Home at the Hendels

I am not just a coffegeek, as you all know but a computer geek too and I want to warn everyone. Despite my geek status a few years ago my computer slowed to an unusable crawl. After having the experts treat it I found that I had been the victim of spyware. I soon went to every length I could figure to combat spyware and adware, let alone Trojans and viruses, and this was before spyware and adware had become so prevalent. Today it is estimated that over 80% of PCs are infected and their owners don’t realize it.

When I got my new computer the very first thing I did was load it to the gills with anti-spy-ware and anti-adware products and a good firewall. This has stood me in good stead. I urge all of you to be as vigilant. I hadn’t heard from my dear friend Angela in Switzerland for some time and was concerned. Yesterday I sent her an email and guess what? She was having problems with here PC and talking of Macs, as if that would be of anyhelp.

This is what I recommend to everybody to safeguard their system. This and keep in touch with your friendly local geek. There are always new wrinkles coming along.

Firewall and antivirus
Norton/McAffee, I don’t trust them and don’t recommend them. Zone Alarm has been around for years and was a leading shareware program. They are still the best as far as firewalls are concerned and Zone Alarm doesn't screw your computer up like the other two. Microsoft’s new firewall is to my mind useless, it doesn’t monitor outbound traffic, which is how spyware and adware go about their business.

Adware and Spyware: I find that there isn’t one program that does it all but I do recommend SpyBot(free) and AdAware as well as Spyware Doctor from PCtools. I am giving the beta version of Microsoft’s AntiSpyware a trial and so far it is holding up well, although some things get through it. Mainly through Outlook’s vulnerabilities. Remember to run scan’s regularly though even though it can be time-consuming.

I recently recommended that you change your browser to Firefox and wasn’t at all surprised to see that most of you have already done so. In fact I was following a post on one of the forums and a webmaster for a major site estimated that 30% of their visitors were using Firefox. So much for Microsoft’s claim that it’s share of the market had dropped from 96% to 90%.

I also highly recommend getting a Gmail account (I still have a few invitations left if you need one) to wean yourself off Outlook and it's many vulnerabilities and take advantage of web-based email.
Any of these program's can be found by Googling them or going to http://www.download.com/