Comments on: Securing your Windows computer

By: If spyware is outlawed, only outlaws will have spyware - Homeland Stupidity

If spyware is outlawed, only outlaws will have spyware - Homeland Stupidity — Thu, 26 Nov 2009 04:05:17 +0000

[...] two years ago, almost at the very beginning of this site, I wrote in more detail about securing your Windows computer. Most of the information is still relevant and useful [...]

By: jim

jim — Wed, 24 Oct 2007 18:39:52 +0000

Confirming – Norton A-V is actually VERY risky to rely on; I had constant viral & malware headaches using it, which stopped once I moved to Panda … I now use Spybot Search & Destroy in conjunction with Avast. They work well together. I still have a screen-capture of Norton: “# of files scanned – 0, # of problems found – 1.” Truly a cybernetic miracle! Apparently it can find problems by osmosis.

My computer sometimes acts “sluggish” – probably due to simply over-stuffing its memory – but I’ve yet to encounter a single serious problem with virii or malware, for more than 2 years.

By: Anonymous

Anonymous — Sun, 28 Jan 2007 14:15:04 +0000

norton is an excellent product? where do you get your information? norton is semi-useless bloatware!

AVG as mentioned earlier is a more effective (and free) alternative.

By: Johnson

Johnson — Sun, 18 Jun 2006 22:09:34 +0000

Avast is also a good free AV. Nice thing about Avast is that they update almost every day, but they use a patch program so the updates are small. And I think clamav and f-prot, although usually mentioned for Linux, have free windows versions.

adaware is good to run as a backup, but I have found spybot to be better. In the past at least, adaware has purposely ignored some types of spyware, saying they don’t “hurt your machine” (they sure hurt mine). This stuff is usually the spies that major manufacturers install with bundled software, so adaware is probably trying to avoid lawsuits. As a test, I ran both adaware and spybot side by side for a year. spybot found 5 or 6 things I had installed from bundled software. adaware didn’t find any. Maybe adaware has changed its mind on this stuff since I was using it.

If you’re up to learning networking, give snort a try. It’s built for Linux, but also has a windows version. snort is a NIDS which can sniff out a lot of bad stuff. Much of what it checks for is already in some firewalls, however. In general, a great way to get free security software for Windows is to look for ports of Linux stuff.

spywareblaster is also good, and use a hosts file which blocks bad addys.

By: Is your computer endangering homeland security? - Homeland Security or Homeland Stupidity

Sun, 01 Jan 2006 05:54:45 +0000

[...] Use anti-virus software, a firewall, and anti-spyware software to help keep your computer safe and secure. While it’s not always pleasant to think about keeping your computer secure, a few dollars and a few minutes of your time go a long way toward keeping malicious software off your system. For more on this, see Securing your Windows computer. [...]

By: IO ERROR

IO ERROR — Tue, 26 Jul 2005 23:05:54 +0000

Microsoft presses Windows Genuine Advantage, locks out pirates

Microsoft’s Windows Genuine Advantage program, aimed at preventing pirate copies of Windows from receiving updates and other downloads, took effect Monday.

…

By: Howard Robinson

Howard Robinson — Sun, 28 Nov 2004 02:53:53 +0000

Two good Anti-spyware programs are spybot and adaware.

By: Nielmot

Nielmot — Sun, 21 Nov 2004 05:04:28 +0000

AVG has a free version of their anti virus program.
I have used AVG for about 6 months now and I have been happy with it. It is slowly but steadily gaining in popularity. (probably would grow faster if they marketed it more)
http://www.avg.com/us-en/homepage

By: Dan Birchall

Dan Birchall — Sun, 21 Nov 2004 01:33:51 +0000

I’ve found that the best and safest way to run Windows is under emulation. In fact, Microsoft has said as much themselves – their page for Virtual PC notes (or used to, at least) that Windows under Virtual PC isn’t quite as vulnerable as “the real thing.” (This is probably due to it not being given as much control over network interfaces; the host operating system is likely to answer if anyone comes knocking.)

Running under emulation also typically means that the Windows “drive” is really just a drive image file under the host OS – which can easily be duplicated, backed up, or whatever. Imagine your Windows box getting totally hosed, and being able to fix it in a matter of seconds simply by copying over a “clean” copy you saved. I’ve been there, done that. And Windows crashing under emulation doesn’t usually have any effect at all on the host OS.

I’ve run Windows NT 4 Workstation under VMWare on Linux, and Windows 95, 98, NT 4 Workstation and XP Professional under Virtual PC on Mac OS X. There are very few things I have to do that require Windows – most can be done as easily, if not more easily, on Linux or a Mac – so it’s convenient to not have Windows running all the time.