Do you use protection?

[Nick]

Not much in the news lately about internet viruses, huh? Think that a trojan was a horse in Greece? A worm is something you fish with? Think again.

Quick, yank your computer's external connections, lock the doors and hide under the bed. The latest NEW viruses, worms and other assorted nasties have been unleashed upon the 'net and are headed straight for your computer.

Look at this list (http://securityresponse.symantec.com/avcenter/vinfodb.html#threat_list) of the latest buconic cyber-plagues now creeping across the earth.

[Bogy]

And with all these real viruses out there, the ones that can cause more trouble are the hoaxes. Again this morning I got an email from a friend wondering if he needed to delete the file with the teddy bear icon. And if he needed to forward the warning to everyone in his address book so they could also warn everyone in their address books. Who knows how many unneeded emails being sent, clogging up the net.

As far as my protection at home, router with hardware firewall, personal software firewall, regularly updated virus scanner.

[markh]

Oh. computer protection. I thought this was a safe sex thread.:)

[Steve Mehs]

I thought the same thing especially when the word trojan sticks out like that ;) I'm protected by Norton AntiVirus 2003 and ZA Pro. There was a point when I would be getting anywhere from 10-20 virus ridden emails a day. Checking my e-mail would be a 5 minute chore where as before it was 5 secs. I got so fed up, I called up Earthlink to attempt to change my username/email address, since I'm not the account holder he wouldn't authorize it so I changed it from the MyAccount page. :rolleyes: never trust a human to do a computers job :) Since then, I have never got any virus ridden emails, in fact I hardly get any emails period, not many people know my address, and I never let my mom enter it on web anymore. Now 90% of the email I get is from the DBSTalk server from adminall emails, PM notifications and report a posts. Just the way I like it.

[gcutler]

Originally posted by Steve Mehs
...Since then, I have never got any virus ridden emails, in fact I hardly get any emails period, not many people know my address, and I never let my mom enter it on web anymore. Now 90% of the email I get is from the DBSTalk server from adminall emails, PM notifications and report a posts. Just the way I like it.

I setup a business e-mail account (with one of the 8 accounts addresses I have with my home earthlink account) so really it is just a new address no one has ever heard of. I only use it for business correspondence and never use the address for ordering Books, or joining forums, etc, and love the fact that I don't get any junk-mail (and I don't give my business card with the address to get a free sandwich which is also a killer).

I think that the only way to avoid junk mail is to have two addresses, the public one you use to order thru Amazon.com and join dbstalk.com :D , and then have one that only good friends and close family know about. But once you order something or somehow get that personal address out to the public, it is a lost cause (unless you start another new address)

[firephoto]

I haven't had an antivirus program on any of my machines for quite awhile. I have my file prefs set to show extentions and hidden files when i'm in Windoze and have went back to the XP firewall instead of ZA. I always use non-outlook/MS for my POP3 email and outluck express for for my hotmail sometimes and the web interface for some other email accounts. AOL seems to strip out the viruses on my netscape.net account emails (not that I don't just delete all the junk there anyway). The last virus I had was frrom my stupidly going to a web page that was there only to give you a virus. :( That was about 2 years ago.

So to answer the question, yes I do use protection but with the computer I just try to be "carefull". ;) :lol:

[BobMurdoch]

Originally posted by markh
Oh. computer protection. I thought this was a safe sex thread.:)

Remember folks, always wear your raincoat!:lol:

[BobMurdoch]

I like McAfee Clinic with Personal Firewall. I get a yearly subscription that automatically updates me when new threats spring up AND it warns me when spyware tries to phone home from one of my programs.....

[gcutler]

Originally posted by firephoto
I haven't had an antivirus program on any of my machines for quite awhile. I have my file prefs set to show extentions and hidden files when i'm in Windoze and have went back to the XP firewall instead of ZA. I always use non-outlook/MS for my POP3 email and outluck express for for my hotmail sometimes and the web interface for some other email accounts. AOL seems to strip out the viruses on my netscape.net account emails (not that I don't just delete all the junk there anyway). The last virus I had was frrom my stupidly going to a web page that was there only to give you a virus. :( That was about 2 years ago.

So to answer the question, yes I do use protection but with the computer I just try to be "carefull". ;) :lol:

But all it takes is one mistake and you can be toast. By having the Anti-Virus and Firewall SW, you can be fancy-free :D

[BobMurdoch]

With hackers getting more and more creative, you can't just rely on good practices to protect you (not when just viewing a webpage that a hacker has infiltrated can hurt you). It's no just avoiding opening .exe and .scr files anymore.

I REALLY recommend you get SOME form of protection, preferably something that checks for updates DAILY.

[firephoto]

I sort of have went the way of more protection lately with Mandrake 9.1 running for the last week or so.

Except for the video capturing/editing thing, I have been able to do everything I need to do and have actually had pretty good luck installing some programs and configuring things. For me 9.1 seems to be much better than 9.0 and the matrox drivers finally worked right this time without crashing things. I have dual monitors on a single G450 card and it can get interesting setting it up sometimes. I ended up settling on dual-head without xinerama so I can't drag and drop from one monitor to the other and have to launch programs from the display I want it on. It is more stable this way.

Any linux anti-virus software recomendations? Also what kind of linux flavored virii are there?