Google owns a Panda that isn’t near as cuddly as this little fellow above.

After all the havoc it created in 2011, it was certainly not on the Christmas-list of a lot of webmasters out there!

Why?

It killed their traffic from Google… by as much as 80%, or more in some cases!

What Is Panda?

Most people know that Google has a search algorithm that it uses to return search results to people who search Google for information. Nobody, other than a few Google engineers, know exactly what the many factors are that this algorithm looks at. It’s kinda like the Coke-formula… a well-guarded secret!

We do know that the normal “search engine optimization” factors are important because it helps the search engines figure out what the topic of a web page is. We also know that the quality of inbound links are important because each link is seen as a vote in favor of the web page. These things, among others, are part of Google main search algorithm.

Enter Panda… the codename for a new “quality” algorithm that Google applies to results returned by the main algorithm.

Panda was set upon the world of websites on Feb 24, 2011, creating huge overnight traffic losses for many websites, big and small. Since that fateful day, there have been at least ten further updates to the original Panda algorithm, with the most prominent update probably being Panda 2.5.2 on Oct 14, 2011.

What Is Panda All About?

In one word… Quality!

Like Google’s main algorithm is aimed at finding web pages that answer the search question, Panda is an attempt at further refining the search results by identifying the highest quality answers.

As I understand it, the goal is to catch all those websites that are merely regurgitations of other websites (directly copied in some cases), or websites that produce massive amounts of shallow content that offers no real additional value.

Panda does this by applying a penalty to those websites that do not meet the quality criteria that Panda uses, thereby allowing sites that do meet the criteria, to “bubble up” in the results.

What To Do If You Got Panda-Slapped

As with its main algorithm, Google says very little about how Panda works. However, this article by Amit Singhal, one of Google’s top search engineers, gives some insight into the mindset you need to acquire when thinking about your website.

You’re going to need to take a good, honest look at your website.

Does it provide real value and give your visitors the benefit of your unique insight into the topic, or is it something that was hastily slapped together and that borrows heavily from content on other sites?

You want to be able to honestly answer “yes” to the former.

Here are a few things to pay attention to:

1. Give visitors a reason to stick around on your site: 
1. Write good headlines that entice visitors to read the page’s content. 
2. Provide your own, well-written, original content that includes your unique perspective. (Don’t “borrow” content from other sites, and in particular, don’t copy & paste content from other sites.)
3. Structure content properly to make your pages easy to read or scan (many visitors scan over pages).
4. Make sure that links to other pages on your site are well-organized and easy to find.
2. Easy on the eyes:
1. Make sure your site looks professional and instills confidence in the visitor. If it doesn’t, it is time for an update.
2. Make sure that the font and font-size on your site makes it easy for visitors to read your content.
3. Add images to your content where it makes sense. This helps to make content more interesting.
3. Compare your site to your competition:
1. Look at things that your competition provides to visitors that you don’t, and see if you can provide that too. 
2. Look for ways make your site better then theirs, i.e. provide useful things to your visitors that your competition does not provide.

I must say that, based on a test that I did recently, Panda is still a work in progress. I did a Google search for the main keyword of one of the best-performing pages on one of my websites, and compared the top 10 results to my own page. I am completely convinced that my page (at #57 in the results at the time, now at #33) was better than at least 6 of the top 10. (Yes, my own biased opinion.)

The point is, however, Panda will get better at its job as time passes and any website that does not focus on quality and value will lose out on a lot of potential traffic.

They were using my website as a “resource” for their own visitors. My first thoughts were that I really didn’t like that.

Yes, in a way it is a compliment that they considered my content good enough to use as a resource.

However, I would have much preferred an ordinary link that allows my website to be displayed as I had intended. I did not recall agreeing with the site owner for my site to be used in that way.

Furthermore, I was not sure how this would affect other aspects of my site, e.g. the Google advertisements that appear on the site. The bottomline is that I decided that I did not want my site to load in this way.

Initially I considered contacting the website owner to get them to change it. Then it dawned upon me that there might be other sites that are loading my content in this way. I did not want to go on a hunting expedition to track them down and contact them individually. So I decided that “frame busting” code was the way to.

Frame Busting Code

There is a way to use Javascript to check if a web page has been loaded inside a frame, and if so, to cause the browser to reload the page by itself, i.e. outside the fame. This is called “frame busting”.

Here is the script that I used:

<script type="text/javascript">
if(top.location != self.location)
{
	top.location.replace(self.location);
}
</script>

I added this code inside the header (between the <head></head> tags) on every page on my site.

That’s all there was to it, and it works like a charm!

There is another method where you can achieve the same thing by adding some directives to the .htaccess file on your web server. The above Javascript works great though, and is easy to implement.

If somebody is loading your website inside their website and you don’t like it, I hope this article helps you to solve the problem and prevent it from happening again.

This set off all kinds of alarm bells in my head, so I immediately went to the site’s hosting account, looking for the file that Google mentioned in the suspicious URL. And there it was!

(For the sake of privacy of my client’s site, I won’t mention the exact name of the suspicious file – a Google search for the file shows which website was compromised – but I will tell you that it was a PHP file with a name made up of 5 random characters, e.g. bwrts.php)

I immediately downloaded the file to check it out. When I opened the file in my PHP editor, it was base64 encoded, which was basically a confirmation in my mind that this file served some or other dangerous purpose. Further investigation led me to find out that this file was part of a system to deliver fake AV trojans to visitors of other website.

Since I had my own experiences a year earlier with fake AV trojans, this really infuriated me!

I then scrutinized the rest of the website and found an unknown directory named “.files”. It contained a little more than 4,000 HTML files. I downloaded all of those and inspected a few of them. They seemed to be more or less identical, except that they were all named after recent popular search engine search terms, e.g. “super bowl 2011.html”.

The HTML files also contained links to other websites that appeared to have been compromised in the same way as mine, e.g. links like “www.website.com/bwrts.php?search-term”. I did a WHOIS lookup on those sites and discovered that they were all hosted by the same company that hosts my website! It was clear… those bastards had hacked into the host’s server and compromised a whole bunch of sites on the server!

I immediately contacted the website host and made them aware of the situation. A few hours later they assured me that everything had been cleaned up. I don’t really know what they did because I did all the cleaning on my website.

Cleaning Up The Hack

Here are the steps I followed to clean it all up:

1. Deleted the PHP file referenced in the Google message.
2. Looked for further unknown, oddly-named PHP files throughout the entire website. I found one tucked away in my /images folder and deleted that too.
3. Deleted the entire .files folder that contained the bad HTML files.
4. Disabled the master FTP account on the website (done from the Control Panel).
5. Created a new FTP account for uploading or downloading files and created a complex password for that account that uses a mix of letters, numbers, and punctuation characters.
6. Informed the website host of the situation to allow them to take action on their end.
7. Submitted a reconsideration request to Google to inform them of what I found and what I did to fix it, and asked them confirm from their side that the site was no longer compromised.

I hope this never happens to you, and if it does, I hope my story helps you to rescue the situation fast.

To me, the productivity-problem has two components:

1. Working on the right things, i.e. not keeping myself busy with stuff that don’t matter.
2. Getting these things done, and at the right time.

Toodledo

About two years ago, a friend pointed me to a great tool called Toodledo. As I immediately discovered, Toodledo rocks! It helps you define goals that you want to achieve, and then create tasks that you have to complete to achieve the goals. Tasks can be categorized into “Contexts”. You can assign several levels of “Importance” to tasks, assign start dates, due dates, and you can even set up repetitive tasks and sub-tasks.

Toodledo allows you to sort tasks in many different ways, e.g. Due Date, Importance, etc. It also has a very handy sort-view called Hotlist, which uses an algorithm to determine what the most important task is that you should be working on.

So, Toodledo solves problem #1… figuring out what you should be working on now.

I started using Toodledo and it worked great… I always knew what the most important thing was that I should be working on. But there was a problem… I wasn’t always working on the things that I knew I should be working on, or when I did, I would take forever to get them done.

Enter Google Calendar!

Google Calendar

I decided to start using Google Calendar to schedule my activities for each day. I would create several time slots and assign some time to each of the most important tasks that Toodledo says I need to work on. (I read somewhere that it is important to work on big tasks for a little bit each day until it is completed. That way the big tasks are not as daunting.)

This worked like a charm! Each day, not only did I know what to work on, but I also knew when to work on it. Each activity had a specific start and ending time, and I would hold myself to these times.

This added a sense of urgency to tasks. If I was working on a task and I saw that, for example, I only had 20 minutes left to work on it, it would inspire me to pick up the pace. All this led to me getting more done than ever before.

So, Google Calendar solves problem #2… actually working on the tasks and getting them done.

An added bonus to all this was that when I scheduled a little time off, I no longer felt guilty about taking a little time off. I knew that it was scheduled time off, and that I would get back to scheduled tasks later.

(As a side note, both of the tools I am using are online tools, meaning I can get to them from either my laptop or desktop and have no problems keeping everything sync’d. Both of these tools also work very well on my Android phone.)

Ready to try it? Here’s what to do…

1. Sign up with Toodledo. They have a free version, but their Pro version only costs a few dollars per year and offers more. I use their Pro version.
2. Sign up with Google Calendar. This is free. If you already have a Gmail email address, you basically already have Google Calendar.
3. Set up your Toodledo account by creating some goals, contexts, and tasks that support your goals. These are the tasks that you need to work on each day.
4. Look at your Toodledo Hotlist to find the tasks that you need to work on first. I sometimes also use the Due-date view as a double-check.
5. Schedule yourself to perform these tasks by putting time-slots on your Google Calendar. I use Toodledo’s contexts (categories) of tasks (e.g. Admin, Websites, Personal, etc.) and schedule time each day for each of the categories, working on the most important task in the category. This way I am constantly able to get to the variety of things I need to work on. (Let’s face it, we all have multiple different things we need to get to.) At the end of each day, schedule a time-slot for “Planning”, where you spend 30 minutes planning and scheduling yourself for tomorrow. Also, schedule 2-3 “leisure” slots during the day where you take a break, surf the web, or do email (in addition to lunch, that is).
6. Stick to the system. Hold yourself to the times you have assigned. Sometimes, especially in the beginning, you may misjudge the time needed to complete a task. In such cases, modify your schedule where necessary. I only modify my schedule when I need to complete a task that day, or when an additional 15-30 minutes will let me complete the task today instead of tomorrow.

That’s my system! It works very well for me. If you decide to follow it, I hope it works just as well for you!

Page Structure

It is a good idea to structure any document properly, whether it is a web page or not. The typical way to structure documents is by using headings.

Headings come in levels, thereby giving you the ability to structure documents. A “heading 1″ is the most important heading, followed by “heading 2″, “heading 3″, etc. Also, a heading 2 is a sub-section of heading 1, and heading 3 is a sub-section of heading 2, etc.

Such page structuring allows the reader to scan over all the headings and get a quick overview of what the document (or web page) contains.

The H1 Tag

The H1 HTML heading tag, <h1></h1>, is the tag we are most concerned with on any webpage when it comes to visible text on the page. The text inside this tag is supposed to tell us what the topic of the page is.Within the page structure described earlier, this is most important visible text on the web page.

Typically, there should be one H1 tag on a web page, it should be near the top of the page. It should contain text that not only entices the reader into reading the page content, but also contain text, typically carefully-selected keywords, that help the search engines figure out what the topic of the page content is.

How WordPress Themes Often Use H1

Many WordPress themes put the website’s name in a H1 tag and the site description in a H2 tag. (The page title is then usually put in a H2 tag as well.)

To human visitors it doesn’t matter much, but this arrangement tells the search engines that the website’s name is the most important text on every page. Yes, the website’s name is important for brand recognition, but surely it can’t be the most important bit of text on every page on the website.

Should the headline that tells the reader what the topic of the page is, not be considered more important? I think so.

A Smarter Way To Use H1

A smarter way to ensure that the search engines’ attention is put in the right place, is to generally use the H1 tag for the page’s title or headline.

There is one exception… the home page. One the home page, put the website description in a H1 tag (it does afterall describe what the entire website is all about), and put the home page’s heading in a H2 tag.

What about the website’s name? Don’t put it in a heading tag. Simply put it in DIV tags and apply CSS formatting to make the site’s name stand out visually on the page.

How To Implement This Smarter Way Of Using H1

Here’s how to implement this:

Your site name and description is typically located in the header.php file of your theme. Open that file in a text editor or your favorite php editor. Find the lines of code where your site name and description is specified. The site name code is usually <?php bloginfo(‘name’); ?>, surround by an A tag and probably also by a H1 tag. Your site description code is usually <?php bloginfo(‘description’); ?>, surrounded by a DIV tag or possibly a H2 tag. Then do the following:

1. If your site name is surrounded by H1, change it to DIV, or <h1></h1> to <div></div>. You may also have to add a new CSS class to your theme’s style.css file and assign the class to the DIV tag. This new CSS class should contain the formatting needed to retain original formatting for your site name.
2. Replace your original site description code with a conditional statement that checks if the current page is your home page or not, and then places your site description either inside a H1 tag (if it is the home page) or a DIV tag (if it is not the home page). Here is an example:

<?php if ( is_home() || is_front_page() ) { ?> 

<h1 class="sitedesc"><?php bloginfo('description'); ?></h1>

<?php } else { ?> 

<div class="sitedesc"><?php bloginfo('description'); ?></div> 

<?php } ?>

That covers your site description. The next step is to make sure that your page title or headline is displayed within the correct tags. Here you have to edit two of your theme’s files, page.php and single.php.

Open the first file and look for <?php the_title(); ?>, more than like surrounded by an H2 tag. Replace that code with a conditional statement that also checks if the current page is the home page and then either put the page title inside a H2 tag (if it is the home page) or a H1 tag (if it is not the home page). Here is an example:

<?php if ( is_home() || is_front_page() ) { ?> 

<h2 class="pagetitle"><?php the_title(); ?></h2> 

<?php } else { ?> 

<h1 class="pagetitle"><?php the_title(); ?></h1> 

<?php } ?>

Repeat this step for the other php file as well.

Add a CSS class to your theme’s style.css file that applies the same formatting to the H1 and H2 tags so that there is no visual difference when either tag is used.

And there you have it… your WordPress theme will now use heading tags on your website that will do a much better job for your site in the search engines.

What Are Website Cookies?

A website cookie is a small text file that a website places on your computer. It contains information about your visit to that website. The cookie could contain a large variety of information about you, basically anything that the website wants to remember about your visit and that could help it identify you when you visit the website again.

The information in cookies is often stored in an ordinary, human-readable format, but sometimes the information is encrypted, usually for security reasons.

Cookies can last forever or they can have an expiration date after which they have to be recreated. Most browsers also have a function that allows you to remove all cookies, or to prevent cookies from being created in the first place.

How Do Websites Use Cookies?

Websites can use cookies in several ways. As I said, the basic goal is to store information to allow the web server (the computer that hosts the website) to recognize you. Here are some of the more common uses:

1. Your Preferences: Some websites allow you to customize the website according to your liking. You might change the website color scheme or layout. These preferences are stored in a cookie.
2. Session Information: Some websites set a special type of cookie called a session cookie. In many cases, these are websites where you have to log on to use the website, e.g. banking sites. Your session information, including a very short expiration period, is stored in the cookie. When the session expires, the cookie is destroyed and you have to log on again.
3. Tracking visitors: Many websites record visitor statistics, e.g. how many visitors did the website get, how many were repeat visitors, how do visitors typically navigate through the website, etc. Much of this data is recorded with the help of cookies.
4. Marketing: Websites that sell products will often track which products you look at and use that information to suggest other similar or related products to you. This information is stored in cookies.

Why Are Cookies Stored On Your Computer?

There are several good reasons why cookies are stored on your computer and not on the website’s server:

1. Storage: Some big websites get millions of visitors. If all the cookies for all the visitors were stored on the website’s server, that would require a lot of space.
2. Identification: If cookies were stored on the website’s server, it would be difficult to identify you on your next visit because your IP address (a unique number that assigned to your computer when you connect to the internet) may change from one visit to the next. A cookie on your own computer eliminates this problem.
3. Security: If cookies are stored on a website, it can be accessed by anyone who has access to the website, and you won’t know who they are. If the cookie is stored on your computer, it can’t be accessed by such people.

Privacy Issues With Cookies

There have been some ramblings on the internet in recent years about how cookies might be used to invade your privacy. I mentioned earlier how marketing websites (online stores) use cookies to make suggestions to you upon your return. Some companies, after you have looked at several products on their website (that they tracked with cookies) and after you have bought something from them, thereby giving them your name and address to ship your order to, may take all that information that they have about you and sell it to other companies who sell similar products. Before you know it, you may be bombarded with all kinds of offers.

The key here is to review the Privacy Policies of companies you deal with. If they say that they may sell your information, only do business with them if you are comfortable with that.

As you can see, the potential value that website cookies provide can outweigh the potential harm if you are careful who you do business with. Cookies are not dangerous to your computer and they won’t fill up your hard drive.

I always leave cookies enabled in my browsers because they offer great value.

I once read a story about how somebody got fired from their job because of something bad they said about their boss on Facebook, forgetting that the boss was one of their Facebook friends! To make it all more embarrassing, the boss fired the person in a comment on the post!

Sometimes we come across something fun that we’d like to share with some of our Facebook friends, but not with all of them.

So how do you go about posting something to only a few of your Facebook friends?

Well, it turns out that it is quite easy to do. Here’s how…

Step 1: Create A List Of Friends

Facebook allows you to post only to certain individual friends, but it could become quite cumbersome if you want to post regularly to the same sub-set of Facebook friends. The solution is to create a Facebook List of friends that you will be posting to:

1. Go to your Facebook and click on the Home link near the top-center of the page. That takes you to your News Feed where you see all your friends’ posts.
2. On the left, below your photo, is a menu with one of the options being Friends. (In my case it’s the 4th item down.) Click on that.
3. The next page will have a button labeled “+ Create A List” near the top-center. Click on that.
4. A box will now open where you can enter a name for your list and select as many of your Facebook friends who will be members of the list. Enter a name, select your friends, and click on Create List.

Your pre-defined, special-purpose friends list is now created.

Step 2: Post To The List

Now all you do is enter your Facebook post, but before sending it, you edit your sharing options and select the list that you created in step 1:

1. Enter your Facebook post.
2. To the left of the Share button (that would send your post), is an image of a lock, with a small down-arrow next to it. Those are your sharing options. Click on the down-arrow.
3. The 4th option in the drop-down menu is Customize. Click that.
4. A box will now open where you can set the privacy of your message.
5. In the section labeled “Make this visible to” is a drop-down box with the selected option being “Friends Only”. Click on that drop-down box and select “Specific People…”
6. A text box will be shown below the drop-down box where you can enter the names of your friends that your post is intended for. Enter the name of the list that your created in step 1. Then click on Save Setting.
7. Click the Share button to send your post to the Walls for your selected friends.

To summarize, to post to a selected group of Facebook friends, create a Facebook list containing your friends and then post to the list. It’s as easy as that!

This happened to a friend of mine a while ago. He spent months working on an e-book that he wanted to market, his computer crashed, and the e-book was gone!

Having a “backup and restore” system in place is absolutely crucial if you have files that you really don’t want to lose, like a school project or music or photos of the kids, or an e-book… Who of us don’t have such files?

I am a happy user of a free online backup service that is saving me a lot of trouble! Let me tell you about it…

Why An Online Backup Service?

Having any kind of backup system in place is already a step in the right direction, be it as simple as backing your files up to a CD or DVD, but here is what makes an online backup service great: It is off-site, i.e. not at your house or business!

That means that even if you have a fire at your house or business that destroys everything, your backups will be safe.

My Choice?

While there are a few choices available, I use Dropbox and I really like it because of some special benefits it gives me.

Dropbox is very simple to use and is truly a “set it and forget it” solution. All you have to do is sign up, download and install their free backup software, and move your important files to a special folder that Dropbox creates.

After that, Dropbox handles everything automatically. It copies all your files to your secure Dropbox storage space on the Amazon S3 Cloud. If you change any of your files on your computer, the new version is automatically and immediately copied to your Dropbox storage the moment you save the file.

If your computer crashes and you get a new computer, all you do is install Dropbox’s free backup software on the new computer, enter your account details into the Dropbox software, and it automatically copies your files from your Dropbox online storage space to your new computer. That’s it! Not a file lost!

What’s more is that if you use more than one computer, you can install Dropbox’s free backup software on both computers and have the latest version of your files automatically available at all times on both computers. So the two computers stay in sync all the time. This is another aspect of Dropbox that I find particularly useful.

A further benefit is file sharing. Let’s say you and a friend or colleague are in two different physical locations and you need to collaborate on a project of some kind. If your friend also uses Dropbox, you can share a folder in your Dropbox with your friend. Your friend will then have access to the files and any changes either of you make to the files are automatically available to both.

How Much Does It Cost?

Initially, nothing! When you create a Dropbox account, you get 2 gigabytes of storage for free. As long as your storage needs stay under 2 GB, Dropbox stays FREE.

It is only if you need more space that you need to pay. Currently you can buy an additional 50 GB for $99 per year, or 100 GB for $199 per year.

Online File Safety?

One of my first concerns was whether my files would be safe from prying eyes or other types of hackers in my online Dropbox account (Amazon S3 Cloud). I checked into this and came up with the following:

• All files are stored in a strongly-encrypted format and are completely inaccessible without your account password. Not even Dropbox’s own employees can view your files.
• When files move between your online Dropbox account and your computer, they are encrypted and sent over a secure internet connection.
• Only those people who you specifically share files with, can see those files, and only the shared files too.

This made me feel comfortable that my stuff would be safe.

Computer Platforms?

Another great thing about Dropbox is that the software is available for Windows, Mac, and Linux systems. Not many of Dropbox’s competitors can say that!

About a month after I opened my Dropbox account, my desktop computer crashed. I could continue working on my laptop because all my Dropbox files were available there as well, and when I finally got my new desktop, I installed Dropbox and a few minutes later all my files were on my desktop too.

I really like this online backup service and recommend Dropbox to all my friends without any reservations.

This whole exercise was an incredibly frustrating experience, but I eventually managed to get the problem solved. So I decided to document my experiences here to hopefully prevent you from also damning those virus writers to hell!

Symptoms?

How did I know that something was wrong?

The most obvious clue was that Firefox browser would go to websites that I had not intended. I would do a search on Google, and if I click on one of the links in the search results, I would end up on a totally different website. Without any action from me, Firefox would also open a new tab by itself and go to some strange website. Once I saw that, I knew that Firefox was hijacked and that I probably had a virus of some sort!

After this I installed Google’s new browser, Chrome, knowing that it is a safe browser and hoping that it would not have the same hijacking problem. Chrome installed OK, but it was completely blocked from any internet access. To me, this was confirmation that something big was wrong!

Identifying the Virus

I was surprised that I picked up the virus in the first place. I run Comodo Antivirus on that machine and it works well. Then I discovered that the virus definitions were about 3 months old (very bad). When I tried to update the virus definitions, the process kept failing. Some Googling led me to believe that my virus database was corrupt, which might account for how the virus slipped onto the machine. I managed to download an update using my Linux machine and updated Comodo on the XP machine.

In a way, I got lucky with identifying FakeRean. I spotted a file called ave.exe amongst all the open processes (using Task Manager). I Googled that and discovered that it was part of a trojan called FakeRean.

What is FakeRean?

You can read the a lot more about FakeRean here, but basically it is a fake antivirus / anti-malware program that comes under a variety of names, like “XP AntiSpyware 2009″, “Vista AntiVirus Pro”, and about 30 other names.

It displays fake warnings about infected files on your computer, and asks if you want to remove the files. If you say “yes”, it saves a file called ave.exe to your computer. It changes your computer’s registry to make sure that ave.exe is run every time you open a program. When ave.exe runs, it hijacks your Internet Explorer browser and Firefox browser, disables your Windows firewall and Windows Security Center notifications.

I am assuming that it is also during this time that the TDL3 rootkit gets installed because, in the end, that was the last part of this thing that I removed and it was responsible for hijacking Firefox and blocking Chrome.

Removing FakeRean

I took two steps to remove Fakerean:

1. Download this file from MalwareHelp.org and save it on your Desktop. (Right-click on the file and select Save Target As). Don’t worry, the file is safe. This file fixes the changes that FakeRean made to your registry. Double-click the file and click Yes to merge the file with your registry. This will stop ave.exe from starting up every time you run another program.
2. Download and install MalwareBytes’ Anti-Malware. Start the program. Go to the Updates tab and make sure you have the latest updates installed. Then go to the Scanner tab to run a full scan. After the scan, the Scan Results shows all the bad stuff that was found. Make sure all the bad stuff is selected and click the button to remove it.

In my case, these two steps killed off the initial infection… but wait… there’s more…

The Firefox redirection and Chrome block was still in place despite the original cause (FakeRean) being removed. I discovered that it was the TDL3 rootkit doing it.

Removing TDL3 Rootkit

I don’t know much about rootkits other than that they can be very difficult to remove. These things get embedded into your system in very smart and hidden ways. That being said, there are supposedly some tools that can remove them. It’s just a matter of finding the right tool.

Kaspersky’s TDSS Killer was reported to kill TDL3. It did locate TDL3, but reported it to be in the file atapi.sys while Comodo reported it to be in the file viaide.sys. Several attempts to remove TDL3 failed because subsequent scans, with computer reboots between each, kept reporting that atapi.sys was still infected with TDL3 (and it said nothing about viaide.sys).

I discovered Hitman Pro to be the tool that can remove TDL3.

So here’s what I did to get rid of TDL3 rootkit and its effects:

1. Download Hitman Pro, activate their free 30-day license, and scan the computer. In my case, it found TDL3 in viaide.sys as Comodo had also reported. It cleaned the infection and a second scan reported no further threats.
2. Flush the DNS cache: Go to Start -> Run and type in cmd and click OK to open the command window. Then type ipconfig /flushdns and press Enter. You will get a message that says, “Successfully flushed the DNS Resolver Cache.”
3. Download HostsXpert to reset your Windows hosts file to its original configuration. Sometimes browser hijackers will modify the hosts file. After downloading and extracting the zipfile, run the program, click Make Hosts Writable?, and click Restore Microsofts’ Hosts File.
4. As a final step, do another scan with MalwareBytes’ Anti-Malware (dowloaded and installed earlier).

At this point your problem should be solved, i.e. Firefox no longer spawns new tabs and goes to strange websites, and Chrome is no longer blocked from internet access. This was the case for me.

There are those who believe that you can never know if a computer is 100% in good shape after cleaning a rootkit infection. They say that it is best to rebuild the machine. I haven’t done that (too much work and I’m still recovering from the frustration of dealing with this) and I’ll leave it to you to decide if you want to do it.

Final Thoughts

The people who write malware as sophisticated as FakeRean and TDL3 are obviously very talented programmers. I don’t understand why these people will use those talents to purposefully create something bad. C’mon guys, use your talents for something good instead!

Credits

Thanks so much to all the good people at websites like BleepingComputer.com, MalwareHelp.org, SevenForums.com for providing me with the information that helped me solve this problem. You rock!

Is it important to have lots of followers? How do you go about getting more followers on Twitter? Do you follow back all your new followers?

What Is Twitter About?

I think the answer to these questions lies with looking at what Twitter is all about.

In a nutshell, Twitter is about the conversation. It is about people sharing thoughts and ideas with those who are interested in what they have to say (i.e. their followers). It is about listening to others’ ideas, and if possible, making a valuable contribution to the conversation.

Your Twitter stream, made up of your tweets and the tweets of the people you follow,  is where the conversation takes place and is where the value lies. If someone in your stream tweets junk (spam) or even just stuff that you are not interested in, it diminishes the value of your stream. At that point  you can simply unfollow that person!

You are the guardian of the value that your Twitter stream offers you!

With that in mind, the right approach would be for you to look for people who tweet about things that you have an interest in. Like Elaine in Seinfeld, who judged men to see if they are “sponge-worthy”, you need to ask, “Is this person Twitter-stream-worthy?” Then you will build a stream that offers you value and one that you can contribute to.

Why Would You Want Lots Of Followers?

The basic thought behind having lots of followers is that the more followers you have, the bigger your influence on Twitter (the more people will read your message). This sounds wonderful, but…

What if you have 1,000 followers and 900 of those followers are “twitter bots” or people that aren’t really interested in what you have to say? Then, effectively, you have only 100 followers.

So, having lots of followers is a good thing, but the quality of those followers count a lot towards determining what influence you really have.

Two Philosophies On Getting Followers On Twitter

There are two basic philosophies on how to get more Twitter followers:

1. The Reciprocating Follow: Some people follow a bunch of other people in the hopes that those people, or at least some of them, will follow them back. Some people in this group will actively search for and unfollow the people they followed and who did not reciprocate. Tools like FriendOrFollow make it easy to find out who is not following you back.
2. The Interesting Tweet: Other people merely rely on their own interesting tweets to get followers. Their philosophy is simply, “if they like what I tweet, they will follow me.” This group may look for interesting people to follow, but they aren’t particularly concerned about whether those people follow them back or not.

The Interesting Tweet philosophy should be at the heart of anybody’s efforts to get more Twitter followers. If people find your tweets interesting, they will follow you. Not only will that bring you followers, but your focus on “interesting tweets” ups the overall value of Twitter for everyone.

If you don’t believe me, take a look at this guy (warning: some profanity) who tweets about all the funny stuff his dad says. He follows only one person, but at the time of writing this he has almost 800,000 followers and has tweeted only 74 times!

The Reciprocating Follow philosophy can bring you a lot of followers too, but you may not want to be too set on the “reciprocating” part of it. What if you follow somebody who tweets really interesting stuff, but declines to follow you back? You will lose out on the value they offer if you unfollow them.

The other side of the Reciprocating Follow philosophy is that someone follows you in the hopes that you will follow them back. Don’t ever auto-follow them back (there are tools that will let you do that) or you will end up with a Twitter stream filled with junk. Take a look at each new follower, and if you are interested in their tweets, follow back. Don’t ever feel that you have to follow anybody!

Guidelines For Getting More Twitter Followers

With all this being said, here are my guidelines for following people and getting more followers on Twitter:

1. Add a photo of yourself to your Twitter profile. People like to deal with other people.
2. Complete your profile bio to show people that you are a real person. Give people an idea of who you are and what your interests are.
3. Use Twitter directories like WeFollow or a tool like WhoShouldIFollow to find interesting people to follow. Then follow them without being too worried about whether they follow you back. Some will, some won’t.
4. Take a look at new followers before following them back. Never auto-follow people back!
5. Focus on posting interesting tweets. This will bring you new followers.
6. Retweet other people’s interesting tweets. This will also bring you new followers.

Happy tweeting!