Nowadays as the Internet and other networks are greatly developed computer viruses are distributed rapidly and intensively. Everyday several new viruses capable to damage considerably your computer system arise. Anti-virus specialists work hardly to make updates their software against new viruses as soon as possible. The viruses can get inside computer in different ways. That is why there is no simple method to protect system. Only series of measures can give you reliable protection from the infection. Below are 9 steps to protect MS Windows based PC system from viruses.
1. Make regular backups.
It should be said that there is no absolutely safe way of protection. Virus creators regularly find holes in new computer products to use them for infection of computer systems. Some dangerous viruses can considerably damage data files or even erase entire file system. Make regular backups of your data files to separate file storage device. It can be separate hard drive, flash card, compact disc or another file storage device which you choose. To ease the procedure you can use some automatic backup software. And be ready if the system will die because of virus infection.
2. Be ready to reinstall your system if it dies because of viruses.
Get distributives of your operation system and distributives of software which you use and keep them together, for instance, on a set of CDs not far away from you. In this case if virus infection will cause unrecoverable system failure you can rapidly reinstall your working medium.
3. Protect your network connection with Firewall.
Firewall is a software which blocks suspicious potentially dangerous connections to preventing viruses from network to penetrate into your system. Windows XP system has quit simple but reliable built-in firewall. You can enable it as follows. 1) in Control Panel, double-click Networking and Internet Connections, and then click Network Connections. 2) Right-click the connection on which you would like to enable firewall, and then click Properties. 3) On the Advanced tab, check the option to Protect my computer and network.
If you need more flexible control of connections with network you can get and install more advanced firewall software like Norton Personal Firewall or Outpost Firewall. If you use this software you have ability to permit or to block particular connections and to monitor network activity.
4. Use antivirus software.
Install antivirus software which will scan your system searching and erasing viruses on a regular basis. Leaders in antivirus software products for Windows systems are Norton Antivirus, McAfee, Kaspersky Anti-Virus and PC-cilin.
5. Regularly update operating system.
Windows XP has built-in automatic update service. It regularly contacts Microsoft server to find updates and notifies you if updates are ready to be installed. Updates are important because hackers regularly find holes in operating system which are often used by virus creators.
6. Don't install and don't run suspicious software.
Check new programs which you are going to install with anti-virus software. Don't download software from suspicious websites. To download software always seek website of software creator or official distributor. Do not open applications received by email from unknown persons.
7. Limit access to your computer.
Protect enter to system with password.
8. If you use Internet Explorer, consider moving to another browser.
As IE is the most distributed browser today virus creators actively use defects in its security system to infect computers. Infection may arise if you will visit webpage which contains invisible harmful code. You are more safe if you use less known browser only because virus creators do not pay much attention to it. Major IE competitors Firefox and Opera browsers provide now the same comfortable interface and range of services for working on the Web.
9. Use spam protection.
Viruses are often distributed via email. Switch on spam filters in your email box to block spam receiving. If you need assistance with using of the filters you can ask your email service provider.
About the author:
Evgeny Kovalenko is the Editor of FSSD computer software directory with free submission service for software developers and distributors.
Sunday, March 04, 2007
9 Steps to Protect your MS Windows System from Viruses
What Is Spyware - An Overview Of Spy And Malware
Spyware is malicious software that can intercept and take control of your computer without your knowledge or consent. The presence of spyware in the computer of a person is a major threat to the privacy and productivity of a person. Spyware can get very easily installed to your computer without your knowledge. There are some software which can help you in fighting off the menace of spyware. Reading spyware reviews can help you in buying the best spyware remover available in the market. For, there are different types of spyware removers available in the market.
Spyware reviews contain all the features of the spyware remover. The reviews tell the customers about all the different features of the particular spyware remover. You can come to know about the effectiveness of the spyware remover. You can find the reviews from magazines, newspapers and different online sites. Reviews are reliable as they are written by people who have already used the product. Thus you can also come to know about the negative aspects of the software as well. The spyware reviews can help you in choosing to buy the remover which best suits your requirements.
Spyware is not the same as worms and virus found in the computers. Spyware is designed to exploit the infected computers for commercial gains by the makers. The typical tactic adopted by spyware is through the use of pop up advertisements, theft of personal information and also monitoring the web browsing activity of the user. The spyware which gets installed in your computer without your knowledge monitors your internet habit and this information is sent out to a third party who can use this for advertisement purpose.
Different types of spyware exist so it becomes very difficult to remove them from the infected computers. The most common form of spyware is adware. Adware works through sending one pop up ad after another pop up ad for different products and services while you are working online on your computer. The adware maker is thus able to collect your personal information and then starts bombarding you with spam and junk emails. This can at times become very frustrating to the user. In fact at times spam and junk emails outnumber the normal emails which you receive daily in your mail inbox.
There are some online companies that give its customers free trail of the spyware removers. You can read spyware reviews and find out about sites which provide its customers with such facilities. You can visit such sites and download the software and see for your self if it is effective for you or not. Such offers will help you in buying the spyware remover that will suit your requirements.
Always ensure that you go through different spyware reviews before you actually purchase the one. If you do not purchase the proper spy remover you could end up causing damage to your computer. Spyware reviews are the best sources to help you out in buying the best spyware remover.
About the author:
Matt Garrett, http://www.xoftspy.co.uk
Tuesday, February 13, 2007
Spam Blockers: Unique Challenge For Busines
The use of email has the potential to eliminate much of the costs associated with sending correspondence through regular mail. Invoices can be sent by email speeding up the payment process. Email can also connect individuals on a global basis in ways that have not been possible in the past.
Environmentalists were thrilled that fewer trees would be needed in a paperless exchange of communication, but there’s been a blight in cyberspace known as spam. Those who receive spam emails are about as impressed as those moments at during the evening meal when all telemarketers seem to make calls. The truth is no one likes spam.
“Spam is putting the Internet in jeopardy.” — Phillip Hallam-Baker
Many companies have responded to the difficulties with spam by providing consumers with spam blockers that eliminate most of the spam messages that are sent via cyberspace.
While this is wonderful news for consumers it provides unique challenges for passing along information to customers though bulk mail features – even when your customer opts in to a company mailing list.
Many spam blockers see bulk mail of any sort as spam and will typically block those emails. Some programs allow you to review the mail marked as spam to determine if you want to accept it as regular mail, but other programs block it before it ever comes to your in box.
"The spam wars are about rendering email useless for unsolicited advertising before unsolicited advertising renders email useless for communication." — Walter Dnes & Jeff Gin
If the above quote is the litmus test for ‘spam wars’ then this warfare is being won by zealous spam blocking software.
Many legitimate emails are now being sent to a large number of subscribers in a rolling delivery. By limiting the number of emails being sent to opt-in clients, business interests are finding better success in delivering requested materials.
Perhaps there will come a day when there will be a more sophisticated method of differentiating between legitimate bulk mail and spam, until then online marketers are finding increasing success through the use of blogs, optimized site content, forums and RSS feeds as an effective alternative.
About The Author
Scott Lindsay is a web developer and entrepreneur. He is the founder of HighPowerSites and many other web projects. HighPowerSites is the easiest do-it-yourself website builder on the web. Get your own website online in just 5 minutes with www.HighPowerSites.comWhat Is Anti-Spam Software
Along with the benefits, came the negative aspects of email. For the multitudes of marketing hawks out there, this was an opportunity to send unsolicited promotions of their products, instantly, and at a very low cost. Today, spam has reached such monumental proportions that 10 out of every 13 emails (76.9%) we receive are spam, one way or the other. This is why anti-Spam filter has become a must have software for almost all PC users.
Stopping Spam
Simply put, anti-spam software helps detect spam. It is a software program that detects unsolicited and unwanted e-mail, and prevents them from reaching your inbox.
Anti-Spam software is also known by many different names, such as: Spam Filters, Email Spam Filtering, Spam Blocking Software, Anti-Spam Filter, Spam Filtering Software, Spam Blockers, Bayesian Filters, and Anti-Spam, among many others.
Anti-spam software is installed in your machine to divert the spam coming in. If installed in the mail server, you will never receive the spam, to begin with. The filtering is configured based on a number of criteria. These could be specific words in the subject line, in the body of the message, and the type of attachments accompanying the mail. You could arrange to filter out even the sender’s email address. Certain Internet Service Providers (ISPs) maintain a blacklist of habitual spam senders – known as spammers. Anti-spam software detects these blacklisted senders and rejects them per se.
Over time, anti-Spam software has become sophisticated to match with the wiles of the spammers. They use techniques that do not trash genuine emails by effectively analyzing the content of the email. Such software looks for keywords and tries to interpret their meanings in the sentences. Certain spam filters do not accept emails that come to you in the form of "Undisclosed Recipients." They accept emails where your email address is in the “to” or “cc” fields.
Anti-spam software has become an essential part of your computer’s security, to ensure that you only receive the emails you want, and not others. To help eliminate spam, look for anti-spam software that has the following features, among many others:
Blocking emails using both lists and preset filters - blocks specific addresses, watches subject lines, and messages within
Updating filters automatically
Isolates spam outside of your inbox
Puts acceptable emails automatically into your safe list
Monitors and filters multiple email accounts
Now that you know the basics about the need and importance of anti-Spam filter, select the right one for your computer and get rid of the menace of Spam.
About The Author
Arvind Singh is admin and technical expert associated with development of computer security and performance enhancing software like Registry Cleaner, Window Cleaner, Anti Spam Filter etc. More information can be found at www.pcmantra.com. Related Information:Beware Of Spam Withdrawals
Q: I am so sick of all the spam that is sent to my business email address. I spend an hour every morning just trying to sort out the good email from the bad. I know I could just delete it all, but I'm afraid I'll accidentally delete email that might be important to my business. Short of unplugging my computer, what's the best solution for dealing with spam?
A: I feel your pain. I, too, miss the good old days when the only time you'd spend an hour dealing with spam was trying to pry it out of the can.
Due to the nature of my business, I get a lot of unwanted email. I've been working on the Internet since 1995 and my email address has been publicly exposed for most of that time, so I am a spammer's delight. It is no exaggeration to say that I used to receive more than 400 email messages a day. Out of those 400 messages about 10% were from people I knew, 10% were from people I needed to know, and the rest were from people that I would like to track down and field dress with a very dull knife.
Spammers, they are called… the scourge of the Internet… the digital kin of the lowly telemarketer and dreaded junk mailer.
After listening to me complain about spam for months, my lead engineer burst into my office a few weeks ago and announced, "I've solved our spam problem! I've installed a spam filter on our server that will prevent spam from getting through."
Great, I thought, now I can find something new to complain about.
I wondered what I would do with the extra two hours a day this wonderful spam filter would give me. My joy quickly waned when within a day my email went from 400 to 40. It was the saddest day of my life. Sitting there staring at my empty email box I suddenly felt very alone. At that moment I realized that not only had I come to expect the morning deluge of email, but I had come to find comfort in it. The spammers had become my friends. They wanted me to get rich quick and brighten my smile. They wanted to enhance my love life with generic Viagra and give me great deals on miniature cameras, low interest loans, waterfront property, and more. And the sheer number of folks concerned about the abundance (or lack thereof) of my anatomy was incredibly heart warming.
And the ladies that sent me email were so nice. They were worried that I was lonely and offered to cure my loneliness if only I gave them a credit card number. How sweet is that?
After a few days the withdrawal symptoms ceased and I was happy to be free of the majority of the spam, though to this day I'm afraid that I might be missing out on something grand.
You and I are not alone, Anna. According to a recent study by eMarketer, the average Internet email user now receives 81 emails a day, and nearly one quarter of them are spam. Spam now makes up more than 40% of all email and costs U.S. companies more than $10 billion annually. Seventy-six billion unsolicited e-mail messages will be delivered in 2003.
So how do spammers get your email address in the first place? It's easier than you might think. While some spam comes as a result of online purchases (yes, there are companies that will sell your email address no matter what their privacy policy says), that's just one of the ways spammers get you in their sites.
Spammers use "spider software" to crawl the web and harvest email address, so if you have a personal or company website that has your email posted on it, sooner or later a spam spider is going to grab your address and add it to the mill. Likewise when you sign up to take online surveys or receive email newsletters, you are potentially exposing yourself to spammers.
How can you reduce the amount of spam you get? Many people think that you can't fight spam, so you should just accept it and move on. In other words, you can not fight the Borg, so smile and be assimilated into the fold. While spam is hard to eliminate, there are things you can do to lessen the amount of spam you receive and it's impact on your daily business life.
First, stop clicking on the "unsubscribe" links at the bottom of spam emails. While some of the links are valid and will get you removed from spammer's lists, other are actually there just to let the spammer know that your address is valid. Click the link to unsubscribe and you might actually see the amount of spam you receive increase.
Second, it's a good idea to have at least two e-mail addresses. Use one for personal or business use, and the other for surveys and online purchases.
Third, consider installing a spam blocking software on your computer or company network. There are a variety of spam blocking applications on the market that range in price from free to a hundred bucks. Though none of them will completely eliminate spam, they can greatly reduce the volume you receive. Search the Web for "spam filter" and investigate the ones that you feel are right for you.
Your Internet Service Provider should also offer an anti-spam application, but be careful how you use it. I have a client who recently increased the sensitivity of their ISP spam blocker to the point that nothing was getting delivered to their company email accounts, including their own company newsletter. They had effectively built an email brick wall that stopped the spam and everything else. Not a good idea.
Before investing in a commercial spam blocker you might also try adjusting the email filtering settings in your email software. Microsoft Outlook, for example, lets you set rules for handling incoming mail. The same is true with Outlook Express, Eudora, and Apple's Mail OSX. Each have built-in filtering features that can help eliminate unwanted email by parameters you set.
One thing to remember is that if spam didn't work, it would quickly go away. In other words, if spammers weren't profiting from sending unwanted emails they would go do something else.
Probably become a telemarketer or credit card debt collector.
Whether you use a commercial product or rely on your existing email software to filter out spam, just be careful that you don't batten down the hatches so tight that you no longer receive any email at all.
Here's to your success!
Tim Knox tim@dropshipwholesale.net
About The Author
Entrepreneur, Author, Speaker
www.prosperityandprofit.com
Spam: How To Fight It
Internet is flooded today with undesirable advertising letters also known as spam. Both for an ordinary user connecting to Internet via dialup and for various companies paying for the dedicated line or using DSL spam equals wasted megabytes of information. The megabytes, which are paid for. And time, wasted on viewing advertising offers of unnecessary things or services.
Currently there are a lot of ways to guard your email box against unceasing attacks of “Viagra”, tourist reservations, commercial seminars and the best “windows and doors” in the world, which can be bought cheaply and simply. One of the cures could be changing the email account. But this is by no means a panacea: in a while the new box will be displaying nonsense newsletters from all over the world. You can of course use the server-inbuilt filters or paid resources which try to minimize the spam flow, letting through just the letters from “authorized addressers”. But the server filters block just a small part of proposals to “enlarge” or “relax”. And the powerful “authorization” protection is, first, expensive (plus a monthly fee), and second, is very inconvenient for people on the contact-list (they have to undergo a lengthy “authorization” procedure).
Ideal filter
To clean the mail account from spam a universal anti-advertising shield is needed which will save the money otherwise wasted on downloading weighty letters traffic and the time otherwise lost on viewing and deleting them. Such a shield is the programs which remotely check the mail in the user box without uploading them and block unwanted letters immediately at the server. Such programs are many. They differ in interface and functionality, but have one thing in common: obligatory check of email at the server. Without this feature there would be no sense in the blockers at all. To upload messages and check them locally is not a big deal. The applications differ in their settings, spam filtering ways, speed of work and different features enabling maximum efficiency. The most wide-spread way of blocking spam is by letter headings and continuously updated list of “illegitimate” addresses, which are known as harmful advertisements distributors.
What should an ideal spam blocking application be like? First, it should cope with its primary duties flawlessly. Second, it should have a nice interface, be simple to tune and work autonomously. Third, it shouldn’t prevent normal functioning of other programs, mail clients in particular. Let’s look into the interior side of a spam-blocking application and decipher the underlying basics.
Spam-blocking principles
Usually the application downloads message headers which undergo “partial enquiry”. Depending on the functionality of a certain “tool”, filtering is conducted by fields (header, sender, addressee etc.), black and white lists of electronic addresses in the database and a wider list of recognized spam generating servers. For checking lists are used, either created by developers or edited by users. Undoubtedly, the more thorough the home-made spam-blocking provisions, the better, but ideal work cannot be achieved without proper tuning of blocking and filtering rules. Of course a user setting the most rigid rules risks losing with the blocked spam useful and harmless letters. But in any case, it’s a private decision.
Apart from preinstalled blocking rules, user can make his/her own corrections, such as widening the “dangerous server” lists, editing black and white lists and creating his/her own lists conforming to certain rules (for instance, taking into account letter size plus filtering from “that particular left-most Korean server list). On installing the application and adjusting its settings (or you can leave everything as it is) and initial workability check, one can make a final decision concerning fitness of the filter for further use. It remains to decide which application to select.
SoftInform Spam Blocker
New spam-blocking application by SoftInform company - Spam Blocker – enables maximum efficiency by guarding the user computer (his/her mail box to be more specific) from spam flows, saving money and time on viewing useless messages and paying for the “mail advertisements” traffic. As a universal spam blocking tool Spam Blocker possesses indefeasible advantages compared to analogical applications. High quality (blocking 85 to 100% of spam), simple, exquisite and friendly interface, flexibility of settings make SoftInform newly released application the best in its class.
Are you not tired of endless spam? Have you lost track of newly registered (“clean”) accounts? Dozens of letters daily burn you and your company megabytes of far from free traffic? All you need to do is to install Spam Blocker, in such a way ridding your computer from persistent and useless e-mail advertising.
About The Author
Max Maglias
[Phone] 2197964
[Email] sbpress@adscleaner.com
[Web-site] http://spam-blocker.adscleaner.com
How Can I Stop Getting Spam?
Are you getting too much spam? We all are, but if you're a webmaster the word spam takes on a whole new meaning.
It’s not uncommon for the luckiest of email users to receive a dozen or so spam messages each day, while those of us who aren’t so fortunate receive hundreds.
The casual home user tends to be more fortunate, so this article is devoted to those of us with one or more website because webmasters are getting hit by spam … and hit hard.
The reason … a website doesn’t do you much good if you don’t give potential customers a way to contact you, and that normally means posting an email address on your website, where it is vulnerable to email address harvesting tools used by spammers. Domain registration records are also a common source used by spammers.
In order to conduct business online you now need to sift through the endless barrage of offers for herbal viagra, pornography, pyramid schemes, and so on.
With such a large volume of spam to contend with, it’s likely you’ve lost sales due to missing important emails that simply floated away in this sea of spam. And there's no way to really calculate the cost of that lost business. If you've missed email then how can you ever know how much business you've lost?
If you want to solve the problem, you need to be proactive because the sad reality is that if you do nothing, it will only get worse until finally it reaches the point where your email account has become totally and completely unmanageable. Fortunately there are a few options available to you.
Securing Your Domain Registration Against Spammers
First let's address the whois database, which is a publicly accessible database in which your domain registration record is listed … and that includes your email address. It's not uncommon now for people to be spammed at a brand new email address within hours of registering a new domain.
Go Daddy http://www.godaddy.com is a domain registrar that now offers private domain registrations. At the time of writing this article, they are the only registrar who currently offers this service. Hopefully in time, other registrars will pick up on this idea and offer the service too.
With a private domain registration, which costs only a few dollars more than a regular registration, your contact information including your email address will not be publicly accessible in the whois database.
That’s guaranteed to cut down on spam quite significantly as this very important source of addresses that spammers use, will no longer provide your address to them.
If you don’t wish to obtain a private domain registration, then there is another option that will be equally effective. Set up a new email address that you use only for the purpose of providing registration information for your domain name. You can easily scan email sent to that address for messages from your registrar, and delete the rest without having to read it.
Securing Your Website Against Spammers
The other major source, and by far the biggest source of email addresses for spammers is of course the mailto links on your own website. Email address harvesting or extraction software as it’s known is cheap, easy to use, and readily available … and it’s very effective. That means there are a lot of spammers out there with easy access to your email address.
Chances are hundreds or even thousands of spammers using such software have already harvested your address. And what can you do about this? You need to provide a way for your customers to reach you by email, or you'll lose business. There are steps you can take to prevent your email address from being harvested and used by spammers though, while still providing legitimate visitors to your site with a way to email you.
One solution is to make all the mailto links on your site point to a form instead, which will still provide a means for people to send you email. Provided you use a CGI script that doesn’t require the address to be embedded within the form itself, you can shield your address from email address extractors.
If you don’t want to require people to fill out a form to email you from your website, then you can get a little more creative. It is possible to put a mailto link on your site that when clicked will still launch the sender’s email program, and start a new message with your address in the To field … but without having to embed your email address in the mailto link where spam software can snatch it. Click below to see an example of how it works.
http://thewebhostcompany.com/cgi-local/email.cgi
It looks like a normal URL, and there's clearly no email address anywhere in the link, but when clicked, instead of loading a web page in your browser as you may have expected, your email program opens up.
How’s that possible you might ask? Simple. A little magic with CGI using Perl or PHP will do the trick. A free copy of a script that does this is bundled with Postmaster Pro, available at http://www.postmasterpro.com which is discussed below.
What About Spammers Who Already Have My Address?
So far we’ve discussed a few fairly simple techniques designed to prevent spammers from obtaining your email address in the first place. But, how do you deal with the spam you’re already getting? Your address is already out there. The solution is to either block or filter.
For either, you'll need software. For blocking, I recommend Postmaster Pro. If you prefer to filter then Spam Assassin is highly recommended. Both run on the server, so there is no need to download spam before filtering it out. That's a huge time saver if you're not yet on a high-speed connection. It also makes it a bit less likely you'll end up downloading a virus since email from untrusted senders, i.e. spammers will be significantly reduced.
Spam Blocking Software
Postmaster Pro which is available at http://www.postmasterpro.com takes a novel approach to blocking spam. It only allows email to be delivered after people who’ve sent you email have been placed on an approved sender list. But the interesting thing is that people who send you email can put themselves on your approved list. This is done simply by clicking a link in an email that automatically gets sent to them the first time they send email to you, which is perfect for those of us who don’t know in advance whom we should put on the approved list, i.e. if you’re running a business online. It also makes building and maintaining such a list very simple.
Given the fact that spammers normally use invalid return addresses, and those who do use valid return addresses seldom read email that's sent there, let alone respond to it (they receive thousands of failed delivery notifications, complaints, remove requests, and autoresponder messages every time they do a mailing) … it’s a very effective technique with no chance of blocking legitimate email, as is the case with filtering.
Spam Filtering Software
For those who would prefer to filter ... Spam Assassin is perhaps the best option. It is available at http://www.spamassassin.org. Once you have Spam Assassin installed, it will provide you with very powerful and flexible filtering tools. Spam Assassin is a mature product, having been around for quite some time. If you’re going to filter, Spam Assassin is about as good as it gets.
As with any filter though, you do run the risk of missing legitimate email from time to time. There really isn't a good way to tell how often this is happening unless you want to read all the email that gets filtered out, which negates the whole point of filtering. If you set your filters permissively enough though, you should be reasonably safe. For the first month or so after installing any filter, you should continue to read every single email in order to make sure it isn't set too restrictively to allow legitimate email through.
By using the techniques mentioned in this article, you can take back your mailbox, and dramatically reduce, if not eliminate spam.
About The Author
Sean Proske is the CEO and founding partner of thewebhostcompany.com which has provided reliable and affordable hosting since 1996.
www.thewebhostcompany.com
mailto:info@thewebhostcompany.com
sproske@thewebhostcompany.com
