Tantalus42
Posts: 51
Joined: 1/27/2006
Status: offline
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I guess the question is how much do folks want to pay for piece of mind. Zone Alarm is fine as far as software based firewalls go, but it's not that expensive to buy yourself a hardware router like those by Linksys and get that extra piece of software off your system. You never have to worry about the hardware locking up your computer and crashing.
I started with Zone Alarm myself but had too many problems with it, then I migrated to Tiny Personal Firewall which was better (but not a good product for casual users, and I don't believe it's free for personal use anymore). I even tried my hand at building a Linux system that acted as a router and firewall, which worked pretty well for a while. Now I have a Linksys router that handles all that, but I got a really good deal on the price (free from work *grin*). If I had to start from scratch, I'd go ahead and buy the same setup I have now.
99% of your headaches these days come from spyware, so all those suggestions about installing and scanning for spyware are good ones. Spybot works well, Ad Aware works well, and even Microsoft Defender does a good job of blocking spyware (but note: Defender will not completely remove found spyware as the others will, Microsoft is too worried about lawsuits from companies saying their legitimate products are being targeted).
The rest of what you can do is simply good habit for online use. I try to tell people to use the following guidelines:
1. If you get a message from ANYONE, even a friend, with a link to a site or a file attached that you did not expect, do not open it. If it was a friend, email them back and verify that they sent it. When you email, make sure to ask them a specific question only they can answer (some new virus programs can actually capture your attempt to email your friend and reply back to you with a "yes I meant to send that", so if your friend is already infected you still won't realize it until it's too late).
2. Never trust web sites you haven't been to before. All web sites are suspect until they have proven themselves trustworthy. If you're browsing new sites, turn on Spybot's built in automated defenders, like the Tea Timer, that will capture attempts to install programs or change your internet explorer settings. I personally don't like to run it all the time since it brings up annoying messages about what its doing periodically (and if you are already infected, those could be quite frequent), just when I'm off in a part of the web I'm not familiar with.
3. Run a real firewall, do not trust Microsoft's built-in firewall.
4. Run an up-to-date antivirus program that automatically updates its virus definitions.
5. If you notice any problems with your system or any strange pop-up internet windows, run a spyware sweeper program like Spybot or AdAware (running multiple ones is even better). There is really no need at all to do this every single day unless you have a significant infection already and it won't go away. If it won't go away, you're S.O.L., best thing to do is back up your important files and rebuild the system from scratch.
6. Most of all, if you KEEP FINDING SPYWARE... then look at WHERE you are visiting and try to figure out which sites are installing it. Most likely you've got one or two sites you visit frequently that are doing this to you and you don't even realize it. Try switching to Mozilla Firefox or Netscape to reduce your rate of spyware infections, both have massively lower accessibility issues then IE does and most spyware simply won't work on them (the joys and triumphs of ActiveX at work). Yes, that makes viewing some websites difficult, but that's a problem with web programmers not sticking to listed coding standards, so blame it on them, not Mozilla. *grin*
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