Issue Date: July 11, 2004
Protect your PC for free
It's a scary world out there, full of viruses, spam and hackers. But why drop big bucks on PC protection software when you can download it for free?
Anti-virus software is a big business. Grisoft, for one, sells protection to companies, but also offers a free version for home users, AVG Free Edition (www.grisoft.com/us/us_dwnl_free.php). AVG will scan your computer and e-mail for bugs, protecting both your PC and your wallet.
Police your home computer on a budget.
|
The Federal Trade Commission recently reported that the creation of a national "do not spam" registry would be "ineffective," so to stop spam, you can use probability-based filtering software that will learn to recognize it by searching for key words and phrases in mail you've previously rejected as spam. K9, available at keir.net/k9.html, uses this learning technology, known as Bayesian filtering; it also checks your e-mail against DNS Blackhole Lists, which tracks spammer-only domain names. After a few days of training, K9 flagged about 98% of my spam.
Those worried about hackers using their PC for malicious deeds can try Zone Labs ZoneAlarm at zonelabs.com. ZoneAlarm is a firewall, an application that works as a gatekeeper between your PC and the Internet. It blocks outsiders and lets you control unwanted access from the Internet. If ZoneAlarm tells you Internet Explorer or AOL wants to connect, you can allow it, but if an unrecognizable program (say, "$$$_cclex-xxx") wants to send or receive data, you can just say no.
ZoneAlarm is pretty annoying for the first few days, as it asks you about every single program on your PC that uses the Internet, but it's well worth the initial bother.
It turns out that, with the right software, the world isn't such a scary place after all.
-- Charles Herold
|
