A registry cleaner is a piece of software designed for the operating systems from Microsoft. Its main purpose is to erase duplicate entries or any unwanted entries from the Windows Registry.

Nevertheless, some security experts hold completely different opinion on the usefulness of registry cleaners and have discarded their benefits to remove redundant or unwanted items.

The issue becomes even grimmer in light of the fact that scareware and malware are usually linked with such utilities.

Registry Cleaners refer to a piece of software that tries to make Windows Registry free of configuration data which is of no use or is redundant on the computer that will improve the performance of a slow computer.

Configuration data usually exists in the Windows Registry in various forms such as useless information, settings for the installation or operation of malware and information of uninstalled software.

A Registry Cleaner scans the Windows Registry to detect unnecessary values so that they could be repaired or deposed.

Benefits:

Registry cleanup software, or registry cleaner, could enhance system performance by sanitizing the registry of unwanted data.

As manual cleaning of unwanted data and illogical entries would not be feasible, registry cleanup software is a significant tool that automatically hunts for invalid entries, broken links and missing references to files within the registry and repair them.

There are several benefits of repairing an invalid Registry key.

Until and unless majority of applications have shifted to .NET Framework, which is not dependent on the registry for the setting of applications, registry cleaners will always have a critical role to play.

Some of the registry cleaners present users with restore and backup facilities, which enable them to undo the undesirable changes done by the registry cleanup software.

Computer users, who usually add or remove applications, should have Registry Cleaner installed in their systems. But security experts believe that virtual machines are perfect systems for Registry Cleaner installation because they need reliable reverting means to go back to the best known testing scenario.

Although Registry Cleaners keep the Windows Registry clean off unwanted material, some security experts disagree with this claim and questioned their benefits.

With SPAM being such a problem it might seem the right thing to do is never give anyone your email address. As a strategy that’s not bad but it misses one rather important point; the purpose of having an email address is to be able to exchange emails, both with friends and also as a means to receive eZines from online forums and information sites. In theory any one of these sources could share your email address with a spammer (perhaps by listing it on a public site) and before you know it your email box is full of emails you don’t want and can’t stop… note, we do not do this, your address is safe with us.

Therefore what you need would seem to be a list of separate email addresses, all of which are yours, that you allocate out to the different email lists and online forums you have. That way if one of the addresses gets picked up by the spammers you can just drop and block that one address (and perhaps the list it was subscribed to) and continue in your low or no-SPAM world.

So how do we do this?

What we’re going to do is use one “real” email account (ideally with a hard to guess name) and then a set of forwarded email addresses, all of which are different, but all point back to the real email address. Typically your ISP (Internet Service Provider) provides a small number of email-boxes for you (normally called “POP3″ mailboxes). Choose one of these to be your “real” email address and point your email client to it (follow the instruction in your email client such as Outlook Express and ISP to do this). Then we need to register a domain name which will allow us to have lots of forwarded email addresses. 123-Reg.com
are an example of a company that provides an inexpensive high-quality service to do this, so we’ll use them
as an example. Create an account, it’s free to do this, and give them your real email address. Then you should register a domain name with them; obviously you need to think of a domain name which you would like as part of your “public face.” Choosing a name you like can take a little thought, but don’t take too long, domain names are being registered at the rate of one every two seconds, so get in to secure yours as soon as you can! The cost is very low, with .uk domains at around UK£3 / US$5 per year and .com/.net around UK£9 / US$15 per year (note, you should register for at least two years). Using the email forwarding option from the 123-reg.com control panel, set the catch-all address as your real email address. Then any emails sent to any name at your domain will be forwarded on to you automatically.

Here’s a worked example for Brenda Wyatt.

• Brenda’s ISP supplied POP3 email address is brenda@myisp.com
• She creates an account at 123-reg.com and registers the domain “WyattMail.net”
• She sets up email forwarding via the 123-reg control panel to forward all emails received to @wyattmail.net to brenda@myisp.com.

Now when Brenda signs up to a forum or email list she gives an email address which is individual to that list. Let’s say she registers with Amazon, she could register as ‘Amazon@wyattemail.net’. They will send emails to that address which will be forwarded to her brenda@myisp.com email address and she can read them as she wishes.

The nice thing about this system is that Brenda hasn’t had to go anywhere else to register the email address ‘Amazon@wyattemail.net’, 123-reg just sees the wyattemail.net part and sends it on for her.

So what happens if she finds one of her email addresses is being targeted by spammers? Let’s assume this happens to her “dodgylist@wyattemail.net” email address. She then goes to 123-reg.com, logs in and goes to the control panel. She selects the email forwarding page, adds a fresh line with ‘dodgylist@wyattemail.net’ in it, clicks the ‘return to sender’ checkbox and clicks ‘update’. Now any email to this address will be returned to whence it came. Nice, eh?

©2005 Paul Quirk & Mark Quirk. Article taken from
CareOfWindowsXP.com.

Paul Quirk & Mark Quirk are both IT professionals with a combined 35 years of experience in the IT industry.
Find out more about keeping your computer under your control at
http://www.CareOfWindowsXP.com.

Identity theft, one of the most insidious forms of white-collar crime, is a federal crime under the Identity Theft and Assumption Deterrence Act. It occurs when charlatans steal your personal and/or financial information to use your credit accounts, tap your bank accounts, get new credit in your name, file fraudulent tax returns, get cell phones in your name, access your insurance benefits, and so on. When someone steals your personal and financial information, your life may become a living hell, particularly if you don’t realize what has happened right away and the imposter has siphoned off funds using your name. This makes adopting strategies for identity theft prevention all the more essential. The steps to take for prevention are really simple.

Identity theft crimes make headlines more and more every day. You hear about them on the news or read about them in the papers. The Federal Trade Commission, the leading governmental agency addressing the problem of identity fraud, has reported a dramatic increase in the incidence of this crime. Recently, FTC released a survey that revealed identity fraud claimed a whopping 27.3 million victims over the past five years and result in over $53 billion annual losses to businesses and financial institutions. Accurate and up-to-date information is the most critical element in any identity theft prevention measure. For this reason, Federal Trade Commission launched a website annualcreditreport.com where all consumers are eligible for a free copy of their credit reports. By getting a free copy of your credit report you should be able to spot suspicious activity.

The old adage “Prevention is better than cure”, is very much applicable for identity theft prevention. While state governments, local and federal law enforcement agencies, and private organizations are taking new steps to minimize this threat, it is also crucially important for citizens to take responsibility for protecting their personal information. As an identity theft prevention measure, individuals can hire credit-monitoring services that alert them when there are changes in their credit report. Proper disposal of personal information and other sensitive material is a vital identity theft prevention technique. This could be accomplished by shredding documents. Do not allow intact documents to be thrown in garbage. To thwart phishing attacks, do not reply or click on links in the email that asks you for your account or billing information. Instead, contact the company cited in the email by telephone or by website you know to be genuine, to verify the contents.

Keith Londrie II is a well known author. For more information on Identity Theft, please visit Identity Theft for a wealth of information. You may also want to visit keith’s own web site at http://keithlondrie.com/