dacs.doc electric

 

Secure Computing
in the Internet Age

 

At the August 3rd DACS general meeting, Jeff Setaro, a DACS officer and DACS own virus expert will present on the topic of securing our computing in the Internet Age. Jeff will describe the differences between viruses, Trojan horses, and worms. He will elaborate on malware and spyware and the “zombie” problem. Jeff will recommend anti-virus software, personal firewalls and how to use safe computing.

From a personal viewpoint I’m interested to find out the latest on spyware and malware and how best to protect my computer, now mostly used by my younger teenager son. His older brother has now moved on to owning his own mobile equipment. My younger son has been spending a large portion of his after school and vacation days on AOL instant messages talking to his friends in town. Are there risks in receiving malware and spyware from AIM?

I still have this question in mind from late last winter when I found my usually fast responding computer and internet connection working like molasses. In addition, the printer was giving all kind of error messages when used. To resolve the problems, I did an in-depth scan disk, an updated virus check and a complete defrag of my computer hard disk, but to no avail. I suspected that something had installed itself in my machine since I had also lowered briefly the privacy level on the Internet explorer in order to allow access for a new multiplayer game. Either the brief time IE was not on medium to high security or something in AIM that day attacked my computer. I was stumped for a while after none of the usual remedies worked. I remembered however reading a recent article from the New York that just addressed that issue. I went back to the article and downloaded Ad-aware from Lavasoft – program that Jeff will mention in his presentation according to his preview. As soon as it was installed Ad-aware cleaned all the junk that had accumulated. In less than one hour my computer was back to its normal self and out of the morass.

Now in addition to keeping my anti-virus up-to-date, I also keep the anti-spy, ad and mal ware software up to date and regularly use it to clean my hard disk. Another topic that I’m looking forward to be addressed by Jeff is how best to set up hardware router/firewall. I may have a lot to optimize in that regard and unfortunately I was not able to attend the July meeting in setting up routers to network computers because I was away on vacation but I hope that Jeff will elaborate on this topic.

As usual the meeting will be at the Danbury Hospital Auditorium starting at 7.00 p.m. with computer questions and answers and brief club announcement. The main presentation will start at 8.00 p.m. All general meetings are free and open to the public. Do not hesitate to invite a guest with you. For more information on the meeting, please check DACS web site at DACS.org.


Marlène Gaberel is a DACS board member and VP for Public Relations. You can e-mail her at: vppublic@dacs.org

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