March 2007 Archives

One of the first Anti-Spyware tools available for use and still one of the better ones. SE Personal is a Freeware version for home personal use. The software works pretty really well but does not have an active resident scanner to stop bad software from being installed. You have to manually run the program, update it and scan your system.

If you need something active then you can opt for one of the other editions they offer, such as Professional.

Check it out for when you need to run a scan on your system.

Also, if you want to avoid most spyware just click the "Browser you can Trust" button on this page and use Firefox as your browser instead of IE and save your system from bad software. :)

Firefox - Rediscover the Web

Speaking of Internet Explorer. Are you still using it? You should seriously consider trying out Firefox from the Mozilla Foundation. It's free open source software so you can download it and install it on any or all of your computers, at home or at work (with permission of course).

It's a web browser...for the Internet. That may sound like a condescending sentence but you'd be surprised of how many people I talk to that think Internet Explorer is "The Internet" and not even know that IE is just a piece of software to access the Internet. Microsoft has done a very good job of keeping people in the dark.

One of the biggest reasons for choosing Firefox is that it does not suffer from the weaknesses of sites loading Spyware on your computer, since there is no ActiveX system in Firefox malicious web sites can't use it to install those programs.

Another great reason are what they now call Addons. You can get these free extensions to Firefox to do anything from showing you the weather down on the status bar to having full fledged FTP clients built right in.

So anyhow. Check out that link, download the free software and put the icon next to your Internet Explorer icon, run it and make it your default. If you happen to come across one of the very few sites that does not work in Firefox then you can always load up IE and go to that site and then go back over to Firefox.

I've used Firefox since it was version 0.4 and called Phoenix and I'll never go back to Internet Explorer.

AVG Free Advisor: Free anti-virus, anti-spyware and anti-malware tools

OK, I'm probably going to have a small flood of posts for a few days. Trying to remember some of the useful utilities that I use all the time so I can refer people I work with to this site for the whole list.

Grisoft makes available free versions of both their Antivirus and Antispyware. The Antivirus is free for personal non-commerical use and that works for most people. The Antispyware however only keeps it's residential scanner active for 30 days, after which you need to manually update and scan your computer. It's still good software though you just have to remember to do that if you continue to use Internet Explorer.

UBCD for Windows

I came across this the other day while updating the software I use in my Bart PE disc and this is really a great alternative. Think of UBCD4WIN as Bart PE on Steroids. It's got lots more Antivirus, Antispyware software on it. It has lots more utilities and many more network card drivers built in, even wireless. You should be able to boot most PCs and have network (i.e. Internet) access without having to do anything special. Even a great CD if you just need something to boot up, use the net and not leave a trace. :)

It does require you to have a valid copy of Windows XP and the disc. This utility actually extracts files from the original Windows disc so it can create this little boot CD.

If anybody cared, this is a new replacement blog of mine. I don't write much about my personal nonsense and who wants to read that anyway? From now on I'll be making posts more technology related and stuff that interests me personally.

Maybe it will be more useful now to somebody :)

Oh, and sorry about the ugly template. When I make some time to sit down and customize some things I'll make it look better. However, in the meantime this is functional.