And still use Microsoft Windows?
Unless you are a geek, the panoply of options that Windows offers to hackers wanting to hijack your PC is intimidating. The range of anti-virus software doesn’t help, not least because a good proportion of it actually contains the viruses themselves.
Frankly, to use XP, Vista or 7 is considered an invitation to hackers by some of the most respected commentators in the industry.
But you have a PC and one of these operating systems and you don’t have the technical expertise to use a linux distribution — what do you do?
The first thing is to stop using your email client. No, I don’t mean stop using email — that would be unthinkable.
An email client – like Outlook- usually downloads emails and their attachments to your PC. This is a bad thing.
Even if you are careful and leave the email on the mail server, you still risk inadvertently exposing yourself by opening one of those innocuous-seeming emails that turn out to be spam and downloading that very small, but potentially lethal package attached to it. Another bad thing.
You are also dependent on having the latest spam filters on your PC, no matter how good your ISP is at filtering these messages (and believe me, most aren’t that good). That means you have to keep a constant eye on updating this software, which will inevitably slow you down — another bad thing.
Avoid the email client, and the attendant risks, by using webmail only. As long as you have a half decent broadband connection, an up-to-date browser (Firefox being the choice of the internerdery) and are watchful over which websites you visit, then believe it or not, you will be, in an order of magnitude, more secure.
For the last 6 months I have been using a Sony Vaio netbook with XP and Firefox – no viruses, no threats, no nothing.
Now, this isn’t to say there aren’t any risks with this approach. Of course you should avoid obviously dodgy kinds of websites: gambling is one, porn is another. You might also like to steer clear of ‘warez’ sites. And you should use an anti-virus package which has a threat ranking for websites as an indication when you are entering a grey area of the net.
In my view, unless you are engaged in heavy-weight content creation, then a PC and a browser, a good one, is all you will ever need, oh, and a Superfast broadband connection (at least 10MB) to give you the ability to upload your photos to a photo library service online.
You could buy an ipad of course, or a Mac, but given that you have a PC, why not try this? Oh, but I was forgetting you are reading this in Argyll where the best we can muster on ADSL is 2MB, and much less for those who don’t live near the exchange like me. Shame.
(More on this last issue from our newsroom within days.)
Really newsroom anyone reading For Argyll might believe you are closet Mac using SNP supporter. The only reason the poor PC gets the bad security press is because the majority of desktops and laptops are Windows based PC’s and therefore worth the effort to hack.
The annual Pwn2Own contest at the CanSecWest security show in Vancouver gives hackers and security experts a chance to demonstrate their ability and try to breach the security of various devices and software. “Pwn2Own” is hacker slang for gaining control of another computer.
After day one of the annual security showdown the results were near an exact replica of the previous years. Safari on the Mac was the first to fall again this time it took all of 10 seconds, followed by Internet Explorer 8 on Windows 7. Firefox on Windows 7 x64 was also taken down, as was the iPhone’s mobile Safari. Google Chrome was last to succumb.
Gotta love security by obscurity — am I right, Apple fans.
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Hands up to being a Mac devotee (and For Argyll is a Mac-based operation) – but this piece wasn’t sourced from the newsroom – it was an opinion piece.
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John you are right. Obscurity is key for the protection Mac-users enjoy. But the point of the article really was to give PC-users the opportunity to sideline the hassle of viruses etc. by depending on the cloud for their email security. Well, it would be possible if we had the broadband infrastructure in Argyll that we need.
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Save yourself the headache and install a Linux variant. The Ubuntu machine was the only one left standing at pwn2own 2008.
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I disagree with your blanket proscription of email clients for several reasons:
- If you don’t use an email client then you can’t send email direct from websites by clicking on an email link.
– Webmail services get hacked as well – I have had a lot of spam from Hotmail accounts that have been compromised recently.
- Webmail services are inevitably subject to various restrictions and limitations
If you take sensible precautions an email client presents minimal risk. Suggesting that they are the root of all evil is encouraging people to throw the baby out with the bathwater. Might as well stay at home as well – less chance of getting run over.
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