Computer Security: Anti-spyware and Anti-virus

[_JP_]

My point is that if you don't have the proper security on your computer, you are an identity theft victim waiting to happen. Men and women, USE PROTECTION!

The best protection against online identity theft is to use a computer that has no personal information on it for online use.

 

[TstebinsB]

The reason all of you think that your anti-programs work and protect you is because you have never faced a serious attack. So what if retailers can't install cookies, or ad agencies can't spot any patterns in your shopping behaviour. BIG DEAL. They still find a way to keep track of you. You are minneow in a sea of whales. You think hackers spent months cooking up the programs so they can see how much porn you store on your PC? Please, they are taking risks to crack banks databases, investment banks trading records, online merchants customer info. That's why the companies spend thousands if not millions of $$$$ for protection. They have experts on 24-hour standbys, tech departments spread around the countries. Your $50 SecuritySuite has no chance. In order to properly protect consumer PC's, you need to spend around $1200.

I think you're overstating how much security a consumer PC would need. Even with sophisticated hardware and federal-level software, it would cost about $700 to properly secure your PC. Without personal info stored on your PC, session-only cookies, no javascripts, java, or flash, the only info someone could take from normal browsing is your IP address. (I understand it's hard to enjoy the internet that way). Even that, with the right hardware/software, can be manipulated so that it's near impossible to find out. I can't say for sure because technology is always changing. Nonetheless, the only way "they" could take your info is if you shop online, do online banking/trading, or basically have any online accounts where your real info is stored in some company's database. My business computer has info on all my banking/trade accounts and the small businesses that I own. It has to have important business info on it and it's never offline. I'll never truly be secure because someone could compromise that company's system. But from my experience, it's not that hard to protect your computer, even against a serious attack.

I've had plenty of hackers try to break through my security over the years. In fact, I had a college acquaintance have this personal vendetta against me and try for years to break my system. (No need to discuss how I found out he was the culprit.) He never succeeded. He now works for Microsoft's Security Dept. With people like him working there, it's no wonder Microsoft has so many security breaches...

 

[TstebinsB]

Quick question for those of you who use Firefox: do you have any trouble using eBay? Firefox and eBay don't seem to work well.

 

[doctorsimon]

None of this protects us from identity theft when the government is incompetent as ours is here.

 

[BMWRider]

Quick question for those of you who use Firefox: do you have any trouble using eBay? Firefox and eBay don't seem to work well.

I am a longtime Firefox user and have no problems with eBay. Make sure you load all the add ons and it should work fine.

 

[rabidpotatochip]

I don't know how this thread managed to stay under my radar for so long.

I've got a hardware firewall sitting between my network and the internet. My wireless access point doesn't broadcast its SSID (hackerbait), only allows a max of two clients and filters them by MAC address. Naturally I've got Ad-Aware, Spybot S&D, Avast Antivirus (commercial license), etc. For a while I ran a honeypot but nothing interesting happened. Basically, if someone can get into my network they deserve to be there.

Firefox + Adblock (Noscript became more trouble than it was worth (six techies just had heart attacks after reading that)) is really a great combination. Throw Greasemonkey and a good bunch of scripts into the mix and you've got a real winner. IEtab for when you don't feel like switching browsers. Spywareblaster is nice for passive protection and it's also free. If you're really paranoid, not using Vista (but still using Windows) and don't feel like creating a limited account for net use you can use a program called DropMyRights, which will run a program with limited permission (think Internet Explorer/Firefox/Opera).

After all that is said there are some threats you simply can't protect yourself against. Most spyware, adware, and rootkits rely on either user ignorance (which in most cases is preventable) or vulnerabilities in your software/setup. Generally the software that relies on user ignorance is on sites that are geared towards teens, people who can't resist downloading the new mega cursor pack or people seeking questionable entertainment (read into that how you like).

 

[professorchaos]

Here is a trick to protect your computer without installing a slew of programs (each of which uses a slice of limited system resources). Create two accounts, the first for daily, routine use and the second for administrative tasks such as installing software. The first one should be a member of the "power users" group and the second a member of the "administrators" group. Installation routines are typically run with the credentials of the logged on user and require administrative priviledges to successfully complete. As such, much of the garbage you might collect when surfing the web cannot be installed when you are logged on as a power user.

I have two computers protected with just anti-virus and this configuration has gone a long, long way towards protecting them.

 

[Halden]

Quick question for those of you who use Firefox: do you have any trouble using eBay? Firefox and eBay don't seem to work well.

Maybe you have disable Javascript and/or are missing plugins. ebay runs fine on Firefox for me.

 

[MaxP]

Symantec Corporate edition Anti-Virus, occasional Spybot S&D, common sense and a large dose of good luck have kept me safe for years.

 

[arcman]

Here is a trick to protect your computer without installing a slew of programs (each of which uses a slice of limited system resources). Create two accounts, the first for daily, routine use and the second for administrative tasks such as installing software. The first one should be a member of the "power users" group and the second a member of the "administrators" group. Installation routines are typically run with the credentials of the logged on user and require administrative priviledges to successfully complete. As such, much of the garbage you might collect when surfing the web cannot be installed when you are logged on as a power user.

I have two computers protected with just anti-virus and this configuration has gone a long, long way towards protecting them.

This is a good practice, and is actually the way Vista runs by default. Every user in Vista runs with limited privileges, and when an action needs to be run as an administrator, Vista will prompt you to be temporarily elevated to administrator status. The Unix/Linux operating systems have run like this for years, they have a superuser "root" account that is not recommended for everyday use, and they have a command called "sudo" [superuser-do] for the limited accounts that will let you run a single command as root provided you give the correct password. This is the primary reason these Unix and Unix-like operating systems have almost no viruses compared to Windows systems, Apple's OSX included since that's based off of Unix. A virus can't do jack if it gets into your system but doesn't have the password permission to touch any of the files.
XP would probably not have had 90% of the incidents of viruses and spyware if it had taken this route, it will be interesting to see how Vista fares.