O.T. Avast Smart scan

[Robert in CA]

I have a Dell XPS 8500, with Windows 7 Professional, SP1,
with Spywareblaster, Malwarebytes, Avast , Windows Defender
and Windows firewall.

Seagate Desktop HDD ST2000DM001 2TB 64MB
Cache SATA 6.0Gb/s 3.5" Internal
Ram 12.0 GB
System type : 64-bit operating system

I also have

I have a Dell Optiplex 780 Tower, with Windows 7 Professional,
SP1, with Spywareblaster, Malwarebytes, Avast , Windows Defender
and Windows firewall.

Seagate Desktop HDD ST2000DM001 2TB 64MB
Cache SATA 6.0Gb/s 3.5" Internal
System type : 64-bit operating system

and (external hard drives)

(8500)
WD BLACK SERIES WD2003FZEX 2TB 7200
RPM 64MB Cache SATA 6.0Gb/s 3.5" Internal
Hard Drive

(780)
Seagate Desktop HDD ST2000DM001 2TB 64MB
Cache SATA 6.0Gb/s 3.5"
Internal Hard Drive

I recently ran the Avast Smart scan with these results.

https://postimg.cc/Z0syLRfP

https://postimg.cc/WFWtSW7p

https://postimg.cc/k64gVNP0

https://postimg.cc/3kTrjQHC

https://postimg.cc/SY9q8DTv


Should I be concerned or is this just another marketing
tool for me to buy their premium? It seems to me that if
I let it resolve these issues I'll also loose valuable
data I don't want lost.


Thanks
Robert




--
This email has been checked for viruses by Avast antivirus software.
https://www.avast.com/antivirus

[Paul]

Regarding picture #5 and remote registry...

https://www.reddit.com/r/techsupport/comments/8g9m4l/avast_has_told_me_i_have_2_computer_problems_but/

"WinKey + R -> type in services.msc and hit enter.

When the list of services comes up find "Remote Registry"
in the list and see what its startup type is. The default
is "manual". Double click the entry and set it to 'disabled'
if you are worried about it, but it needs to be started from
your machine in the first place for an attempt to be made to
do remote registry management, so it would require malware
to already be on your machine to start the service up, in
which case said malware could just change the registry keys
it wanted to without using the remote registry service.

You don't have to do anything there. Or you could turn off Remote
Registry entirely, if you desired to have Avast report "one
fewer thing".

That interface on Avast, you should click "Skip", as that
is an advertising screen to Buy Pro or whatever.

It's true, that you can clean out the Recent Items folder
if you wanted. But if you do, it just fills up again,
and is hardly worth doing. I usually clean that, if I
run a certain kind of backup and I start seeing an
excess number of filenames from the Recent items. I then
go in after the backup is finished, and clean them out.
I might do the same, if I notice thousands of items in
some browser cache I'm not using at the moment.

Reducing the file count on a disk drive, by doing things
like this, it helps for Agent Ransack brute force search
time (saves a whole microsecond). But that's about the
only benefit. If you were using Void Tools "Everything.exe",
since it keeps the file list for its own self, you don't pay
a price in real-time for having a few extra files.

Paul

[Mayayana]

"Robert in CA" <Rob...@yahoo.com> wrote

| Should I be concerned or is this just another marketing
| tool for me to buy their premium? It seems to me that if
| I let it resolve these issues I'll also loose valuable
| data I don't want lost.
|

You really need to understand what you're doing. Cleaning
up TEMP files is a good idea. Fixing Registry orphans is slightly
risky and generally of no value.

Example: The Registry says file type XX2 is handled by Acme
Editor, which was uninstalled. But you never have XX2 files,
because only Acme Editor makes them, so it doesn't matter.
Or there's a CLSID for a COM object that's gone. But it will
never matter unless some code tries to instantiate that COM
object. In that case you'll just get an error like "Failed to
create object". It's not "hurting" the Registry.

I once tried MalwareBytes and it told me I had 10 problems.
Several were Windows settings I wanted. Some were harmless
Registry values. One was my boot manager, which it wanted
to delete, claiming it was malware! It even gave a fake, generic
name to the malware. What it didn't do was to explain any
of the "problems". Not one was a problem to my mind and if
I'd allowed MB to do its thing it would have messed up my
system.

[Robert in CA]

I couldn't change anything because its grayed out. I generally
use disk cleanup under system tools and defragmenter. I haven't
done either in some time so will do so after this post. However from
what you say I can generally disregard this and continue as before.

https://postimg.cc/F7dNb9SW

https://postimg.cc/f3KNWk4L


Thanks,
Robert

[Robert in CA]

Exactly!

Robert

[Robert in CA]

Since were talking about security issues; I wanted to relate
a strange event that happened recently. What happened
was this; On 7/8/21, 8:45pm I received a telephone call which
I thought was from my brother because he's the only one who
calls me but instead it was from a lady who spoke very loud
and asked if I were who I was and I said yes, then she said ,' I'm
sorry you had to take your car in to such and such repair place.
I said, wait a minute, can you speak a little softer and where did
you say you were from? She then hung up.

The strange part was she knew my name and she knew where I
had taken my car in for repair recently (to have the A/C fixed). The
only way she could of known that was to view my bank statement
or their invoices. I changed my username and password on my
bank account and cancelled my debit card.

I called the police and told them the story and they also thought it
weird. They asked if I had posted anything recently and told them
I haven't posted anything online in over a year although I use to but
stopped because of things like this might happen.

The only thing I can think of was that this was part of the theft of
the 30 million users on Twitter, Facebook and eBay recently. Since
then, I've disconnected my phone (its a landline) since I only get calls
from my brother and I call him instead.

Ironically, I had to take my car back in and told them the story and
they also thought it odd.

Thoughts?
Robert

[Paul]

Car dealership networks keep records.

I would think that would be a prime candidate for a leak.

Some of what they do, is warranty related, and my dealership, one
day I went in there, there was a kind of "audit" or "inspection"
going on. And some disagreement about what the dealership had done.

And that kind of activity is backed up by computers,
databases, and the corporate at the center of it.

Banks are not exactly brain trusts either, but they're
a step ahead of car companies.

The same could go for chain or franchise businesses
such as a Midas Muffler.

On smaller businesses, their weakest link would be
their "CC processing company". Sometimes a small business
cannot do business with reputable outfits, and are forced
to use less desirable agencies. Just about every small
business needs at least one computer, because they need
to order parts from a distributor (windshields, mufflers,
crappy brake pads).

If the person has repair details, then the leak is
in the dealer network. If the person only
knows you went there, that could be CC processing
(she would know you spent $700 say, but would not know
what it was spent on, only the total for the bill
would be extractable).

A lot of the scam calls I get here, used synthesized voice.
But at least one person in the country, making calls
of this sort, got caught. And I'm hoping such cases
make these people "a bit more nervous". Even the call
centers in India, have had the odd police raid. But it
never seems to be enough.

Paul

[Robert in CA]

Well, it's not a car dealership per se it's a small
repair shop I go to but I thought the same thing.

As I said, I told them about it also because I think
as you do that's where it came from although I
didn't tell them that but I wanted them to be aware
that this happened and they were named directly.

I also get the occasional scam calls with someone
who wants me to contribute to something or other
or to participate in some questionnaire and I just
hang up but this was something more unusual. As I
said, it's no big deal for me to leave the phone
disconnected.

Unfortunately, since I don't have a cell phone I couldn't
track it. Well I do and I don't. I do have a cell phone
(LG Classic flip)but I haven't bought any new applications
or whatever they are so it doesn't work. I only bought
it because my regular phone went out and I needed
something to call a repair ticket on. It's a long story,....
ended in operator fault... bad phoneline sheesh!@ *L*

Robert

[Paul]

ca...@mit.net wrote:

> Just for laughs....
>
> Tell me how Win10 is more secure than XP.
>
> Total number of vulnerabilities for Windows XP: 685
> https://www.cvedetails.com/vulnerability-list.php?vendor_id=26&product_id=739&version_id=0&page=1&hasexp=0&opdos=0&opec=0&opov=0&opcsrf=0&opgpriv=0&opsqli=0&opxss=0&opdirt=0&opmemc=0&ophttprs=0&opbyp=0&opfileinc=0&opginf=0&cvssscoremin=0&cvssscoremax=0&year=0&cweid=0&order=1&trc=685&sha=96656e0273b52e8473fbf8b6371fe2ed4a0f8ae8
> or
> tinyurl.com/uk8s2z5x
>
> Total number of vulnerabilities for Windows 10: 1,111
> https://www.cvedetails.com/vulnerability-list.php?vendor_id=26&product_id=32238&version_id=0&page=1&hasexp=0&opdos=0&opec=0&opov=0&opcsrf=0&opgpriv=0&opsqli=0&opxss=0&opdirt=0&opmemc=0&ophttprs=0&opbyp=0&opfileinc=0&opginf=0&cvssscoremin=0&cvssscoremax=0&year=0&cweid=0&order=1&trc=1111&sha=41e451b72c2e412c0a1cb8cb1dcfee3d16d51c44
> or
> https://tinyurl.com/yen89snp

Vulnerability is measured at a personal level.

How many times was the OS tipped over for
the user in question. Here are my statistics.

WinXP 1
Win10 0

I'm not aware of any effort to measure that way.

The CVE count, should be scaled by the number of lines
of code in each OS. And even then, a lot of exploits
require the exploiter to be in the room with the
computer.

We don't have sufficient materials using either
approach, to evaluate this properly.

Paul

[Robert in CA]

Thanks again for your help, I'll check back again after awhile
when I'm ready to purchase the 3rd computer, the Dell 9020
or better.

Thanks again,
Robert