| Author | Message | ||
     Mikej |
Anyone run into this one yet? http://www.spywareinfo.com/~merijn/cwschronicles.html Our home computer got infected with at least three spybot programs, not sure if one of them was the above one. I think we've finally got it cleaned out. I'm now considering getting an Apple-type computer maybe after the first of the year. I know this type of stuff has been gone over before, just refreshing the discussion due to a different discussion elsewhere about the CWS problem and the fact that it is becomming apparently more prevalant (sp?).  (Glitch, is this picture one of your's, or did I find it elsewhere somewhere?) | ||
| Steve_mackay |
Mikej. Getting an Apple is *NOT* a bad idea  They are a bit more pricey than a PC alternative. But the lack of spyware/malware/virii is worth the price of admission. I've got two Apples at home. A Dual 1GHZ G4, and a 400MHZ G4, that is running two websites, including our local BRAG site www.brewcitybrag.org Their reliability is 2nd to none IMHO. But, it matters what you WANT to do with your computer. There are cheaper alternatives. | ||
| Tripper |
Man do I know alot (more than I wanted to) about computers. I just spent 2 weeks fighting popups and spyware that SOMEONE clicked on while coupon shopping. Thanx to Josh I got it cleaned up. Follow the instructions on this page http://forums.majorgeeks.com/showthread.php?t=35407 and you'll get it gone. Takes a long time, but all the s/w he uses is free. The anti spyware forums seem alot like BadWeb. A group of enthusiast attempting to keep their quirky machines running, and willing to share their knowledge freely. Now if I could just get this intermittent freezup to go away..... | ||
| Mikej |
Steve, my computer uses will change after the first of the year, I'll start compiling a functional list of what I want to do then. A web page is one thing, some commercial store front type of stuff is an eventual 'nother item on the list. Time will tell how far it goes. I will want it to be hacker unfriendly and spybot disabling and possibly backtracking to see who wants my data. But don't know how deep I want to get into it yet. Maybe I'll just stay with brick and morter and just deal with the old fashioned folks and be simply happy. Gonna take a couple of years regardless. | ||
| Josh_ |
>some commercial store front type of stuff is an eventual 'nother item on the list. Anyone considering this, take a look at PayPal's free shopping cart. Great way to start accepting orders online for free. Only catch is your customers have to have (or create) a paypal account. | ||
| Steve_mackay |
OKay, Mikej. The storefront stuff, may be a killer. Specialized software like that, may be difficult to find for the Mac. But here is really a way to keep a windows PC somewhat safe, in order of importance. 1.) DON'T use internet explorer! Personally, I use Mozilla Firefox on my windows PCs. Never a problem with adware. 2.) DON'T use outlook, or outlook express! I use Mozilla Thunderbird, and never had a problem with virii spreading. 3.) Use a virii scanner. There are a couple of free ones. I use Avast. www.avast.com . There is also AVG for free www.grisoft.com There is no reason to use and pay for Norton. 4.) Download, and regularly use, and update adaware, and spybot search and destroy. | ||
| Ingemar |
Ditto on Steve's points. Grisoft was my free favorite, until I got infected twice in a row. That's not why I use a virusscanner... IMHO, Symantec AV & Internet security suck. I'm not sure they even do their work properly, they are system hogs and make your system instable. I've been thru all free virus scanners and firewalls. In the end I chose to pay for TrendMicro Internet security. Not too big in memory, contains firewall, spyware protection, virus protection and spam filter. Very user friendly, easy to setup. 30 day full functioning trial available. Daily updates. Sometimes several a day. If you ask me, the best money I've spent on my pc so far. | ||
| Glitch |
Glitch, is this picture one of your's? I didn't make that one, if I had I'd name it "There has GOT to be a better way to make a living!  | ||
| Reepicheep |
If you want to run your own webserver, especially if you are going to do it for a business, know what you are getting into. For $30 per month, you can buy a HECK of a lot of bandwidth on a site that is secured and maintained by somebody else. If you want to host your own site, more power to you, but know that it will take a non trivial amount of work to keep secure and stable. | ||
| Aesquire |
I had popups the first boot after a new load of xp. I loaded eXtra Poor 5 times in 2 days & ended up loading SP2 & anti viral & anti adware software while unhooked from the web. It's a jungle out there. | ||
| Steve_mackay |
Aesquire. The popups you were recieving were from the "messenger" service. Not to be confused with MSN messenger, or windows messenger though. It's different, and quite easy to disable. MikeJ has the right idea. Switching OSes is a good idea IMHO I'd never boot in to windows, if I could get my cad/cam vendor to port to Linux | ||
| Mikej |
If I do the storefront thing it will probably be through a third party service, as said to let them deal with the firewall attacks and up-front security issues. I'll be digging into this OS consideration soon though. I guess I'm sort of looking at it like buying a new bike and considering the theft quotient. If the majority of bike thefts were of brands A & B, and if brands C & D only have a small percentage of thefts, and if brands E & F had an even smaller percentage of thefts, then as long as brands C-F fulfilled my needs and wants then I might as well ignore brands A & B. So, likewise, if the majority of computer viruii are focused on MS applications and weaknesses and virtually open doorways to the MS-OS, then I'd be well advised to consider non-MS applications and OS's. Whatever works best with the least amount of headaches and hassles factored in. Damn, never thought I'd be seriously looking at an Apple box ...  | ||
| Mikej |
ps, I'll also want to find out a way to disable email feedback that lets the senders know that their message has been accessed, but that's part of round two. | ||
| Josh_ |
MikeJ: what application? | ||
| Steve_mackay |
MikeJ, Part of Apples security, is actually security thru obscurity. With only 2% of the marketplace, it's hardly a bother for the hackers. But what the Mac gives you is an easy to use, rock stable UNIX OS, with good eye candy, and good support. And, if you're ever interested in doing video work. The Mac is the BEST for home based video editing and authoring IMHO. Stop in at the Mayfair Malls Apple store, and talk to 'em. If you want me to come with ya, I'd be happy to One less MS box in the world would be worth it | ||
| Steve_mackay |
MikeJ, also, if you have someone, ANYONE in your family that is in education. Either a teacher, or a student, you can get a pretty good student/facilty discount on Apple hardware/software. | ||
| Mikej |
Josh, I'll be looking at CAD, photo work, some publishing, retail stuff, and some side geospacial stuff sort of related to archaeology depending on where the thoughts lead and end up. Sort of in the fuzzy thought phase right now deciding if I'm making soup or stew. Kind of side-stepping into two divergent but sort of related fields hoping between the two of them something will work. Current field functionally died years ago, just eaking out a living in the shadowphase of the business as it transitions into the new realm of the business environment. Sort of breaking out of cubedom if you will. Not sure if that answered the question. I've still got too much clutter in the way to focus too well on it right now, just setting the background thought process into second gear, while trying to finish up a 20-60 page term paper for next Tuesday. Might have to cup for the cost of EndNote by Sunday if need be. | ||
| Josh_ |
I was just wondering which app you wanted to turn off email receipt notification in | ||
| Mikej |
Steve, I'm currently a student, but the university either stopped selling software at thier bookstore or moved software sales to some other department. I'll have to find out what the situation is there before December. | ||
| Mikej |
Oh, okay, oops. Currently using several email packages, yahoo mail, hotmail, and core.com. Not sure what I'll end up with. I assume it's just a switch, but I also know that some emails send triggers to web sites with user identity attached somehow. In the past I just logged onto core.com and downloaded the email without opening it, then disconnected from the web before viewing emails. Now I just view the messages online and do the deleting there before downloading anything I want to keep locally and for offline use. I'm also still on dial-up at home and will remain so until I get something more secure setup. | ||
| Josh_ |
Outlook/OE do it automatically in some versions and it's just a switch to turn it off. Other packages I believe you have to turn it on your self. However, you may be referring to HTML code embedded in the message that runs upon opening and can/will report back on it's own regardless of the email client. What you want in that case is to turn off HTML. | ||
| Mikej |
Yep, the html code, but sometimes I like the links. Guess I can't have everything. I also want to disable the feedback to the sales lead tracking software some vendors use, I don't know if it's html based or not. I'll have to do some studying when I get to that point, at least now I have an idea what to look for. Thanks. | ||
| Steve_mackay |
Well, by default. Mozilla Thunderbird will NOT download the pictures. While the links will work if clicked on. This is how OE is set by default now in SP2 IIRC. It's not the HTML that tells to potential spammer/hacker you're alive, it's the things that are actually downloaded, such as the images. The bare HTML is embeded in to the email, and the sender has no clue that you've actually received it, until you download the images. | ||
| Reepicheep |
Google mail does it "right" as well. It will render empty frames where the HTML links to images, and give you a button at the top that allows you to fetch the images if you wish. Basically, if you view an HTML page, and it has links to images, and those images get displayed, the sender can tell you read the email, and other information. | ||
| Ethanr |
For an idea of just how much software is available for the Mac, see <http://www.apple.com/software/> and <http://guide.apple.com/index.lasso> Tons of stuff available. The biggest disparity is in games. They usually hit the PC market earlier than the Mac, though most titles do make it to the Mac within a few months. I'm not into computer games, myself...prefer to play with my kids on the PS2...so that's not an issue for me. Regarding security, Mac OS X is a very solid UNIX variant. Lack of virii, etc., isn't just due to its relatively small user base compared to Windoze. UNIX is hard to hack. Consider that Linux is free, including the source code, and yet there haven't been many successful hacks. The basic UNIX core of OS X (Darwin) is also open source. It's not worth a hacker's time to hit UNIX when MS OSs are so easy to break. | ||
| Bigdaddy |
Mac = FreeBSD. FreeBSD is the most reliable (no need to argue that point) OS on the planet. Build your own BSD box ( www.freebsd.org ) and save some money, expand your computing horizons and knowledge base. Join the Geekdom. Reepicheep, Have you seen some of the 'port knocker' entry scenarios? fwknop = sweet. Greg | ||
| Reepicheep |
I have. Cool stuff, but (IMHO) unnecessary. For my home network, I only expose secure shell and apache proxy server (locked down to a predefined list of IP's), running in a DMZ. I watch for active exploits for those two products, and patch promptly when necessary. Good luck cracking those two... Port knocker would be cool if I was trying to stealth something past my ISP, but they just block the ports they want to block (HTTP and Telnet) and leave the ones open they want to leave open (including SSH). I am happy with the compromise they they have reached, and the cheap uber bandwidth I get as a result (350k bytes / second download for $29 per month). FreeBSD is great, as are the linux boxes, but any OS that is not kept patched is going to get popped sooner or later. That being said, unix still kicks ••• in terms of security over windows boxes. Unix has an honest seperation between the application layer and the operating system layer, and between user processes and adminstration processes. But I still don't like putting anything but a hardened firewall facing the internet, and keeping all users and extra applications off that. Forward traffic (i.e. web server, ssh server, etc) to a different box NAT'd behind the firewall, preferably in a DMZ. Aack. Enough geeking out. Back on topic... How to secure a typical home network: 1) Get a firewall network appliance and correctly connect it to your cable modem / DSL modem (probably labelled WAN port). 2) Put the rest of your machines on the other ports on that appliance. 3) Go to www.grc.com and follow the links to shields up and do a free scan against your system. You should see NOTHING exposed. 4) Keep your operating systems patched using XP service pack 2 and the auto update feature. If not that, patch once a week at minimum. An unpatched system connected directly to the internet (no firewall) has about a 12 minute life span (honestly). Don't hook your system up to the internet until AFTER your firewall is hooked up. 5) Run and keep updated antivirus software. Always. Keep it up to date. Even if this costs you $$. Really, keep it up to date. 6) Go to www.lavasoft.de and get the free add aware program. Update it's definitions and and run it weekly, and any time your browser did something whacked out (like your home page was changed for you, or you suddenly have a tool bar in explorer you never had before). 7) Don't hang out in bad neighborhoods. Don't surf porn sites, don't install and run stolen software, don't install and run software designed primarily to steal copyrighted material. Do all that, and your home systems will be pretty solid, and you won't have to make somebody like me stay up until 2 in the morning in some sort of death struggle trying to save your data and recover your system. | ||
| Mikej |
Thank you all for all the input. Got me some homework to do. | ||
| Bigdaddy |
Reepi, Agreed. Mikej, You're a savy guy (reading your posts convince me of this.) Take one old Window$ box and install FreeBSD. You can do it and you'll be impressed. If you don't have access to an older machine for a test environment ping me. Greg | ||
| Mikej |
Three computers in the house, two that I know where they are and one hidden buried in a box someplace. One's a newer window box running win2000, one's a little older still running win95, the final one is an old 386sx, can't recall if I ever updated it from dos to windows but think it might be on windows 3.0 or something like that. I may backup any wanted data from the win95 box and do a test run of the FreeBSD on it. Maybe I'll start playing with it over Thanksgiving. I don't dare play with the win2000 box unless I want to start sleeping in the basement.  The old 386sx box, assuming it didn't get dumped behind my back during the last move (last time I remember seeing it, it was in a wheelborrow in the old garage), I had thoughts of turning it into some sort of graphics or pdf viewer or something. |
