How to ensure the "road-safety" of your computer

When computers are interconnected and, even more so, connected to the Internet, you have to make sure that they behave well and are protected! To that end, you don’t need to buy expensive software, there are free programs out there for download which are available for private or non-commercial use! Please read on to find out how to make your Internet experience as safe as possible!

You can use the links below (on the product names) to install the tools on your own or you can walk through my more detailed step-by-step instructions linked with the first word in each step.

Steps 2 and 3 require a restart of your computer, so does "Windows Update" from time to time.

Five Simple Steps for Internet Safety

  1. Activate automated Windows Updates
  2. Install signature-based anti-virus software Alwil Avast
  3. Install behaviour-based security software PC-Tools Threadfire
  4. Replace Internet Explorer with Mozilla Firefox and install the NoScript-Extension
  5. Install Secunia Personal Software Inspector
After restarting your machine and letting Avast do a full anti-virus scan, you should be ready to go online with more confidence.

Background Information (Optional Reading!)

Software never is perfect. Some of the issues are not serious, but some actually cause the system to go into a state where malicious code can be activated. You can search for the term "Buffer overflow" on the web if you want to get more details on this.

In any case, to avoid this situation, software manufactures provide updates (patches) of their software from time to time when those serious flaws are discovered. To have Windows itself up-to-date with those improvements is obvious, but also all other software running on your machine should be reviewed for updates from time to time! Step 1 and 5 above are included for that reason.

Steps 2 and 3 are dealing with tools that fight the same "digital criminals" but with different methods. Avast uses a signature-based process, whereby Threatfire watches the behaviour of programs installed or running on the computer! That’s like trying to detect criminals by using a "Most Wanted" list in the first case or watching people’s behaviour to check whether they are committing a crime in the second case. Both the signatures and the behaviour - descriptions have to be updated (over the Internet) on a constant basis! Both programs are configured by default to do that automatically in the background.

Replacing the "ubiquitous" and obtrusive default browser Internet Explorer (IE) with Mozilla’s Firefox (FF) as indicated in Step 4 might be contentious for some. Fact is, however, that the IE is much more intertwined with Windows than FF and still is the primary target for malware due to its higher penetration. Helpfull Add-Ons (will be explained later) in FF set it apart and make it safer then IE.

Secunia’s Personal Software Inspector helps to detect software with missing important security updates and provides information or direct download links to get the latest versions for your system.

Certainly there are more options than these, and suggestions for improvement are surely welcome!