Anti-Something 2009

NEWS FLASH!

For everyone out there who has fallen for the, "you're not secure, please download x program to fix all your problems and cure cancer at the same time!" you're not alone. Where I work we encounter these situations on a daily basis, and it's insane that people will pay $70-$100 for this fake anti-virus or anti-spyware program when they just paid a one year subscription to Norton a week ago.

Here are some guidelines to avoiding these problems and quite a few other problems as well. While I might not have coined the term smart browsing, I tend to come back to the topic quite often when explaining security to those of us who aren't very computer savvy. It's true, 95% of all viruses can be stopped by educating the user, but rarely does that user listen to anything you say until the third time I charge them for malware removal.

Smart Browsing basics-

(1) If you have a current anti-virus subscription, don't fall for the pop-ups that tell you you're insecure

(2) Do not under any circumstance open an e-mail that talks about boosting your performance that you aren't expecting.

(3) Educate your kids! A lot of them are smart enough to get into things they shouldn't and curious enough to really cause problems. I've personally seen that making them pay a single bill usually changes things A LOT, but that all depends on the age of the kid :).

(4) Look into SteadyState. It's an amazing tool and setting up one mess-around account that erases all the changes every time you reboot can save everyone a whole lot of stress.

(5) Don't play the clicky-clicky game! When your mouse turns into what looks like a hand, that means that if you click, you will be redirected to a new page. When you go to close out a pop-up using the red x but the cursor looks like a hand, it's probably wise not to click on that "fake" red X. The people who design these pop-ups know all about our nasty little habbits. In this case you could go to your task manager (ctrl-shift-esc) and close out the internet explorer that has the pop-up.

I've used those basic concepts over the past few years without an active anti-virus and have yet to run into any big problems. I won't say that I didn't mess up, but when I did mess up I knew what I did almost immediately and learned from my mistake.

If this blog ever reaches anyone, I hope you take these five basic rules to heart and that I will never see you walk through the front door of my workplace with an infected machine.

Until the next time, be gone!