lack of common sense, paranoid, or novices?

Nice to see this thread still open in the new day

 

Am I suppose to reply every hour? Well, I see posts that fall into one or two of categories of my topic. I do agree with one post, I shouldn't have listed those extensions for my browser.

Now, for the expert explaining that hacked websites infect computers, I find extremely rare to stumble upon a reputable website with security of their own, hackers trying to infect visitors and making it obvious to the world, instead of accessing the saved user and credit cards information in the servers without others knowing. Isn't it also rare for software infections? Unless you're pirating them. I don't know where you plug your USB drive, it's unlikely USB drives would be infected from school or work. It has been over ten years with people telling others to disable auto run, if they bother to install that many security applications, they should known about it.

I can't believe a poster is even 74 years old, it's like one of those teenagers on a computer hardware forum listing their "rig" in their signature section.

 

PUPs? Oh, and don't forget about fake installers due to social engineering or just plain not knowing the real download link because sometimes it's hard to tell.

Public computers perhaps? C'mon, don't tell me that you never need to get data from other computers which aren't yours. True, true, disabling the autorun would help. But not everyone have their Windows shipped with Group Policy Editor. You still can disable it via some registry tweaks though.

And I can't believe this flaming and ad hominem thread is still not locked and managed to stay for about a day.

 

Are we going to start listing credentials now? lol let's hear yours zcale!

 

Thanks, but I wasn't looking forward the number 74. My doctors are glad to see me too.

 

Why? I don't see where this thread serves any useful purpose.

 

I like it. Zcale is funny.

 

After reading your post I have to come to the conclusion that you know very little about Cyber Security in general. Are you serious? Adblock Plus, and WOT is not going to prevent you from becoming infected in most cases. I think you need to worry about your own security because there is much to be addressed with your false sense of security instead of taking cheap shots at members here at Wilders.

 

Take it from me, a self-proclaimed expert in everything "computers"!

I've been on the net before it was called the internet. This means BBS'ing at 300 baud.

I typically run without tons of security programs, just the basics ma'am.

The two times I had any kind of infections were when I visited nefarious & questionable sites. And I was able to restore from a backup, thus saving hours upon tedious hours learning how to eradicate a specific bit of mal-ware. And prior to doing a restore, I used a Live-OS disc to safely copy a few documents that weren't backed up yet.. All in all a rewarding experience because I (and you can do it too) defeated this mal-ware with nary a care.

It has been my observation that many people have too many mal-ware'ish toolbars AND security programs running. All this does is conflict with your goal of using the system and slows you down. All you need is a basic browser and email client for 99% of internet activities.

Stay away from those system optimizers, cleaners, speed-up-my-pc utilities, that kind of crap. The best optimizations you can do is keep the amount of temp files and leftovers from defunct installs to a minimum. If you have a mechanical disk, then a defragger that does file-placement optimization is a good thing. SSD? Leave it alone.. Until they can correctly make useful optimization tools.

Don't use the likes of CCleaner until you know exactly what it is targeting. Everytime someone runs this program something goes wrong with their system, usually small subtle things. Annoying things. My recommendation is to disable every single option, and then selectively enable some areas after you've become familiar with what they do. What areas of the system they erase and reset.

CCleaner does little to protect your privacy, forensically. You can go run LastActivityView and see all kinds of privacy-breaching metadata. Windows O/S is a modern-day infiltrator & spy.

Common sense is an incredible resource when using computers and conducting electronic transactions, whatever they may be.

It is also critical to know that anything that leaves your Ethernet Port or Wireless Antenna is subject to being spied upon.

Coming from the old-school 8-bit Atari and Commodore days has taught me that resources are to ALWAYS BE CONSERVED. And to know exactly and precisely what software is running on your system. That's 90% of the battle.

It is important to separate your "plan" or "concept of the system" into 4 major parts.

1- The hardware
2- The operating system
3- 3rd party applications, purchased and freeware alike
4- Your own personal user-self-generated data

This helps in understanding what is where in your system. This helps troubleshooting in crunch-time when something breaks.

My experience has shown that the people that list all kinds of hardware and software in their signature are doing 1 of 2 things:

1- Letting others know their configuration. Letting others know they are expert in the items listed and are available to answer questions.

2- Bragging rights. Being a show-off and being the Joneses' that you must try and keep up with. Mostly this is for ego-boosting.

 

@ Keatah

Great post

 

Missing the third one :

Let people criticize one's setup and try to give people some ideas to build their own setup.

 

Having the paranoid set of mind or even not but thinking one is a safe as can be, can be someone who has experience and education as easy as who is novice.

If anyone can fix problems so that problems have not an impact of much degree, then what is it matter what level of paranoid is at? Each different, but road to destination does not matter as much as getting at destination safe.