Computer Tips -Tech Info

So, most everything so far has been targetted to high speed internet users or business networks. That means if I use dialup I’m safe. Wrong. For starters, in many ways dialup internet is LESS of a risk than high speed broadband for two main reasons. First, high speed/broadband connections are typically on ALL the time. […]

This may be one of the most important entries in this series. An important defence against those that would try to access your network is to constantly have the “security mindset”. Ask yourself “do I need this, how could it be exploited, what are the implications of this”… When it comes to people asking you […]

One other note from the previous series on WMF exploit infestation cleanup. Among the multiple popups that came when launching internet explorer, most were directed at the site http://60.topnssearch.com –    Send article as PDF   

There’s a joke that many people bring out when new Windows viruses hit big…. it goes along the lines of, “download a fix here” and the link points to a knoppix linux livecd download, or a Mandriva download disk, fedora/etc… Some say linux isn’t affected by as many viruses because it lacks market share, I […]

Once upon a time I did an article about the biggest computer security vulnerability ever. I’ve also passed along the old “the most dangerous part of a car is the nut behind the wheel” joke. If you haven’t got it yet, the computer user can be the “weakest link”. Let’s face it, you’ve got antivirus, […]

Alright, so you’re still reading this series and you’re thinking. Look, I’m not protecting national security secrets. All I’m doing is (running a business|emailing my grandkids|using the web for research). True, good point. You’re not at the defense department. OK. Let’s say you just use your computer for email and web browsing. That’s low priority […]

Before I get things wrapped up, I like to scan rinse and repeat until the scans come up clean. So, this scan of AVG gives a chance to delete the archive entry I mentioned the first pass it took. And spybot get’s updated from the internet and re-runs. All looks clean there… Ad-aware get’s an […]

OK – the last couple of entries got into some heavy lifting and some real learning on your part. Learning about what software needs to run, what services are running, updating them to keep current on security patches. We even talked about securing services listening for outside connections and limiting them to what is absolutely […]

OK, we’re moving on to BHOdemon to take care of the browser helper objects. Unfortunately it looks like BHODemon is not being currently maintained, the developer has had a housefire. I am very sorry, but BHODemon is currently on hiatus, as I no longer have the time to devote to it (due to a house […]

Do I really need a hardware firewall? I’m running XP Service Pack 2 with the built in firewall? (or norton, or zonealarm?) Well, personal firewalls (the name that software firewalls go by) are good for a great many things that hardware firewalls AREN’T. They do have their limitations though and I’ll try to cover those […]