Computer security

More and more, these days, it is neccessary for people to be very careful about what their computers are up to when they are not looking. Viruses, trojan horses, spy or mal ware, and scumware all do things that you might not want. This discussion is aimed at providing you with tools to prevent some of this happening.

First and foremost, it is essential that you have an anti-virus package running on your PC.
Examples of this are from Norton, or Sophos (which we use at school), or Kaspersky Labs. You can also obtain some freely available anti-virus packages, e.g. AntiVir personal edition However, you must ensure that you update it regularly, as there is little, if any, point in running an outdated virus scanner.

The next step is setting up a firewall. This is a piece of software that acts as a sentry to your PC, checking what software can access the internet, and what software can access your computer. This is especially important as Trojan Horse software can easily be installed by mistake, allowing hackers to route exploits through your computer!

Good, free firewalls are readily available: try Zone Alarm, or Kerio Personal Firewall

Finally, Spyware, Malware or Scumware. To quote Patrick Kolla:

"Spyware is a relatively new kind of threat that [some] common anti-virus applications do not yet cover. If you see new toolbars in your Internet Explorer that you didn't intentionally install, if your browser crashes, or if you browser start page has changed without your knowing, you most probably have spyware. But even if you don't see anything, you may be infected, because more and more spyware is emerging that is silently tracking your surfing behaviour to create a marketing profile of you that will be sold to advertisement companies. "


The two main free spyware scanners are Ad-Aware and SpyBot.

As an example, Kazaa is well known for logging and sending back information on your file sharing habits! (However, Kazaa Lite does not).