# Internet protection advice



## Milan (May 29, 2005)

My laptop is riddled with spyware. It's actually spyware from a company(s) that have infected my computer and now I'm getting all sorts of advertisements, pop-ups, dialog windows telling me I have been infected with malicious spyware and need to 'click here' to download the latest spyware remover application from the same areseholes that infected my laptop. They got me good because my firewall came up with a warning telling me that Windows NT is trying access the internet to download the latest updates. It sounded legitimate and I hit the 'allow' button and then all hell broke loose with my hard-drive. It was to late and I got wacked with all this spyware. Thinking back now I should have quickly shut down my computer as the spyware was in the midst of installing itself. I tried to use other spyware programs to clean the mess but the infecting spyware disabled the ability for these apps to download the latest updates. I was meaning to re-image the laptop so I think I'm just gonna format and reinstall everything. My question to all the 'digital children' (got that from a older bloke at work who calls the new graduate engineers by this term and I thought it was rather funny) is, how do you do to protect yourself from internet nasties? I was using a free version of zonealarm for my firewall, I run a router which has limited hardware firewall type protection, Norton's antivirus, popup-stopper and spybot. I should have installed firefox as my browser but procrastination got the better of me.

What have you digital gurus found to be the best set up that doesn't cost the earth? I heard on the radio during the computer talk back segment that the European applications for internet protection were one of the best to use. Any comments? Hopefully from the help you guys give me I'll set up my laptop with the best defence possible after I re-image it.

Thanks in advance


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## terri* (Aug 17, 2004)

Nope, no digital child here, just a fellow sufferer like you as to the goings on of the power of viruses. We have a new laptop and I am almost crazy...I take that back, I am crazy :lol: ...with fear that we will get one and I will be to blame. :shock:

Anyway, I hope some of the wonder kids stop in to help. It does seem like there was some mention of this a few weeks ago. Maybe a search may help you find the thread.

Good Luck, Milan and thank God for the people that save us from ourselves on the net.

See ya, Mate.
t*


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## Milan (May 29, 2005)

The thing is Terri* that they're getting rather sneaky when it comes to loading these nasties on your computer. It can happen to the best of us, computer literate or not. I think I got mine from Limewire a P2P network for downloading music files. This is the type of internet activity that gets you in trouble as they can easily embed some form of spyware as your exchanging data. I knew the risks but was slack with keeping all of my internet security devices updated with the latest versions. I was planning on doing a reinstall in the near future so I wasn't as vigilant as I normally am. Now I know what happens when you don't keep checking your system for malicious files. I'm sure I'll get plenty of help from the super literate computer buffs on this board.

A word of advice Terri*, stay clear from the nude celebrity sites featuring Andy Garcia, it could get you in trouble :wink: (did you notice the wink emoticon also has a lazy eye?)


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## terri* (Aug 17, 2004)

Malicious files??? :shock:

Where are these malacious files?

I have a huge phob about going to a music website.

I keep bumping this up for you...and me.

I can *never* give up the nude Garcia site. Let the bugs bring on the wrath of hell, I love the lazy eyed one! :wink:

I'm going to look for that thread. I think even the old Rev came out of the woodwork to put his two cents in.

Nope, I couldn't find it under his name. Good Luck.


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## bigpete87 (Nov 9, 2005)

okay, heres my protection against the internet strangers,
Currently running on my computer Windows XP SP2:
----*ZoneAlarm Firewall* (free version) http://www.zonelabs.com/store/content/home.jsp
----*Microsoft AntiSpyware* (free) http://www.microsoft.com/athome/security/spyware/software/default.mspx
----*Spybot Search and Destroy* (Anti-Spyware, free) http://www.safer-networking.org/en/home/
----*AVG Anti-Virus* (Free version) http://free.grisoft.com/doc/1
----*Ad-Aware SE Personal* (Anti-Adware, free version) http://www.lavasoftusa.com/

and as you can see, i am a freeloader :lol:

anyways, do you have these softwares install in ur laptop? and what operating system ur runnin? And also update ur laptop on Microsoft Update http://www.microsoft.com, if u have Windows.

sumtime, i get paranoid about viruses and hackers out there.


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## Milan (May 29, 2005)

Thanks bigpete,

I was actually going to install pretty much the same apps you have once I re-image. As you have done I was going to go down the free loader path as well. The only additional thing I will do is install firefox instead of IE.

Currently I have an old Dell Latitute P3, 500MHz, 256RAM running win2000 SP4. I will install 2000 again as I think XP will probably slow it down to the point where I'll be pulling my hair out. Anyone running XP on a P3 500MHz system?


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## Guest (Jan 20, 2006)

I'm not an expert but I wouldn't recommend running XP on a 500MHz especially with your teenie amount of memory left!

terri* if you're on XP just make sure the firewall is "on." Go to control panel--> security center--> click firewall to be "on." I also have AVG which is free. I hated the Norton stuff that came with the computer :x :x :x . I also have spybot which is a nice program.


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## Milan (May 29, 2005)

Reinstalled everything and all is fine. I have a sanitised laptop with no nasties floating within and a whopping 3.5 gig of free hard disk left (it's only got a total of 6 gig - it's an old lappy). This time I'll keep all the defences updated ensuring I don't get infected like last time.

Another question - does anyone find that firefox loads a lot slower than IE?

IE takes about 2sec to load and the first time you open firefox it takes about 10-12sec, there after it's only about 5sec. Apart from that I like firefox mainly because it's not one of Billy's programs.


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## bigpete87 (Nov 9, 2005)

Milan said:


> Another question - does anyone find that firefox loads a lot slower than IE?


Yes, my Firefox loads slow than IE. i thinks its normal. i also love using Firefox. i rarely use IE now.


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## Milan (May 29, 2005)

Thanks Bigpete,

Everything you have suggested I have installed on my laptop. I hope it stays clean like it currently is.

Oh, and I like your little icon :lol:


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## Guest (Jan 24, 2006)

Milan said:


> Anyone running XP on a P3 500MHz system?


I've managed it on a P2 of some description with 64Mb memory. It was...interesting. Suprisingly it wasn't that slow.

Best thing to do is turn off all the CPU hogging graphical fluff it comes with.

Control Panel->System->Advanced

Under Performance click Settings

Choose Adjust for Best Performance.

I normally only have on:

Animate windows when minimizing and maximizing.
Show shadow under mouse pointer
Show window contents while dragging
Smooth edges of screen fonts
Smooth-scroll list boxes

Gives a nice trade-off between speed and a modern looking/feeling OS.


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## Milan (May 29, 2005)

Thanks mrmole.

Next rebuild I'll try loading XP. Hopefully I'll have a better laptop by then.

Another question - I'm looking into buying a desktop PC probably in about 3-4 months time and I want to do a fair bit of video editing off our DV camera. I've got about 20 tapes at the moment that I want to transfer to DVD.

What kind of hardware is appropriate for video editing? In particular - RAM, CPU, graphics card, hard disk and monitor.

Anyone editing there own videos at this time?

Also, what is the best printer you have found that gives good quality prints off a digital still camera.

As always, any help is appreciated.


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## Guest (Jan 24, 2006)

Don't know much about video editing but you'll want huge and fast memory and hard drives and a capable processor.

My AMD64 has 2Gb RAM and even that winds me up sometimes waiting for videos to edit!

As far as I know the graphics card is pretty irrelvant - that's only working hard in games when it's 'making' the images from scratch. I believe it's the main CPU that takes the brunt of video editing.

For pure graphics work I'd go with CRT for price, or a top notch LCD. Cheaper TFT's just can't match CRT's in terms of 'true' blacks and even colour gradients (Look at an LCD tilted away from you - the colour fades from top to bottom).

Can't really offer much more advice I'm afraid. I'm a fan of Western Digital and Maxtor hard drives for a mix of reliability, speed, etc. Don't touch Samsung hard drives. Only make I've ever had fail.

Anyway I've wibbled on enough. Bit of a barrage of information but hope it makes sense!


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## bigpete87 (Nov 9, 2005)

hey milan,

if you are getting Windows XP, it will come with Windows Movie Maker which is a video editing for beginners. if u have a DV Camera, you can hook it up to the PC and transfer the video to Windows Movie Maker.

i see you mention about VHS tapes to DVD. you'll probably need these hardwares http://www.tigerdirect.com/applications/category/category_slc.asp?CatId=1428 which connect to your USB. It will encode your VHS to DVD on your PC.

so if u gonna do some video editing, get atleast 512MB or more RAM, a decent video card (any video card is fine), also get a big hard drive atleast 80GB or more if you gonna do alot of video editing and making DVD files (DVD files are huge). i got a 40GB and its not enough for me due to alot of music, videos, and games.

i hope this helps you.


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## Milan (May 29, 2005)

Thanks for the advice.

Most of my vids are on DV and they're the ones I want to convert to DVD.

I was actually thinking of using Adobe premier elements for the video editing.


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## Brainsilence02 (Jan 29, 2005)

Depends on what hardware you have, what operating system are you willing to use and what things you will do online.

The faster your computer, the newer the operating system you can (and sadly, need) to have. If you are using a Microsoft's operating system then you need a firewall, an anti-virus, and anti-spyware program. The best usually consume a lot of resources and will cost you an important amount of money.

My personal choice is ZoneAlarm Pro and Kaspersky anti-virus Pro. None of them is free, but are available for a trial. ZoneAlarm "basic" sounds good, I think it just doesn't have the advanced settings. Norton sounds bad.

If you have to run Windows in a P3 500, then "Windows 2000" is the apparent choice. I would run this one myself if it didn't had a problem with USB2 drivers and wasn't significanly slower (due to older hardware targeting) on my current marchine. I have seen it working good on a P2 400. Windows NT sounds good, it will surely be faster, but some recent software might have problems (but how recent software will you be running in a P3?).

The best choice would the same choice I am procrastinatting myself, learn Linux/BSD. When configured properly, it's nearly immune to malicious, online and offline, attacks. The "chase" behind Linux/BSD is that it's open-source, so you can really trust your computer. In the other hand, Windows XP has Alexa spyware just out-of-the-box.

For P2P I recommend Shareaza ( http://shareaza.sourceforge.net ); it's open-source too, but you may need to configure TCP ports for this one, and I think that the basic version of ZoneAlarm doesn't have such settings available.

Internet Explorer (IE) is build-in Windows, it's always loaded at the background that's why it takes 2 seconds to show up. I don't know if Firefox can do this, but SeaMonkey does ( http://www.opera.com/ ); it's free but not open-source.

Remember that it is very important to feel safe, but it as well important to be safe. The illusion of safety causes most of the harm.


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## Milan (May 29, 2005)

Thanks BS02, it seems like you know what you're talking about when it comes to computers. I'll give seamonkey a go - I'm happy with firebox but the slow loading annoys me just a little.

Learning Linux just sounds too tedious at the moment and I'm not that paranoid about protection.....but maybe I should be. I have never actually seen or played with Linux at all. Maybe in the future I may give it a shot.

Anyhow I'm happy at the moment and only time will tell if I get zapped with any nasties with my current set up.


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