Safety on Computers

[Oldbushie]

Yeah...

Still, I find that a lot of things suddenly stop working if I turn on a firewall. That and it sucks up too much memory, at least on my old computer.

[dew7]

Well you have to configure the firewall correctly.  

[Drunken Chinchilla]

I dont use a firewall and I dont have an active virus scanner (I do scans weekly though) and I've had no problems with virii at all. As long as you dont download anything from dodgy places I dont see how anything can really get there...

[dew7]

People can tap into your computer through open ports and find weaknesses that are part of any operating system especially Windows.  
Check out www.grc.com to see how many open ports you have and how vulnerable your computer really is.

[Jeysie]

As long as you dont download anything from dodgy places I dont see how anything can really get there...

Surprisingly easily... I know of three examples off the top of my head.

First, a personal experience. Way back when Harrison and I were first looking to move to Springfield, we did a whole ton of apartment researching. Since I'm not a big telephone fan, I did a lot of looking through apartment brochures and online listings for websites, and sent out several e-mails to apartment realtor companies with questions. One of the people I e-mailed sent me back a reply with an attachment that was a brochure of info about their apartment blocks... and it turned out to be infected. Nothing dodgy there, but if I hadn't had an A/V scanner...

Then there's two examples that were even less dodgy and more widespread...

The first that comes to mind is back when the game company Electronic Arts released a commercial space sim game, Wing Commander Prophecy. They then later did a big promo where people who owned the game could download free add-on episode missions for the games. And, well, to quote an old article on the matter:

Like Ultima Online, Wing Commander: Secret Ops has had to leap an early hurdle. On its debut Thursday, game files were found to be infected with the CIH virus, which can erase a user's hard drive. Origin removed the files after two and a half hours, cleaned them up and reponsted them later that afternoon.

Wow. Buy a commercial game, go to the game company's official website, download a legal free add-on... and get a nasty virus too.

And there's the last incident I remembered off-hand... to quote:

The Win95/Marburg virus got widespread circulation in August 1998, when it was included on the master CD of the popular MGM/EA PC CD-ROM game "Wargames".

In this case, you didn't have to download anything... you could get infected just by running a program off a commercial CD!

So you have a choice... run no A/V software at all and take your chances, run A/V software and manually scan everything you put on your computer from an external source... or do what I do, find an A/V program that has an active scan that runs well on your computer and automatically updates, let it do its job, and worry about more fun/useful things.

As for the notion of worrying about open ports... do a Google search on "zombie computers" and read on from there.

Peace & Luv, Liz

[dew7]

Good points, Jeysie.

In PC World, I was reading how it will be common in future attacks to have spyware change the registry and then have another program monitor to see whether the registry is changed back --- the attacks will be much worse -- as if they are not bad enough already --  

[dew7]

Ah, sweetness!

I fixed and optimized my registry today and repaired IE because it was running slowly and now my net connection using Firefox or IE when necessary runs faster than ever.

[Jeysie]

Even more fun with IE6 vulnerabilities:

Extremely High-Level IE6 Vulnerability Found

Stop using Internet Explorer! Now!

Um, ouch.

Peace & Luv, Liz

[Louisiana Night]

AVG Anti-Virus also got a Softy Award ( from MaximumPC).

Anyone here ever compared it, to other anti-virus software( as in, anyone have an opinion, if it's better/worse than others )?

AVG Anti-Virus/Grisoft

[dew7]

Jeysie, I am sure you know by know that I took your advice and am using Mozilla Firefox.  

[racx_00]

Well you have to configure the firewall correctly.  

That doesn't stop it from sucking all the memory out of your computer

[dew7]

Puzzling, my firewall does use up some resources -- it is ZoneAlarm Pro. -- latest version as well as having additional protection of a router firewall and some other protections

I wonder why your uses so many resources, racx?

[racx_00]

I probably haven't done something right

[Oldbushie]

I wonder how it is... my dad's computer has gotten more problems than mine (mostly adware mostly) and my sister had like 200 viruses on her computer recently, yet I've still had the most cleanest computer in the house...

And yes, I still don't use firewalls, I don't care how safe they are. -_- I want as many resources available as humanly possible, which is why at the most I only ever have 12 things running in the background, and this in XP. I have other ways of deterring intruders... muhahahahaha!  

[dew7]

You are both crazy, imo to not use a firewall.  Listen up to MVP Gary Terhune of Microsoft from 98 general newsgroup if you will not listen to me.  He is pointing out to a user called jane why it is insane not to have a firewall.

Consider yourself "told off". You *can't* keep an eye, strict or otherwise, on most of the things that a firewall protects you against.
They happen invisibly. And, unlike antivirus, you can't just "be good" and avoid getting infected. If you are connected to the internet, or any network for that matter, and you don't have a well-configured firewall,
you are essentially living in a house with hundreds of doors, none of them locked, and all of them invisible to you. You won't know something is wrong until it is *way* too late--in fact, you won't even know it
then.

Special thanks to Gary Terhune MS MVP Shell/User

[racx_00]

I have a firewall , even though firewalls are crap and useless, I have one

[dew7]

I am glad you have one Jason and yes they can be annoying but are okay if you configure them properly.

 

[racx_00]

Its configured fine, I just hate ZoneAlarm

[dew7]

Why is that?  I like ZA because I can manually configure everything.  Even programs that are trusted I still have them ask for permission to connect so I can see if a malicious program is piggy-backing on another program in order to download extra bad stuff to my PC or use my PC in Denial Of Service errors (DOS)  Yeah!, this is my interest in computers --- security, security, and even more security  [even then I don't store anything confidential on my on-line PC -- I would have to use an off-line PC for that or just old-school pen and paper]  (No identity theft for me if I can help it)      

[racx_00]

Zone Alarm is easy to hack, thats the main reason I hate it , its an easy firewall to get around , atleast the non-pro version is