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Viruses, Spam
& Security Alerts |
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Protecting your computer
Viruses,
Spam & Security (+Alerts)
Tip
of the moment: Ignore subject lines such as 'Your account is close to terminated'
Spam
Where’s
the latest Spam
coming from?
EVERYTHING YOU TO NEED TO KNOW ABOUT
PHISHING – Thunderbird
eliminates this
More Phishing Info - Thunderbird
eliminates this
A good article
about “Why so much spam”
Security
Symantec summary
useful
information
Real Time Top 10
Vulnerabilities
Trojan
& Virus News (live)
TruSecure
News
CERT
Zdnet security
Central Command
SANS
Institute
VirusBuster
MessageLabs
Security HQ
McAfee
Trend Micro
Security Geeks
as
you can guess this
is higher end [professional user]
Notes for
your Security & “Well Being”:
Our recommended – essential
– programs carry a 5 tick rating
PROTECT
YOURSELF
Install an
anti-virus program. NOW.
Keep all
security tools up to
date EVERY DAY
Make sure you
or your machine
spend at least 15 minutes per day looking after your security
Get the latest
patches and updates for your operating
system
NEVER
automatically
open e-mail
attachments
Always
download or purchase software from trusted,
reputable sources.
Make backups
of important files
on a regular basis – otherwise you’ll be very, very
sorry.
Frequently Asked Questions:
Q. Why is this
page a bit disorganized?
A.
Viruses, spam and
Security have become so inter-connected that to consider each in
isolation is
almost impossible. Writing a page which covers this subject is a vast
job!
Q. Does that mean
I should install everything on this page?
A.
To be absolutely
sure, yes. Of course, don’t install two anti-virus programs
or two firewalls.
Q. Should I be
constantly on the alert for the latest threats?
A.
Within reason,
yes. Without spending all your time doing it.
Q. What
prevention measures are in place on your server?
A.
The first thing
an incoming email hits is an absolute brickwall which refuses email
from some
addresses and domains. This blocks very well known spammers. On a daily
basis,
this list is updated on the basis of real received spam. Next, the
email passes
through SpamAssassin.
This is the
highest rated server spam blocker in the industry. Finally, our
latest feature,
special files in
the web site areas prevent spam-bots from harvesting email addresses
automatically from your webpage. Webmasters must not remove
these files, or
this protection will be lost.
Q. How often
should I update my programs?
A.
Whenever and as soon
as you can
Q. Why
do I get so much spam?
A.
With all of these
measures in place, you should see a reduction in spam, especially with
our new
spam-bot blocker. However, spam is growing at at least 10% per month,
so our
latest measures, whatever they are, may seem to do no good.
Why
so much spam, or
why does some of your email “go missing” went sent
to others?
The
longer your
email address is in service, the more you will receive. Period.
How
to attract spam:
Visit
“bargain”
sites and sign up for email alerts.
Simply
register with
many web sites.
Allow
pop-ups &
cookies (at the very least it’ll tempt you to
“break the rules”).
Leave
your email
address wide open on your website for spam-bots to collect.
Catch
a virus.
Have
somebody you know
catch a virus and flood the internet with your email address from their
address
book.
How
to “lose” email
sent to others: (trigger spam filters)
Use
an empty subject
line.
Use
an empty From:
line.
Use
subjects such as
“Check this out”, “Re:”
Attach
.exe, .pif,
.scr and other file types.
Use
a bulk email
service (they break nearly all of these “rules”)
Use
lots of HTML
tags.
Use
phrases such as
“click here” or “to unsubscribe”
What’s
an
“acceptable” amount of spam?
Anybody who “plays
by the rules” will still receive spam, probably at the rate
of 2-3 per day i.e.
if you log on on Monday morning you should almost expect there to be
8-10 spam
emails awaiting you after a weekend off.
Q.
Aren’t you a bit anti-Microsoft & other big companies?
A.
Well, yes, but
for good reasons. Ours and our customers findings have been that many
of the
open-source or free versions of anti-virus, firewall, email clients
&
browsers are superior in speed and performance than
“mainstream” applications.
Example: a machine infected with 18 viruses failed to have them
detected by
up-to-date versions of McAfee and Norton. AVG detected them and removed
them on
the first pass.
Frankly,
we all know
the faux-pas’ made in security by many of these companies.
Not that open-source
is perfect; but the time from finding a problem to fixing it is often
much less
than in the big corporations.
Now,
let’s get on with fixing things!
START HERE
(don’t ever go on the
internet without it!) (DON'T USE Comodo)
Avira [Firefox Add-on to test version] (running this in scan mode will take
about 60 mins on a typical system) or AVG
Mozilla
Thunderbird
Secure email and industry standard plug-ins
Spybot
remover – SpyBotS&D (running in
scan mode will take about 45 mins on a typical system)
Also
Ad-Aware Add
VX2 Plug-in (running in
scan mode will take about 45 mins on a typical system) (or
try Spyware
Terminator)
Install PopTray - Example Rules.ini file.
Useful
links - Wilders
AVG anti-virus (free).
Avast4 (free) – very complex user interface
ClamWin
(free)
Specific removal tools
(just in case your anti-virus tool misses it!) and another
one too
Mozilla
Thunderbird
email client with Bayesian filtering
built-in
Not only is Mozilla secure, but you can add calendar functions and PGP, GPG Enigmail encryption to your messages and attachments.
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