How to Protect Yourself from Keyloggers in Windows Oprating Systems

How to Protect Yourself from Key loggers in Windows operating systems

Keylogging is a shortened form of “keystroke logging.” Keystroke refers to recording the keys pressed on the keyboard of a computer. Although not always, this technique is usually used for malicious purposes. The software used for the recording of keystrokes are called keyloggers.

Since it is mostly used for malicious purposes, this calls for you to finds ways to protect yourself from keyloggers and their intent to destroy your computing experience.

Types of Keyloggers

There are different types of keyloggers based on how they perform the recording of keyboard key presses. Let’s look into the types of keyloggers before moving further.

• Hypervisor-based keyloggers
• Kernel-based keyloggers
• API-based keyloggers
• Memory-injection keyloggers
• Form-grabbing keyloggers

Form-grabbing keyloggers are the most common ones because of their web-based nature. These keyloggers will grab the data which is input into a web form on any browser and will even work in a secure HTTPS-based connection. The browser does not know about the data theft, as the data is first copied by the keylogger and then passed over to the web browser.

Since Windows 8 includes a very basic antivirus, Windows Defender, most users don’t feel a need for a stronger security suite that may slow down their computers. For those that do, however, the following are three choices to help protect yourself from keyloggers. You can also download Windows 8.1 Preview which will offer better security and features to the users. You can upgrade to the latest Windows Update when a stable version becomes available through Windows Update.

KeyScrambler

KeyScrambler is a wonderful free anti-keylogging software that can be used for protecting against web-based keyloggers. While you can have a complete Internet security suite for keeping yourself safe from most of the Internet threats, it does come with a cost. Most of the Internet security suites are not free and are prone to taking huge system resources while operating.

KeyScrambler resource usage is almost negligible. I have been using KeyScrambler for a few days and have yet to fall into any performance problems. There are two executables running in the Process Manager. Both of them take about three to four MB of memory with almost no processor usage.

Setting up KeyScrambler for protection

KeyScrambler can be downloaded from here. The installation procedure is quite simple and follows the standard app installation procedure on Windows.

I like the way KeyScrambler handles the screen space. While the keyboard is being used on a web browser, it will show an overlay window on the top center of the screen, and when you finish writing, the window disappears saving space and time. The overlay window displays the encrypted version of text being typed by the keyboard. If a keylogger is active, it will get the encrypted form of keyboard key presses.

If the overlay window is being shown, it is the confirmation that KeyScrambler is working and encrypting the keyboard presses.

Right clicking on the system tray icon will allow you to enable or disable the KeyScrambler functionality. You can also use the default hotkey for this purpose which is Ctrl + Shift + K. The hotkey can be customized in Options under the General tab.

You can also change the overlay window in Options under the Display tab.

In the advanced Tab of Options, you can select whether to encrypt the Space key or not and supporting East Asian language input.

KeyScrambler encrypts the key strokes on a driver level, it becomes almost impossible for keyloggers to bypass KeyScrambler. The overlay window will show you the encrypted text while you are typing. The keyloggers will get the encrypted text which will be unreadable for anyone.

I have been using KeyScrambler for some days and have been completely satisfied with it. It is unobstrusive and works seamlessly with all browsers. The only issue I had was using KeyScrambler along with KeePass, a password manager. If you are using auto typing feature of KeePass, the text typed into the text boxes will be encrypted by KeyScrambler, so you will need to manually copy the text fields from KeePass and paste them into the browser.

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Lock A Windows PC Without Locking The Screen

Lock A Windows PC Without Locking The Screen

If you are watching a movie or having a video chat with your family or friends in a group and don’t want anyone to disturb the screen through keyboard or mouse, KeyFreeze is the right app for you.

KeyFreeze locks the keyboard and mouse without locking the computer screen. Normally when we lock a PC, the screen changes to a locked one where we have to enter the password again in order to use the PC again. KeyFreeze gets rid of this situation and freezes the mouse and keyboard while leaving the screen open to make sure that no one can alter anything without your own intent.

Installing and using KeyFreeze

KeyFreeze is such a small utility that it should not have an installer but the publisher has packed KeyFreeze in an installer. The setup comes in an online installer which will download and install the actual program upon execution.

The interface of KeyFreeze is very simple as it comes only with one button, “Lock Keyboard & Mouse“. You can click on the button to lock the keyboard and mouse while keeping the screen open. When you press the Lock keyboard and mouse button, it will lock the screen after 5 seconds.

One thing to note here is that if you are running KeyFreeze as administrator, it will not ask you about running the app otherwise it will ask for admin permissions.

To unlock the keyboard and mouse, just press Ctrl + Alt + Del. This will release the keyboard and mouse immediately. You can press the Back button to proceed if you are using Windows 8.

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Backup Gmail And Yahoo Emails On Your Computer..!

Backup Gmail And Yahoo Emails On Your Computer

Gmail is a popular email service providing email services to millions of users around the world. Gmail has a lot of features but there is no direct way to download and backup email from Gmail on our local computers. Gmail, however, offers POP3 and IMAP functionality which lets us download the email locally using any email client like Microsoft Outlook or Mozilla Thunderbird.

MailStore Home can backup your email

MailStore Home is a free portable app that enables you to archive all the emails from multiple email accounts in a centralized archive. MailStore Home is free for personal use and can be installed in Windows or used as a portable app. If you are running it as a portable app, it will be able to backup your email accounts on a USB flash drive making it possible for your to take your backup anywhere with you.

Features

1. MailStore Home provides a text searching function by which you can search your backed up and archived emails in seconds.
2. It provides a central email backup and management system unlike POP3 which only downloads email from your inbox.
3. It supports several sources including Gmail, Yahoo Mail, Microsoft Outlook, Outlook Express, Exchange Server mailboxes, Office 365, Mozilla Thunderbird etc.
4. Can even backup large amounts of email very conveniently without data loss or corruption.
5. All archived emails can be restored. This feature is essentially great for migrating emails  from one account to another.
6. It can be installed on a PC as well as on a USB flash drive as a portable app.

Installation and usage

When you start MailStore Home setup for installation, it will ask you whether to install it on the computer or as a portable app on any USB drive, hard drive or a specific folder. And that’s it. This is the only configuration you will need for installation.

To start backing up your email, you will need to click on Archive Email button. You will need to create a new profile by entering your email address.

To backup your gmail account, just click on the Advanced button and select Google
Mail. Please note that you will need to enable POP3/IMAP in your Gmail settings in order for MailStore Home to backup the emails. On the next screen you will get some configuration options related to backing up emails from your Gmail account.

Clicking on the Finish button will automatically create a new profile for you. You can select the profile and run it to backup your email according to the settings you have configured before.

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Unlimited Cloud Storage Space

Tired Using Limitd & Many More Cloud Storage Services....?? Here Is Solution... Unlimited Storage Space

Online cloud storage and synchronization has become a necessity and up until now, Dropbox is the easiest, the best and the most popular online storage service with instant synchronization option. With the boom in online storage and cloud computing, lot of companies are offering cloud storage solutions including Google which is offering Google Drive or Microsoft which is offering SkyDrive. Other companies include Bitdefender which is offering Safebox. All these companies offer a small amount of storage for free and if you need more storage, you’ll need to go for a paid package of the cloud storage solution. In the previous year, I have already reviewed 3 free online storage solutions which includes Dropbox, Windows Live Mesh (Now SkyDrive) and SpiderOak.

Today I want to talk about a free alternative to Dropbox or any other similar service with a distinction that it offers unlimited storage option. It is not limited to a few GBs of storage but now you can synchronize and backup Terabytes of your important data including audio and video.

Yes, I’m talking about Bitcasa, a new cloud storage service which offers unlimited storage for free. You will only need to register for an account on Bitcasa and follow the steps below in order to start using Bitcasa unlimited storage.

1. Download Bitcasa client for Windows, Linux or Mac and install it on your computer. The installation process is straight forward and does not require any configuration.
2. Signup for an account of Bitcasa. You can also signup with your Facebook or Twitter account.
3. When you start Bitcasa client for the first time, you’ll need to login to your account that you had registered in step two.
4. Bitcasa sits in your system tray. You can right click the icon and select “Show Bitcasa” in order to open the client.
5. In the left hand pane, select Add and then select the folder you want to backup in the cloud.
6. After selecting the folder, you will get three options: Infinite Storage, Sync and Backup
   
   Infinite storage: The folder will appear in the computer as normal folder but it will be streamed from Bitcasa cloud storage. The folder will remain virtually unlimited in size.
   Sync: The folder will be synchronized between different devices and the data will also remain safe on Bitcasa servers.
   Backup: The folder will be backed up regularly on Bitcasa cloud storage. The folder will also stay in the local computer as well as on the cloud storage.
7. This is all. Bitcasa client will work to automatically synchronize all the selected folders according to your choice. You don’t need to do anything else.

Tip: You can also right click any folder and select the Bitcasa options in order to synchronize the folder immediately. This will save you from step 6.

I have been using Bitcasa storage for a while now and haven’t came across any issues yet. The best thing about this service is that it is offering unlimited storage absolutely free of cost. Which cloud storage services are you using right now? Will Bitcasa replace your current service? Please share your thoughts in comments below.

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