PaulSpoerry.com

The swine flu is the hottest thing on the news today. Every channel, every news web site, and most most people you talk to are saying something related to the swine flu. This flu strand, known as the H1N1 virus, started in Mexico and has spread to other parts of the world due to travelers carrying the virus.

With United States so close to Mexico people here are very much concerned about the flu. More so, it is common knowledge that the border restrictions between Mexico and the U.S. can be bypassed in a relatively easy manner.

So for all those who are wigging out… check out the FluTracker. FluTracker is an online Google Maps Mashup tracking confirmed cases, suspect cases, deaths and false alarms worldwide. To get the latest straight from the horses mouth check the CDC.

OpenDNS is a wicked service (and FREE) to use anyway. All my personal PC’s use it. OpenDNS can also speed up your surfing by allowing keyboard shortcuts from any system, work as a parental filter, and prevent you from seeing so many of those “no such site, but here’s a whole bunch of ads!” parking pages. It’s free to use and set up; here’s a detailed guide for home networks.

So how does it help with Conficker? The latest variant of Conficker is now blazing through over 50,000 domains per day in an attempt to thwart blocking attempts. But check this out,  at any given time OpenDNS has filters that hold well over 1,000,000 domains!!! Combine that with their phishing and domain tagging filters and basically 50,000 domains a day isn’t going to put a dent in OpenDNS. So basically even if you HAVE Conficker… OpenDNS will more than likely stop the worm from even being able to contact the site that would tell it what to do. OpenDNS prevents the worms from even contacting its botnet overlords to receive instructions on what to do.

Check out the OpenDNS blog for more about April 1st and Conficker, when you’re done reading that head on over and configure your home network to use OpenDNS, not just to protect you from Conficker but for all the added bonuses it brings as well.