Just thought I would start a new item of
Tips which you may find useful when you use your PC here by clicking this link you will learn if you dont already know HOW TO COPY & PASTE
http://www.woopid.com/view_video.php?viewkey=80521354
If you have any tips Please add them here

Thank you for the infro John WM, a good idea son as Maxie use to say. Regards Doris

PC SECURITY.

By now most of us know about the things that can attack your PC when you are connected to the Internet. I first became involved with this sort of thing almost twenty years ago when I worked for Qantas Airways, I was team Leader of the department that was responsible for stopping this sort of thing; eventually it became so big that a separate department was set up to take care of it. During those times, I learnt a lot about the problem and since then, I personally, have never had a successful attack by a virus, Trojan horse, adware, spyware or anything similar. I am aware of many attempts but nothing has managed to get through my security.

I also hardly ever receive junk mail, one a month maybe, this is achieved by using Google Mail but more about that later. Incidentally, I never go to those sites that send out electronic greetings cards, years ago I did some tests with temporary e-mail addresses and found that they were beacons for junk mail.

There is a cost to this, it involves a lot of hard work and each time you install something on your PC it will slow down slightly. When I boot up my PC each morning it takes about twenty minutes to go through all the scans and checks but it is well worth the wait; I just get on with other things.

The fight to protect your PC security is a war, the problems and the solutions are constantly changing. The following notes were written on Sunday 14th December 2008 based on my knowledge then.



ANTI-VIRUS.

No one thing is more important than anything else is. If I really had to make a list, I would probably put anti-virus at the top. You can only install one anti-virus; they need to get right down to the kernel of the operating system to do their work, if you try to install a second one they will both think that the other is a virus. I use Avast, which is free to home users, many companies use this product to protect their file servers and workstations, and they pay for this, home users act as monitors reporting to Avast about any new viruses, that is why they get it free. I find Avast to be very fast and it downloads updates very quickly, sometimes two or three times a day. Some commercial anti-virus packages only download once a week. I find that Avast also detects much Malware before any other package zand it certainly would not let a Trojan horse through. The website that I use is:

Avast Anti-virus


You will need to register once a year to use Avast, it is quite a simple process, they then send you a key which you cut and paste. Right cut on the Avast icon, click on “About Avast” then click on the licence key button. Once you’ve installed Avast run a full scan of all you hard drives, it will take a few hours but I betcha it will find something that all the others have missed.



DANGEROUS SITES.

The next important thing is to avoid visiting dangerous sites that might install some kind of malware on your PC, but how do you know which sites to avoid. Quite easy install the WOT add-on to your browser. WOT stands for World of Trust, if you visit a dangerous site your browser will darken with a red warning like the following:



If you want more details click on the link and you will see a list like the following:



WOT is a communal thing, it can help if everyone registers with them so that you can submit details of any problems sites as you become aware of them.

I download WOT from:

WOT



SPYWARE, MALWARE, ADWARE.

You now need a few things to take car of Malware, that’s spyware, adware and a few other things. I use A-squared, SpywareBlaster and Windows Defender. All downloaded from the following links:

A-squared

SpywareBlaster

Windows Defender

You will need to update A-squared and run it once a week. SpywareBlaster needs to be updated once a week and Windows Defender will take care of itself once installed.

You might ask why have so many, well the reason is that there is so much Malware attacking your PC and it is very difficult to find any single solution, usually with three of them at least one will find whatever is attacking.



JUNK MAIL.

Now STOPPING JUNK MAIL. Google mail has the best junk mail or spam filter that I’ve ever seen. I use a Google Mail address but you can configure Google mail to read in e-mail from any other address. Your ISP must allow SSL encryption, Google insists on it to protect your mail, some ISPs don’t allow it because it slows down their server. Here’s the help page for Google Mail. It is complicated but it is all well documented here. Open up all the links and print everything then follow each, one at a time. I know an 81 year old lady with only five years PC experience who was able to follow this.


Google Mail Instructions

Best of luck and I hope that, like me, the above will enable you to avoid virus, malware and junk mail.

Internet Explorer - Most Urgent

If you are still using Internet Explorer it is a threat to the security of your system. At least two million people have already been affected.

Details are here:

Microsoft plans quick fix for IE

MICROSOFT SECURITY ADVICE
Change IE security settings to high (Look under Tools/Internet Options)
Switch to a Windows user account with limited rights to change a PC's settings
With IE7 or 8 on Vista turn on Protected Mode
Ensure your PC is updated
Keep anti-virus and anti-spyware software up to date



The fix has now been released and details are here:

Microsoft Zips Out-of-Cycle Patch for IE Vulnerability

It would be better to download and install this fix NOW before you even think of doing anything else.

I mentioned something along these lines in another thread.

Cloning Your Hard Drive for Backup

The above article mentions Zip drives, I wouldn't have one as a gift, they have something called the "Click of Death", when you hear it you known that they are finished. Using DVDs is a good way, Norton's imaging software, Ghost, can handle multiple CDs, an easier alternative might be a portable hard drive which are quite inexpensive nowadays.

The reliability of hard drives has improved a lot and they now rarely crash. When they first came out for PCs we had problems, the user had to close down in a proper sequence, landing the HD arm (similar to a gramophone arm-see picture in the article), in a safe place so that the tracks wouldn't be damaged.

The biggest problem we had was that when they were new the platters rotated slightly slower than the design speed, as the bearings eased up they would reach the design speed but this was sometimes too fast for the PC to read it. With that old design we got into the habit, when a hard drive was six months old, of backing up all the data, reformatting the hard drive with the now faster running disk, then restoring the data. In those days there were two forms of formatting to carry out, low level and high level. The modern automated hard drive has so many regulators and safety devices that it gives very little trouble.