10 ways you can protect your computer in 2009

[northwalesinks]

10 ways you can protect your computer in 2009
With a growing number of cyber criminals trying to infiltrate computers by stealth, ESET have drawn up a list of sensible precautions that people should take to protect themselves and their machines in 2009. Simply following the below advise will substantially reduce the chances of a successful attack.

Disable Autorun in Windows: this facility is consistently exploited by criminals that use USB storage devices such as flash memory sticks and even digital photo frames, to infect computers.
Keep applications and Operating System (eg: Windows, MAC) components up-to-date with automatic updates and patches, and by regularly reviewing the vendors’ product update sections on their web sites.
Log on to the computer with an account that does not have “Administrator” privileges, to reduce the likelihood and severity of damage from self-installing malicious software.
Use different passwords for the computer and on-line services. Also practice changing passwords on a regular basis and avoid simple passwords, especially those that are easily guessed.
Do not trust unsolicited files or embedded links, even from friends. It’s easy to spoof email addresses, for instance, or to disguise a harmful link so that it looks like something quite different, whether it’s in email, chat or whatever.
Do not disclose sensitive information on public websites like FaceBook or LinkedIn. Even information that in itself is innocuous can be combined with other harmless information and used in social engineering attacks.
If sensitive information is stored on the hard drive, protect it with encryption and by regularly backing up your data to a separate disk and, where possible, a remote site or facility.
Do not expect antivirus alone to protect the computer. Use additional measures such as a personal firewall, antispam and anti-phishing toolbars. However, be aware that there is a lot of fake security software out there, and sometimes even the best protection might not protect as well as common sense and caution.
Do not connect to just any “free Wi-Fi” access point. It might be the “evil twin” of a legitimate access point, set up to intercept your logins and online transactions.
Do not use cracked/pirated software! These are easy avenues for introducing malware into, or exploiting weaknesses in a system. This also includes P2P (peer-to-peer) illegally distributed audio and video files.

[deltadelta48]

Hi North Wales, great tips. What anti virus do you recommend? I just bought a new computer and have a trial copy of Norton right now and MSN's additional protection as it is. Its a jungle out there!

I was in your neck of the woods two years ago. My cousins are in Old Colwyn so we drove all over North Wales and back again. My grandpa was born in Beddgelert and my grandma in Ffestinog.

take care,

[heatemyfather]

If I may offer an opinion, a good free anti-virus program for Windows has to be AVG. I know there are people who don't like it but I reckon it's one of the best of the free ones.

When installing AVG, however, it's important to switch to custom install mode and disable the link scanner as this will put unnecessary strain on your internet connection and browser as it attempts to scan every link in any web page you visit for potential security risks... imagine this happening when you do a Google search and there could be as many as 50 links on any one page.

Steer clear of Norton, uninstall it at the first opportunity as it's worthless bloat.

[heatemyfather]

In addition to those tips given by the OP, I would like to add a couple of very important ones that everyone with a broadband internet connection should get to grips with.

Your broadband router is your first line of defence against the hoards of nasties out there. You are more likely to be attacked by an automated hacking system than you are by someone manually probing for weaknesses, and most routers these days contain the software to block these automated attacks.

If you have a good router such as one from BT or Netgear (I believe Sky and possibly other ISPs provide Netgear ones) then these are among the best so you should configure them properly to make them effective at keeping you safe.

Go to http://192.168.0.1 (or the IP address which is usually marked on the bottom of the router), this gives you access to your router's controls through a standard web browser (IE, Firefox, etc).

You'll have to check for online help on specifics, but you should look to configure the following:

Router password: This is usually the standard 'admin' and 'password' combination (literally, they are the username and password). The first thing you should do is change these to something more secure, common advice is to use numbers and letters in both the username and password, and I would immediately write them down in a safe place (not near the router!), if you forget them and later need access to the router then you'll have to do a hardware reset and will lose all of your router settings.


Wi-Fi : If you intend to use wireless to connect to a laptop or iPod Touch (for example) then you should configure it using the highest security available to all of your devices, this is probably WPA2 with pre-shared key; though there are higher encryption settings available it just depends what is the highest common one supported by all of your devices. Choose a random string of characters including mixed case and numbers, something like gY456Ikkpdsg (it will need to be a specific number of characters). This will then be required on all devices that want to connect wirelessly, you should be able to tell the device to remember it after the first time you enter the code so that you don't have to put it in every time.

You could configure your router to only accept connections from named devices, sometimes called Mac Address Control or Access Control List. Every device has a MAC address, a unique identifying number. Tell your router about these and it will not allow any other device to connect, even if they have the WPA2 pre-shared key.

You can also stop the router from broadcasting it's wireless name so anybody looking for a wireless signal should not even see that it is there. If you've ever looked at the list of available wireless networks in range then you've probably seen your neighbour's in there along with yours, this would prevent it from showing in this list. Determined hackers will still be able to locate it, but with the other two security features in place it should make it much more difficult for them to hijack your internet. Configure your router's wireless name (SSID) to something unique, it does not have to reflect your address or house name (in fact it might be better if it does not identify where the signal is coming from).

The safest thing to do is just plug straight in using network cables and turn off the wireless signal all together, though this makes home roaming with a laptop impossible.

Firewall: Most routers contain some kind of firewall, sometimes called an IP Filter. This is usually much better than any software firewall in your computer. Make sure this is enabled and is set to filter (or block) inbound traffic. This effectively stops people from connecting to your computer from the outside and taking control of it without your knowledge.

If you play online games or use other applications that require specific ports to be open then this is usually the place to configure those, but in my experience the standard settings work fine for most things.


One thing the router cannot protect you from is yourself! Careful web surfing and email usage are the best way to protect yourself, anti-virus and anti-spyware software are only there as your last line of defence.

[DZAMBO]

As I say I give everybody one way to protect personal Computer...and way is very simple: just buy APPLE-MAC Deskop or Notebook and you not going to have any more problems for rest of life...Life is simple...Right ?

10 ways you can protect your computer in 2009
With a growing number of cyber criminals trying to infiltrate computers by stealth, ESET have drawn up a list of sensible precautions that people should take to protect themselves and their machines in 2009. Simply following the below advise will substantially reduce the chances of a successful attack.

Disable Autorun in Windows: this facility is consistently exploited by criminals that use USB storage devices such as flash memory sticks and even digital photo frames, to infect computers.
Keep applications and Operating System (eg: Windows, MAC) components up-to-date with automatic updates and patches, and by regularly reviewing the vendors’ product update sections on their web sites.
Log on to the computer with an account that does not have “Administrator” privileges, to reduce the likelihood and severity of damage from self-installing malicious software.
Use different passwords for the computer and on-line services. Also practice changing passwords on a regular basis and avoid simple passwords, especially those that are easily guessed.
Do not trust unsolicited files or embedded links, even from friends. It’s easy to spoof email addresses, for instance, or to disguise a harmful link so that it looks like something quite different, whether it’s in email, chat or whatever.
Do not disclose sensitive information on public websites like FaceBook or LinkedIn. Even information that in itself is innocuous can be combined with other harmless information and used in social engineering attacks.
If sensitive information is stored on the hard drive, protect it with encryption and by regularly backing up your data to a separate disk and, where possible, a remote site or facility.
Do not expect antivirus alone to protect the computer. Use additional measures such as a personal firewall, antispam and anti-phishing toolbars. However, be aware that there is a lot of fake security software out there, and sometimes even the best protection might not protect as well as common sense and caution.
Do not connect to just any “free Wi-Fi” access point. It might be the “evil twin” of a legitimate access point, set up to intercept your logins and online transactions.
Do not use cracked/pirated software! These are easy avenues for introducing malware into, or exploiting weaknesses in a system. This also includes P2P (peer-to-peer) illegally distributed audio and video files.

[heatemyfather]

As I say I give everybody one way to protect personal Computer...and way is very simple: just buy APPLE-MAC Deskop or Notebook and you not going to have any more problems for rest of life...Life is simple...Right ?

Heh, yeah! Disappointed to see you use the term 'Notebook' though, in Apple Land it's a 'MacBook'.

My advice still stands for Apple Macs too though - any computer and broadband connection can be hacked or hijacked via a wireless router signal if it's not secured.

[DZAMBO]

Yep you are right...but I still with my opinion because with Apple's operating systems is really hard to broke inside with even any Internet provider...just my opinion this is for me likes Windows operating system and Leopard operating system anybody can say is same...no is not...period...and by the way Deskop, Laptop or MacBook I think is enough to say ''APPLE''...

P.S. If anybody have enough money is best way to spend on good proven things...
If anybody don't have enough money to spend for good proven things just buy nothing until you have enough...just my philosophy...

good day to you....

[heatemyfather]

It's not just the computer that can be hacked - they could use your internet connection for nefarious things such as downloading child pornography or sending out millions of spam emails, they can do this even if your computer is switched off as they are accessing the broadband router directly.