How To Stop Viruses Spam, Viruses And Hacker _ www.bit.ly/taiho123

Winning the
Online Battle:
How to Stop Spam,
Viruses, and Hackers
Dead in Their Tracks

By Greg Reynolds
Spam Virus Help.com
Net Sense.Info


Introduction
About The Author: Greg Reynolds is a 23-year veteran of the
computer industry and the President of Net Sense, an IT consulting
firm. He has worked on systems integration projects with some of the
largest companies in the U.S. including IBM, Bank of America,
Wachovia, and Bell South.
A graduate of the University of Michigan, Greg has been hands on with
computers since the days when keypunch cards were used for data
entry. When he can get away with it, he likes to work on his notebook
computer out on the back deck overlooking the lake.
His consulting practice with Net Sense focuses on network security and
project management for corporate clients. The Spam Virus Help web
site is geared toward assisting home computer users.
Greg lives outside Raleigh, North Carolina with his wife and six kids.
When the five boys aren’t beating him up in various sporting activities,
he serves as the First Bank of Dad for all their financial needs. And, of
course, his daughter already has the keys to the vault!
About This Book: “Winning the Online Battle: How to stop spam,
viruses and hackers dead in their tracks” is work in progress.
This ebook version is free for anyone to download. You have full usage

and distribution rights.
You do not have the right to reprint, alter, or convert the content of
this book into any other form.
Copyright Notice: This book is copyrighted, March 2004, under the
laws of the United States. All rights reserved.
Version: This edition is Version 1.3. Check the web site for updates or
subscribe to the Net Sense newsletter.


Table of Contents
Winning the Online Battle:............................................................ 1
How to Stop Spam, Viruses, and Hackers Dead in Their Tracks ......... 1
By Greg Reynolds Spam Virus Help.com.................................. 1
Net Sense.Info.................................................................... 1
Table of Contents ..................................................................... 3
Introduction............................................................................. 7
Building Your Castle Walls.......................................................... 9
Start with a strong foundation ................................................. 9
Use the right building materials ..............................................10
Hardware firewall ............................................................11
Software firewall .............................................................12
Protect your castle from spam and viruses ...............................12
How break-ins occur..............................................................13
Let right in .....................................................................13
Hand-delivered ...............................................................14
Piggyback programs ........................................................15
Guessed right .................................................................15
Summary.............................................................................16
Hiring The Right Gatekeeper(s) .................................................17
Trustworthy....................................................................17

Multi-talented .................................................................17
Multi-tasking...................................................................18
Always on duty ...............................................................18
Updated regularly............................................................18
Gates To Guard ....................................................................18
Internet connection point .................................................19
Email .............................................................................19
Attachments ...................................................................19
Backdoors ......................................................................20
Gatekeeping functions ...........................................................20
Selection criteria...................................................................21
Cost ..............................................................................21
Ease of setup..................................................................22
Functionality...................................................................22
Automation ....................................................................23
Upgradeability ................................................................23
Compatibility ..................................................................23
Beware the Universal Solution ................................................24
Summary.............................................................................24
Eliminating Spies .....................................................................25
Adware ..........................................................................25


Spyware.........................................................................26
Malware .........................................................................27
Summary.............................................................................28
Acquiring the Cloak of Invisibility...............................................29
Cookies..........................................................................29
IP Tracking.....................................................................30
Email Address Theft.........................................................31

Online Communication Eavesdropping................................32
Summary.............................................................................33
Use A Multi-layered Defense .....................................................34
Best Practices - Computer Security .........................................34
Best Practices – Firewall ........................................................34
Best Practices - Spam Prevention............................................35
Best Practices – Antivirus Protection........................................35
Best Practices – Spyware/Adware Detection .............................35
Best Practices - Malware Defense............................................35
Summary.............................................................................36
Computer security for your Windows PC ........................................37
Windows security patches ......................................................37
Internet Explorer Security......................................................38
How to secure Internet Explorer .............................................39
Create a multi-layered defense ...............................................40
Spam filters block 93.7% of your spam email ................................41
Good spam filter: Spam Agent................................................41
Better spam filter: Spam Inspector 4.0....................................42
Best Spam Filter: Spam Arrest ...............................................43
Free Spam Filters are great anti-spam blockers..............................46
Free Spam Filters For Home Users ..........................................46
Free Spam Filter #1: Spam Pal...............................................46
Free Spam Filter #2: Spam Weasel .........................................47
Free Spam Filter #3: Spam Buster..........................................48
Spam Prevention Tips: Anti-Spam Do's & Don'ts ............................49
Spam Prevention rules to live by:......................................49
Don't post your email address online.......................................49
Don't open spam, ever ..........................................................49
Don't buy anything from spam messages.................................50
Don't use spam "remove me" links..........................................50

Do use an anti-spam filter or spam blocker ..............................50
Antivirus software defeats the virus epidemic.................................52
Antivirus Review Criteria........................................................52
Our Good Antivirus Software Pick: ..........................................53
McAfee VirusScan (#3 overall) ...............................................53
Our Better Antivirus Software Pick: .........................................54
Panda Titanium Antivirus 2004 (#2 overall) .............................54


Our Best Antivirus Software Pick: ...........................................54
Kaspersky Anti-Virus Personal Pro (#1 overall).........................54
Norton Antivirus 2004: Free Download Info ...................................57
Norton AntiVirus software ......................................................57
Product Overview..................................................................57
Product Features...................................................................57
Product Problems..................................................................58
Product Pricing .....................................................................58
Free Download .....................................................................59
Norton Antivirus 2004 Update ...........................................59
Free Antivirus Software ...............................................................60
Free Antivirus Software #1: ...................................................60
AVG Anti-virus......................................................................60
Free Antivirus Software #2: ...................................................61
AntiVir Personal Edition .........................................................61
Free Antivirus Software .........................................................62
Free Anti Virus Downloads .....................................................63
Free Antivirus Download #1:..................................................63
Panda Titanium Anti-virus ......................................................63
Free Antivirus Download #2:..................................................64
Kaspersky Anti-virus .............................................................64

Free Antivirus Download #3 ...................................................65
Norton Anti-Virus 2004..........................................................65
Free Virus Scan Websites ............................................................67
Trend Micro HouseCall ...........................................................67
Kaspersky Virus Checker........................................................68
Need a free virus scan?....................................................68
How to do your Free Virus Check.......................................69
BitDefender Free Online Virus Scan .........................................69
Panda ActiveScan - Free Online Scanner ..................................70
Spyware removal protects your privacy.........................................71
What is Spyware?............................................................71
How you got infected with Spyware ...................................72
Why you want spyware removal........................................72
Spyware Removal Review Criteria ...........................................73
Good Spyware Removal Pick: .................................................73
X-Cleaner from X-Block (#3 Overall) .......................................73
Better Spyware Removal Pick:................................................74
Spy-Killer V3.0 (#2 Overall)...................................................74
Best Spyware Removal Pick: ..................................................76
PestPatrol (#1 Overall)..........................................................76
Free Spyware Removal Programs .................................................78
Adware .............................................................................78
Spyware ...........................................................................78


Free Spyware Removal #1 .....................................................79
Lavasoft's AdAware ...............................................................79
Where to download AdAware ...............................................80
Free Spyware Removal #2 .....................................................80
Spybot Search & Destroy .......................................................80

Where to download Spybot Search & Destroy .....................82
Free Spyware Removal #3 .....................................................82
PestPatrol (#1 Overall)..........................................................82
Spybot Search & Destroy nails 99% of spy bots .............................84
Spybot Home .......................................................................84
Why Spybot S&D gets rave reviews.........................................84
Where to download Spybot Search & Destroy ...........................85
Where to get updates............................................................85
Where to get Spybot SD questions answered ...........................86
A Personal firewall keeps you safe online.......................................87
A personal firewall blocks, on average, three hack scans a day...87
What is a firewall?.................................................................87
How a firewall works .............................................................87
Hardware firewall..................................................................88
Software firewall...................................................................88
Free personal firewall ............................................................89
Where you can get a free firewall............................................89
Free Firewall Software.................................................................90
Personal Firewall Software #1 ................................................90
Zone Alarm (#1 overall) ........................................................90
Personal Firewall Software #2 ................................................91
Tiny Personal Firewall (#2 overall) ..........................................91
Personal Firewall Software #3 ................................................92
Norton Personal Firewall 2004 (#3 overall) ..............................92
Firewall Downloads ...............................................................92
BlackICE Firewall ..................................................................93
Outpost Firewall....................................................................93
Stay Safe in Your Castle ...........................................................95
Resource Links Save You Time & Money .....................................96
Spam Resources ...................................................................96

Antivirus Resources...............................................................96
Spyware Resources ...............................................................97
Firewall Resources ................................................................97
Ebook Resources ..................................................................98
Computer Resources .............................................................98
Webmaster Resources ...........................................................99
Security Resources................................................................99
Additional Resources .............................................................99


Introduction
The key to winning the online battle is to think medieval. And no,
that’s not really as odd as it sounds.
You need to be a little Machiavellian – building up your castle walls,
hiring the right gatekeeper, eliminating spies, and acquiring the cloak
of invisibility – to win the online battle.
Then, once you have good defenses in place, you can protect easily
protect yourself while you venture online as long as you keep your
head about you.
And how do you do that?
Simple. You just use common sense:
•
•
•
•

You
You
You
You

don’t
don’t
don’t
don’t

leave the front door open at your castle.
let anyone in unless they know the password.
let spies leak valuable information.
let anyone see where you’re going.

So how does that translate to staying safe online?
You put systematic procedures in place that watch your back. When
you are connected to the Internet, no one can possibly keep up with
all the communication process going on between your computer and
the outside world.
However, by using a combination of specialized programs, you can put
a multi-layered defense that monitors all the communications to and
from your computer and keeps your castle safe.
Every online computer needs the following:
•
•
•
•

Personal firewall
Spam filtering
Antivirus protection
Spyware/malware detection

With these tools you can easily win the online battle and stop spam,
viruses, and hackers in their tracks. The next few chapters will walk
you through the basic concepts followed by chapters describing how


these products work, covering best practices, and providing detailed
product information.


Building Your Castle Walls
In medieval times, castle walls provided a good defense against
attackers. Sure, there were still some risks such as bad guys scaling
the walls, sneaking in the gates, or shooting flaming arrows over the
walls. But, all in all, living behind strong walls was a lot safer than
being unprotected.
The same holds true today. Your computer is your online home and it
needs to be a fortress to protect you from attack.
In other words, PC = Home = Castle.
So, how do you go about turning your computer into a fortress? You
begin by building your castle walls. We’ll get to guarding the gates,
becoming invisible, and knocking off pesky spies in future chapters.

Start with a strong foundation
To build strong castle walls, you first need a good foundation. With
your computer, that means having your hardware and software up-todate, all the holes in your computer’s operating system plugged, and
any necessary patches applied.
Otherwise, your foundation will be weak because the building blocks
weren’t strong enough to handle the load. The unpatched operating
system means the mortar was weak, causing holes and weak spots to
be left in your castle walls.

Today’s programs place more demands on your computer than ever
before. You need a fast enough processor, sufficient memory, and a
large enough disk drive to handle all the work. Otherwise, you won’t
have enough men to defend your castle.
Most home computers today come with enough processing power, but
are woefully short of memory. Imagine defending your castle with
soldiers who couldn’t remember what they were supposed to do and
had to stop and think about it before acting.


By then, things may have gotten out of control. Or, worse yet,
everything will happen in slow motion as your computer slows to a
crawl.
Windows computers need a ton of memory to handle the many
processes they are running simultaneously. When you build your castle
walls, you’ll be adding even more tasks to their to-do list.
Do your computer a favor and give it sufficient memory to do all the
jobs quickly and easily.
At a minimum, Windows XP systems should have 512k of memory. By
upgrading your computer’s RAM memory to that level, you’ll ensure
that every task is handled swiftly.
Likewise, having enough disk space is critical to your system’s
performance. Today’s software programs are enormous compared to
the programs in use a decade ago.
As you add more files to your hard drive, the response time slows as
more data is searched to find what is needed. If you find your system
slowing down, check and make sure that you have enough space
available on your hard drive.
For more information about all the various performance settings to
check and adjust on your computer, see the Chapter on “PC Settings Best Practices”.

Use the right building materials
Once a good foundation is in place, it’s necessary to use quality
materials to build your castle walls. The basic building blocks are:
•
•
•
•

Hardware firewall
Software firewall
Antivirus protection
Spam prevention

A computer firewall is simply a hardware device or software program
that allows into your computer only the programs and data you decide
are acceptable. Firewalls are the best defense a computer can have.


Simply put, a firewall detects, rejects, and protects.

Hardware firewall
A hardware firewall is an external device that resides outside your
computer. A software firewall is a program that resides inside your
computer.
Both types of firewalls analyze all incoming and outgoing traffic
according to preset rules. You can also add additional instructions to
your firewall that will allow certain types of additional communication.
Using a hardware firewall on a home computer is rare as they are
designed to isolate and protect computer networks. Taking our castle

walls analogy a little bit further, these are like walls that protect an
entire town or city.
In some cases though, you might use a hardware firewall at home.
Many people network their home computers together and connect to
the Internet through a single, high-speed connection, usually cable or
DSL.
Several manufacturers include firewalls within the cable/DSL routers
sold in most home electronics stores.
These hardware firewalls disguise everything behind them with their
own unique addresses, called subnets. Communication like this uses
Network Address Translation (NAT).
NAT essentially hides you from prying eyes outside, just as if you were
behind tall castle walls.
A firewall isolates your computer from the Internet by inspecting each
piece of data – inbound or outbound – as it reaches the firewall. It
uses certain basic rules to decide what goes through and what doesn’t.
Each little package of data must correctly identify itself by specifying a
destination address and a port number on that computer.
It must also contain its originating address and the port number from
which it was sent. Think of it as the address information on a regular
envelope – both return address and recipient.


Since every data package contains this address information, a firewall
can selectively accept or reject the various packages of data it
receives.
Certain rules specify which ports are valid destinations on your
computer. Other rules specify which ports are valid senders from your
computer.
Each data packages also contains a little snippet which states whether

it is initiating a conversation or acknowledging one that is already
taking place. Rules stipulate how data conversations can be initiated
and how they must be acknowledged.
Your firewall knows which packages match its rules and are therefore
acceptable. All other packages are refused delivery and go no further
than the firewall.

Software firewall
A software firewall performs the same functions as a hardware firewall.
It places a wall of code in front of all data transmissions instead of a
physical device that essentially contains its own wall of code.
Either type of firewall will provide the necessary castle walls you need
for your computer. In addition, you’ll need to strengthen your castle
walls with antivirus protection and spam prevention.

Protect your castle from spam and viruses
You’ll want your walls to hold up to all types of bad weather, such as a
spam deluge, and any type of attack hurled against it, such as a virus
outbreak.
Spam is an astronomical problem these days. Brightmail reports that
spam has climbed from 42% of all email in February 2003 to 61% in
January 2004.
Considering that overall email usage is growing at a rapid rate, the
volume of spam has become a deluge of biblical proportions.


To ensure that your castle walls stay strong, it’s very important to
block or filter out all incoming spam. You certainly don’t want this stuff
coming inside your castle, so it makes sense to divert it away from
your computer.

A good spam blocker will keep 90-95% of spam from fouling your
mailbox. That goes a long way toward keeping your castle walls strong
because a significant percentage of spam messages carry viruses and
malware that can harm your computer.
Likewise, a good virus protection program will catch the vast majority
of infected messages. Without one, you are asking for trouble by
leaving major gaps in your castle walls.
However, virus programs can never be perfect because each new virus
has a unique signature that must be added to your virus protection
programs scanning database before it can be detected and
quarantined.
That’s why it’s so important to keep your operating system and your
applications patched with the latest updates to close the holes these
viruses are designed to exploit.
Later on, we’ll cover spam and antivirus protection in depth and then
lay out best practices to follow to keep your castle safe. Right now
though, we need to look at the remaining weak points in your castle
walls.

How break-ins occur
Your castle walls are vulnerable at certain weak points like the Internet
connection point and your communications gateway. Break-ins can
occur in the following ways:
•
•
•
•

Let right in
Hand-delivered

Piggy back
Guessed right

Let right in


One way bad things can get inside your castle is by being let right in.
For example, if you had no defenses at all or had only partial defenses
in place.
You can easily infect your PC simply by inserting a corrupted floppy
disk or other removable media. Your defenses must include protection
from trusted sources.
If you don’t have a good antivirus program in place that scans all your
incoming email, you are effectively letting in any virus that shows up
at your door. Then it’s only a matter of time before you make a
mistake and click on the wrong message, thereby triggering the
release of the virus.
Another way that a potential intruder can be let right in besides having
little or no defenses in place is via social engineering or “phishing.” For
instance, you might get an email from someone purporting to be your
ISP or a credit card provider, etc.
You are asked to reveal information about yourself and your account
access in order to verify your account. Obviously, never respond to
these types of email because these are just nefarious individuals
phishing around for information so that they can access your computer
and/or your accounts.

Hand-delivered
“Hand-delivered” messages are another way that your defenses can be
breached. By hand-delivered, I mean messages from a trusted source

that contain malware, i.e. code that damages your computer or does
sneaky things.
Some malicious code can spy out information within your PC and
report back to outside computers on what it finds.
Needless to say, this type of code is unethical if not outright illegal.
Nevertheless, it exists and you have to protect yourself against it.
Many of the better antivirus packages can detect these malicious code
packages.
In addition, there are also software programs that can detect and
remove these programs from your system. These are covered on
Spyware/Adware protection.


Piggyback programs
A third way that break-ins can happen is through piggyback programs.
Here, certain less than reputable companies include extra code in their
downloads that are nothing more than spyware.
This type of program reports back to another computer on certain
aspects of your computer usage.
They are used primarily to trigger annoying popup advertising when
you are online, but they also can be used to take control of your
browser and take you to sites that you have no intention of visiting.
Again, there are good programs available to detect these little
monsters and eliminate them before they can do any more damage.

Guessed right
Guessing right is another way that your computer can be breached.
It’s somewhat akin to firing an arrow over the castle walls and striking
an unseen target.
A potential intruder scans the Internet for likely targets and tries

thousands of addresses per hour automatically. By chance, your
address is selected and the hacker tries to gain admittance to your
system.
They can quickly try dozens of automated probes looking for weak
spots in your defenses.
Without the correct implementation of every level of security on your
PC, a potential intruder can keep trying to get in until they finally
stumble across an opening or guess right on a necessary password.
That’s why having strong defenses are so important. A good firewall
will keep them at bay, and if necessary, disconnect them after
repeated intrusion attempts.


Summary
While keeping your computer in good shape – patched and ready to go
– is a necessary foundation for your castle, a good firewall provides
the essential building blocks of your castle walls.
Without strong castle walls, you will eventually suffer a breach and
possibly lose valuable information to a hacker or even lose all your
data if/when a virus attacks your PC. Deploying spam blocking and
virus protection are a must for keeping your castle walls intact.
However, there’s one important consideration that’s critical to
maintaining a strong defense against intrusion and that’s selecting the
right gatekeeper. Let’s move on to the next chapter and see just how
to make the right choice.


Hiring The Right Gatekeeper(s)
Having a gatekeeper controlling access to the inside of your castle is
very important, but selecting the right one is critical. And, because

there are actually several gates in and out of your computer, you’ll
need to take care in selecting the best gatekeepers for each one.
First, let’s take a look at the qualities a gatekeeper should possess.
Your gatekeeper should be:
•
•
•
•
•

Trustworthy
Multi-talented
Multi-tasking
Always on duty
Updated regularly

Trustworthy
By trustworthy, I mean that the program shouldn’t be a shill for other
products from the same vendor. For example, a free version of a
program shouldn’t constantly harp about upgrading to the paid
version.
A gatekeeping program shouldn’t be reporting back to the vendor
about your activities unless you consciously agree. For example, some
antivirus programs report their data back to their company, but never
ask you if that’s OK with you.
And, don’t even get me started about burying reporting notifications
deep within the legalese.

Multi-talented
A multitalented gatekeeper isn’t one that can perform multiple

gatekeeping functions such as spam filtering AND antivirus protection.
Rather, it’s an intelligent program that makes decisions (albeit minor
ones) independently.
It shouldn’t need to be told to go get updates. The program should be
able to decide that it is better to be safe than sorry when making


decisions. And, your gatekeeper should always have your best
interests at heart, not those of its creator.

Multi-tasking
Your gatekeeper should be capable of doing many things at the same
time. Too many programs have single track tasking, i.e. they stop
doing their job while they go off to get an update or they’re disabled
while those update files are copied.
Granted, it’s a small thing, but it’s a security exposure nonetheless.

Always on duty
Your gatekeeper should always be functioning, even immediately after
installation. The program should be designed to default to place itself
in your Startup folder so that every time you turn on your computer,
your gatekeeper is working.
If you leave your computer on 24x7, then the gatekeeping program
should stay active regardless of any hibernate or suspend programs.

Updated regularly
New versions should come out every year. Interim updates with new
features should be available easily and at no extra charge.
Dead end upgrade paths (you must upgrade to the new Super Pro
version because the Pro version is discontinued and support is being

withdrawn immediately) are verboten.

Gates To Guard
Which gateways to and from your castle need a gatekeeper?
•
•
•

Internet connection point
Email
Attachments


•
•

Removable media
Backdoors

Internet connection point
Your Internet connection, whether it’s dialup or always on like cable or
DSL, is your gateway to the world.
As we discussed in the previous chapter, your best castle defense is to
make your Internet connection point as hard to penetrate as possible.
When you surf the Internet, your location (IP address) is part of the
communication you exchange with every website.
Since you are broadcasting your address, it makes sense to be
prepared for visitors.

Email

Your email arrives through your Internet connection point, but it
contains many items that simply cannot be completely checked as
they arrive.
One example is any links within an email message. Your main
gatekeeper can’t examine everything and this is one area that needs
watching.
A second is HTML code within an email that reports back to its sender
whether you have opened the mail, how long you looked at it, and
other possibly sensitive information.
Obviously, you want to control this type of gateway communication
even though it’s not necessarily harmful.

Attachments
Email attachments are a huge area of exposure. Even trusted friends
can inadvertently send you a virus-infected attachment.


And of course, there seems to be thousands of other folks out there
who delight in sending viruses to as many people as possible.
So, it’s critical that all of your mail be examined by a separate
gatekeeper before you open it and, if you want your friends to still like
you, before you send something as well.

Backdoors
Your computer’s backdoors are the many communication ports that it
possesses - all 65,535 of them.
Granted, most of these ports aren’t used very often, but that doesn’t
mean they should be left open.
Remember in the last chapter where we discussed how your firewall
examines communications in part by checking what the destination

port of the data packets is and which port on the opposite computer
sent it?
Well, there are sophisticated automated tools which can probe all of
your computer ports in less than four minutes.
So, anyone can simply and quickly determine which backdoor to your
castle might be left open and unwatched by any gatekeeper.
And of course, once they gain access, you’ll have a dickens of a time
getting rid of them!

Gatekeeping functions
And what are the gatekeeper’s jobs?
•
•
•
•

Controlling who and what comes and goes (firewall)
Approving any new requests to go outside (firewall)
Identifying and locking up troublemakers (virus protection)
Keeping out the riffraff (spam blocker)

As we’ve discussed, different needs means multiple gate keepers.
Firewall hardware and firewall software do a great job of providing


strong castle walls and tightly monitoring traffic through the main
gateways.
A software firewall will also routinely request your approval for any
new application before it grants Internet access. This prevents any
type of spy code or malicious program from being able to sneak away

with your personal information.
It also blocks executable code from launching your mail program and
unleashing a barrage of virus-laden emails to your entire email
address book.
Your virus protection gatekeeper will impound any known
troublemakers and prevent them from spreading their payload within
your castle.
A spam gatekeeper will block annoying or offensive messages and
either keep them from entering your castle at all or relegating them to
the junk bin within your email program.
Together, these four gatekeepers will do a fabulous job of keeping you
safe within your castle walls.

Selection criteria
And what are the main selection criteria for a good gatekeeper?
•
•
•
•
•
•

Cost
Ease of setup
Functionality
Automation
Upgradeability
Compatibility

Cost

There are free and inexpensive gatekeepers that do a great job.
However, the old saying that “you get what you pay for” holds true in
the computer world as well.


Most free programs that provide the gatekeepers have fewer features
than their commercial brethren.
Oftentimes, the free program is offered by the same vendor and is
intended as a stepping stone to entice you to use their paid product.
Sometimes, these programs come with annoying advertising blurbs or
expire after a free trial period. Nevertheless, using a free gatekeeper
program is way better than not using one at all.
Also, the highest priced offering is not necessarily the best. Check our
chapters on recommended products for insight as to the most costappropriate firewall, antivirus, or spam solution for you.

Ease of setup
Ease of setup is another important criterion. I sometimes think that
there is an evil interface demon that exists solely to kludge up
programs by making them non-user friendly.
A good setup program is intuitive, i.e. it has a good understanding of
what you want to achieve and the default settings are therefore
appropriate for most users. Bad setup programs require you to answer
a seemingly endless list of questions before settings are determined.

Functionality
Functionality is critical in any application controlling a gateway.
Feature set choices should be robust and at the same time, enough
information should be provided to make understanding and enabling
the extra functions a breeze.
If a gatekeeping program lacks certain functions, it won’t be able to

perform all the expected tasks.
Prime examples of this are most antivirus programs. They fail to
provide more than limited functionality in their ability to clean infected
files.
It’s not that doing so is impossible; it’s just that for many of these
vendors, cleaning infected files is not a priority.


One program, Kaspersky Anti-Virus Personal Pro, has the ability to
clean almost any infected file. The real question is - why don’t the
other antivirus programs?

Automation
Another key factor is automation. A program should function
independently and interrupt/alert you only when absolutely necessary.
A useful feature is one where you can set the alert threshold level to
the settings you prefer instead of being stuck with what someone else
assumed you would like.
Automation also means that a gatekeeper program like spam or
antivirus protection that needs update signature files will get the
required updates either on a regular schedule or as alerted by its
source.

Upgradeability
A gatekeeper program should offer a smooth upgrade path. Examples
include an upgrade from a free version to a paid version that doesn’t
require removing the first one, and also a simple way to upgrade to
the latest version of a program.
It goes without saying that the upgrade path should be only a fraction
of the cost of buying the new version outright.

Compatibility
Your gatekeepers should coexist nicely. You wouldn’t want a program
that repeatedly crashed other programs that you were using nor one
that hogged so many system resources that other programs slowed to
a crawl.


Beware the Universal Solution
A universal gatekeeping solution is not the best approach. Many
companies offer combination programs that provide antivirus
protection and spam filtering at the same time.
Unfortunately, they usually don’t do a great job at either one.
You want best-of-breed solutions in each of these critical gatekeeping
roles, not a compromise solution that the marketing department
dreamed up. See the various product reviews for additional
information.

Summary
Selecting the right gatekeeper is critical to properly defending your
castle against sneak attacks (hackers), invasions (spam), diseases
(viruses), and spies (adware).
As we review the various product offerings that fulfill these vital
gatekeeping functions, remember just how important the gatekeeper
job is.
Be sure to select yours carefully and prudently.


Eliminating Spies
In medieval times, every castle had to beware of spies who might

betray their secrets to the outside world. Today is no different. There
are active spies inside your computer castle right now.
It’s time to be a little bit Machiavellian and start eliminating spies from
your computer.
These spy programs fall into three broad categories:
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•
•

Adware
Spyware
Malware

Adware
The most common type of spy you’ll encounter is what’s known as
adware. Adware is any software application in which advertising
banners are displayed while the program is running.
These applications include additional code that delivers the ads, which
appear as pop-up windows or through a bar or panel that appears on a
computer screen.
The justification for adware is that it helps recover programming
development cost for some freeware or shareware application that has
been downloaded to your computer, i.e., it helps to hold down the cost
for the user.
Adware has been criticized for occasionally including code that tracks a
user's personal information and passes it on to third parties, without
your authorization or knowledge.
Ads are often tailored based on your surfing habits or closely matched
to the website you are visiting at the time.
If you think about adware in the context of TV viewing, it’s as if the TV

was observing your lifestyle and displaying ads based on what it
observed about you as you watched TV.