Comments on: The 6 Best Ways to Secure Windows

By: Paul

Paul — Sun, 23 May 2010 21:45:08 +0000

Well I agree with everything except I don’t think UAC is annoying at least not annoying as having to put your password in every time you need root permission. Honestly whats the difference at least in terms of annoying.

By: bikodog

bikodog — Thu, 13 Aug 2009 15:53:58 +0000

I would propose that step #6 is a subset of step # 4. Anti-virus has become an attractive revenue stream for many, so therefore the culture of “fear” is necessary in order to continue its growth.

By understanding that even “reputable” commercial software firms are motivated to make consumers think that there is a threat, it is reasonable to be suspicious of the real need for their AV applications.

By: Ken

Ken — Mon, 03 Aug 2009 16:30:53 +0000

I totally agree with having no anti-virus. It just slows down your computer. After all, prevention is better than cure.

What I don’t agree with is step 5. A pirate myself, I can’t deny doing that. However, you’ll stay safe as long as you DL from reputable sources like private torrent trackers.

By: ubuntucat

ubuntucat — Sat, 01 Aug 2009 16:39:15 +0000

That's a good point. For Vista that problem appears to have been fixed with a Windows update, but for Windows XP and 2000, turning off autorun is definitely a good idea from a security standpoint: How to disable the Autorun functionality in Windows

By: Benjie Gillam

Benjie Gillam — Sat, 01 Aug 2009 13:30:13 +0000

If you’re going to promote not using anti-virus, you ought to tell the user to disable all Windows’ “auto-run” capabilities – anti-virus is very useful for preventing you picking up a virus/trojan from shared media on a CD-ROM or USB key (the latter is especially important at the moment!). Or only share documents/files with people who are equally computer savvy and have sufficient protections.

I advise using antivirus to protect you from MS Word macro viruses, and other such thing which you are likely to come across during a standard working day under Windows. Sure, you could use OpenOffice for that particular threat, but what if you need the macros for work…?

AVG has prevented my wife’s laptop from contracting a virus from a shared USB key before from a school laptop.

Personally, I avoid using Windows as much as possible, I only use it for testing website designs under IE6/7/8 and for playing rented Blu-Rays/HD-DVDs or legitimately purchased games.

By: greg

greg — Sat, 01 Aug 2009 05:25:55 +0000

I once bought anti virus software after getting a virus from a duke nukem map… Needless to say the 60 dollar software did nothing to fix my virus and did nothing to prevent the next one I got from a windows vulnerability. Virus scanners are well packaged scams.

By: Adam

Adam — Fri, 31 Jul 2009 13:24:43 +0000

If you want to see the state of the current threats have a read of “Researchers find financial-plundering botnet monster” http://www.computerworlduk.com/management/security/cybercrime/news/index.cfm?newsid=16004

This professionally designed malware has been infecting Windows computers since 2007, is very widespread and is not detectable with anything presently available.

By: Gordon

Gordon — Fri, 31 Jul 2009 01:31:01 +0000

The thing with UAC is that, if you install some program on a non-admin account, you have to type the admin password. And that will force the program to put some its data to the apps data folder within the admin account folder, thus it will require admin rights ever after. Take this as an example(I know, it’s silly, but it’s a example): I install Visual studio 2008, then install dark gdk. Of course, all the thing I did on a non-admin and was forced to typed the password. Then, I run VS, just to realise that the new content wasn’t there. I have to log into the admin account to use it. But then, part of dark gdk was in non-admin account, and another was in admin account, thus the whole thing break down. And VS is something you can only install once in a lifetime(of a OS), so to actually work with it, I have to re-install the whole system, and go back to use the admin account. Bravo, M$.

By: Count Shrimpula

Count Shrimpula — Thu, 30 Jul 2009 07:54:47 +0000

“Step 1. Install Windows updates automatically”
Agreed on this. For other people’s computers, I usually set it up to install automatically. On mine, I just download automatically and choose when to install. I do that because Windows has the hideous habit of just going ahead and rebooting the computer for you without asking when you have it set to automatically install them. What terrible behavior.

“Step 2. Make your primary account a limited user account”
Tried this on XP and it was miserable. That OS is just not at all designed to handle that, and I went back to a full administrator account, despite knowing full well how bad that is. This is actually doable on Vista (and Windows 7) though, and that’s how I have my Vista install set up. For all its faults, at least that is a big step in the right direction. Of course, the UAC prompts are annoying and poorly implemented compared to using sudo in OS X or Ubuntu, plus they’ve predictably gone and broken it in Windows 7. Oh well.

“Step 3. Use Firefox with the NoScript extension”
I do this, but I would only subject someone I was setting a computer up for if I wanted them to run screaming back to IE. I’ve had great success converting non-geek computer people to Firefox, but I have no doubt that NoScript would be a dealbreaker. Which is a shame, because it is a great extension, and it does make things a lot safer. But FlashBlock is about where I draw the line as far as difficulty of use in extensions I set up for people’s Firefox installs.

“Step 4. Read up on social engineering and how to avoid being the victim of it”
Yes to this, a million times yes.

“Step 5. Do not pirate software, music, or movies”
Ditto my comment for step 4.

“Step 6. Avoid all ‘antivirus’ or ‘security suite’ software”
Eh, I’d still rather see A/V running. I’ve seen things slip through on computers running these precautions. And if you can’t run all of them (because of the problem with running XP as a limited user, for example, or reluctance to deal with NoScript) it does offer some protection. Yes, it can only do so much to protect you against new stuff, but the old stuff still circulates around, and I’ve seen things get onto pretty well-maintained and secure machines. There’s free A/V out there that’s pretty well-behaved and doesn’t give a big performance hit (I use Avira Antivir personally) so I think it’s worth it.

By: eklektisch

eklektisch — Thu, 30 Jul 2009 03:24:50 +0000

Yes! Someone else who says no to antivirus. Being relatively computer-savy I never felt a big need for antivirus. Recently when an antivirus program was being even more of a nuisance than usual, I realized education is far, far better than so-called security software.