(April 26, 2013 at 4:20 pm)Cthulhu Dreaming Wrote: I've been deeply involved with computing for a long, long time, and aside from my personal safe computing practices, my number one rule is this: Nobody uses my PC except me. I keep a guest PC for guests to use, firewalled from the rest of my network, with user accounts with no admin privileges. I don't keep anything valuable on this PC, and can re-install it whenever I feel like it.
As far as my own habits go -
- Keep up to date on security and anti-malware patches
- Don't install software from questionable / untrusted / unknown (obviously this is a judgement call)
- Don't visit questionable websites (another judgement call)
- Use browser addons such as AdBlock, Ghostery, NoScript and whitelist exceptions.
- Use virtual machines for any high-risk computing
- Employ a good backup strategy for important data, including offsite storage and archiving.
- Use difficult to exploit passphrases on everything of value wherever possible.
For what it's worth, I rarely see a hit in my anti-virus software (because of safe habits), and I haven't had a known successful infection in so long that I can't remember when it last happened (at least 10 years ago).
I recommend changing your DNS to one hosted by McAfee!
It offers different levels of protection.
Imagination will often carry us to worlds that never were. But without it we go nowhere. - Carl Sagan
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Professional Watcher of The Daily Show and The Colbert Report!