Sorry for the inconvenience. You will be able to sign up for lessons & chat subscriptions, and log into your accounts, after a technical interruption which will last a few days. Gold Pass Subscribers will all receive a free 3-month extension to their subscriptions, as our way of saying “Sorry!” Note that the videos (without the lessons) are all working normally, for example www.real-english.com/reo/index.html.
February 24, 2008
Hackers are actively exploiting a “zero-day hole” in RealNetworks’ RealPlayer media player, which is installed on tens of millions of Windows computers worldwide, and which is required to view Real English videos. Go to
http://service.real.com/realplayer/security/191007_player/en/
On this page, you will note that there are two different patches, according to the version of the player installed on your computer - one for RealPlayer 10.5 and RealPlayer 11 beta, and another for RealOne Player, RealOne Player v2 and RealPlayer 10.
If you don’t know which version of the Real Player you have installed, you can open your Real Player, and click on “Help”, then click on “About Real Player” to see the version you are running. If your Real Player is in compact mode like mine, you will first have two click on the two >> (2 arrows at the top) to expand, and then you will see “Help”, and finally “About Real Player” at the bottom.
After the patch is applied, you will see no confirmation message telling you that the update has been successful. The patch is, nevertheless, and apparently, effective if you see no error messages during or after the brief update process. I don’t understand why this big company doesn’t do a better job with security related matters.
Additional general info at ZDNet Blog: http://blogs.zdnet.com/security/?p=599
October 20, 2007
