MaltaDad says....(2)

Yesterday I preached “theory”. Today it's action time.

The first thing to do is to safeguard our PCs. What are the threats? The correct answer is: “Viruses, Trojans or Worms, and Spyware". For more info about what they are, Google.

Viruses

The protection against Viruses is, of course, a Virus Scanner isn't it? Answer: NO! It is an updated Virus Scanner. If you don't update the scanner daily you may as well uninstall it.

Most PCs today come with a Virus Scanner installed. The problem is that after a trial period you have to pay for updates. Most people don't realise this and are consequently living in a fool's security paradise.

Most Commercial Virus Scanners are bulky, heavy on Computer Resource Usage (that's a pompous way of saying they slow down the computer) and relatively expensive to run.

I recommend AVG Antivirus. There is an excellent FREE version which is more than adequate. Where Norton and Macaffee bring a Pentium 1 to it's knees, AVG hardly affects it.

Get it from www.grisoft.com. Do NOT EVER try to run 2 antivirus scanners at the same time. Uninstall the one you have and reboot before installing a new one.

That's it! Your virus problems are just about over, as long as you update daily.

Spyware

The next threat to deal with is Spyware. You can consider that there are 2 kinds. Tracking Cookies are relatively innocuous. They enable advertisers to track what websites you visit so that they can target you with specific adverts. However they are a breach of privacy and other users of the PC can easily see where you've been.

More serious are Spyware (and/or Adware) programs. These get installed on your PC and can send information back to the authors. There are programs which steal your passwords and banking details. Others take over your browser and flood you with adverts and porn. Still others set up a mail server on your PC. This then gets used by spammers. They use your resources, you get the blame!

Don't think that because you only visit “nice” sites you are safe. “Nice” sites depend on advertising and many have no compunctions about dumping spyware on you. Solution? There are two worth considering.

AdAware from www.lavasoft.de and Spybot from security.kolla.de

You install them and run them, say, weekly. Spybot offers an “immunisation” facility which should intercept spyware on its way in but I haven't used it so cannot comment on it.

I suggest you get both and use both. They tend to leapfrog each other in performance.

Of course, both are free and frankly superior to the paid for programs available. Read the reviews if you need convincing.

Trojans

Unlike viruses, which spread by email and infected programs, Trojans get into your PC via the network (including the Internet). Tests have shown that a newly installed PC connected to the Internet will be infected within an average of 20 minutes.

In the past 30 minutes there have been 240 probes of my server, mostly from Chinese and Korean computers. If such a probe succeeds then my server will be toast.

Solution: A firewall. Windows XP has one built in. Otherwise try ZoneAlarm from www.zonelabs.com. There is a free version which, when coupled with the programs mentioned above will give you enough protection.

Test: go to www.grc.com, click on Shields Up and then scroll down to Shields Up. Run the test. It will tell you how safe you are.

Our next step is to make life a little more pleasant

SPAM! A word which has come to induce acute depression in many people. You download your mail and most of it is advertising medicines, porn, body parts enlargement and mortgage refinancing. Among the garbage lie the gems of real mail that you really want to read.

Most ISPs offer a filtering service. The problem is that they are trying a “one size fits all” policy so that it cannot be totally effective. If it works for you, fine. Otherwise you need to look at filtering your own.

Once again, the best product is a free one! POPFILE from popfile.sourceforge.net .

Popfile learns as it goes along. Initially you train it by telling what is spam and what isn't. When it makes a mistake you correct it. Soon you're running at 99.7% accuracy or better.

There are 2 versions, cross-platform and Windows only. The cross platform version is more difficult to set up as you first need to install PERL (a programming language). The Windows version installs like any other program and I'd recommend you use that (Unless you're running Linux, in which case most of what I've been writing is old hat to you).

If you've read this far, thanks for listening. Tomorrow we'll look at free productivity software.

Comments

[Kenneth]

What's your take on Microsoft's newly-acquired AntiSpyware, and the Spam utility in Mozilla Thunderbird? Is the latter comparable to Popfile on the basis of effectiveness?

[Maltadad]

Microsoft also recently bought an adware company. Next day the adware from this company was dowgraded from "must remove" to "harmless". You can't go wrong by always assuming that Microsoft is NOT on your side.

I don't use Thunderbird myself as I use Kontact running under Linux. I have tested it and also had good reports about it but haven't tried the Spam Filter. My suggestion is: Try it and see. If you get good results with it, great. However bear in mind that if you change email clients then you lose your spam history and filters and have to start again from scratch. With Popfile you can use any client as Popfile interposes itself between the mail server and the client.

I have even transferred the Popfile Knowledge base between computers and from Windows to Linux simply by copying the relevant files.

[Maltadad]

Microsoft also recently bought an adware company. Next day the adware from this company was dowgraded from "must remove" to "harmless". You can't go wrong by always assuming that Microsoft is NOT on your side.

I don't use Thunderbird myself as I use Kontact running under Linux. I have tested it and also had good reports about it but haven't tried the Spam Filter. My suggestion is: Try it and see. If you get good results with it, great. However bear in mind that if you change email clients then you lose your spam history and filters and have to start again from scratch. With Popfile you can use any client as Popfile interposes itself between the mail server and the client.

I have even transferred the Popfile Knowledge base between computers and from Windows to Linux simply by copying the relevant files.

[Sharon]

Hehehehe I was thinking of buying Norton. So now I'll try out this AVG thingy. I used to use McAfee but it really slowed down my computer.

Also, I tried and really liked Geek Super Hero, www.geeksuperhero.com to keep my machine free from popups, adware, spyware, etc

My friend used Zone Alarm and it used to pop up with restrictions every couple of minutes. Norton tends to the same sometimes which is a little irritating. I want my browsing experience to be smooth!

[Sharon]

How is AVG free? The site keeps prompting me to buy stuff :)