The Underscore Archives

On 6/5/07 12:42, "Chris Brock" <chris.brock at gmail.com> wrote:

> also are free firewalls like OUTPOST? and virus software AVG? still
> good ways of protecting a broadband PC

There are two routes to infecting your PC - one requires your action (e.g.
surfing to a dodgy page with IE, opening an email attachment, etc), the
other exploits flaws in Windows to infect you directly from the internet.

A hardware "broadband router" will protect you from the latter threat, which
is probably the more serious. Don't trust Outpost, because host-based
firewalls are switch-offable by viruses, etc. However, Outpost can be useful
for spotting if a virus/worm/etc tries to make an outbound connection from
your PC out to the internet.

AVG will protect you from some viruses, etc, but is no substitute for
vigilance and using, for instance, Firefox rather than IE. I think there was
another AV programme recommended on here recently that ended in "32", but
not sure.

Oliver.