Some homeland defense for your PC -- and it's all free

March 23, 2004

BY ANDY IHNATKO


I'm wholly in favor of (1) spending as little money as possible, and (2)
making my computing experience as safe and happy as possible.

Toward those ends, (1) I pursued a career in Technology Punditry, in which
software and hardware manufacturers are more than happy to send me
stuff to try out, and (2) I got a Macintosh.

But this plan won't work for all of you. Some of you have already impulsively
spent all of your education money on medical or law degrees, for instance,
and only an enlightened few are arrogant enough to make a serious go of
Mac ownership.

But while there's no shortage of solid commercial software for protecting a
Windows machine from online nastiness, there's no shortage of free
solutions either.

You need an antivirus utility, for starters. In fact, I'm pretty comfortable telling
you that installing a utility that prevents viruses, worms, and other
malfeasance-ware from running ripshod through your system is of a
slightly higher priority than taking your kids in for their diphtheria
vaccinations.

Why? (1) Because I have no kids of my own, and (2) the basic character of
Windows viruses has changed. They no longer victimize the single user;
their purpose is to subvert hundreds of thousands of infected computers
into covert relayers of spam (bad) and weapons for launching attacks
against commercial and government servers (super double-plus bad).

I've consistently recommended Norton Antivirus and McAfee Virus Scan (the
hatred those companies have for viruses is pure and quite beautiful) but if
you balk at the price, go to www.grisoft.com.

Grisoft has a special edition of its AVG Anti-Virus package that's free for
home users. It's routinely updated with new virus definitions, just like the
Big Two, and it's a perfectly adequate defense against viral nastiness.

But alas, not all users are clever enough to see the obvious advantages of
a free piece of software that prevents viruses from, you know, destroying
their PCs and every other PC on the network. So you need a firewall app.
Every time a piece of software tries to use your PC's network connection --
whether it's trying to bring something in or send something out -- the
firewall examines the request with a jaundiced eye.

The end effect is that if a trojan horse tries to use your PC to blast the Net
with spam, or if a piece of spyware tries to transmit sensitive personal
information from your PC to eggsucking crooks, your firewall will (hopefully)
detect and block the attempt.

Your No-Excuse Solution: ZoneAlarm, Zone Labs' free edition of its
commercial firewall app. It doesn't have all the features of ZoneAlarm Pro,
but (like AVG's freebie) it's light-years ahead of what you're currently using,
if you're currently using nothing.

Oh, yes -- spyware. Spyware is malicious software that secretly collects
data about you and your machine, and sends it to a third-party. It's bad
enough if it's an online marketer collecting info about the kinds of Web
sites you visit, or a scammy promoter who keeps changing your
browser's "Home" page to his own haven of herbal pills and mortgage
companies. But some forms of spyware can record every keystroke you
ever make, looking for passwords, credit-card numbers, and anything else
that might be valuable to an eggsucking weasel.

Spyware can be secretly be installed on your PC through any number of
sources, but it's easy to detect and eliminate. Your free solution: SpyBot
Search & Destroy, a free download from www.safer-networking.org.

It's quick, simple, and wholly effective; it even goes so far as to examine
your browser for cookies that marketers use to track and profile you.

The last item on our Freebie Rotisserie is the Mozilla browser,
downloadable from mozilla.org.

Okay, so what problem does Mozilla solve? The problem of using Internet
Explorer.

Yes, Mozilla has a built-in blocker for popup ads, can eliminate inline ads,
and has better cookie management than IE. But the real reason to get it is
that it's just a much better browser. Explorer has barely taken a single step
forward in usability or sophistication since Bush took office, and has been
handily eclipsed.

Switch to Mozilla and outside of all the improvements, you'll never know the
difference.


Andy Ihnatko writes on computer issues for the Sun-Times.