Any issued cards are now unusable with databases set to be destroyed within days

The much criticised ID cards scheme is finally dead and buried after the government revealed on Friday that any cards issued can no longer be used to prove identity or travel within Europe.

A brief statement on the Home Office web site explained that the final nail in the coffin would come "within days" when the National Identity Register, the database designed to hold the card details, will be destroyed.

"Laying ID cards to rest demonstrates the government’s commitment to scale back the power of the state and restore civil liberties," said home office minister Damian Green.

"It is about the people having trust in the government to know when it is necessary and appropriate for the state to hold and use personal data, and it is about the government placing their trust in the common-sense and responsible attitude of the people."

However, despite the administration’s insistence that the scheme was an essential tool in the war on terror, it was much criticised by business and privacy groups, with then ICO Richard Thomas raising significant data protection concerns.

These were heightened when the massive HMRC data breach led to a spate of revelations about poor data handling practices among public sector bodies.

Author: Phil Muncaster

Tomorrow April 1, is D-Day for Conficker, as whatever nasty payload it’s packing is currently set to activate. What happens come midnight is a mystery: Will it turn the millions of infected computers into spam-sending zombie robots? Or will it start capturing everything you type — passwords, credit card numbers, etc. — and send that information back to its masters?

No one knows, but we’ll probably find out soon.

Or not. As Slate notes, Conficker is scheduled to go “live” on April 1, but whoever’s controlling it could choose not to wreak havoc but instead do absolutely nothing, waiting for a time when there’s less heat. They can do this because the way Conficker is designed is extremely clever: Rather than containing a list of specific, static instructions, Conficker reaches out to the web to receive updated marching orders via a huge list of websites it creates. Conficker.C — the latest bad boy — will start checking 50,000 different semi-randomly-generated sites a day looking for instructions, so there’s no way to shut down all of them. If just one of those sites goes live with legitimate instructions, Conficker keeps on trucking.

Conficker’s a nasty little worm that takes serious efforts to bypass your security defenses, but you aren’t without some tools in your arsenal to protect yourself.

Your first step should be the tools you already have: Windows Update, to make sure your computer is fully patched, and your current antivirus software, to make sure anything that slips through the cracks is caught.

But if Conficker’s already on your machine, it may bypass certain subsystems and updating Windows and your antivirus at this point may not work. If you are worried about anything being amiss — try booting into Safe Mode, which Conficker prevents, to check — you should run a specialized tool to get rid of Conficker.

Microsoft offers a web-based scanner (note that some users have reported it crashed their machines; I had no trouble with it), so you might try one of these downloadable options instead: Symantec’s Conficker (aka Downadup) tool, Trend Micro’s Cleanup Engine, or Malwarebytes. Conficker may prevent your machine from accessing any of these websites, so you may have to download these tools from a known non-infected computer if you need them. Follow the instructions given on each site to run them successfully. (Also note: None of these tools should harm your computer if you don’t have Conficker.)

As a final safety note, all users — whether they’re worried about an infection or know for sure they’re clean — are also wise to make a full data backup today.

What won’t work? Turning your PC off tonight and back on on April 2 will not protect you from the worm (sorry to the dozens of people who wrote me asking if this would do the trick). Changing the date on your PC will likely have no helpful effect, either. And yes, Macs are immune this time out.

Via Yahoo

Windows Live OneCare 2.5 is now available on Microsoft Connect for folks to start testing.So what’s new with Windows Live OneCare 2.5? After installing the Beta myself, I didn’t notice anything different over the non-Beta version. I decided to ping the Windows Live OneCare team to see what we can expect with Windows Live OneCare 2.5. They tell me that the Windows Live OneCare 2.5 release is mainly what they call an "under-the-hood" release. That means that we won’t see any big  new features like the great OneCare Circle introduced in 2.0.  Going forward with the Windows Live OneCare 2.5 Beta – continue to expect the improvements and changes to remain "under-the-hood" and not very noticeable in the UI.

Download from liveside | Via windowsvistablog.org

www.bugmenot.com

2. Google Cache

3. Be the Bot

http://www.avivadirectory.com/bethebot/

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