OT A computer virus heads up
 

"Wayne.B" wrote in message
...
On Wed, 1 Feb 2006 13:00:32 -0500, "RCE" wrote:

So, has all this hacking and virus stuff been over emphasized to sell
protection software, or have I just been lucky for the last 15 years?

You've been lucky. My home computer has the standard array of
protection: anti-virus, hardware firewall, software firewall, and
anti-spyware. It's up 24x7 and constantly connected with never a
problem. Many attempts are logged however.

I have a small laptop which normally gets used on the boat and
consequently has little or no protection. Two years ago I took it on
a trip to upstate NY, dialed into a small town internet service used
by friends, and 15 minutes later had a worm or virus which took down
the whole computer. I had to totally rebuild the software from the
ground up.


Now you did it. Thanks. Paranoia setting in. One thing I do though. I
never intentionally leave my computer connected to the Internet when I am
not using it. I am in the habit of always shutting the connection off.

RCE

OT A computer virus heads up
 

"RCE" wrote in message
...

"Doug Kanter" wrote in message
...



You *will* get burned at some point. It's a question of when, not if.


Well sure, now that I've announced to the world that I am unarmed.

Oh, well. Computer prices are coming down.

CE


That would be your solution to a virus messing up your computer???

News flash: Unprotected computers can become infected within a matter of
minutes. If your ISP's providing some sort of firewall, you're lucky it's
working. But if you *do* have a problem, it will be proof that the
protection does NOT work, and that a new computer will run into a similar
problem.

OT A computer virus heads up
 

"Wayne.B" wrote in message
...
On Wed, 1 Feb 2006 13:00:32 -0500, "RCE" wrote:

So, has all this hacking and virus stuff been over emphasized to sell
protection software, or have I just been lucky for the last 15 years?

You've been lucky. My home computer has the standard array of
protection: anti-virus, hardware firewall, software firewall, and
anti-spyware. It's up 24x7 and constantly connected with never a
problem. Many attempts are logged however.

I have a small laptop which normally gets used on the boat and
consequently has little or no protection. Two years ago I took it on
a trip to upstate NY, dialed into a small town internet service used
by friends, and 15 minutes later had a worm or virus which took down
the whole computer. I had to totally rebuild the software from the
ground up.


Same here, sort of. I was doing a reformat/reinstall of XP for a friend, but
I forgot to unplug the thing from the cable modem. I hadn't installed
ZoneAlarm yet (big mistake that should've been obvious). Tried to get all
the MS security updates before continuing with anything else, but something
completely took over IE. The computer was useless, all within 20 minutes.

OT A computer virus heads up
 

So, has all this hacking and virus stuff been over emphasized to sell
protection software, or have I just been lucky for the last 15 years?


Wayne.B wrote:
You've been lucky. My home computer has the standard array of
protection: anti-virus, hardware firewall, software firewall, and
anti-spyware. It's up 24x7 and constantly connected with never a
problem. Many attempts are logged however.

I have a small laptop which normally gets used on the boat and
consequently has little or no protection. Two years ago I took it on
a trip to upstate NY, dialed into a small town internet service used
by friends, and 15 minutes later had a worm or virus which took down
the whole computer. I had to totally rebuild the software from the
ground up.


What he said. I've had pretty much the same experience,
except repeated 3 or 4 times now and a few other minor
crashes that may been from hackery or just WinDOS urping on
itself.

Sometimes you pick up malware in less than 15 minutes!

Regards
Doug King

OT A computer virus heads up
 

"RCE" wrote in message
...

"Wayne.B" wrote in message
...
On Wed, 1 Feb 2006 13:00:32 -0500, "RCE" wrote:

So, has all this hacking and virus stuff been over emphasized to sell
protection software, or have I just been lucky for the last 15 years?

You've been lucky. My home computer has the standard array of
protection: anti-virus, hardware firewall, software firewall, and
anti-spyware. It's up 24x7 and constantly connected with never a
problem. Many attempts are logged however.

I have a small laptop which normally gets used on the boat and
consequently has little or no protection. Two years ago I took it on
a trip to upstate NY, dialed into a small town internet service used
by friends, and 15 minutes later had a worm or virus which took down
the whole computer. I had to totally rebuild the software from the
ground up.


Now you did it. Thanks. Paranoia setting in. One thing I do though. I
never intentionally leave my computer connected to the Internet when I am
not using it. I am in the habit of always shutting the connection off.

RCE


By the way, now that you're a bit paranoid, be aware that the firewall which
is part of XP is only partially useful. It blocks incoming nasties, but it
does nothing about a worm that's already in your machine and attempts to
make outbound contact. The simplest way around this is to install the free
version of ZoneAlarm (which some people don't like, but they're silly). They
make various levels of protection, including one which includes antivirus,
but the free thing is just a firewall.

www.zonelabs.com

My son installed the free version and said it sent up messages for a short
time which made him think he'd installed the fancy version. Really, it was
just a badly worded attempt to get him to consider one of the versions you
pay for. The messages stopped after a couple of weeks, if I recall, and the
thing's been nicely behaved ever since.

It's a bit of work getting it set up because any time a program wants to
communicate with the outside world, ZA asks for permission. But, once it's
trained to recognize the "good" programs, it's nice & quiet.

OT A computer virus heads up
 

"Shortwave Sportfishing" wrote in message
...
On Wed, 1 Feb 2006 13:00:32 -0500, "RCE" wrote:

So, has all this hacking and virus stuff been over emphasized to sell
protection software, or have I just been lucky for the last 15 years?

i have often suspected that the virus/worm/hackers out there actually
work for symantec and other makers of anti-this and that software.

one of the issues i have is cookies

Which browser are you using? Doesn't it give you the ability to deal with
cookies manually, by asking permission to accept them?

OT A computer virus heads up
 

"Doug Kanter" wrote in message
...


By the way, now that you're a bit paranoid, be aware that the firewall
which is part of XP is only partially useful. It blocks incoming nasties,
but it does nothing about a worm that's already in your machine and
attempts to make outbound contact. The simplest way around this is to
install the free version of ZoneAlarm (which some people don't like, but
they're silly). They make various levels of protection, including one
which includes antivirus, but the free thing is just a firewall.

www.zonelabs.com

My son installed the free version and said it sent up messages for a short
time which made him think he'd installed the fancy version. Really, it was
just a badly worded attempt to get him to consider one of the versions you
pay for. The messages stopped after a couple of weeks, if I recall, and
the thing's been nicely behaved ever since.

It's a bit of work getting it set up because any time a program wants to
communicate with the outside world, ZA asks for permission. But, once it's
trained to recognize the "good" programs, it's nice & quiet.


Thanks. I'll try it be f or
e

my

c o m p

uter



c r a

shes/....


r
C
E

OT A computer virus heads up
 

"Shortwave Sportfishing" wrote in message
...
On Wed, 1 Feb 2006 13:00:32 -0500, "RCE" wrote:

So, has all this hacking and virus stuff been over emphasized to sell
protection software, or have I just been lucky for the last 15 years?

i have often suspected that the virus/worm/hackers out there actually
work for symantec and other makers of anti-this and that software.

one of the issues i have is cookies - i have to clean them out every
once in a while - those are probably the most - quote dangerous end of
quote - in the sense they can and do slow down a computer. and there
are various spy programs, etc that are a pia.

i was like you actually - i only had a firewall and anti-popup
software for a few years until about three years ago when i noticed
that my computer was doing really odd things on startup and it wasn't
getting to my home page as fast as it used to. i surfed around and
came up with adaware which i tried the free version of. 236 cookies,
a couple of spy programs and some other things called malware. axed
all the bad guys and computer is fine.

it was right after that that i noticed that there was some outgoing
traffic on the computer when it was online- sure enough, one of those
cookies left open a port and i got hacked.

fixed that, purchased norton, donated to spyware, bought adaware and a
program called pop-up stopper and havent had a problem since.

Yep, Ad-Aware is indeed terrific *free* software. Spybot S&D, Spyware
Blaster and Microsoft Antispyware are also good.........and *free*. I run
Cleanup! weekly to get rid of my temp files. Also a *free* program. (I
think you get my point now ;-) )

Popups are blocked automatically with Mozilla Firefox. You may want to give
it a try.

A nice little program that is not free is Tuneup Utilities 2006. You can
download a free trial version he
http://www.tune-up.com/products/tuneup-utilities/

OT A computer virus heads up
 

" JimH" jimh_osudad@yahooDOT comREMOVETHIS wrote in message
...


Popups are blocked automatically with Mozilla Firefox. You may want to
give it a try.


Excellent cookie control with Firefox, too.

OT A computer virus heads up
 

"Shortwave Sportfishing" wrote in message
...
On Wed, 1 Feb 2006 15:09:57 -0500, " JimH" jimh_osudad@yahooDOT
comREMOVETHIS wrote:


"Shortwave Sportfishing" wrote in message
. ..
On Wed, 1 Feb 2006 13:00:32 -0500, "RCE" wrote:

So, has all this hacking and virus stuff been over emphasized to sell
protection software, or have I just been lucky for the last 15 years?

i have often suspected that the virus/worm/hackers out there actually
work for symantec and other makers of anti-this and that software.

one of the issues i have is cookies - i have to clean them out every
once in a while - those are probably the most - quote dangerous end of
quote - in the sense they can and do slow down a computer. and there
are various spy programs, etc that are a pia.

i was like you actually - i only had a firewall and anti-popup
software for a few years until about three years ago when i noticed
that my computer was doing really odd things on startup and it wasn't
getting to my home page as fast as it used to. i surfed around and
came up with adaware which i tried the free version of. 236 cookies,
a couple of spy programs and some other things called malware. axed
all the bad guys and computer is fine.

it was right after that that i noticed that there was some outgoing
traffic on the computer when it was online- sure enough, one of those
cookies left open a port and i got hacked.

fixed that, purchased norton, donated to spyware, bought adaware and a
program called pop-up stopper and havent had a problem since.

Yep, Ad-Aware is indeed terrific *free* software. Spybot S&D, Spyware
Blaster and Microsoft Antispyware are also good.........and *free*. I
run
Cleanup! weekly to get rid of my temp files. Also a *free* program. (I
think you get my point now ;-) )

Popups are blocked automatically with Mozilla Firefox. You may want to
give
it a try.

A nice little program that is not free is Tuneup Utilities 2006. You can
download a free trial version he
http://www.tune-up.com/products/tuneup-utilities/

look you smarmy little block head - nothing is -free-. adaware pro is
not free. i bought the pro version to support them so cheapskates
like you can have it - free - .

spypot is not free - oh, wait its only free to dweebs like you - check
the faq page -


What the hell is your problem? Do you have to play the expert on everything
Tom or are you willing to take some advice from others?

And BTW, it's Spybot, not Spypot.........and it is free.