napster music downloads

Most people are reluctant to take the news on board, but mobile phones are to all intents and purposes mini computers and as such are as vulnerable to hackers as anything else that is hooked to the internet. This fact was hammered how a few days ago with the news that a Vodafone HTC Magic mobile phone from was found to contain malware. The Trojan horse attack was discovered completely by chance by a person who works for one of the less well known anti-virus security software developers. She discovered the virus after connecting her phone to her home computer to download some photographs. The alert worker was amazed and bemused to discover that a password stealing Trojan was in residence. The hackers had programmed their Trojan so that it would only activate when transmitting to a Windows based computer, which is becoming increasingly common these days.

The virus software industry is becoming aware of an increase in this trend, with a number of the leading companies now offering a specialist program for mobile phone protection.  The mystery that remains unsolved is how the two virus files with the titles of “autorun.inf” and “autorun.exe” had found themselves on the phone, with suspicions that a botnet had succeeded in infiltrating it.  Further investigation by Vodafone found that no less than 3,000 phones, all of them sold through the company’s Spanish subsidiary had been infected. 

Vodafone were apparently taken aback by the attack, and hastily released the following statement:

“Vodafone takes the security and privacy of its customers extremely seriously and launched an immediate investigation into this incident. Following extensive Quality Assurance testing on HTC Magic handsets in several of our operating companies, early indications are that this was an isolated local incident. Vodafone keeps its security processes under constant review as new threats arise, and we will take all appropriate actions to safeguard our customers’ privacy.”

Reading between the lines, no device is safe from cyber hackers, and the fact that they were able and willing to plant some fairly powerful malware and let it lie in wait till it would find a PC to attack, shows the extent of the sophistication and guile that they are prepared to go to in search of the rich pickings of cyber crime.

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Tags: Digital Download Products, Malware, Mcafee, Trojan Horses, Viruses, Vodafone

It’s not every day that you can say that something was an “overnight sensation” but when Napster hit the fledgling internet scene it certainly was one of them. The concept of music sharing was certainly very innovative and seemed even innocent. If you have a nice song that you liked to listen to, why not share that experience with others. Napster provided that platform and it turned out that there were millions who were just waiting to leap on it.

Unfortunately, like many other overnight sensations, in the cold light of dawn Napster was seen to have no small amount of wrinkles and warts. First of all the music companies and artists hated it, as it was depriving them of income and royalties. On the other hand, computer hackers loved Napster and all these millions of downloads and uploads proved an ideal vehicle for transferring all kinds of viruses to unprotected computers all over the world.  

Napster in its “illegal” framework could not continue, and the courts decided after a long and drawn out legal battle that music sharing in Napster mode was basically a breach of copyright and subsequently a criminal offence. And just to show that they weren’t playing any games, a number of “music lovers” who didn’t take courts at their word and continued to deal in pirated music found themselves “guests” of various governments around the World.  

The people behind Napster quickly got the message and closed down their website to review their position. They were still very aware that there was a tremendous demand for easy access downloadable music, and that the public would pay money to access it, and not necessarily download it. Downloading music means paying for it, and listening to music means that the track is not your property but you can still enjoy access to it for a minimal fee. That was the principal that brought the new Napster and music industry together and has made Napster the World’s largest reservoirs of digital music.  . 

Napster  have now an offshoot in the UK,  offering  around unlimited streaming from their ten million plus catalogue of songs to suit very taste as well as the chance to legally download five MP 3 tracks a month for just £5.00.

 The arrangement that Napster succeeded in working out with the music industry and the understanding of the global music loving public that there are no free lunches has proved to be an example of a situation where everybody wins, except of course the spam hackers who have long since moved on in search of  their ill gotten gains.

When Thinking about music Downloads thing Do It Legally www.napster-music-download.co.uk  Get 5 free MPs each month with membership Sign up Now and Get 3 months for the Price Of 2

Tags: Digital Download Products, Downloading music, legal music source, Music Downloads, Napster

Like Facebook and Twitter of today, Napster was a bit of a trailblazer in its day. Yet unlike these two current media superstars, there was a problem with Napster, and that was that they service they provided was basically illegal and for that reason was eventually closed down.  But not before they set an industry trend that was so original that it had to be continued, and it was only right that the people whose vision Napster was would be the ones who would continue to develop the company and its services and take it to the heights of international success that it would achieve at international levels.

The original Napster began its online presence in 1999, Founded by two university students named Shawn  Fanning and, Sean Parker, their concept was an immediate success, Fanning’s idea was to allow  the millions of people who had music on their hard discs to share it with others.  Fanning and Parker claim that they had no idea that what they were doing was illegal, the simply thought that they would provide a service, initially without earning any money, that would allow these millions of songs to be shared with others.  The Napster site grew so popular, that it was possible to locate even the most obscure music file using its user-friendly interface, which soon began to contain lots of advertising links to justify Fanning and Parkers hard work and vision.

Soon Napster discovered that their idea was not to be very well accepted by the vast international music companies such as Sonny, Universal Studio and the Bertelsmann Music Group (BMG) who between them owned the copyrights on millions of songs, going back fifty tears and more.  These companies were dead against this free file saving concept and they used the full weight of the law to force Napster to cease and desist from their file sharing exploits, and with no time to be wasted.  Napster contested that they were merely holder of a huge directory and that the actual file transfers were taking place between computers that were not part of the Napster network, The fact that Napster were also holding more than eight million songs in stock, with the bulk of them also being illegally transferred was the fact that lost Napster the case.  

Big business  won their case and in less than two years from when they made their first online appearance, Napster were not only forced to cease broadcasting online, but also were bound to pay music creators and copyright owners a $26 million settlement for their  past and is it now transpired  unauthorized uses of music. What they also agreed to do was to pay a $10 million advance against future licensing royalties of the music they had downloaded.

That $10 million proved to be money very well spent and now Napster is not only entirely legal also has remained the World’s largest company for downloading music. 

Now you can download MP3s for a nominal fee as well as listen to any of the ten million tracks that Napster hold through their UK subsidiary.

Napster UK now offers unlimited streaming as well the opportunity to download five legal MP 3 tracks for just £5.00 a month. For people who are just joining Napster and agree to pay the first two months e will get the third month free. Knowing that you can legally download music of your choice as well keeping the music industry alive and well has to be worth that.

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Tags: Digital Download Products, Facebook, legal music source, Music, Music Downloads, Music Piracy, Napster, Twitter

It wasn’t that long ago that anyone who dared to mention the word, Napster in the company of a recording artist or a music production company was liable to get struck over the head by a gold disc. The frenzy when the public discovered that they could download just about all of their favourite songs for free was tremendous. What they didn’t know at the time was as they were downloading all that “free” music they were also downloading the forerunners of some of the most powerful computer viruses that ever walked this planet.

The presence of Napster and those like them on the scene caused tremendous damage to the record companies as well as the talented artists who provided the songs. This was obviously a situation that could not continue, and eventually became, and still remains, a criminal offence to download music. The court systems of the World saw downloading music as a serious offence, and several people who didn’t take the warnings seriously and continues to download pirated music found themselves behind bars.

The record companies won their victory and Napster as well as their competitors in the pirate music industry saw the writing on the wall and withdrew their service.

Such was the demand for easy access downloadable music that Napster raised like a phoenix from the ashes; Today Napster is not only entirely legal but has become the World’s largest company for downloading music. 

Most people don’t like to steal, and the compromise in the music industry that allows the public to listen to music without having to pay for it has made for a total legitimisation of downloading music, a situation that 99% of the players involved in the scenario feel comfortable with. Today it is possible to download MP3s for a nominal fee and play them in your car, your mobile telephone and even on your computer.

Napster UK have pulled out a lot of stops to be the most competitive against their main rivals, which today are iTunes owned by Apple in the United States  and the European based Spotify.  ITunes are selling songs individually at around 80 pence for the latest hits, although they do claim that they can go as low as 50 pence for the older classics. Spotify, who claim that they have over five million tracks in their library are also selling MP3 tracks at around 65 pence, across the board.

Napster UKs offer is based around unlimited streaming as well as five MP 3 tracks for just £5.00 a month. For new members that pay the first two months free will get the third month free. That means 15 tracks for £10.00 or 66 pence a track, from a choice of eight million tracks. It’s hard to argue with these figures as well as the knowledge that you can download the music of your choice without risk and in the knowledge that you are playing you part in keeping the industry alive. 

It wasn’t that long ago that anyone who dared to mention the word, Napster in the company of a recording artist or a music production company was liable to get struck over the head by a gold disc. The frenzy when the public discovered that they could download just about all of their favourite songs for free was tremendous. What they didn’t know at the time was as they were downloading all that “free” music they were also downloading the forerunners of some of the most powerful computer viruses that ever walked this planet.

The presence of Napster and those like them on the scene caused tremendous damage to the record companies as well as the talented artists who provided the songs. This was obviously a situation that could not continue, and eventually became, and still remains, a criminal offence to download music. The court systems of the World saw downloading music as a serious offence, and several people who didn’t take the warnings seriously and continues to download pirated music found themselves behind bars.

The record companies won their victory and Napster as well as their competitors in the pirate music industry saw the writing on the wall and withdrew their service.

Such was the demand for easy access downloadable music that Napster raised like a phoenix from the ashes; Today Napster is not only entirely legal but has become the World’s largest company for downloading music. 

Most people don’t like to steal, and the compromise in the music industry that allows the public to listen to music without having to pay for it has made for a total legitimisation of downloading music, a situation that 99% of the players involved in the scenario feel comfortable with. Today it is possible to download MP3s for a nominal fee and play them in your car, your mobile telephone and even on your computer.

Napster UK have pulled out a lot of stops to be the most competitive against their main rivals, which today are iTunes owned by Apple in the United States  and the European based Spotify.  ITunes are selling songs individually at around 80 pence for the latest hits, although they do claim that they can go as low as 50 pence for the older classics. Spotify, who claim that they have over five million tracks in their library are also selling MP3 tracks at around 65 pence, across the board.

Napster UKs offer is based around unlimited streaming as well as five MP 3 tracks for just £5.00 a month. For new members that pay the first two months free will get the third month free. That means 15 tracks for £10.00 or 66 pence a track, from a choice of eight million tracks. It’s hard to argue with these figures as well as the knowledge that you can download the music of your choice without risk and in the knowledge that you are playing you part in keeping the industry alive.

When Thinking about music Downloads thing Do It Legally www.napster-music-download.co.uk. Get 5 free MPs each month with membership Sign up Now and Get 3 months for the Price Of 2

Tags: Digital Download Products, Downloading music, Music, Music Piracy, Napster

Someone who spends a long time as one with a piece of machinery or equipment knows pretty soon if something is not working as it should or did not so long ago, It could be a car, bus or truck driver that feels that their vehicle’s engine is not firing on all of its cylinders, or a housewife who know without being told that her spin drier is not rotating fast enough.  With a computer it sometimes takes a little longer to discern that there is a problem. However in time, the owner or operator will begin to reach a situation where it will no longer be possible to ignore that all is not well.

First of all the computer will begin to operate at a much slower pace and the owner will automatically suspect that a mechanical malfunction has occurred.  They may even get as far as taking their computer to a technician for it to be checked over. Unless the technician is really on the ball, and not all of them are, they will not pick up on the fact that the computer has been compromised. What is important to remember is that a computer virus rarely causes a computer to stop operating. That would defeat the purpose. Inevitably the visit to the computer technician winds up with the customer being charged a chunk of money, and leaving the premises, scratching their heads, none the wiser. 

The next stage in the mystery, is that the computer is taken home, sat up and continues to work at minimum capacity. Suddenly out of the blue, strange, uninvited and decidedly unwelcome pop up messages will bring to show up, offering all kind of products that you neither want to buy nor even want to know that they exist. 

What you, and the computer technician, may have suspected has actually occurred. Your computer has been attacked by spyware, and these messages will continue to pop up at an increased frequency.  And there is only one thing that can be done about. You guessed it.  To take the computer back to the “repair shop” and pay out what it takes to have these viruses driven from it, and hopefully forever.

As we all know, prevention is an awful lot better than cure, and if your computer technician is worth the diploma printed on their wall, will not allow you to leave their premises until they have convinced you to install a professional anti-virus program on your computer.

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Tags: Anti Virus, Digital Download Products, Mcafee, Trojan Horses, Viruses

UK Cabinet Minister Ed Miliband as well as several other members of the British upper class are among those who have fallen victim to a

phishing attack through Twitter. The virus attack came to light when UK Secretary for Energy and Climate Change Miliband began to notice that his Twitter account was transmitting spam tweets, sending messages of a highly explicit nature. The message included a link that invited visitors to enter their personal information, which then fell into the hands of the hackers behind the phishing scheme.  

Twitter were not slow to issue a warning, asking subscribers to keep their eyes open for direct messages (DMs)  containing phrases like  ” is this you??’ or ‘LOL is this you’ as well as  a link. If they receive such a message, they should discard it immediately.  Anyone who does fall victim to the scam will not only be likely to pass on their sensitive personal information as well as sending out some fairly lurid messages to friends and foes alike.

Also known to be a definite victim of the phishing scam is a key executive of the online branch of a major UK bank, who has seemingly spent the better part of last week on the phone apologising and explaining that the messages (as well as the offers they contained) did not come from him.  Others who refuse to either confirm or deny that they may have fallen victim include another very highly placed Labour official to a number of print and radio journalists.

Software security analysts have reported an increased interest in compromising Twitter accounts, supposedly as a reaction to Google, Microsoft, and Yahoo’s recent steps that will increasingly integrate nearly real-time data such as Twitter posts into their search engine results. This has apparently left a number of openings for hackers to use Twitter as well as the other social networking tools to target keywords. These keywords particularly include news events, which they use to secure prominent positions. When a surfer clicks on the link, malware, .such as that used to affect Ed Miliband among others is then introduced onto the computer or mobile phone.

Such a short term yet potentially damaging attack goes to show that once again people who like instant access to information cannot afford to leave anything to chance. Phishers are working flat out to devise new schemes to harvest sensitive and often classified information, that .can cause tremendous harm if it falls into the wrong hands as well as severe  embarrassment in many cases.

That’s why every individual and organisation should take their internet security very seriously.   

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Tags: Anti Virus, Anti-Phishing software, Digital Download Products, Ed Miliband, Mcafee, phished, Phishing, phishing fraudsters, Phishing Scams, Trojan Horses, Twitter, Viruses

Anyone who ever saw the film “Gremlins” will remember that he film had a very important message part form being kind of cute? It was about a little boy who wanted to claim as a pet a very unusual but potentially very dangerous gremlin. Although before agreeing, its former owner made the boy and his family promises that they would never beak any one of three simple rules. If not the consequences could be catastrophic.  Of course the boy broke the rules and that cute little gremlin in the corner became a monster. The same thing can happen to your shiny new computer if you don’t observe an even simpler rule.  And that is, to make sure your computer is protected from viruses at all time.

Owning a computer and having it in your home, believe it or not, is a responsibility and one that should be taken very seriously.  If you don’t you will soon discover a load of hackers, spammers, and viruses have invaded your computer and with it your life. That means that a computer owner can ill afford not to follow some basic steps in protecting their home computer and the information that it contains.  

The most important step is to make sure that a proper anti-virus program has been installed. A sure sign of a worthwhile anti-virus computer software is that that it is on sale at reputable stores, and not just online. You really have to take a second look at software that is only available for download and does not come in a boxed, CDrom version.

It has to be said that here are no shortage of virus protection programs available both on the internet of in office apply centres and computer stores.  Never install an anti-virus program that suddenly appears as pop up on your computer. There is no surer sign that at best the program is a fake and at worse it contains even more viruses!

Many people like to have the security of having a boxed version of the programs they buy as a backup, although these days it really isn’t necessary.  When you bring your new computer home, you will most always find that a trial version of one of the top antivirus programs will have been bundled with it, and you have nothing to lose by giving it a try. If you are happy with it, then there is no reason not to update to a licensed version when the trail period runs out. The other option is try a few other virus protection programs for a trial, and then once you have decided which one suit you best, either download it from the internet whilst ordering a back up boxed version which will be delivered to your home in a few days.

Whatever to do keep your computer protected and don’t let the gremlins in.

Tags: Anti Virus, Digital Download Products, Gremlins, Mcafee, Trojan Horses, Viruses