Help Me Sort My Security Setup

[TerryWood]

I use Avast Home plus Comodo Firewall as my baseline. (Win XP SP2) I then wished to add Sandboxie because I liked the idea of dumping everything after use, apart from selective saves.

Unfortunately I could not get Sandboxie to work effectively with Thunderbird. Problems of pop ups "do you want to set T/Bird as default mail client" when it was already set as default. Much help from Sandboxie forum could not resolve it so I settled on GesWall which works like a dream but of course operates differently and does not dump the results of an evenings browsing. So third leg of my security in place.

Then I read good reviews about Cyberhawk and that it also came out well in TechSupportAlert tests. So 4th leg of my security in place.

This forum suggested that I needed Spyware Terminator with Realtime Shield and HIPS enabled (The HIPS part to complement CyberHawk) So 5th part of my security in place.

There is not much information about S/T HIPS and given the sophistication of some of the more dedicated HIPs I began to wonder If S/T HIPS was robust enough to support the first 4 legs of my security setup.

So I installed the free version of AntiHook which seems very comprehensive relative to some of the others.

MY main aims are to protect myself whilst on line banking and to minimise viruses Trojans Keyloggers etc and their effects.

So have I got it right, do I need all of them? Is Spyware Terminator the right antispyware HIPS combination. Is it better to separate the functions in more dedicated way. Could Windows Defender have a role here

I would appreciate mature commentary on my setup please. Utilising only freeware, leaning towards set it and forget it (I am no techie) and getting rid of surplus.

I also have Snoop Free, DropMyRights through My browser & email. On demand not realtime Windows Defender, AVG Antispware, Superantispy, Sypbot & Adaware

Thanks for all your help


Terry

[Mrkvonic]

Hello,
In your place, I would drop Cyberhawk, S/T and Antihook. If you want fire and forget, HIPSes are not for you.
DropMyRights is already doing a bit of sandboxing for you.
Personally, I also dislike Windows Defender, so I would remove it, but on-demand scanners don't hurt much.
If you're using Firefox or Opera, then you're set very nicely.
Mrk

[Devinco]

How does sand boxing Thunderbird help?
If Thunderbird is set to plain text, no scripting, no downloading images, no clicking on links, and you don't open attachments, then it is safe, right?

Or is sand boxing an email client for the remote chance that...
1. the mail server is compromised and tries to cause some kind of communication related buffer overflow in the email client.
2. MitM (Man in the Middle) attack using same as above.
3. A plain text email that causes a buffer overflow in the email client.

These all seem very unlikely, but an email client does face the internet, so should we sandbox it in some way?