Virus Protection
Fact: if your PC connects to the internet without any form of protection, it will become infected with a virus sooner or later.
An antivirus program is absolutely essential and should be updated frequently, such as every week. If you think there is a virus on your PC, download the free Stinger from McAfee as a quick fix to get you out of trouble. If you don't have one of the top-make antivirus programs, such as Norton or MacAfee's, download a free one from 'Free AVG' or 'AntiVir' then do a full scan of all drives. Make sure that there is a guard program running in the background all the time from now on. Some AV programs slow down disc access times more than others.
The BIOS settings might also provide a very limited amount of virus protection against certain attacks. Windows users should make an emergency recovery disc, using Settings > Control Panel > Add/Remove Programs > Startup Disk > Create Disk. You will need your Windows CD (unless you were bright enough to copy it to a hard drive).
Firewall and Virus Downloads
You can try to
block 'script kiddies' from hacking into your computer using a software
firewall, such as that built into XP and improved in SP2. ZoneAlarm is very effective and most of the newer (bought) antivirus programs include one now.
It blocks external accesses and allows you to control what programs can access the internet from your computer. XP's firewall does not block outgoing traffic at all. You will be surprised how often Zonealarm displays messages about someone trying to get in. It is a bright idea to use Windows Update for the latest bug fixes and security plugs but not for hardware drivers, as they are always out of date and sometimes cause more problems than they cure. Best only to upgrade drivers directly from the manufacturers' websites.
In the Performance Gobblers part, I refer to Spyware. ZoneAlarm will block that too and only allow it to send your personal data out if you are daft enough to let it.
As regards email viruses, the usual advice is not to open any suspicious emails, just delete them, and certainly don't open any attachments, including MP3 unless you were expecting a particular email from someone. Delete anything that says something like "ASCII characters converted to bin file" without question. You can usually block any emails from Nigeria, as it they be variations on the famous scam requiring your bank account number. Amazing that anyone can fall for that one, or the 'political prisoner in Korea' being helped by someone in Amsterdam. Still, all it needs is one idiot in a million to reply with their bank details to make it pay.
It is the nature of email viruses and worms that they will send themselves to everyone in your mailing lists, pretending to come from you. It is most likely that you will receive one from someone listed in your email address book. Your ISP might well filter some email viruses - I know that ClaraNet does.
Dial-up Scam
Here's what happened to someone I know. a scam that will only work with a dial-up connection. A pop-up window appeared on someone's computer which could not be closed (he wasn't using Opera, then), whilst surfing a dodgy website. After a while his phone bill arrived with an extra £100 on it. Another one paid out £90 until I deleted the network connection - named 'default' and ran Spybot. After installing a good firewall, I don't think they will be troubled but it makes sense to unplug the phone connection when not needed.
The clever bit is how they get you to download something. I saw one that looked like an official Microsoft window, with those cute green arrow buttons, etc. The message was 'Your computer is under threat from spyware - click here to prevent this' - which, of course, would then have downloaded something nasty. Moral: Close or disable pop-ups (use Opera, Firefox, a pop-up blocker or the Google navbar for IE) and unplug the line when not in use. Windows XP SP2 updates IE6 with a pop-up blocker.
I have received a very plausible demand for payment that looked as though it had come from eBay. The links looked right but they linked to somewhere else. I did not click on anything but forwarded it to eBay's fraud email address. I have never used eBay!
