Ramblings of a Prophet

In this blog I will talk about my opinion and views about viruses, and a brief overview of what to do about them.

There are several types of malware you can get, primarily from the Internet.  The most common type of malware is called a cookie.  A cookie is pretty much harmless, and usually they aren’t even bad.  A website will put a small file on your computer that contains information that the site reads, if you have it set to save your password.  The bad cookies are put onto your computer discreetly, and usually they track your browsing, to give you adds you might be interested in.

The next type of malware is called spyware, this stuff is more dangerous, but usually not fatel for your computer.  Spyware usually contains pop ups and sometimes keyloggers.  Keyloggers are a small program that logs al the keystrokes, which could be a problem if you use your credit card, but keyloggers are usually for advertisements.  Another more rare type of spyware will actually install programs on your computer withought your permission.

Trojan Horses are another common type of malware, it disguises itself as an advertisement and also usually creates minor changes on your computer, or creates pop ups, however they can sometimes be more dangerous.  Some Trojans will try and record your passwords, and sometimes your credit card number.  They can be devastating to you, but usually not your computer.

Spyware is yet another type of malware, but it is usually harmless, it just tracks your browsing, but they can be irritating.

Now to more serous things, worms and viruses, which are almost identicle, but for now, I’m going to treat them as the same.  A Virus/Worm is designed to basically infect and usually obliterate a computer.  Although the majority of viruses just open a door to all types of malware, some viruses will take all system resourses or deleat files.  Viruses often are contained in downloads, often illegal ones, but can come form anywhere.

Some of you may be thinking, oh man, is there anything we can do about this, in fact, there is.  There are many many anti-virus and anti-spyware programs out there, some are good, and some suck, and some are fake.  Im going to talk about my 2 favorite, Spybot, and Avast Anti-virus (take note, those are both free, but aren’t necessarily the best, but my favorites).  First I will talk about Spybot, it is a free to download program that will scan your computer for spyware, cookies, Trojans, and several other types.  Spybot also has a resident protection, which runs in the background, and will alert you whenever a program tries to modify the registry, which is a handy feature for more advanced users.  The two most important things to remember when using spybot is that you HAVE to keep it updated, otherwise it wont be looking for current malware, and the other is that it isnt a anti-virus program, so you shouldn’t rely solely on that for your computer.  One more very important thing, you are looking for Spybot, NOT spyware bot, spyware bot is a fake program that actually infects your computer!!!  I have found spybot to work quite well in most cases, but in a few instances it has been unable to remove a certain program, but overall Spybot is a really good program to have, and hey, its free.

next i’m going to talk about Avast, Avast is an anit-virus program, they have many versions, but i use the home edition, a free edition, and free is always good.  Avast has a feature called a virus chest, which is a secure file that can contain viruses.  the reason for the virus chest is that some viruses will self duplicate when deleted, so when they are moved the piece of code that executes when it is deleted, doesn’t execute.  Avast has 2 components, resident protection, and a scan.  The scan can be set to 3 different settings, a quick scan, a normal scan and a thorough scan, if you have more than 200-250 Gbs of data then doing a thorough scan will take quite some time.  It is important that you don’t just turn it on and leave it, because when it finds something it will pop up a window asking you what to do, if you pick move to chest it will pop up another window asking you some more stuff.  Here you have the option to move/rename all, if you click that you can now walk away from your computer.  I have some say that Avast works wonderfully for them, but a few people say avast didn’t not find files, but it is up to you to decide.

one last thing is having a firewall, even just the windows firewall works, it will thwart most attempts to direct connect to your computer, but that is a very rare occurrence, due to the number of computers in the world.

Always remember, KEEP ANY PROTECTION PROGRAM YOU HAVE UP TO DATE!!!

www.spybot.com/  -  spybot

www.avast.com    -  Avast

http://www.safer-networking.org/index2.html   -  the spybot parent site

One last note, this blog is not intended to be an instruction manual, or promotional, but it is just one mans opinion, trying to help reduce the number of computer related headachs.