PC Security---what's the best?

[BLACKPANTHER]

Originally Posted by jonnywombat

use hijackthis for all spyware dection

Unfortunately, I'm a complete numpty on my compupiter! Hijack this scares me a bit 'cos I'd prob end up deleting summatt I shouldn't. I wish they'd just bring out one thing that did it all.....without me having to do a thing, or is that just a pipe dream. AVG/avast!/spybot have been spot on for me up to now.

[Spree]

Brilliant Dave321 - just brilliant

I just buggered my keyboard up spitting Guinness all over it you fool

[jonnywombat]

Originally Posted by BLACKPANTHER

Unfortunately, I'm a complete numpty on my compupiter! Hijack this scares me a bit 'cos I'd prob end up deleting summatt I shouldn't. I wish they'd just bring out one thing that did it all.....without me having to do a thing, or is that just a pipe dream.

If in doubt post your log files in their forum. then given a bit of time someone will normally tell you what to do, if anything.

As implied by a lot of members, there are quite a few solutions to anti-virus, spyware and malware, among other things but there seems to be one thing everyone has missed, and I consider this to be the important one: don't visit dodgy sites and don't download software or other items from these sites if you can't trust them.

Example:

"Awesome Software Version 5 for $30" from www.nastywebsite.com
"Awesome Software Version 5 for $130" from softwarevendor.com: The Leading Software Site on the Net

The former is a poorly designed, buggy website that doesn't offer SSL (https -- secure web browing) when making payments and you don't know who the company is and the software is unusually cheap -- dodgy.

The latter is a respectible company who you've heard of and others suggest and the price is more what you'd expect for the software you're buying.

There's also the issue of music and movies. We all like the idea of not having to pay for our next Britney Spears album so you download Limewire, because your mate at work said, "it's really boss la!" It is, "really boss" but sadly a lot of the wrong people think so too and they exploit this popularity and try to infect people's machines with trojan horses, drone viruses, etc..

I like to give people an idea of why virii (plural for computer virus) exist and what they generally do...

They can inject an infection that turns your computer into a drone/zombie. Here is a black & white version of the Wikipedia article. Your computer gets infected and this virus runs in the background in secret. It then connects to a remote computer, along with the few hundred thousand PCs infected and a single person, or group of, can control every single computer with a single command and get the computer to perform naughty deeds, such as Denial of Service attacks or data mining for information like credit card details surfing habbits or they can even use your computer has a warez machine... that is, use it to house their software/wares and hand it out to other people.

The second reason for wanting to infect a machine is proof-of-concept. They merely want to prove that a virus can be written or a certain exploit exists in MS Windows and it needs to be patched. If MS don't listen, then they force them to listen by implementing a harmful virus that MS has to patch.

Then there's the destructive aspect - people just have issues and want to take it out on others, so they evelop a destructive virus designed to destroy your property. Why? I don't know. Maybe their girlfriend dumped them *shrug*

Besides all the excellent advice from the members here, here's what I'd do:

Avast! your machine, or use anti-virus software that fits your needs -- just keep it upto date; also keep your operating system upto date. This applies especially if you're running Windows. You Linux heads (me included) aren't exempt - Linux virii do exist, as does virii for Macs

Spybot or anti-spyware your machine weekly, if not daily. This task can be automated using the scheduler built into Windows.

Take care as to what you download, and from where. If you're going to download that midget clown porn, then please use something like BitTorrent and use trusted sources where people have left comments and feedback on the content to confirm it is what it claims to be.

Image or clone your harddrive from day one. This is a process where you install everything you want on the computer, BEFORE connecting it to the install and then you "image" the hard drive - that is, take a snapshot of it so that if it goes belly up, you can go back to the original image. There is loads of software that can do this, such as Asigra or Norton Ghost (the latter is cheap and industry standard in the IT trade) -- great way of recoving from a nasty virus.

External storage is an absolute must. Harddrives are bloody cheap these days, so if you can afford a new exhaust, you can afford a 80Gigabyte+ external hard drive. You can use this store your music, your movies, your videos (*cough*porn) and those pictures of your cat looking cute on your new bike.

The follow on from the external storage, comes BACKUPS! They're great because after you accidentally delete your Justin Timberlake albums, you can refer to them and recover your favourite artist's albums.

Firewalls. Firewalls are fun and a good way of closing up unused ports on your computer. There are so many out there, I'm not going to suggest any. usually, in a lot of cases, your router (provided by your ISP in some cases) will have a firewall built into it.

I can't think of anything else at this time, but that seems like the lot from me.

Hope this helps.

[grotbag]

Originally Posted by mtcrilly

As implied by a lot of members, there are quite a few solutions to anti-virus, spyware and malware, among other things but there seems to be one thing everyone has missed, and I consider this to be the important one: don't visit dodgy sites and don't download software or other items from these sites if you can't trust them.



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I prefer the short version please

Originally Posted by grotbag

I prefer the short version please

Sure, here it is: stop downloading porn, and those animal farm videos are illegal in the UK you dirty sod :P

[grotbag]

Originally Posted by mtcrilly

Sure, here it is: stop downloading porn, and those animal farm videos are illegal in the UK you dirty sod :P

Cheeky bugger

[druidsam]

Originally Posted by grotbag

Cheeky bugger

yes he is.. im starting to like him already



..........................Sam

Originally Posted by grotbag

Cheeky bugger

I'm a scouser, we're naturally cheeky monkeys :P

But seriously, give the post a read and you'll get a better understanding of what you're protecting your self against. It's like replacing an exhaust (I've never done this), I can imagine it's easier to do if you know how your exhaust works and why you're changing it, no?

[jonnywombat]

Not wishing to be a pedant but the correct plural of virus is simply viruses..

Although virii (or sometimes viri) are often used in terms of computers no dictionary recognises either as the correct plural

Also as for linux viruses..AFAIK a couple do exist merely as proof of concepts, none are in the wild, and even if they were the potential for damage is low as long as you don't log in as root