Firewalls and Anti-Spyware Questions

[Gary Sisco]

Okay. I've received a message from my computer, as a pop up, twice now, that my interactions and web use are being "followed" by unknowns.

Recs for firewall and anti-spyware programs?

[Pete C]

Originally posted by Gary Sisco
Okay. I've received a message from my computer, as a pop up, twice now, that my interactions and web use are being "followed" by unknowns.

The message wasn't from your computer, it was from someone trying to sell you software.

I'm no expert on your options. I use the free version of Zone Alarm for my firewall, which seems fine. For anti-spyware I'm using the free version of Lavasoft ad-aware, but you have to do periodic manual scans--only the pay version will block the spyware from entering your computer in the first place.

Gary, I use both Ad-Aware and Spybot, and they keep my computer relatively clean and popup free. They are both excellent, completely free, and easy to use. Using both together is stronger than using only one individually.

Ad-Aware: http://www.lavasoftusa.com/

Spybot: http://www.safer-networking.org/

You will be amazed at the sheer quantity of parasites that they will find and destroy on your hard drive.

[Ron Thorne]

Gary, I'll echo what Pete and John posted, though I use the ZoneAlarm® Pro version which I bought online. The free version is not nearly as thorough but is quite good, as is AdAware spyware detection from LavaSoft. The free version won't block the spyware but it detects it, alerts you, and allows you to either quarantine or delete the offenders instantly.

I'd highly recommend downloading both of those freebies right away. I'm assuming that you already have an anti-virus program running. If not, here's a reliable piece of freeware for that, which I'd download and install first.

ZoneAlarm® site:

http://www.zonelabs.com/store/content/home.jsp

Look under Direct Links (right portion of home page) • ZoneAlarm (free)

Grisoft Antivirus site:

http://www.grisoft.com/us/us_dwnl_free.php

[Tanager]

The recs you've gotten are good ones. I use ZA Pro on my personal Windoze boxen. I also have my home net firewalled off in layers as well, although that's likely a bit of overkill for most peeps. I've heard very good things about both Adaware and Spybot, although I've never used either myself.

[Henry Mars]

Most of the Spyware on your computer has been preinstalled by M$. If you look in the registry you will find a Key that also gives the government easy access to your box.
Get rid of all M$ operating systems and software ..... reformat your drive and install Linux. That will eliminate 99.9% of the problem.

[Ron Thorne]

Yeah, Gary, Henry will be right over to accomplish this for you and give you complete tutorials before heading to Alaska.

[Cem]

Yeah, if I had the time, patience & weren't a techno-phobe, I'd go with Linux... Do y'all think the combination of Norton Antivirus & ZoneAlarm® Pro are adequate protection? I worry about worms & such, as I'd feel horrible, if I infected 100's of folks on my email lists. Sometimes, I do receive returned supposed emails addressed from weird email addresses from my website.

[Ron Thorne]

I'm certainly no authority Cem, but my former college roommate is, and he's very satisfied with the level of protection afforded by these two pieces of software, in addition to Ad-aware from LavaSoft. You must keep your antivirus definitions constantly up-to-date, however. I keep mine set for Automatic LiveUpdates. Mine was last updated on Wednesday, February 4th.

[Cem]

Thanks, Ron. Mine is on auto-update and was updated on Feb 4, also. What does Ad-aware do, that ZoneAlarm® Pro cannot accomplish?

[Salvador Dali Lama]

its always a funny thing to reccomend linux to someone worried about security or privacy on a MS box. unless you're really on top of your shit, having a linux box would be much, much less secure. unless you completely stayed off the internet. but whatever.

I just use ad-aware. I do scans every so often, though it's kind of futile - the same damn tracking cookies just come right back.

[Cem]

David, my Norton email scanning is always on, so is my Zone Alarm mailsafe. I still wonder...

[Ron Thorne]

Originally posted by Cem
Thanks, Ron. Mine is on auto-update and was updated on Feb 4, also. What does Ad-aware do, that ZoneAlarm® Pro cannot accomplish?

Cem, I also keep my E-mail Protection (MailSafe) ON for both Inbound and Outbound mail.

Ad-aware seeks and finds cookies that have been planted in your computer from travels around the internet. Some of those are sent there specifically to look at various components within your computer and can be vicious. Once detected, you can remove them, though as Salvador suggests, many of them return sooner or later. It's still not a bad protocol and the software is free, intuitive to use and doesn't hog a lot of space on your hard drive. I'm running it right now and am anxious to see if it finds any intruders. 31,779 objects were scanned and no new objects were found.

Read more about it and download it for free here.

[Tanager]

Originally posted by Salvador Dali Lama
its always a funny thing to reccomend linux to someone worried about security or privacy on a MS box. unless you're really on top of your shit, having a linux box would be much, much less secure. unless you completely stayed off the internet. but whatever.

I could not possibly agree more. Unless you're going to check Bugtraq, CERT, CIAC, and every other alert/security org for patches and security holes, and unless you know enough *nix to know which services to disable on any Internet-facing box, manage IDs, and apply patches/fixes, you are asking for more trouble than you're solving by a large margin.

Just repeat after me: "there is no such thing as a secure OS in the consumer market." Then do your best to stay on top of the alerts for whatever OS you run, practice due diligence, and above all...

KEEP BACKUPS OF ANYTHING IMPORTANT.

[Henry Mars]

Actually, most spyware is written to run on M$ systems. I have had no trouble on the Linux end of things with spyware. On most Linux distros you don't need to worry about securtiy. If you are a newbie .... there are "free" firewalls that work just fine and on some distros they have a security setting called "paranoid" which plugs most if not all of the back-door entry points. As for security patches ... they are distributed almost as quickly as security issues are discovered under Linux and, unless you are brain dead it isn't too hard to learn how to apply them.
Every day you hear about some new virus or worm that kills only M$ os's, not so with _nix.

The only virus that usually wreaks havoc with _nix systems is the "external user virus".

[Salvador Dali Lama]

say Tanager, whatever happend to rootshell.org? that was my favorite security site back in the day, and it doesn't seem to be up any more.

yeah Henry, *nix is great if you really stay on top of what's going on security wise, but if not, you never know when some 19 year old kid from st. paul is going to root your box. it's a constant struggle that I doubt many consumers would be interested in.

no matter how many security patches there are, there will always be new things to exploit. its the nature of the beast. me, I don't have the stomach for all that stuff anymore.

[Tanager]

Originally posted by Henry Mars
Actually, most spyware is written to run on M$ systems. I have had no trouble on the Linux end of things with spyware. On most Linux distros you don't need to worry about securtiy. If you are a newbie .... there are "free" firewalls that work just fine and on some distros they have a security setting called "paranoid" which plugs most if not all of the back-door entry points. As for security patches ... they are distributed almost as quickly as security issues are discovered under Linux and, unless you are brain dead it isn't too hard to learn how to apply them.
Every day you hear about some new virus or worm that kills only M$ os's, not so with _nix.

The only virus that usually wreaks havoc with _nix systems is the "external user virus".

I'm not talking solely about viruses or spyware, and as someone who works in this field as a professional, you are simply offbase when it comes to security and Linux when you make such blanket statements.

[moneyp]

Tanager is right. You don't hear about Linux/Unix hacks as much because the home user doesn't use them as much, but Linux servers are a primary target of hackers, and exploits are constantly being found as often as they're found on Windows.

If Linux (or Mac, for that matter) was the primary OS for home users, they'd be the primary virus target as well.

[Henry Mars]

Mone, I don't think the discussion was about servers or did I misread the post? You are right on that count of course. Security is a major issue on any server.

On the other hand a Linux workstation is far less likely to be hacked than a M$ workstation. While it is true that the learning curve with Linux is steeper, in the end my personal experience has taught me that when properly administered it is far more stable and secure than any M$ bloatware. Problems with Linux are generally fixed quickly.

M$ was so confident in their own server OS that they were using Unix to power their web sites. (I think that has changed recently though.) They didn't trust their own software because it is a well known fact that M$ security sucks.

To each their own I guess. Some people like to be owned.

[Gary Sisco]

Thanks for the info and links.

Pete -- I thought it was an ad but wasn't sure because it was a pop-up and had all of Microsoft's design qualities, but I thought I'd remembered reading that Microsoft doesn't do that but that people who write viruses often design things that look very much like a MS communication but aren't. Anyway, I didn't click on it and don't click on anything I'm not absolutely sure about, nor attachments.

I use Norton Anti-Virus, on automatic update, and it's worked so far, for years. We've never had a virus, yet, on three different laptops, now.

[Gary Sisco]

Done. Thanks, guys.