Firewalls = good, but use alot of system resources.

I use a router. Linksys makes a bunch of good "user friendly" routers.

As for SPYWARE.....take your pick man. Im with jpdadeo, but not a spokes person for Lavasoft.

It is alright, but you have to have something else too, it doesn't get all the "bad" stuff. I also use SPYKILLER.




*Just my 2

 

Skippy - I think you must have fogotten the quote that said "They got ONE thing right, video games!". There browser sucks (example: TUFF) and their O/S's are shotty at best (but I do love XP overall, minus the security issues).

Software firewalls are OK, and you may as well turn on the XP firewall, you won't notice any decrease in performance. Hardware firewalls are best, and I think he may already have one with his wireless setup. However, firewalls & routers DO NOT STOP SPYWARE or VIRUSES!!! Thus, the need to do away with IE.

 

I agree with you on that. (slappy)

I dont recall saying they do. (slappy)

 

skippy, I never said that you said they prevent that stuff. I was just expanding on a point skippy! Oh, and IE blow skippy chunks, skippy!

 

I only said "slappy" twice.

he he he

But we ARE on the same sheet of music

 

 

Lavasoft
Lavasoft
Lavasoft
Lavasoft
Lavasoft
Lavasoft
Lavasoft

At $5. bucks a mention, that’s another $35. bucks Lavasoft owes me



I ment $40. bucks

 

Something else I recommend...learn how to edit your registry. Most of the crap that is set to load on startup won't show in that 'startup' folder. It gets hidden in the 'run' folder in the registry. You'll likely find all kinds of crap in the run folder you didn't know was running. Many viruses will stick themselves in the 'run once' folder too...so this is why you shouldn't reboot if you think you just got infected. Sometimes there's a program that executes one time (like an installer) when you reboot - it looks at the 'run once' folder to see if there's anything that needs to be run, and so it does. You can sometimes remove the entry from the run once folder and then continue on to find out how to remove the virus completely before it runs on a reboot. That's just one of the ways a virus can install itself anyway.

Regedit is the program to edit the registry, but don't use it if you don't know what you're doing because you can really screw up your PC if you mess up the registry. Go to START, RUN, type REGEDIT, click OK. You'll now be looking at your registry.

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\Curr entVersion\Run

 

Don't forget to check HKEY_CURRENT_USER\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\Curr
entVersion\Run as well. They hide stuff in there, too.

A word to the wise, Tuff. A newb in the registry can = not good. Becareful and ask questions if your not sure. Just don't go in and blow away registry keys becuase it's fun (leave that to the pros like me!).

 

Good point D Zerv It.

If you are unsure at the least...ask a question, do a google search, etc.

 

When you have a piece of software as popular as Internet Explorer, you are gonna have hackers out there that will take advantage of it by writing malicious code.

If netscape/opera/firebird/firefox were as popular as IE, there would be more malicious code written for them.
But until then, IE is still the #1 target of hackers due to it's popularity.

 

Yeah, but the others are 10x better and are not popular enough yet... so use them while it's still safe!!

I could see NS being the next target. Opera, Firefox and others are way to stripped down to write nasty code for. I'm not saying it can't be done (becuase it can) but it's not worth the effort to many since a very small percentage of folks use them. Ahhhh... I love being in the small, trouble-free percentage group!

IE is for newbs & suckers!!! Seek

 

Hey there "spanky"

I dont have a choice at work

I agree with you again (gawd help me).

I use Mozilla's Firefox at home.

 

Damn it brooks.... I was just going to say that ...

The reason the other browsers are "more secure" is that very few people are looking for exploits and even fewer are interested in writing exploits for them - the folks that take advantage of the issues want BIG time may hem - you DONT get big time mayhem attacking <1% of the users

And what makes the other broswers better ? The fact that most bank sites wont let you use them ? The fact that many sites dont look right with them ???

Oh thats right they are better simply because they arent made by Microsoft.. Ill listen to one of these MS bashers when I see on atht has NO MS software on his computer ...

 

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