Wolfcsm
Well-Known Member
A little bit of training and discipline are required for most of these programs to work:
Anti Virus programs really protect you for the KNOWN things that are in the wild. They play catch up when something new is let loose in the wild - several hundred every day, most days.
A good antivirus program ( whichever you are comfortable with), that is kept updated - each day is the best, is a good defensive wall around your system.
But, if you click on everything that is attached, go to off the beaten path web sites or download everything you see - you are leading the intruder right past all of that good defense and into your computer.
If you are using more than one computer at home use NAT (Network Address Translation) for your IP addresses, behind your router. NAT uses a group of IP addresses that are non routable. These addresses are never seen by the world that is on the WAN side of your router.
FIREWALLS are great. But take a lot of work to get to the place where you can do what you want to. Once you have them where they are working and let you do what you want, you have pretty much turned off most of the features of the FIREWALL.
One thing that can help a lot have a system or systems that adults can use that kids cannot. Set them up as you need and use them. Have another system for kids. Without a lot of care, they are going to get things that you do not want on your "good" systems. When they do - REFORMAT the system and start from scratch using an image disk to rebuild the system. After they loose their files a few times the idea of being careful will begin to sink in.
All the security programs in the world can be defeated by the hand - keyboard interface. If it looks funny - scan it. Or better yet delete it before you click on it. Pay attention to scams in email - you are probably not going to receive $12,345,678,90 from your long lost Nigerian Uncle - DELETE it!
Look at the links you get in emails. There are lots of attempts to get you to give out information to places that look legitimate but have a URL like: www.bank.com.what.is.this.biz That is not going to get you to your bank and will probably cost you a LOT!
Hal
Anti Virus programs really protect you for the KNOWN things that are in the wild. They play catch up when something new is let loose in the wild - several hundred every day, most days.
A good antivirus program ( whichever you are comfortable with), that is kept updated - each day is the best, is a good defensive wall around your system.
But, if you click on everything that is attached, go to off the beaten path web sites or download everything you see - you are leading the intruder right past all of that good defense and into your computer.
If you are using more than one computer at home use NAT (Network Address Translation) for your IP addresses, behind your router. NAT uses a group of IP addresses that are non routable. These addresses are never seen by the world that is on the WAN side of your router.
FIREWALLS are great. But take a lot of work to get to the place where you can do what you want to. Once you have them where they are working and let you do what you want, you have pretty much turned off most of the features of the FIREWALL.
One thing that can help a lot have a system or systems that adults can use that kids cannot. Set them up as you need and use them. Have another system for kids. Without a lot of care, they are going to get things that you do not want on your "good" systems. When they do - REFORMAT the system and start from scratch using an image disk to rebuild the system. After they loose their files a few times the idea of being careful will begin to sink in.
All the security programs in the world can be defeated by the hand - keyboard interface. If it looks funny - scan it. Or better yet delete it before you click on it. Pay attention to scams in email - you are probably not going to receive $12,345,678,90 from your long lost Nigerian Uncle - DELETE it!
Look at the links you get in emails. There are lots of attempts to get you to give out information to places that look legitimate but have a URL like: www.bank.com.what.is.this.biz That is not going to get you to your bank and will probably cost you a LOT!
Hal
