jambutty

Surfers on the Internet should treat their computer security in the same way as they treat their own domestic security. In other words make it as secure as you can and don’t shrink back from the cost.

Before connecting to the Internet you really do need to have some sort of a Firewall to stop intrusions by the wicked. There are many types available but I opted for ZoneAlarm. There is an adequate free version available at http://www.zonelabs.com/store/content/home.jsp although it is worth buying the Pro version for added protection. $49.95 may seem a high price to pay but if it stops just one hacker getting at your vital information it is worth the cost.

A good firewall like ZoneAlarm keeps all of the 64,000 odd ports available to sneaky stuff firmly closed so nothing can get in that way. In fact you can surf in ‘Stealth Mode’ and that means no one can trawl the Internet and find you. That just leaves the ports used for accessing a web site and downloading and uploading your emails and your web space if your have some.

An anti-virus programme is also essential and again there are many available but I use AVG where they also have a free version from http://www.grisoft.com/doc/1 and yes it is worth getting the Pro version for $33.30. Regular (sometimes daily) updates keep your defences up to date.

One bit of software that you should have is MailWasher from http://www.mailwasher.net/ This programme accesses your ISP mailbox without downloading anything onto your computer so that you can inspect each email for SPAM, unwanted etc and delete them before they arrive at your computer. You can ‘train’ MailWasher to recognise repeat SPAM and it will be already tagged for deletion when your list of emails is displayed and you can also ‘train’ MW to recognise wanted emails.

You can download the free version for a 30 days trial and after that it will cost you $37. In my view money well spent

After that you will probably need some sort of software that will scour your system for SpyWare, Key Loggers and a variety of other nasties that are being developed by those who want to gain access to your computer and use it as their own for their own nefarious purposes.

Most viruses (and yes it is viruses and not virii) arrive attached to an email although you can still get infected from a web site. Email viruses not only mess around with your computer and seek out your precious private data but replicate themselves by sending an email to every address in your address book. Of course you know nothing about it until some irate friend accuses you of sending them a virus.

But there is a simple way around that. If you had no addresses in your address book then the virus wouldn’t be able to send an email to all your contacts. So my address book is empty except for my own email address. Then if something starts to send out emails unknown to me I will be the only one to get one and I will be forewarned and thus enabling me to start searching for the nasty.

“But I can’t remember all the email address of my friends etc.” I hear your anguished cries. Well neither can I so I have devised a different way.

Hands up all those who use Word to compose their emails and then copy and paste the text into the email New Message box?

So this is what I do.

I have a special folder for my email Word documents.

For each contact I create a Word document that has the contact’s name on the first line and that document is saved under that contact’s name.

On the line underneath I type in that contact’s email address and it becomes a hyper link that will launch the Message Box.

Then under that I type my message, highlight and copy it and click on the email address and the Message Box is launched with the email address already in place and paste my message into place. All that is left to do is enter something in the subject line hit Send and off it goes!

So when I want to send an email to Joe Bloggs I find his document and get on with it.

It works for me so it may work for you also.

gerryst

You should give Linux a try as well. Or, if you investments came out nicely, buy a Mac.

Both platforms are inherently more secure than your average (preloaded) Windows installation.

While the Mac is known for his ease of use, Linux has long been said to be a system only for experienced users.
Yet with current versions this is no longer true.

You can give Linux an easy try with a live-CD. These are CDs that come with anything you need to run a decent Linux system and usually they don't even require acces to the harddrive, so you reboot your PC with the live-CD, give it a try, reboot, pop out the CD and everything is back to normal.

The most widely used Live-CD is Knoppix, available from http://www.knopper.net/knoppix/index-en.html


One last advice: You should use Firefox as a webbrowser, since some other Linux browsers may have difficulties with some HYIP sites.

jambutty

Useful information gerryst, thanks.

Many years ago when I was forced to abandon the Amiga A1200 in favour of a PC if I wanted to stay abreast of the Internet innovations, I toyed with the idea of going down the Mac road. The overall cost put me off and also the fact that the PC was much more widespread than the Mac even if it was a superior machine. Being Amiga savvy as I was I would have been at home in the Mac world but broke. So the PC got the nod.

I’ve had a brief look at the Linux OS but my tired old brain cell (68 last Sunday) isn’t really prepared to learn yet another OS. I’m still trying to catch up on Windows. So I will just have to persevere with what I’ve got. But then you never know in some complete moment of absolute madness I might give the CD thing a try. I’ve bookmarked the site for later investigation so thank you for that piece of information.

gerryst

For those unwilling to switch systems, I recommend using Firefox [1] as browser and Thunderbird [2] as email client.

Compared to Internet Explorer and Outlook (Express) they are much more immune against catching spyware/adware.

Additionally they sport features Microsoft has just recently started to develop for their software, like tabbed browsing.




[1] http://www.mozilla.org/products/firefox/
[2] http://www.mozilla.org/products/thunderbird/

akuma99

I support the view about Firefox and Thunderbird, they are great, I would also recommend a free antivirus program called AVG Free edition, for those that cant afford good old Norton. Has served me well so far.

jambutty

A couple of days ago I downloaded and installed PestPatrol at $29.95 from http://store.ca.com/dr/v2/ec_Main.E...CACHE_ID=182827 and since then no Spyware/AdWare has got onto my machine. I have several other anti Spyware software that used to identify SpyWare but once PestPatrol got to work none of them are now registering SpyWare, because PestPatrol has stopped all getting in.

OE and IE may not be the best bits of software around but I have no real problems with either so far.

But it is always useful to read about alternatives, so thanks gerryst.

gerryst

That's some good software.
Using Firefox and Thunderbird on some colleagues' machines resulted in zero spyware as well using only a month-old background virus-scanner and the firewall on the broadband router.

XiangWei

Will firewall slow down the speed of browsing on the internet?

jambutty

No it shouldn’t do XiangWei.

But even if it does it will only be fractional and even on a 56K dial up you wouldn’t notice the difference.