hi ppl
looking to know what the best firewall is as the 1 i am usin is hopeless also i have sum sort of spyware an internet explorer plugin it says but wen i delete it, it comes back 10 mins l8r and changes my settings. any ideas thanks
hi ppl
looking to know what the best firewall is as the 1 i am usin is hopeless also i have sum sort of spyware an internet explorer plugin it says but wen i delete it, it comes back 10 mins l8r and changes my settings. any ideas thanks
On 23 Nov 2004 11:02:17 -0800, the great yin spoketh
The best firewall is the one you learn how to use.
Lars M. Hansen
On Tue, 23 Nov 2004 18:22:58 -0400, Jason spoketh
Firewalls doesn't do a lot to keep spyware from getting installed. It may, if configured correctly, prevent such software from initializing communication with "mother". There's only one cure for spyware, and that's called "brains".
Lars M. Hansen
Which won't help them much seeing as removing spyware/adware seems to be giving them a hard time.
Jason
What you describe leads to the conclusion that your system is compromised. Format the harddrive and resintall the operating system from clean media.
If a system is compromised, there is _no_ other safe way.
Wolfgang
Here are some instructions are written specifically for you as a home user. I'm assuming you have a single PC connected directly to a broadband modem and don't want to change that. I would not necessarily give the same advice to someone with more experience or someone in a non-home environment. I also realise that some of this is a bit off topic for a firewall group but you are probably not aware of that.
When you've done that and when it no longer finds any viruses then move on to 2.
You say that your firewall is hopeless? Which firewall is that? I suspect that your problems are caused by the myriad of security holes in Internet Explorer rather than anything to do with a firewall. Since your firewall has to allow Internet Explorer to work it may not be much help and you may not know how to configure it to stop malware making outbound connections. Consider using Internet explorer only when you have to (such as for Windows update) and a different browser for everything else such as:
You must learn how to use your firewall and what it does. Otherwise it will certainly be hopeless. You may already know how to use Google or some other search engine to find the information you need. For example:
You should consider putting a hardware firewall between the modem and the PC instead of connecting the modem directly to the PC (unless the modem has a built in router). Then there is less need for an update CD before you go online to update a freshly installed PC using Windows update. A suitable device, which may be better described as a NAT router rather than a true firewall, costs about £50.
Jason
That last line comes close to an insult. I rarely find people that have no brains, but even people with brains can be ignorant. Fortunately, brains are built to learn, so ignorance is curable.
As you point out, firewalls are not particularly effective at stopping spyware. Still 'the great yin' has asked for help, so we ought to either educate or ignore this reqeust.
I have found five practices that are effective at preventing spyware. First, only access the Internet from user accounts, not from an admin account. This is easy to configure from the Windows Control Panel (User Configuration). The second effective tool is Firefox (or Navigator, or Opera) because these are not tightly integrated with the Windows OS & they are not targeted as often as MSIE. However, I still need to use MSIE to go to the Windows Update site.
Third, I refuse to download anything that can be executable. No exes, even if they would provide desirable strippers dancing on my desktop. No bat files. I do occasionally download MS office files, but only if I have a reason to trust the source (e.g., I did download an Excel spreadsheet for safety reports from OSHA.)
Fourth, I have increased the security settings in MSIE (access via Tools menu/Internet Options... menu item/Security tab/ Internet button/Custom... button. The key here is to disable (or at least prompt) active content (.Net, ActiveX and Java).
Finally, I have chosen to run non-Windows operating systems whenever I can. But I don't expect that many find this an acceptable option. Still, there isn't much worry about spyware if you run Konqueror on patched OpenBSD.
These are all actionable steps that 'the great yin' can take to prevent spyware.
(Agreed so far) Except that I would do all the downloading and updating before actually pulling the plug on the network connection and going the work of finding and deleting the viruses, spyware offline. You may well still find some things that spybot search and destroy (for instance) has been unable to remove. If using W98 rerun everything in 'safe' mode. If still problems you should run Hijack this from:
Then run everything again. Hopefully you will be clear. Go to windowsupdate, update everything again. Try not to log as a an member of the administrators group (XPpro, W2K NT4etc)
*Then* you can think about a firewall!
A firewall will not stop spyware/malware from installing on your machine. Use Ad-Aware and SpyBot to rid your system of these unwanted programs.
On Thu, 25 Nov 2004 02:58:08 GMT, shish-ka-bob spoketh
No insult was intended. I was merely pointing out that using a healthy dose of common sense when playing around on the internet is probably going to spare you more malware than any software solution that you install.
You other points are indeed good, and something that more people should live by...
Lars M. Hansen
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