How to Manually Uninstall a Globally Installed Chrome Extension

Google Chrome allows other programs on your computer to install system-wide Chrome extensions. Chrome even allows these extensions to prevent you from disabling or removing them via Chrome’s Extensions page.
The terrible Ask Toolbar included with Java security updates is one of the most common examples of this, but this technique could be used by other programs — and even malware.

Control Panel

If the extension’s developer is behaving properly, you will be able to uninstall a globally installed extension from the Windows Control Panel. They will be shown alongside the other applications you have installed on your system in the Programs and Features section. Uninstall them from the Control Panel, if you can.

In the case of the Ask Toolbar, Ask.com graciously allows us to remove it from our system via the Control Panel, although they don’t even allow us to disable it from within Chrome. However, a developer could just as easily create a malicious extension and prevent you from uninstalling it via the Programs and Features window, so we’ll cover how you could get rid of this extension manually.

Windows Registry

Chrome allows other programs to associate extensions with Chrome via the Windows Registry. We’ll need to use the registry editor to deal with such extensions. To open it, press the Windows key to open the Start menu (or Start screen, on Windows 8), type regedit into the Start menu (or at the Start screen), and press Enter.

Locate the following key in the registry:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Google\Chrome\Extensions (On 32-bit versions of Windows)
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Wow6432Node\Google\Chrome\Extensions (On 64-bit versions of Windows)

Each key (folder) under the Extensions key represents a globally installed Chrome extension. You can check which extension a key contains by opening the key and examining the Path value.

In our example here, we haven’t yet found the terrible Ask Toolbar, but we have located an obnoxious “SweetIM” toolbar that hitched a ride on some unscrupulous software.
To get rid of this extension, we’ll need to delete its key by right-clicking it and selecting delete.

To delete the extension’s files as well, we could note the location displayed in the Path box, navigate to that folder on our computer, and delete the extension’s .crx file (or the entire folder containing it).

Remove a Managed Extension

We haven’t yet found the Ask toolbar, so we know it’s not attached to Chrome through the registry. It must be located in one of Chrome’s extension folders.
To open your Chrome user data folder, enter the following into Windows Explorer’s address bar:

%LOCALAPPDATA%\Google\Chrome\User Data

Open your profile folder – generally named Default, unless you have created a new profile – and open the Extensions folder inside it. You should be in a folder like the following:

C:\Users\NAME\AppData\Local\Google\Chrome\User Data\Default\Extensions

If you have a variety of extensions and apps installed, you’ll see quite a few subfolders. To determine which one is associated with the Ask Toolbar (or whatever globally installed extension you want to remove), we can open Chrome’s Extensions page, enable the Developer mode check box, and view the Ask Toolbar’s extension ID.

Locate the folder with the same name as the extension ID, delete it, and restart Chrome. The extension will be removed.

Unfortunately, in the case of the Ask Toolbar, the folder we deleted will immediately be recreated. Ask.com runs an Updater.exe process in the background, and it appears to recreate the extension’s folder each time you open Chrome. This ensures that the Ask Toolbar comes along whenever you create a new Chrome profile.
This example just goes to show that, if you have malicious software running in the background, you’ll need to neutralize the malware by removing its associated browser extensions. The malicious software can keep recreating extensions even after you remove them manually.

Luckily, we can just uninstall the Ask Toolbar from the Control Panel, so this doesn’t really matter in this example. However, Ask.com have provided an excellent example to malware authors looking to get around Chrome’s protection against globally installed extensions.

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Chrome also provides a way for programs to globally install extensions using a preferences file located in Chrome’s application directory. However, you likely won’t find any extensions using this method to install themselves. Thanks to a long-standing bug, extensions using a preferences file will be automatically uninstalled each time Chrome updates itself to a new version. You can find more information about the preferences file method over at Chrome’s developer site.

How to Backup Your Social Media Accounts – Facebook, Twitter, Google+ and Instagram

How much of your life is recorded online? Spend a moment considering this and it’s likely to be a terrifying idea. You may not consider yourself the type of person to keep a journal, or even a blog, but over the years you have probably posted thousands of words on the likes of Facebook, Twitter and Google+.
Add to this the images you may have posted and this is data you may well want to record. Could you bear to lose all of this? We’ll show you how to backup all of this data so you can keep it for posterity.
The chances of Facebook, Twitter or Google losing all of your data are fairly slim, but by opting to download it you not only make all of your status updates, images and more available offline, you also make it far easier to work with and can make use of it in different ways.
There are slightly different methods and techniques used by each social network, but you can request and download all of your data free of charge. Here’s how to go about it.

Facebook

Log into your Facebook account, click the gear icon to the upper right of the page and select Account Settings. Make sure that you are in the General section of the settings and click the ‘Download a copy of your Facebook data’ link to the right.

There are a couple of options available to you now – downloading a regular archive, or opting for the expanded one. The basic download, referred to by Facebook as Downloaded Info, includes details of your check-ins, chats, general account details, your photos and more.
There are also an ‘expanded archive’ option which includes far more detail including the apps you have installed, a list of people who have been unfriended, data that has been hidden from your newsfeed and details of IP addresses that have logged into your account. Full details of the differences between the two different archives can be found in Facebook’s help pages.

To download a copy of your basic Facebook archive, click the Start my Archive button followed by ‘Start my archive’. After clicking Confirm, you’ll have to sit back and wait while your data is collected together. You will then receive an email letting you know when the archive is ready for download.

If you’re more interested in obtaining the complete history of your account, you should instead click the ‘expanded archive’ link. Enter your password and click Continue. As with the regular archive, you then need to click ‘Start my archive’ followed by Confirm.

In either case you’ll receive an email containing your archive ready for browsing.

Twitter

Downloading your Twitter archive is similarly simple. Log into your account, click the gear icon to the upper right of the page and then click Settings. Scroll down to the bottom of the page and click the ‘Request your archive’ button in the ‘Your Twitter archive’ section.

As with Facebook, you’ll have to wait a little while for the archive to be prepared, so click the Close button and await the arrival of the confirmation email – in all likelihood this won’t take too long to arrive. Click the ‘Go now’ button in the email

Click the Download button to grab your tweets.zip archive, which you can then extract using your tool of choice. Twitter archives are provided in both HTML and CSV formats.

Google+

To download your Google+ data, log into your account, click your profile picture to the upper right of the page and then click Account.  You have the choice of downloading all of your Google data – everything from Picasa albums to Google Voice data – in one fell swoop, or you can download different archives individually.

To keep things simple and download everything at once, click the ‘Download your data’ button. This will take you to Google Takeaway where you’ll need to enter your password again. You can go ahead and move to the ‘Choose services’ section to select individual services to download data from if you like, but otherwise just click Create Archive.

Instragram

Freeing your photos from Instagram requires the use of a secondary website – it is not a service provided by Instagram. Instaport enables you to download your entire account as a zip file, and there are plans to also allow data to be transferred to Facebook or Flickr.

Visit the Instaport website and click ‘Sign in with Instagram’ before providing authorizing the connection to your account. Make sure that ‘Download .zip file’ is selected and click the Start Export button.
This time around you’ll have to keep checking back to the page to see when your archive is ready as no confirmation email is sent out. Just how long this will take depends on how many images you have uploaded.
If you want to get more specific about the images you want to download rather than just grabbing the whole lot, click the Advanced Options link to access additional settings such as images from a certain time frame.

Have you backed up your social media data, or is it all just pictures of cats and food?

Dropbox 2.0 Adds New Notifications Menu, Allows Easy Sharing and Activity Monitoring

Yesterday Dropbox released a new version of their desktop client that makes monitoring your account’s activity and sharing files easier than ever…all from a quick access menu. If you are an avid Dropbox user, then you will definitely want to grab a copy of the latest version!
You can check your account’s space usage, access settings, and more using the Gear Icon in the upper right corner of the menu. The bottom links will access your local Dropbox folder and open the website in your default browser. The sharing option is highlighted in red in our screenshot above…
From the Dropbox blog post: If someone shares a link with you, you can now get to it immediately — directly from the Dropbox menu! You’ll get notifications in real time as people share with you, and can see them later just by clicking the Dropbox icon. You can also accept or decline invitations to shared folders directly from your desktop.
We’ve also made it easier to see what’s recently changed in your Dropbox and added a quick way to share your stuff with a link, right from the Dropbox menu.
As you can see the new menu offers up some terrific options to make using Dropbox easier than ever, so head on over to grab a copy of the latest installation file!
Special Note: The new notification menu version is not available for Linux at this time.
Discover the new Dropbox menu on your computer [Dropbox Blog]
Download Dropbox 2.0.0 for Your System [Dropbox]

How to Host an FTP Server on Windows with FileZilla

In this guide we’ll take you through the steps to setup a folder on your Windows computer as an FTP repository, using a free program called FileZilla. FTP can be used to easily transfer a lot of files between computers; the FTP repository can be mapped to multiple computers across the Internet so that other people can access the directory right from Windows Explorer.
To start, you’ll need to download FileZilla server, available here.
After downloading the program, you can install it with all of the default settings. FileZilla will install a service that runs whenever Windows boots up, so if you would rather only run the FTP server manually, select the appropriate option from the drop down menu on the third screen:

Apart from that setting, everything else can be left at the defaults for the purpose of this tutorial. Once installation is complete, the FileZilla interface will open. Just click OK when this window pops up right after installation:

Once the FTP server interface has loaded, we are ready to specify a directory as an FTP repository. If the directory you want to use isn’t already created, minimize the interface and create a folder where you want the FTP share to be. In this tutorial, we are going to use the folder ‘FTP’ on our desktop. Its exact location will be “C:\Users\geek\Desktop\FTP”.
Click on Edit and then Users.

On the left side of the window that comes up, click on “Shared folders.”

Once there, click on “Add” underneath “Users.” Enter the username for an account that another computer will be using to access the repository we’re setting up.

Click OK once you’re done entering the account name, and then click on “Add” underneath the “Shared folders” section. Once you’ve done that, a window like the one below will pop up, use it to select the directory you would like to share as an FTP repository.

Click OK. Now we need to assign the user permissions for this repository. By default, the user we’ve created is able to read files, list directories, and list subdirectories. To give the user further permissions, such as the ability to copy files to this repository, check the boxes beneath ‘Files’ and ‘Directories.’

Click OK once you’re done setting the user permissions.

Securing Your FTP Server

Along with configuring the user(s) with a strong password, there are a few settings within FileZilla that you can configure to further secure your new FTP server.
Hackers will constantly scan the internet for hosts listening on port 21, the default FTP port. To avoid being detected by the thousands of hackers constantly scanning for people like you with an FTP server, we can change the port that FileZilla listens on. Go to Edit and then Settings. Under “General settings” you’ll see “Listen on these ports.” It should currently be on 21, but we recommend changing it to a random five digit number (nothing over 65535).

This doesn’t necessarily secure your server, but it obscures it and makes it harder to find. Just remember that anyone determined to hack you will eventually find the port your FTP server is listening on, so further measures must be taken.
As long as you know the IP’s (or at least the IP range) of the computers connecting to your FTP server, you can set FileZilla to only respond to login requests from those IP addresses. Under Edit > Settings, click on “IP Filter.”
In the first box, put an asterisk to block all IP’s from connecting to your server. In the second box, add exceptions to this rule (IP’s or network ranges that should be allowed to connect). For example, the following screenshot shows a configuration in which 10.1.1.120 and the 192.168.1.0/24 (in other words, 192.168.1.1 – 192.168.1.255) IP range would be able to connect:

Along with secure passwords, that should be about all the security your FTP server will need. There is a default Autoban setting already configured in FileZilla, so anyone who tries connecting to your server too many times within a short period will be locked out for a while. To tweak this setting, click on “Autoban” under Edit > Settings, but the default will suffice for most people.
One last note on the security of this FTP server: transmissions are in clear-text, so don’t use plain FTP to transfer anything confidential. SFTP or FTPS can be used for encrypting FTP communications, but are beyond the scope of this guide and will be covered in future articles.

Windows Firewall Exception

If you have a third party firewall or anti-virus program, be sure that the port you’ve chosen to run your FTP server on is allowed through it. If you have Windows Firewall enabled, you’ll need to add an exception for the port. Go to your Start menu and type Windows Firewall, then click on “Windows Firewall with Advanced Security.”

Click on “Inbound Rules” in the left column, and then “New Rule…” in the right column. We’ll be allowing a port through the firewall, so select Port when the wizard asks “What type of rule would you like to create” and then click next.
Type in the port you have chosen for your FTP server to run on (default is 21, but in this guide we chose 54218).

Click next three times after entering your port number. Put in a name and description for this exception so it’s easy to find in the future, and then click Finish.

Mapping the FTP Share on another Computer

Now that the FTP server is completely set up, we can have other people connect to it with the user information we provide them (also make sure you have allowed their IP address). Others could always use GUI applications such as FileZilla to connect to your FTP share, or they could map it to their computer so it shows up in Explorer.
Open ‘Computer’ and right click in a blank area, then select “Add a network location.”

The “Add Network Location” wizard will appear, click next twice. Enter the IP address and port of your FTP server, and click next.

Uncheck “Log on anonymously” and enter the username you have configured for your FTP server. Click next twice and then click finish. It should ask you for your password, and then you will be able to browse to the FTP share as if it were a local hard drive.

Learning Windows 7 – Networking

Last time we looked at the theory behind IP addresses, subnet masks and name resolution, and we ended the installment with a practical guide on how to change your network settings. This time we take that knowledge and extend it by introducing things like DHCP, Network Locations, Ping and much more.

DHCP

The Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol is used to assign IP addresses to devices on the fly, as opposed to setting the IP address of the device manually like we did in the last article. In fact, you probably use DHCP all the time but just aren’t aware of it, for example when you take your laptop to a coffee shop that has free Wi-Fi. DHCP is useful in many scenarios. Let’s take a look at a few.

• With the number of mobile devices we use on the rise, we find ourselves constantly needing to connect to different networks. For example, you need to connect your phone to your Wi-Fi at home and to the Wi-Fi at work. Without DHCP we would have to change the IP address on our phone every time we got home, or to work.
• Large companies can benefit from DHCP. Can you imagine having to go around and set 1500 IP addresses, only to have the Network and Communication team come to inform you that because of a bad design decision you need to change the IP addresses on all those work stations?

DHCP uses a four step process, commonly known as DORA, to assign an IP address.

• Discover – When you connect a DHCP enabled device to the network, it broadcasts a message to all nodes on the network (technically this is called a DHCPDiscover packet), asking if any one on the network is a DHCP server.
• Offer – If a DHCP Server receives the DHCPDiscover packet, it looks in its scope (a fancy name for the list of addresses that it is allowed to give to devices) for an available address which it then in turn sends back to the requester in a DHCPOffer packet.
• Request – When your device receives the DHCPOffer packet it sends a message back to the DHCP server requesting the offered address.
• Acknowledge – The DHCP server then give your client the go ahead to use the IP address using a DHCPAck packet.

Setting up a DHCP server is beyond the scope of this series, but in order to make sure that your clients are configured to use DHCP, open the properties of your network card and confirm that it is set to obtain an IP address automatically.

APIPA (Automatic Private IP Addressing)

A Windows 7 computer that is configured to use DHCP can automatically assign itself an IP address if a DHCP server is not available. For example, this could occur on a network without a DHCP server or on a network if a DHCP server is temporarily down for maintenance.
The Internet Assigned Numbers Authority has reserved 169.254.0.0-169.254.255.255 for Automatic Private IP Addressing. As a result, APIPA provides an address that is guaranteed not to conflict with any devices on your network.
After the network adapter has been assigned an IP address, the computer can communicate with any other computer that is connected to the same networks and that is also configured for APIPA. When troubleshooting, if a DHCP enabled computer has an APIPA address it is often a sign that it can’t connect to the DHCP server.

Network Locations

The first time that you connect to a network, you must assign it a network location. This allows you to maintain different Firewall profiles and network settings for different networks. For example, you may want to be able to discover devices on your home network but you certainly don’t want to be able to discover devices connected to the Wi-Fi at McDonald’s.
There are four network locations:

• Home Network – Assign this profile to a network when you know and trust the people and devices on the network. Network discovery is turned on for home networks, which allows you to see other computers and devices on the network and allows other network users to see your computer.
• Work Network – Assign this profile to small office networks. Network discovery is turned on for Work Networks by default.
• Public Network – Assign this profile to a network that you might connect to in a public place such as an internet cafe or an airports. Network discovery is turned off by default.
• Domain Network – This is the only network profile that you can’t assign to a network. It is automatically assigned to you when you join an Active Directory domain.

Below you can see the Windows Firewall with Advanced Security MMC console, which shows you that there is a different Firewall profile for each network location.

Troubleshooting Tools

Most of our time is spent troubleshooting problems on existing network infrastructure rather than setting up new networks. The following are the command line tools you will need to get acquainted with in order to troubleshoot network connectivity effectively.

PING (Packet InterNet Groper)

If there is one tool you need to remember from this troubleshooting section, its PING. The PING utility uses ICMP echo requests to test connectivity between you and another node on the network. The syntax of the command is simply ping followed by the IP address or hostname of the node you want to test connectivity to.

ping 192.168.0.254

Tracert

We use tracert, pronounced trace root, to track network traffic as it traverses the network. It is useful for determining where the point of failure in a network lies. The syntax of the command is is simply tracert followed by the IP address or hostname of the node you want connect to.

tracert google.com

NSLookup

The NSLookup command queries a DNS server for machine name and address information. To use NSLookup type nslookup followed by a host name or IP address.

IPConfig

When used alone, IPConfig tells you basic information about your network interfaces, such as their IP address and subnet mask. However, there are a few hidden gems.

• Using IPConfig with the /all switch shows you verbose information about your network interfaces.
• Using IPConfig with the /release switch forces your network card to release its IP address, you would then use IPConfig with the /renew switch to request a new IP from the DHCP server.

NetStat

Netstat is used to view port information on your machine. For example, you can see if there is any application listening on a specific port. Whenever I have had to use NetStat, I have found it useful to use the –ano switch.

Homegroups

One of the cool new features in Windows 7 is the Homegroup feature that allows easy sharing of files between machines. Today we take a look at how to add a new Windows 7 machine to an existing Homegroup. To start using the Homegroup feature we need to create one first. On the the computer that is going to be hosting the Homegroup type homegroup into the search box in the Start Menu and hit Enter.

In order create a Homegroup, you have to have your Network Location set to Home or you will get an error as shown below.

To change your network location, click on the What is a network location hyperlink and then change your network location to Home.

When the configuration is complete you will be asked what you want to share with other people in the Homegroup. Select what you want to share as needed.

Once the Homegroup has been created you will be given a password. Write this down in a safe place as you will need to enter it on the other machines for them to be able to join your Homegroup.

Now head over to the PC you want to join to the Homegroup and again type Homegroup into the Start Menu. This time click on the Join button.

Then enter the homegroup password.

That’s all there is to it. You now have two computers linked together via a Homegroup. To view member of the group and what they are sharing, open explorer and select Homegroup on the left hand side.