How Safe is Your Success? Part 4 of 8

"How Safe is Your Success" is a series of eight articles. Each article addresses a different aspect of a universal problem which is of particular importance to those who do business on-line. Most Internet users are at least aware there are dangers "out there", but few appreciate the real extent of those dangers, the possible (even likely) consequences, or the best, most practical and least expensive means of countering them. This series is intended to at least provide some useful awareness of the situation.

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Part 4 - Adware and Spyware

In Part 3 of this series I stressed the importance of having an anti-virus package installed on your PC, and the extreme importance of keeping it current with updates from the publisher of the package. Unfortunately, many people who do appreciate the need for such precautions fail to make an important distinction — one which leaves them exposed to threats they mistakenly believe they are protected against.

You see, while a good anti-virus program can detect and deal with many variations on the virus/trojan/worm theme, it can't handle all variations. An anti-virus program is a good start, but you can't stop there. Into your defensive line-up you must add a few more specialized scanner-type programs to catch some of the threats the anti-virus program can't handle.

It is beyond the scope of this short article to delve into the differences between virus, trojan, worm, adware and spyware — nor is an understanding of the characteristics of each necessary in order to effectively combat them. For the more curious reader, my security Bible "The Hacker’s Nightmare" deals with all threat types in some detail. It is however necessary to appreciate that:

(a) All variations are extremely prevalent;
(b) There are differences between each type of threat;
(c) There can be further (sometimes significant)
variations within each category;
(d) There is no single antidote that will protect you
against all of the above.

You may recall from Part 3 that, for the average home and small business computer, I generally recommend against the all-in-one security suites that purport to protect you from a multiplicity of threats, so in that context point (d) above is a valid observation. For my reasons for that recommendation please refer to the previous part in this series.

Don’t worry! The fact that we need several somewhat similar programs in our arsenal isn't going to impact the bank balance to any significant degree. As I pointed out in the previous article, many of the very best solutions in this threat category are quite free. That's even more fortunate than it at first seems. While the programs I use and recommend are extremely effective, they aren't perfect. Sometimes you need to install two competing programs of the same type, because often one will catch intrusions that the other won't, and vice versa. These programs are invariably quite small and don't place any significant load on the computer, so the extra protection is very worthwhile. A good example of this multi-application recommendation is adware/spyware detection.

While it has it's quirks and it does look a bit rough, in my opinion the most effective software solution of all against adware & spyware is a product called Spybot-S&D (S&D stands for "Search & Destroy") from PepiMK Software. Spybot is free to both commercial and home users.

Spybot's main competitor is Ad-Aware from LavaSoft. While Ad-aware is a commercial product, there is a very adequate Personal version that is free for non-commercial use. Implement the free version on your home PC. For your office/business computers LavaSoft offers several packages, full details of which you can get from their website.

NO … Stop Thinking Like That!!!

If you are thinking "Oh, Spybot is free and Ad-aware costs money — I'll use Spybot", you aren't paying attention. I was quite serious when I said: "sometimes one will catch intrusions that the other won't, and vice versa". If you are only interested in stopping some threats — just the ones you can stop for free — then you are wasting your time reading these articles. I promised to tell you the facts, and this is a fact: You Need To Install Both Of These Programs.

Both Spybot-S&D and Ad-aware offer a number of configuration options and, as you may remember from the anti-virus article, if configuration options are offered you should take that as a strong indication that you won't get the most out of the application until you set those options. Both of these applications offer quite a large number of configuration options, which may be a little daunting to some, but not at all beyond the ability of the average PC user. Ad-aware installs a User Manual accessible from the Windows Start Menu (Start -> All Programs -> LavaSoft). Spybot-S&D has a tutorial available from the program's Help menu.

Like your anti-virus program, it is extremely important that both Spybot-S&D and Ad-aware are updated regularly with new database information from their respective websites. If you need more detailed assistance with either of these very important defensive products, "The Hacker’s Nightmare" deals with both in depth.

For more information on the products:

Spybot-S&D http://HackersNightmare.com?res=Spybot
Ad-Aware Free http://HackersNightmare.com?res=AdawareFree
Ad-Aware PRO http://HackersNightmare.com?res=AdawarePRO

The strength of both Spybot and Ad-aware is that they are very good at finding, identifying and eliminating certain types of nasties that have found their way into your computer — threats that your anti-virus program is probably not designed to detect.

There is another very important tool in this category that I always have installed on my PC's. Called SpywareBlaster from Javacool Software, this utility does not scan for and clean out spyware — rather, it's job is to preventing such threats from ever getting installed in the first place.

SpywareBlaster also is available in a free version for non-commercial use, but I do not recommend it even if you do qualify. Like the other applications we have discussed, SpywareBlaster must be regularly updated. While the free version can be manually updated at any time, it has no provision for auto-updating. For a paltry $9.95 per annum licence fee, you can have the very great advantage of scheduled auto-updating. Remember, such applications are only as good as their last update, and you certainly don't want to be relying on old data for your protection.
http://HackersNightmare.com?res=SpywareBlaster

If this newsletter has been passed on to you by a friend, please subscribe yourself so you can be sure of receiving the next part in this series, when we will look at a threat that is becoming very commonplace and which can cost you dearly — the so-called "phishing" scams.

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