Kathy Kinsley provides links to free virus protection and firewall programs. If you do not have both of these types of programs installed, please do so. I mean, after all, if you can do it for nothing and it might save you big bucks if you had to hire someone to erradicate a nasty virus from your system, it does make a bit of sense to take precautions, doesn't it? Oh, and please stop opening those email attachments that come from senders you don't recognize. In fact, I don't even open ones from senders I recognize unless it is something I was expecting.
I am geek/0™ and yet have been online for almost a decade without ever having gotten a virus infection. I am pretty sure I have only gotten alarms from protection programs on a couple of occasions. You do not have to be a techno-wiz to keep your system secure, you just have to use common sense. Uh, and in additon to those programs that Kathy provided, I think everyone should have Ad-Aware. It is also free for personal use. It is very useful for tracking down those data miners that send personal information to websites through cookies.*
*Or at least I think this is what it does. Some techie might be able to explain it more correctly, but I do think my explanation gets to the gist of the matter.
Posted by Tiger at August 24, 2003 10:56 AMThe spyware watches where you go and what you click and sends that info directly to the servers of whatever company the spyware belongs to. Cookies not necessary.
I usually do recommend AdAware as well, but on this was I was specifically concerned with security, not privacy. :)
Posted by: Kathy K at August 24, 2003 11:03 AMThanks for clearing that up Kathy, and for publishing those links to the programs. I am sure that information is going to be so very helpful to many, and such is the reason I felt compelled to point to your post. ;)
Posted by: Tiger at August 24, 2003 11:30 AM