A man will die, but not his ideas.

Thursday, December 22, 2005

Play It Safe



Whether you go online via a 24/7 connection (e.g. ADSL, DSL, cable modem, etc.) or throgh dial-up, one thing is for sure: you have to take certain measures to ensure the safety of you system and the data on it. Otherwise, you might find yourself crying over what you've lost due to a foolish click with your mouse. Personally, I faced this situation once. But even if it wasn't that serious, you might get stuck in a situation where you find your head wanting to explode out of frustration because you can't go online for no obvious reason!

Well, after facing many nights of frustration, here is my advice. First of all, stop using the most buggiest operating system on the planet (a.k.a. Windows) unless you truely can't help it. Install a respected anti-virus software (e.g. McAfee VirusScan or Symantec's Norton AntiVirus) and, most importantly, make sure you have the latest virus definition file for that tool. Install an Adware/Spyware removal utility (e.g. Lavasoft's AdAware) with the latest update. Use a more secure browser to surf the Web (my choice is Mozilla's FireFox) and a safer e-mail client (e.g. Thunderbird). Don't download any files from untrustful sites and don't open any attachments in e-mail from unknown sources (and even if you know the source, it won't hurt to double check by sending him/her an e-mail asking whether indeed this was sent by him/her).

You should also install a firewall software (e.g. ZoneAlarm or McAfee's Personal Firewall) to prevent any unintended traffic from accessing or leaving your machine. Finally, if for some reason (a virus/trojan/spyware) you can't go online, scan your system and remove the cause then run a WinSock fixing utility (you can download one over here and here, and another solution can be found here). Damn, I've really got to hurry up the transition process to Unix/Linux. If only I could enable those two RAID IDE channels on my 945G motherboard. :$

More information and safe computing tips can be found on this link (Safe Hex). And links to useful tools can be found here.

Posted by A :: 11:13 PM :: 2 Comments:

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