Alexander’s Blog

AVG AntiVirus is a free and popular antivirus application that people have been using on their desktop computers for years to protect their desktop operating system, such as Windows XP or Windows 7. Did you know that AVG also has an Anti-Theft Service for Android devices? Here’s how it works.

1. Download and install the AVG AntiVirus software from the Play Store on your Android device.
2. Once you have configured the software for protection, performance and privacy, click on the Anti-Theft icon to activate the service.
3. You will receive an e-mail from AVG that your service is activated, along with the instructions on how to use this service.
4. Go to any computer and visit AVG’s Anti-Theft Web page at http://www.avgmobilation.com/anti-theft.
5. Login with your Google account. Select the appropriate option, such as Shout, Locate, Lock, Unlock, Wipe, or Scan.
6. You can use the Shout option to make the device sound an alarm. Essentially, this will play a ringtone on the device. This can come handy if you can’t find your smart phone in your house and there is no other phone in the house to dial your number.
7. When you use the Locate option, it can take several minutes to locate the phone and will give you its proximity in a Google map.
8. The Lock option can be used to lock the device remotely so others can’t use it. This will require someone to enter the password that you will enter. This password is a temporary password and has nothing to do with any other password on your device or Gmail account.
9. You can use the Unlock option to send the unlock command to the device but it can’t actually unlock your device remotely. You must enter the password you provided when you used the Lock option to unlock the device
10. Using the Wipe option will wipe your Android device remotely. Needless to say, I didn’t try this feature and will have to trust AVG that it works.
11. If you select the Scan option from a desktop computer, within seconds your Android device will start scanning your computer for security threats. This is the same action that you can take from the AVG mobile application on your Android device.

Does the Service Work?

So what about security and does this Anti-Theft service really work? In my tests, I found that the application works for the most part and can be useful to lock a stolen device remotely (and potentially wipe out the device, which I didn’t try). The features work, except that the first time I used the Locate feature, it didn’t even come close to the actual location of the device. While my smart phone was in my had, it showed that my device was located in a different zip code about 10 miles away from me. After a while it did show the exact location, so decide for yourself if this is good, bad, or ugly.

Another weak point that I discovered is that the application itself doesn’t use Secure Socket Layer (SSL) to encrypt the pages on the Web site. This surprised me. A company that makes AntiVirus software should be securing pages where customers are entering passwords and working on Anti-Theft software. In other words, you are using AVG’s unsecure page to secure your Android device. Really? This makes no sense.

Not only the Web site is unsecure, the password that you provide to lock the device can only be 4-6 characters. In other words, the password you provide is going to be very weak. While this may be good enough to keep an average “Joe” out, it won’t be good enough to keep a serious hacker out.

Hopefully, over time AVG will improve this application. It’s a good start but in my opinion the application appears to be more for fun and games than to offer a serious anti-theft service……mainly due to the quality of service and the fact that AVG doesn’t offer encryption to use a security software on their Web site. As I mentioned already, it does seem to get the job done for the most part so I am not ruling it out as a totally useless application. I believe it needs work to offer better reliability for locating the device and also needs some security improvements. After all it is a security application.

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Copyright ©2013 Zubair Alexander. All rights reserved.

You can manage multiple Remote Desktop Connections with RDCMan, a utility that has been around for a long time. Unfortunately, Microsoft didn’t make this tool widely available for several years. Fortunately, Microsoft’s Symon Perriman pointed out during his presentation at my Seattle Windows Networking User Group a couple of days ago that a new version is available from Microsoft. It’s version 2.2 that was posted on 5/27/10.

RDCMan manages multiple remote desktop connections. It is useful for managing server labs where you need regular access to each machine such as automated checkin systems and data centers. It is similar to the built-in MMC Remote Desktops snap-in, but more flexible.

Supported Operating Systems: Windows 7, Windows Server 2003, Windows Server 2008, Windows Server 2008 R2, Windows Vista

Users using Windows XP or Windows Server 2003 will need to obtain version 6 or newer of the Remote Desktop Connection client software.

You can download RDCMan here.

Telnet Client is not installed by default on Windows 7, Windows Server 2008 R2, Windows Vista, or Windows Server 2008. The procedures to install Telnet Client vary based on the operating system you are using. Microsoft has documented the following instructions on TechNet in this article.

To install Telnet Client by using a command line.

1. Open a command prompt window. Click Start, type cmd in the Start Search box, and then press ENTER.
2. Type the following command: pkgmgr /iu:”TelnetClient”.
3. If the User Account Control dialog box appears, confirm that the action it displays is what you want, and then click Continue.
4. When the command prompt appears again, the installation is complete.

Managing your workstations and servers remotely has become a necessity these days. Here’s a comparison of remote desktop software on wikipedia that you may find helpful.

Click on the image below to see the complete comparison of remote desktop software for various platforms.

The Shutdown command can be used to remotely restart or shutdown a Windows 2000 or later computer.

For example, you can remotely reboot a Windows 7 computer from a Windows XP computer as long as you have administrative privileges. On the destination computer, you may need to ensure that your account has the user right “Force shutdown from a remote system.” You can run gpedit.msc at the Start, Run and then add your account to that user right, as shown in the screenshot below.

The shutdown is especially handy for Network Administrators and PC Support professionals in a domain environment. Here’s the syntax used by the shutdown utility.

C:\> shutdown /?

Usage: shutdown [-i | -l | -s | -r | -a] [-f] [-m \\computername] [-t xx] [-c "comment"] [-d up:xx:yy]

No args                 Display this message (same as -?)
-i                      Display GUI interface, must be the first option
-l                      Log off (cannot be used with -m option)
-s                      Shutdown the computer
-r                      Shutdown and restart the computer
-a                      Abort a system shutdown
-m \\computername       Remote computer to shutdown/restart/abort
-t xx                   Set timeout for shutdown to xx seconds
-c “comment”            Shutdown comment (maximum of 127 characters)
-f                      Forces running applications to close without warning
-d [u][p]:xx:yy         The reason code for the shutdown
u is the user code
p is a planned shutdown code
xx is the major reason code (positive integer less than 256)
yy is the minor reason code (positive integer less than 65536)

To restart a computer make sure you use -r, to shutdown the computer use -s. As mentioned earlier, the shutdown command can be used on a local or a remote computer. To restart a remote computer use -m \\computername. For example, if you have a computer that’s hung on a certain process and you can’t even remote desktop into it, you can try to restart the computer remotely and force running applications to close without warning by using the following command.

shutdown -m \\computername -r -f

If you want to use the GUI version, simply type shutdown -i to bring up the graphical interface. Here you can add, one or more computers, configure the option to Restart, Shutdown, or Loggoff, display a warning notice on the computer, configure the computer to reboot after a specific interval, and configure the option for Shutdown Event Tracker that will record the reason for the action in the Event Viewer.

I mentioned at the beginning of the article that you can use Shutdown utility on Windows 2000 and later computers. Microsoft’s KB article 317371 explains how to use Shutdown tool in Windows 2000. However, notice that the older utility used a forward slash (/) instead of a hyphen (-) for the switches.