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Friday, August 09, 2013

I Need To Pay Attention Too

My Mom used to say, “Practise what you preach.” I should have done that a couple days ago.

Deep Scan Day

I spent a lot of time today deep scanning my computers looking for a virus. Fortunately (I think), everything came up clean.

At the same time I can’t help thinking how I always say watch what you click on, pay attention to the installs and so on.

I do quite a few videos, some of which end up on YouTube. This involves a lot of editing and reviewing over and over.

Normally I use Windows Media Player which for the most part works very well except for the odd occasion when a codec problem arises.

It’s great I’ve used it for a long time…

While doing some reading in one of the reputable newsletters I subscribe to, I read in the forums where quite a few people liked a certain video player program that I hadn’t heard tell of. So I decided to try it.

I won’t name the program because for this purpose it doesn’t really matter. It seemed to be an excellent program, and I think it was. The clarity of HD was better than any I have used before.

So in two days of testing, I was quite happy. - - - Until today.

You Better Scan

The information screen on the program, and on its web site displayed a message that anyone who downloaded the program between July 26th and Aug. 8th should carefully check and scan their computer for a modulated virus as their site had been hacked. It had since been secured safely.

Well I am thinking, between the 26th and the 8th, that would be me.

I figured since my systems are well protected it should have been detected during the download. But sometimes newer malware can bypass protection. So most of today was spent deep scanning every single file, which brought production to a halt.

My reason for mentioning in this manner, is this stuff can possibly affect anyone. Even though I felt the program was good, I didn’t really research it enough. That gave me almost a full day of extra work, just scanning.

Kudos to the owners of the program for bringing it to everyone’s attention though. I think it probably is a great program, and for that reason I choose not to name it.

Lesson Learned

At the same time, I relearned a lesson. Just because a number of people say its a great piece of software, and it appears in a reliable online publication, be sure to do your own research.

And take your time, don’t be in a hurry to install.