What makes a computer 'safe'?

[byke95]

Hi,

How do you guys protect your computer from the various nasties out there?

What packages out there (ane there any decent free ones?) would you recommend and what would you stay clear of?

At the moment I have a AVG and run Microsoft Defender every once and a while.

Many thanks,

Phil

[JonB]

I say Fuck em all. I use every 3 month free trial with Internet Security for every company, there are at least 5 companies that do this.

By the time my 3 months are up I uninstall it and do another free trial with someone else after a year i'll reformat my PC anyway so those companies won't have anything left in the registry so I can use their software free for 3 months again and again.
____________________
Be careful whose advice you buy, but, be patient with those who supply it. Advice is a form of nostalgia, dispensing it is a way of fishing the past from the disposal, wiping it off, painting over the ugly parts and recycling it for more than it?s worth.

[veeeffarr]

Just don't be stupid and download and run untrusted .exe's, and click dodgy links and you'll be alright.

It's not like some super-leet hacker is going to come and steal all of your files such as natalie_portman_nude_with_dog.jpg

All of the scanners/firewalls/spyware bots(especially) just profiteer from a) the people too stupid to use the internet and b) the paranoid.

Just don't download stupid shit on the net and you'll be fine.

[byke95]

[veeeffarr]

[tokarev]

What I use is AVG free version and Microsoft Defender (to detect the spyware...although it hasn't detected any spyware since I have had it. ) But my router also has an inbuilt firewall in it, so I rekon I am pretty safe from the l33t h4x0r5. Although I dont know how good the inbuilt firewall in the router is.

[JonB]

Saying that if I was to buy a program I would definately buy Zonealarm Pro, it is amazing IMO.
____________________
Be careful whose advice you buy, but, be patient with those who supply it. Advice is a form of nostalgia, dispensing it is a way of fishing the past from the disposal, wiping it off, painting over the ugly parts and recycling it for more than it?s worth.

[derbisenda16]

use AVG free and SpyBot Search and destroy, Both free and very effective.

[numark1]

Yeh as toby says to pick up a virus/spyware to do some actually damage is quite a challenge.

All viruses are overrated, most of them do fuck all.

[ali-b]

[stinkwheel]

Another vote for zone alarm pro, a wee bit awkward to configure initially but it seems to do a good job. Most importantly, it stops spyware sending stuff OUT very efficiently.
____________________
“Rule one: Always stick around for one more drink. That's when things happen. That's when you find out everything you want to know.”
I did the 2010 Round Britain Rally on my 350 Bullet. 89 landmarks, 3 months, 9,500 miles.

[derbisenda16]

[BFG]

Viruses don't do anything? And static doesn't harm components, smoking doesn't cause cancer and the world is flat. Just because we don't immediately perceive the results, doesn;t mean there's no harm being done.

General consensus as a minimum for a safe PC on broadband is
1. Anti-virus such as AVG,
2. anti-spyware such as Lavasoft Ad-aware (beware imitators).
3. Firewall. Best is to add a hardware NAT firewall + a software firewall. Or just a software firewall if money is tight.

Another cheap + very effective solution is to ditch IE in favour of Mozilla. Then for sites which aren't desinged properly, so you HAVE to view them in IE, lock down security as follows:

In tools / internet options, select the security Tab. Click custom level and at the bottom reset to "high". Then for sites you trust, add them to the trusted sites zone (you can take off require https). This means if you end up on a dodgy site, it can't run scripts. But you don;t have to keep opening up your security settings for other sites. I.e. Add *.bikechatforums.com to your trusted zone. Then on here there will be a little green tick bottom left. Surf, away, when you click outside of BCF, the icon will turn into a no-entry sign and no scripts will run. Works 90% of the time but still not as good as mozilla.

[numark1]

[numark1]

[JonB]

and how the fuck do you know it isn't sending anything?
____________________
Be careful whose advice you buy, but, be patient with those who supply it. Advice is a form of nostalgia, dispensing it is a way of fishing the past from the disposal, wiping it off, painting over the ugly parts and recycling it for more than it?s worth.

[derbisenda16]

markkatate stop talking bull shit. Viruses Do stuff all the time. They isolate them in Dos if your not carefull and are impossible to remove unless you know what your doing. and yes key loggers etc do collect data and 50% of the time send info back to the sender. They do not always function correctly though.

Ive had email viruses which send out porn to people, They search your computer for email addresses and send crap to them.

[numark1]

[numark1]

Oh and 95% viruses can be removed quite easily. Reboot your pc in safe mode run a scan , usually decent anti virus software is sophisticated enough to clean up most of the "damage"

[derbisenda16]

Dos is the basline of windows............

Some viruses embed themselfs into this so nothing running on windows can remove them....To remove them you need to boot into dos and remove them manually.... thats what it means.

[numark1]

They isolate them in Dos

thats what i didnt understand.

[simon1221]

[stinkwheel]

Viruses are a pain in the arse. Anyone who says they aren't a problem has simply been lucky not to have been hit by a nasty one.

When I first got this computer, it was hit by three viruses when it first connected to the internet to update the antivirus data. One of them was the blaster worm, this makes your computer shutdown 30 seconds after connecting to the internet. Within three minutes of connecting to the internet it was totally unusable.

My boss had one at work which caused the computer to randomly shut down, got onto the boot sector of the hard drive and fucked it.

Some of them even allow a third party to take over your computer remotely.
____________________
“Rule one: Always stick around for one more drink. That's when things happen. That's when you find out everything you want to know.”
I did the 2010 Round Britain Rally on my 350 Bullet. 89 landmarks, 3 months, 9,500 miles.

[senna_f4]

Viruses, trojans, spyware are dead easy to prevent and remove, never had a problem sorting out windows pcs with virus

What you all should be really afraid of is a windows kernel "rootkit". If you get "rooted" you wouldn't be able to do virtually anything from the installed OS. Only an OS booted from a non RW disk eg cd can be used to detect changes, but trust me even MS may spend weeks sorting it, you would have to reformat, if you ever found out, that is.

Rootkits originated from unix/linux and there are special software for detecting changes to files.

A typical rootkit was I believe installed by the sony anti-piracy stuff, and detected by Mark R, who is very good in windows stuff.

If you get rooted windows (or any os) won't know it is present as all calls to the particular area of memory/disk will be intercepted by the rootkit
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"You don't know the power of the dark side."

[derbisenda16]

o well just get a new Hard Drive....Cheap enough these days. Pick up an 80gb for £20 odd, as for the data you could potentially loose...ALWAYS TAKE backups grr hehe