A 2012 reminder on a basic computer security habit: Get and install AND USE Secunia PSI to help keep various softwares on your Windows computers updated, fully patched with all known security patches.
Oh, and while Microsoft is at work updating Microsoft Security Essentials (and re-rebranding it back to “Windows Defender”–see here for an offline version) for Windows 8, if you want to pair it with the most consistently “highest rated” free anti-malware software–AVG Free–it’s now OK to do so. MSSE has always “worked well with others” on my systems, but AVG Anti Virus Free 2012 has been designed to work much better with other anti-malware products than before. If you like having a second opinion handy and can spare the processor cycles to have two AVs running, that’d be how I’d pair a couple up.
DO NOTE: AVG is pretty aggressive about flagging things it considers “hacking tools” or other powerful low level software tools as dangerous, and it will move such things to its “virus vault” by default. For example, it really, really doesn’t like tools like ProduKey (a tool to simply look up product keys for Microsoft software already installed on a computer–handy if Microsoft “Genuine (DIS)Advantage” suddenly forgets your copy of M$Office is registered already *sigh*) and Ophcrack, which I keep as a current ISO file for whenever I need to burn another copy to help someone out who’s forgotten their own Windows password (sadly, it happens more often than you might think; I put it down to all the autolobotomy kits that’re pushed by the Mass MEdia Podpeople Hivemind, Academia Nut Fruitcake Bakeries, etc. *heh*). So, if you decide to use it, and if you use such tools, always double check its actions.
Just sayin’.
And as always, just practice halfway sensible safe computing. Scan everything you download before invoking it. Have some sort of reiable link scanner installed. I like the combo of Opera Browse and WOT (Web of Trust), but AVG’s Link Scanner is very good. I also recommend that Windows users who want internet filtering try OpenDNS Free rather than using the Microsoft Parental Controls feature.
Of course, there’s a lot more* to maintaining nominal security on Windows computers, but these are Good Things.
*Strong passwords, changed frequently? Yep. Both software and “hardware” firewalls? Yep. The highest level of encryption available for one’s wireless network? Yep. And so on.
On the “strong passwords” front… I may be overdoing it a wee tad, but, well, let me tell you how to crack mine.
1. Have a database with the lyrics of many 100s of songs, as I recall/sing them, in 5 or more languages.
2. Find out which song I’ve selected for a particular password’s generation.
3. Begin compiling all the passwords that can be generated by selecting the first letter of each word in one or more of the verses from the selected song (complete with any special character substitutions and capitalizations determined according to my own, idiosyncratic, principles). Most of these passwords run to 64 or more characters.
4. Voilà! You have cracked one of my passwords! Unless I just changed it, of course.
🙂
BTW, such passwords are very easy for me to recall, but “I have a little list” in my safe, just in case I’m not around and family needs access to my stuff. That’s a different kind of security, but one to keep in mind.