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July 28, 2009, 05:03 PM
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#1 (permalink) |
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How To Keep Your PC Safe and Surf Without Worry
While reading another thread regarding gold spamming and such, i thought it may be a good idea to start a thread here discussing the best ways to protect your PC from getting viruses, mal-ware, spyware, and other things they may cause hacking, crashing, and destruction of your PC. here is my list of recommendations, they may not be the best, but they work for me and i have never been hacked, and spyware and all that jazz is at a zero on my PC. first off if you are running Windows XP i suggest: Sygate Personal Firewall this is FREE, and the best part about it is that is tells you everything that is trying to connect to your PC or what is trying to send from your PC, and you can grant access, deny it, or always allow it access. there may be other programs that do this, if there is please list it, i would like to know as well because i am running vista and this is not compatible with vista because it has been discontinued and integegrated with norton which i don't use nor care for. i hear zone-alarm is good, never used it, not sure if it is free. also, more importantly use Mozilla FireFox Internet Browser i have heard people say they hate firefox, but i KNOW you will find after a few weeks of using it, it is BETTER, safer, faster, and smoother than Internet Explorer. it is not complicated, it is just a tiny bit different. the best part are the addons for it, there are a few essentials you will need. FIRE FOX ADDONS: Addblock Plus This will remove banners and junk from webpages that can essentailly contain spyware and harmful scripts. you can choose the banners to block if they are not already black-listed by addblock plus. if you see an ad that you no longer want to see right click on it and hit "block image" and so on. if you want to visit the site that keeps it updated and maintained you can find it HERE these addons take time to get used to but they are totally worth it. NoScript is another essential addon that blocks out any unsafe scripting on webpages. you can check out the recommended addons on the mozilla page, but those are a few good ones that i use. Firefox is highly customizable and you can import your IE bookmarks to it so you wont have to bother with resaving them. also, one important thing about Firefox and you can even do with IE is not allowing any history or cookies to be kept. i know alot of people HATE this because they want to save those 10 precious seconds out of their lives by not having to type their username and password in every time they visit a site, but i think those 10 seconds of typing is worth it. i do not let firefox save ANY of my password, Cookies, or History. there may be a few sites that Require cookies so you can view there page, so if you trust the site, just enable them for that site, no biggie. as for Warlocks Den, and any other site like Myspace or anything, i do not let these sites save passwords or cookies. they are deleted every time the browswer is closed that way they do not exist and cannot be tracked or found by anyone. another good tip when it comes to a password is using the same password for every site, but with variations that you can remember. for example if your password was an acronym (which is a good password) like: Ring Around The Rosie Pockets Full Of Posies; your password would be: RATRPFOP then for warlocks den add DEN on the end: RATRPFOPDEN or for Ebay: RATRPFOPBAY or to make it even less trackable use: BAY or EBA instead of EBAY. but using an accronym is easy because you dont have to remember the letter combination, you just have to remember the ryhme or the verse, or setence, or quote, or whatever you use, then add a few letters on the end to make it easy to remember for that site. this keeps things easy and safe. i would not recommend using any password organizers or password "safes" or anything like that, most of them are NOT as safe as they sound. now to clean up crap off your computer. i would recommend using GLARY UTILITIES it is free, and very easy to use, the only stipulation is it automatically installs the "Ask" Toolbar which can easily be removed. just go to control panel and remove it. this program is great because it will scan all kinds of crap on your computer, remove any registry errors, shortcut errors, Useless Startup Programs, it cleans your Temporary Internet Files, Erases any files that act as trackers on your PC, and finally checks for Spyware. This program also includes a function to PERMANANTLY erases files on your computer so they CANNOT be brought back. it also includes defragging tools and all kinds of stuff, very very nice program that does its job. there is a PRO version that costs money but i have the FREE version. Another Program Highly recommend is MALWARE BYTES This program is the best for removing spyware and malware off your PC. run it and it will find and remove any spyware. it is FREE. Glary does do a good job of removing spyware but Malware Bytes is known to find things that Glary could not. so it is good to use both. I Have also used Registry Mechanic, it costs money and it does a good job, but i have found that Malware Bytes finds the same stuff. the version i got was a trial version and the trial ran up so i just uninstalled it, but it is very good and easy to use. now you may think wow that is alot of time consumption, running all of those programs just to clean up your PC. sometimes depending on the size of you harddrive it may take up to an hour to run completely. but i would rather take the hour or so to clean it up and know nothing can happen to my PC. Just run it while you are sleeping, it won't get in the way, and by the time you wake up it is complete. As for a running active Anti-Virus i use AVG it is free and runs really light on your PC. does not take alot of memory. some functions can be disabled if you do not use them that way you are not using precious memory on useless functions. also make sure before you install AVG that there are no other Anti-Virus programs on your computer, they can sometimes interfere with each other. Remember these are just suggestions. they are not REQUIRED and cannot GUARANTEE to be 100% protection against hacks, spyware, malware, and viruses, but it helps. the last thing that helps out the most is to be concious of what you are downloading and what sites you are going to. if you do not trust the site DO NOT DOWNLOAD FROM IT. it's that simple. also if you get an email from someone ALWAYS be suspicious if you do not know who they are, and if it says they it is from a friend but what is typed doesn't look like something they would type, then it is not them. i have had this happen on a few occasions, an email will get hacked and a spam email is sent from the email to everyone on the contact list and it contains a virus that all you have to do is click and you are screwed. so be cautious. hackers virus writers are always looking for a way to get past the protective forces, so you have to stay on your guard. i would also recommend often checking websites like: MCAFEE THREAT CENTER that will keep you updated on new viruses and vulnerabilities that have been found. So if you guys have any recommendations or tips, post them here, i hope this thread can help people surf safer and keep their accounts and PC's Safe.
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iK |
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July 28, 2009, 05:13 PM
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#2 (permalink) | |
 
Status: <Demon Trainer>
Character Info
Pernicious 80 Blood Elf Warlock Dark Iron US PvP Guild: Allmacht Profile: Blizzard Armory Talent Spec: 0/13/58 |
Re: How To Keep Your PC Safe and Surf Without Worry
Quote:
So even if you don't donate, at least let the Ads through.
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July 28, 2009, 06:12 PM
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#3 (permalink) |
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Re: How To Keep Your PC Safe and Surf Without Worry
lol, forgot to add that part, i disable addblock plus at least once or twice a week just to click the adds here  don't worry about that! hehe
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iK |
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July 28, 2009, 06:28 PM
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#4 (permalink) |
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Character Info
Pst 80 Human Warlock Antonidas US PvE |
Re: How To Keep Your PC Safe and Surf Without Worry
Great post! Ikabod, you don't need to disable the whole adblock plus addon. Click the little downarrow to the right of its stop sign. choose "disable for wowmb.net". That way, its still enabled everywhere else, but it allows the ads here to generate some revenue. If you do it successfully, the red ABP stopsign turns into a green ABP green circle thingie. |
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July 28, 2009, 06:58 PM
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#5 (permalink) | |
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Re: How To Keep Your PC Safe and Surf Without Worry
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awesome, thanks. i usually just leave it on so i don't have to look at the ads, then just disable it so i can click the ads to help out the site here and there! hehe. i don't want to over click them, might look suspicious 
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iK |
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July 28, 2009, 08:54 PM
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#6 (permalink) |
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Character Info
Giger 70 Gnome Warlock Kael'Thas US PvE Guild: Odyssey Profile: Blizzard Armory Talent Spec: 57/0/14 |
Re: How To Keep Your PC Safe and Surf Without Worry
Buy a Mac.  It's been a while since I've bothered to use windows, but from what I remember these programs were all pretty good, and free, but feel free to correct me since, as I said, it's been ages: Spybot S&D - Anti Spyware Spyware Blaster - Anti Spyware Ad Aware - Anti Spyware AVG Free - Anti-Virus Comodo Firewall - ...firewall and, things to avoid because they do more harm than good: Anything Norton Anything McAfee |
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July 28, 2009, 09:11 PM
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#7 (permalink) |
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Re: How To Keep Your PC Safe and Surf Without Worry
i am not downing macs at all. i have never used one for more than a week or so, when i did use one, i did like it. they are very nice, well designed computer systems, but i have grown up on windows and i have learned to use one very well, but if you use a PC and use it right you won't get viruses, and macs can get viruses too, just not as often or as bad. here is an article from trend micro talking about mac viruses. New Malware Cracks Macs | Malware Blog | Trend Micro but either way you slice it, it all falls back on the user. Quoted From the above Trend Micro Article: "Perpetrators of these malware continue to circumvent stumbling blocks in directly infecting Macs by tapping into the weakness and gullibility of users downloading and installing pirated software" Anyone got a mac that got hacked?
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iK |
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August 03, 2009, 12:49 PM
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#8 (permalink) |
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Re: How To Keep Your PC Safe and Surf Without Worry
The user is always the least secure part of the system. Just getting the software helps, but understand it, how it works and what it protects you from. The third one is crucial as by understanding what you're facing you can smarten your surfing. As far as macs versus windows goes, there has lately been a surge in mac malware. Simply put, vista was a disaster and apple cashed in on the bad rep of windows. As a result the number of potential targets rose and it became worth writing for. It's worth adding that in reference to the first paragraph, a lot of mac users actually believe their OS is significantly more secure than windows, hell, apple even push that line (something I feel unethical but that's a whole world of fanboy baiting and tedium so lets just say it's a grey area and leave it) but it's not. And what's more because these users believe it is, they're careless, don't use security software and browse with confidence and assuredness, which means that for *many* (not all) macs, security is a lot lower as the weakness, the user, is overconfident. Minority OS malware is always rarer however. On top of this, MS have experience of being constantly under assault and update vulnerabilities faster. There's a lot of debate over the security of OSX but it's probably fair to say "in the region of windows". That said, as far as browsers go, firefox is updated faster than IE. On top of this, peripherals can browse the web, they're inside your firewall and often very very insecure, so sooner or later there will be viruses hitting them. The way to surf is to remember that to err and make a vulnerable OS is human, especially considering all the things a PC is supposed to do, and human ingenuity it's probably par for the course in fact. You are either vulnerable in some way and should browse with care or on a very locked down and limited system. I think anything more flexible than a solar powered calculator would be vulnerable to viruses. I guess what I'm trying to say is that the key to security is to be really careful and assume that whatever steps you take, it won't make you invulnerable. That said, taking care to secure things does help. A lot. |
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August 03, 2009, 03:14 PM
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#9 (permalink) |
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Character Info
Froshaka 80 Blood Elf Warlock Alexstrasza US PvE Guild: Is A Living Legend Profile: Blizzard Armory Talent Spec: 0/56/15 |
Re: How To Keep Your PC Safe and Surf Without Worry
I have not heard of the Glary Utilities referenced by the OP above. But, it does sound very similar to CCleaner (aka Crap Cleaner) and it comes without a toolbar,etc.. it and the other utilities the company makes are all freeware. Their defragmenter and undeleter are very good. |
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August 03, 2009, 05:57 PM
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#10 (permalink) |
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Character Info
Killspell 80 Undead Warlock Dunemaul US PvP Guild: Çarpe Ñoctem Profile: Blizzard Armory Talent Spec: 55/0/16 |
Re: How To Keep Your PC Safe and Surf Without Worry
Is there anything wrong with using Opera instead of Firefox?
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Demonology Warlocks laugh even when they're stunned Destruction Warlocks laugh even when they're on fire Affliction Warlocks laugh even when they're dead |
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