Our favorite internet browser, Firefox , has been updated today to v3.0.9.  You can update your version of Firefox by opening Firefox and selecting Help > Check for Updates.  Several security and stability issues have been patched in this latest version.

This update includes:

• Fixed several security issues.
• Fixed several stability issues.
• Many users experienced an issue where a corrupt local database caused Firefox to “lose” its stored cookies. (bug 470578)
• Fixed an issue where, starting with Firefox 3.0.7, inline image attachments on popular webmail services (like AOL and AIM) would not display. (bug 482659)
• Large forms would sometimes take a long time to submit. (bug 426991)
• In certain cases, new windows would not have proper focus. (bug 446568)

We’ve had a few people ask us how to download a video from YouTube and save it to their local hard drive.  There’s a really easy way to do this.  It’s called save2pc and best of all it’s freeware.  According to save2pc, you can save YouTube and Google videos in AVI, MPEG or FLV video format.  It’s also free of adware and spyware — plus, it’s portable.

You can download the portable version of save2pc here.

Have other suggestions? Leave us a comment!

We’ve had a few customers asking about IE 8 and whether they should upgrade or not. While we think IE 8 will be better than it’s predecessors, there appears to be enough issues with it that it would be smart to hold off for a while — at least a month or so until these issues are resolved.

A few of these reported issues are:

• A zero day security exploit.
• Issues with Spybot-S&D’s immunization tool and IE-SPYAD , which adds unfavorable sites to your IE’s restricted zone.
• Some users have reported that after installing IE 8 and applying Windows’ hotfixes, IE 8 has inexplicably reverted back to IE 7 .  Very strange…

Hackers no doubt will also be hammering this browser hard, looking for additional exploits since it’s brand new — another reason to hold off until Microsoft has time to patch these issues.

Know of more issues? Let us know!

Hopefully, this doesn’t apply to you.  As mentioned before, Conficker is a nasty worm spreading at a high rate.  Today is no April fool’s joke.  It’s the day many believe that the creator of Conficker will trigger all the infect machines — around 15 million worldwide.  This worm has the ability to harvest and record credit card numbers, user names and passwords, etc.

If you’ve been keeping your anti-virus and anti-malware software up to date, you should be in good shape as most detect it by now.  It’s also important to run Windows Update to ensure that all the latest Windows patches have been installed on your machine(s).  However, if you try and run your updates, but are unsuccessful, it could be a sign that your machine is already infected.

Here is a list of some Conficker symptoms:

• If you are unable to run Windows Update

• If you are being locked out of a directory

• If you are being denied access to your admin account or password

• If you cannot get into security websites and services, or update your installed anti-virus and anti-malware software

• If you notice a high rate of internet bandwidth being used on your computer while the computer is supposedly idle

If some of these symptoms are occurring, visit our Conficker forum thread for ways to remove this nasty worm.  If you need further assistant, don’t hesitate to contact us.