Internet Security can be divided into three basic genres: Virus, Intrusion and Privacy. We can protect ourselves from all three with the use of software, freeware and good common sense. For instance, what's the point in Anti-virus protection software if you don't keep the virus definitions up to date or if your computer is so insecure that any 15 year old script kiddie can enter at will?

Virus protection - Most people understand that they need adequate virus protection. Unrfortunately, some don't keep their anti-virus software current. These people hurt the Internet experience of all the rest of us as well as making things a mess for themselves.

Face it, most viri and worms come via e-mail. The press often claim that you must be concerned about email that comes from someone you don't know. That's foolish, at best. Infected computers send out infected e-mail to addresses they find in the address book of the infected computer as well as addresses found in temporary internet files and instant messaging programs. It's the people you do know who are most likely to send you a virus!

Some viri can actually damage your computer beyond the repair capability of the average techie while others send your private files, letters, financial documents and credit information randomly to the people in your email address book.

The solutions are quite simple, actually.

• Buy a good anti-virus programs like Norton's or McAfee. There are others, but they aren't adequate. I've found that AVG and Panda tend to warn you about non-viri.
• Keep your AV program up-to-date with weekly or bi-weekly definition updates from the AV company.
• Don't run email attachments unless you know it's ok. Updated Norton's or McAfee tend to take a lot of this worry away.
• Delete instead of quarantining infected email. When the AV program asks if you want to quarantine, click "no" or or "skip", then choose "delete" on the next page.
• Don't buy AV programs through e-mail Spam or advertisements. These are pirated copies at best. There is no way to update definitions and they might actually be infected with a virus. Read this letter from Symantec.

Be careful about e-mail virus hoaxes. Most warnings that you receive about a Virus from an e-mail are for suckers and proliferate because people don't check to see if they are real. Some actually ask you to delete important files from your computer... not very smart. Hoax information can be found at http://www.sarc.com/avcenter/hoax.html and virus information at http://www.sarc.com/, the Symantec Anti-virus Research Center.

Intrusion protection - Few people understand how insecure their computer is. They just don't understand that their operating system, Windows for instance, can actually be an internet server beckoning immature script kiddies to come on inside and take a look around, possibly damaging or stealing infomation. They are totally unaware that if they're an AOL, Earthlink or other large ISP member, their internet ports are being scanned every minute of every day they are connected to the Web.

It's either free or very inexpensive to protect oneself from intrusion with safe practice and a personal firewall. Steve Gibson from Gibson Research Center tells us "Without your knowledge or explicit permission, the Windows networking technology which connects your computer to the Internet may be offering some or all of your computer's data to the entire world at this very moment!" He provides a unique online test to check your computer and offers advice on how to fix this problem.

Shields Up from GRC will test both your shields and ports to see how effective your computer is at refusing connections from intrusion. Just click on the "Test My Shields" then the "Probe My Ports" buttons on the above Shields Up link.

To protect your computer from intrusion is quite simple. Buy or download a personal firewall. A good firewall monitors all traffic entering or leaving your computer for intrusion suspects. You must then give that program permission or not depending on whether or not you asked for that connection. Once you tell the firewall to let something in or out, you can tell it to make that decision permanent.

For example, you'd want your e-mail program to communicate online without needlessly warning your that it was connecting, but you might not give permission to some other program to enter.. Comet Cursor or Gator, for example.

I personally like the Zone Alarm firewall which is Steve Gibson's recommendation as well. The nice thing about it is that it's free for the basic program. Zone Alarm monitors all traffic, both inbound and outbound from your computer.

The worst, in my opinion, is Black Ice Defender, in that it doesn't protect you from outbound traffic. For example, if a virus from within your computer tried to communicate information with another site or hacker, Black Ice would have no clue.

 

Privacy is your right - Many people would be astounded at how much they're tracked online. Programs like Comet Cursor, Gator, Bonzai Buddy, and more include spy programs with collect data on you and send it back to the advertiser. Some programs actually store advertising right on your hardware and display these ads on your screen. You might think these are normal pop-up ads from some internet site. Many of these Spybots can actually degrade the performance of your computer causing it to be unstable, slow and prone to crash often. You might be blaming Microsoft when it's really not their fault.

Moreover, though internet cookies are generally a good thing, persistent non-private cookies collect data and share it with all those companies who subscribe to that cookie.

Here, the solutions can get a little more complicated and require a little more than just downloading one free piece of software.

Adaware from Lavasoft is one of the best free little programs out there to help you. Once installed, you run Adaware which goes through your machine removing many advertising cookies and pieces of spy software. Remember to keep the definitions updated with the free Refupdate 2.01.

Spybot Search and Destroy is another great anti-spybot software. It finds many bots that Adaware missed but misses a few that Adaware finds. The great thing about Spybot is that if finds and deletes many items that actually have infected your machine with advertising programs. Some of these programs pipe ads though your instant messenger program or browser. Spybot is free and is supported by donations. Please consider sending them a little.

Now, let's see what you can do to protect your privacy. Once Adaware and Spybot have flagged certain cookies as being used to track you, let's make sure they can't come back. You need to do this before you let Adaware and Spybot delete them.

Open your Microsoft Internet Browser

Click the Tools menu at the top and then click "Internet Options."

      

Pick the privacy tab at the top of the Internet Options window. Click on Edit.

You type the website address of the shared cookie you saw in Adaware or Spybot into the blank and click "Block."

For example: If Adaware found doubleclick.txt as a cookie, enter doubleclick.com and click block. Then type doubleclick.net in there and click block as well.

From that point onward, Doubleclick advertising will not be able to set a shared cookie into your browser. After a while, you'll notice that Adaware and Spybot find less and less intrusions and shared advertising cookies on your machine. As an added benefit, you'll receive less Spam.

This also works on a Mac once you determine what cookie to block.