DeweyDevil's Blog

Recently some folks got into an uproar over something their "norton" picked up off of a website. I thought about it and I since I got no warning while visiting this website was I  infected? The answer is no. I am not infected nor did  I get a warning because I do not use norton or any "suite" of products to be my one stop shop for firewall,spyware and anti-virus.

I am not a hacker, but I do know most so called  "hackers" you hear about today are either script kiddies that are just teenagers trying out exe files they found on warez websites or botnet attacks which are dangerous and usually affiliated with organized crime.

So with that said. Do you have a suite of net protection all from the same company like norton offers and I believe mcafee does as  well? If you do and you also invest in the stock market, do you invest all your money in 1 stock or do you diversify? I would assume you have a 401k that diversifies your investment to get you the most reward while minimizing risk?

Well here is something to think about. Microsoft is the target of choice for hackers because its the most popular operating system. Hackers also love these suite or one stop shops of firewall,spyware and anti-virus. Why? Because they only need to really crack one program like your firewall to gain access to the other programs associated with norton  or mcafee or whatever your suite is. Its a domino effect. You also will get alot of false positive readings from these one stop suite packages. Like many did last night while visiting a particular website.

Something to also think about, these suites are resource hogs on your system slowing them down to a crawl at times while they update or scan.

Whats the solution? Have a seperate anti-virus, firewall and spywarekiller program all from different companies and different programmers. So you are thinking man thats gonna cost alot. Well my friends I am about to list programs that are free.

Thats right free!

Keep in mind I have used free firewall, anti-virus and spywarekillers for 6 plus years and have never had an infection on any of my systems and I goto some crazy sites.

So lets start with your firewall.

Microsoft xp and vista offer very minimal protection in their offerings. Think of that firewall as just a toll taker on a bridge. Not really much enforcement there and not much protection.

If  you are a comcast subscriber just goto your comcast.net homepage and sign in and download the mcafee firewall for free. It is a sound program that does a nice job.

If you are not a comcast subscriber try out comodo's free firewall located here.

http://www.comodo.com/products/free_products.htmla>

Now for anti virus- if you are a comcast subscriber and are using the mcafee offering for your firewall dont use the same company's anti-virus. You fall into the lack of diversity trap mentioned earlier.

I highly recommend  http://www.avast.com/eng/avast_4_home.html 

It is not a resource hog and updates its virus definitions regularly and constantly scans your system and e-mail.

Another excellent free offering is http://free.grisoft.com/doc/download-free-anti-virus/u
s/frt/0

Now grisoft-avg is more technical than other offerings and it can be a bit of a resource hog at times but it does an excellent job as well.

Finally- spyware/adware/malware.

Adaware and spybot search and destroy are very popular but in some ways too popular and the free versions sometimes dont update that often.

I will make only one recommendation here.

http://www.spywareterminator.com/

The above spyware scanner works in real time blocking anything it deems naughty.

Although they want you to install their webcrawler toolbar which you dont need if you use the google toolbar.

So in closing feel free to continue using the suite of protection you currently use if you think its best for you.

But there are options out there that have many advantages over a one stop shop.

I want to meet the hacker who can break through 3 different companies programs vs the hacker that can cut through just one companies programming department.

 

The hacker who can cut through three different independent programming departments almost deserves access to my system. lol

 

Blah the blog is acting up....  read everything and the links will take ya somewhere safe I just cant guarentee if they take you to the exact program but they are all good. lol