Because sick people lurk on the Web . . .

Thanksgiving Day, I was on the phone with my dad, when I noticed my wife waving her arms frantically, with a look on her face that said “Mayday! Mayday!”

She was at her laptop, and it was doing bad, bad things. There was some “Rapid Anti Virus” message that kept popping up, saying such and such files were infected and required with a virus . . . turns out the “Rapid Anti Virus” was itself a virus. It pretty much tortured the little laptop, reducing the screen viewing size, putting some porno sites on the desktop, and with a constant stream of threatening notices popping up like Jack-in-the-box demons . . .

The next day, we contacted local computer wiz Bruce Richardson. For a reasonable fee, he was able to clean out the viruses (virusi?) and get things back to normal. He also agreed to write a column on “safe computing.” It turned into a two-parter, today’s on home to avoid virus attacks, next week’s on what to do if your computer is invaded.

By Bruce Richardson

Safe computing tips

Treat your email like snail mail

Some common sense applies to your email inbox.  Odds are if you received a letter in the mail from the Bank of Nigeria, you would not think twice about throwing it in the trash.  Treat your inbox the same way.  You can usually tell by the subject line that an email is junk.  If it is junk and also has an attachment – don’t even think about opening it.  It probably has a virus.

 Most people shy away from strangers on the street, yet they will open files from strangers on the web. You already know who is going to email you.  Your family, friends you know, companies you have contacted. If the email is from someone you don’t know, think twice about opening it.  Download programs only from trusted companies. I know that there are a lot of “free” music downloads sites out there, but it might be worth your while to pay, to ensure that you don’t download a virus.

You should have current anti-virus software on your machine.

These programs are well worth the money and your computer resources. They are sometimes annoying, but just remember that it only takes once for a virus to ruin your computing experience

Use another browser

It is worth noting that since more than 90% of the world’s computers have Internet Explorer from Microsoft, that Internet Explorer is the primary target of virus attacks and hackers.  

 Mozilla Firefox is gaining a lot of users, Apple’s Safari is stable now and very nice, and Google’s Chrome is very fast.  You don’t have to settle for what came with the machine.

Safe Surfing

If you like to surf the Internet, I have to recommend McAfee’s SiteAdvisor toolbar.  It will warn you about sites that have had issues reported due to download and excessive advertisements.  If you choose to go it alone, try to stick to .com and .net sites.  For a good time, visit Alexa.com.  This is a site that ranks every site on the Internet.    If you have a website – personal or business, you can also enter it here and see if and how you are listed.  Most of you will find that you are not listed in the top 100,000 or even the top million – there are so many sites on the Internet.

Know your computer’s limitations

We were all told that your computer is the fastest game machine, holds the most downloads, connects to the Internet from anywhere on the planet…..well, it is not necessarily so.  Speed is determined by the clock speed of your processor and the amount of memory on the machine.  If you buy a machine today, it will come with a processor in the 2GH range. I won’t define this here, that speed is sufficient for most computing needs.  It is worth noting however, that an AMD chip is faster than Intel, even though Intel is probably what you have now.

2GB of memory, however, is not enough – especially if you have Windows Vista as the operating system.

Whatever system you buy, you need as much memory as you can afford.  If you have an old machine you are still using, try to add more memory to it.  It is just critical these days.

Know what file types are.

I know you don’t want to have to think about anything except having fun with your computer, but these days you have to.  Just a couple of things about file types.  There are a lot of different kinds, but only a few you need to know about to safely operate your computer.

First, you should be able to tell the file types on your machine.  In any window you have opened up to look at files, select View, Details.  With the detail view, you will see the file type and also the date modified.  

If you download a file from the Internet or from an attachment, the file type is also listed.  The file type is usually three letters after a period, e.g. – setup.exe

“.exe” means that whatever you are opening or downloading is a program that will run on your machine.  This could be good or bad.  If you download virus protection software or a software update or an actual virus, it will usually be an .exe file

“.vbs” is a visual basic script and is usually a weapon of choice for hackers and virus mongers

There are so many file types, that I would suggest you access  www.filext.com and check on the extension if you are really certain that you want to run the file.

File sizes

Sorry, more work for you to think about. File size is a dead giveaway that there might be something else with that picture or song you are downloading.  Again, select View, Details to see how big your files actually are.  A 3 minute song is between 3 and 8 megabytes. If your 3 minute song is 75 megabytes, you could be inviting trouble. A regular e-mail is only 5 to 10 Kilobytes.  They are quite small.  

The point here is really to know what you are downloading at all times.  It can’t be casual anymore.

Bruce Richardson is the owner of Purple Tree Farms in Ocean Shores.  Bruce is a Web Designer and Technology Consultant having served his indenture in the Corporate world for over 25 years.  Bruce can be reached at 360-500-3643.  His website is www.purpletreefarms.com