Best Practices in Avoiding Viruses and Other Unfortunate Serious Conditions
Unless you have relegated your computer to being a unconnected doorstop
in the basement family room, you will likely have experienced the pain of
computer virus or spyware infection.
Your system slows to a crawl, and shuts down at unexpected times, your
precious files are at risk of being lost, and your email buddies are besieged
with strangely formatted emails apparently arriving from your location.
One client system was infected after taking advice from the 'kid across the
street' to uninstall all anti-virus software because he said, 'all you need
is a firewall program' .. hmmm. So, just to be clear:
|
If you connect to the internet (and often even if you do not) you NEED
an up-to-date anti-virus program, ESPECIALLY if you are using Microsoft Windows for your operating system.
In addition, you SHOULD CONSIDER spy-ware detection and firewall software.
You MUST ALSO keep your operating system fully patched and updated.
|
Anti-Virus: For general hoax or virus information go to the
Symantec Anti-Virus Research Center. You could go out and purchase the latest Norton Anti-virus
program for some $90 per year, or install your ISP 'included/free/works most-of-the-time' anti-virus
program (and many do), but I recommend checking out the offerings from Grisoft AVG
www.grisoft.com.
For single non-commercial users I recommend the Free AVG version 6.
You must register to get a registration code. AVG Free Edition is a fully
featured anti-virus software with the following restrictions:
* Basic user Interface only
* Disabled Advanced Scheduling of Tests
* Disabled Creating of Your Own Tests
* No Techical Support on the free version
.. however, after installation the program automatically scans for virus
threats in the background and on request and you get unlimited free virus list updates
from the grisoft website.
For networked or commercial users, I recommend the regular AVG version 7.
Click
here for AVG pricing and options for the single user, network, fileserver
program versions for linux or windows.
You can download a 30-day unlimited trial version for any of these versions.
Paid versions include unlimited tech support and TWO YEARS of updates on a
fast dedicated virus list update server.
Anti-Spy-Ware: Ad-based or Spy-ware software is sneaky software
installed onto your system inadvertently and/or surrepetiously along with
other software and often only differ in effect on your system from virus
software in that, by definition, it does self-replicate.
The effect on your system is often the same as with
a virus infection. Adware causes ad banners to popup on your screen, changes
banners on websites, can change your Yahoo and Google search results with
advertisments instead of your true results and place pop-up advertisments
on your desktop, start menu, and in your web browser Favorites and Bookmarks.
Spyware programs hide on your computer and do a number of harmful and annoying
things without your knowledge. These programs can even steal information from
your computer such as credit card numbers, email addresses, and more.
Pop-ups proliferate, your internet connection settings are
modified without your knowledge or permission, information is collected and
sent to unknown entities somewhere out on there on the internet. To remove
these various threats, I like to use the free
Ad-aware from www.lavasoft.de. Another favorite
is
Spyware Blaster from Javacool Software. Use Ad-aware to
detect and remove the problem files. Then use Spyware Blaster to 'innoculate' your system to common
spyware attacts.
Firewall: A firewall is program or hardware device that monitors
access to/from your computer and works to protect you from unauthorized access
,especially via the Internet. The must popular software firewall is
Zone Alarm at www.zonelabs.com.
Once installed, Zonealarm will popup a window when program xyz trys to send information
out to the internet or when someone out there tries to contact your computer. Of course,
this precaution can be defeated if you allow the connection by saying, "Yeah, sure", instead
of, "No way, eh". So if in doubt, just say no. A correctly functioning firewall can prevent
infection and transmission of many of the newer types of viruses (e.g. the Sasser worm).
Patches and Updates: And finally, keep your operating system up to date. The errors
and ommissions / security holes that exist in all operating systems are used by those evil
hackers to send viruses/spy-ware/other malicious programs into your computer. By keeping up
to date, we can minimize the effect of these program on our system. Windows
includes the Windows Update function (click Start, All Programs, Windows Update). Linux
Fedora has the Up2date or YUM programs that can automatically check for and install
critical program updates (Open Terminal, SU to run as root, then 'yum update' to get updates).
Of course, updates for Win95 are no longer maintained, Win98 updates are still being
posted but will end shortly, WinXP is still being actively updated, but the SP2
(Service Pack 2 Update) for XP, took some time to work before the dust settled. It was
supposed to ramp up security on WinXP (kind of) so that features and services that had free
reign on your computer in the past now require special dispensation in order to
function as they once did. Of course, you have to read and understand the security messages
and NOT click come on in when the Big Bad Wolf is knocking on your door.
A new integrated firewall program will be on by default, preventing access from baddies
out on the internet as well as stopping you from seeing your files on your other locally
networked computers (without adjustment of the Active Directory Group Policies settings
by 'your administrator' i.e. you .. you do know how to do that properly, eh?). The Remote
Procedure Call (RPC) service will run with reduced system priviledges. The Distributed
Component Object Model (DCOM) will be locked down, Windows Messenger Service will be off
by default, ActiveX controls will be monitored and blocked, so even the old Windows Update
programs will have to be updated to continue to work. So .. many neat programs that just
used to work in the past may require re-jigging to work in the future and hopefully a
lot of those suspicious programs trying to run in the background to send pop-ups to
your screen and your password to the evil unknown hacker will be stopped from running ..
for a while. We shall see.
|
