If using Firefox, a reasonable hardware firewall and good anti-virus, any substantial advantage to using Adaware or one of the other anti-spyware software? Still checking into and not fully aware of all of the capabilities of Firefox, but it seems that it and the existing firewall/AV could pretty much do the trick as far as critical requirements. Wondering whether I'm missing something in this.
Appreciate all suggestions on this. thanks
Do the trick to do what? It's based on you and what you're doing to put the computer at risk. After all, you're the one sitting behind the mouse doing the pointing and clicking, and you are at the keyboard doing the typing.
It's like you are saying "I have a radiation suite on, but I am standing inside a Nuclear Reactor."
The key to at all is practicing safe hex, hardening the O/S as much ass possible to attack. Its not the Superman costume sitting in the closet (the prevention software).
Yes. The only trick is "you". No browser, no software firewall, no antivirus, no anti-spyware, no adaware, no hardware firewall, nothing will effectively prevent you from running malware in the end.
It is mostly what you do what decides whether or not your computer gets infected or not. Just like: If you frequently dive into the junk yard you'll get dirty. Nothing will prevent that.
Thus the really "critical requirement" is that you think about what you are doing. That makes the real difference.
Gerald
I would absolutely run AS with real-time scanning enabled. There are also behavior based malware blockers that provide another layer of security against "zero day exploits", such as Threatfire and DSA. But as others have already said Safe Hex is essential. Security software only supports Safe Hex.
*Good* security software supports Safe Hex, bad security software (as all "Anti-spyware" software is) rather breaks it. In fact, even most of the more renoble security software typically makes the system more insecure.
Generally, adding more software only increases complexity, which is the major counter player of security. Therefore, the general advice is to remove as much software as possible, not adding new one.
As for the real-time scanning and behaviour blocking, it fails blatantly in the real world.
Although it certainly isn't any guarantee, and you will still be vulnerable just like we all are, you might run NoScript in Firefox - I believe it does improve safety and it certainly makes the web a quieter place to live and browse without constant visual assault.
One note - sometimes NoScript gets in the way - an occasional site wont run right. You can just turn it off completely and remember to turn it on as soon as you are done with that particular site.
Another solution I've found equally good is to run NoScript and if I'm having trouble, use the add-on called Launchy and run the same page in Opera - that almost always works.
Louise
Louise
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