Protect Your Computer — It’s Easy

Okay, today’s post is a diversion from my normal subjects, but I just spent several hours helping a friend clean up his PC after it bogged down horribly. I was shocked at what I found. While most of this seems to be common knowledge, there are still far too many people whose computers are at risk. And that’s bad news for all of us! Because any weak link in the chain weakens the integrity of the internet as a whole and increases risk to other users near and far.

So here are a few simple steps that you must take to protect yourself, your computer, and the rest of the world.

1) Computer security is critical right from the moment you switch on your brand new computer, Ideally, buy a computer with pre-installed virus protection and a firewall. And buy a long-term subscription. Yes, you might be locked into a subscription that you won’t use, and maybe the software won’t be the top of the line out there, but it’s still less expensive and safer than renewing and upgrading every year. Especially considering just how problematic some anti-virus programs can be to upgrade. Don’t get me started.

2) If you don’t have anti-virus and anti-spyware installed from the start, install it yourself before connecting your computer to any public network. The difference between a computer virus and spyware is that a virus is a malicious piece of computer code that can be implanted on any computer and it can result in destruction of the file systems of your computer and can be transferred from one computer to another and spread like the biological virus. Spyware is a program that collects information about you without your knowledge or consent. Spyware does not spread like a virus, but is usually surreptitiously installed with other approved programs.

3) Keep your virus definitions up-to-date and keep your virus subscription active. Just turn it on — this is too easy not to do!

4) Always keep your software firewall on. Even better, get a router and plug your computer into that. Now you have a hardware firewall and a software firewall. A firewall is built into many security suites, and ships with the OS on most new computers. If you don’t have one, just grab yourself a free copy of Zone Alarm.

5) Keep your OS patched. For most of us, that just means turning on the automatic Windows Update feature.

6) Backup early, backup everything, backup often. Best way to backup? Partition your hard drive, and store all data on one drive, all applications on another drive. Setup a one-touch backup to an external drive. Store backups offsite with something Amazon’s S3 service.

7) Keep your passwords safe — i.e. don’t “sticky” them to your monitor; don’t use easy-to-guess passwords (did you see Patriot Games ); don’t use dictionary words; mix it up with upper and lowercase, letters, numbers, special characters, 8-10 characters long.

Protect your personal information. If you are asked to give out personal information like phone number, address, SSN, identification numbers etc. on the internet, use more caution. Find out exactly why and how they will be used. If there is a link in your email that asks you to login by clicking on the link, then don’t! Usually genuine emails don’t ask you to login directly by clicking a link in the email. If you want to login to your membership accounts, always open a new browser and then type the URL of the website (to login to Paypal account, type paypal.com on the new browser instead of clicking on the link from an email that is asking you to login.).

If you are giving out credit card information, then the page that accepts credit card information must have secure encryption. The URL usually begins with https instead of the regular http. If you right click and select properties, the Connection section should read something like 128 bit encryption (High) and also must have 1024 bit exchange.

Just do it. Computer safety is simple and requires very little time, but it does require some habit changes. But you’ll make me and millions of other netizens very happy.