[Digital Janitor]

Spy-Ware, Ad-Ware, Viruses, Worms, Trojans and the like. These are all just programs written to do what they do. Programs that protect your system can only protect you from the programs the developers are aware of. At some level they are a false sense of security. Image how many people are on MySpace. If only one percent of those people where virus writers how could any company keep up with the number of viruses out there. They can't and that is the point. Though I do use AVG (spy-ware and virus) programs on my system they are not the end all, beat all solutions. Nor are the mainstream systems. Your best protection against these things are education. Learn what is safe to do on the Internet and what is not.

A. Get rid of the Preview pain in your mail program. Previewing an email is just like opening it up. Any scripts that are in the email will run when you preview it.

B. Do not accept attachments from anyone that you do not know.

C. When you get an email with an attachment in it from someone you do know, call or email that person back to make sure they are even aware they sent it.

D. Do not open any attachments that can run programs such as, but not limited to, .bat, .com, .pif, and .exe even if it is from a friend. The friend might think it's a cool program and sees no issues right away but later it could be bad.

E. If you can check your email from web based mail before you bring it in to your POP client then you can avoid some of these issues by deleting all mail that comes from an unknown source through the web then bring it in to your POP client.

F. Do not just install every ActiveX control that someone puts on their web site. Make sure you know the company or the program well enough to trust what it's doing and the company well enough to trust them.

G. Freeware is a great thing and in many cases you can find freeware programs that do some cool stuff but your also taking a big risk. Make sure you download freeware programs that have ratings from multiple people who come back and say they loved it.

H. Understand what spy-ware is. All these toolbar programs out there are nothing more than spy-ware that track where you go and what you do. Some are not as bad as others but a good way of looking at these programs is that if I don't need it to use the web then I will not install it.

I. Don't go to web pages with flash file presentations in them that friends send to you as something funny! Though the file might be harmless you never know what that page is doing in the back side and what information is being taken from your computer every time you visit.

J. Don't go to greeting card sites where a friend has send you an online greeting card. Though it was a nice thought and nice your friend took the time to think about you, your opening yourself up to issues by going to these type of sites.

K. Only accept email in plain text. This will prevent scripts from being run when you do open an email.

There are so many more but this is a good start.

Remember this, a virus is a program that sits on your hard drive, uses your processor to do its work, takes up memory while it runs in the background and uses your network to propagate itself across the Internet. An Anti-Virus program sits on your hard drive, uses your processor to do its work, takes up memory while it runs in the background and uses your network to update itself from the Internet. They sound very much the same to me! My point is that having a couple of programs to protect you from the pitfalls of the Internet can't be all that bad but better protection is to learn how you get infected and what to look out for.

Later,
Digital Janitor