Secure your computer

I don’t have anything good to say about anything today, and I’m fairly disgusted with economics and politics, both in the CNMI and elsewhere, so I’m going to follow up on some computer stuff again this week.

I’d like to share my personal laundry list of computer security software with you. I’m skipping the anti-virus realm; that topic gets lots of press these days so I don’t have any comments to add to the heap.

In my opinion it’s wise for PC users to use ALL, not just some, of the following programs.

1. Security utility: WinPatrol
www.WinPatrol.com
Price: Free

“Scotty the watchdog” safeguards your computer from browser hijacks and from unauthorized program installations. You’ll get a warning if some sneaky software has attempted to change your “home page” setting, which is a valuable red flag to let you know that something is amiss.

You also get a convenient list, with explanations, about programs that are running on your computer, and you can disable selected programs from launching when you boot up; yes, you can do this using the Windows XP operating system as well if you can remember how to navigate to the right place (but why bother?). This is a great program. Scotty even barks when you click him. Woof woof.

2. Anti-spyware: Ad-aware
www.lavasoftusa.com
Price: Free

This is easy to use, and it runs faster than any of my other anti-spyware utilities. Actually, I have not seen it catch any serious threats, but my other tools may have just caught them first. Ad-aware’s simplicity and speed, however, make it worth having no matter what.

3. Anti-spyware: Spybot Search and Destroy
www.safer-networking.org
Price: Free

This is probably the most popular anti-spyware program of them all. Free and powerful…but certainly not perfect, and I would not use this alone to guard against spyware. In fact, I wouldn’t rely on any single anti-spyware program, it seems to me like it takes all three of my picks (Ad-aware, Spybot, and, next entry below, Spy Sweeper) to have any meaningful measure of protection.

4. Anti-spyware: Spy Sweeper
www.webroot.com
Price: $29.95 per year

The worst software problem I ever had was a serious problem with a nasty piece of spyware. Ad-aware and Spybot couldn’t even detect it, let alone fix it. My anti-virus (as usual) was useless.

Well, happy ending, Spy Sweeper found the problem, which enabled me to fix it. That alone was worth far more than the subscription price.

Spy Sweeper also has “shields” that it puts up to safeguard you from getting infected in the first place, and it prevents sneaky web sites from surreptitiously adding their URL’s to your “favorites” list.

5. Security and anti-popup utility: PopUpCop
www.popupcop.com
Price: Free

There’s a 30-day free trial version, which is what hooked me on this program. The purchase price is a one-shot deal, not a yearly subscription.

PopUpCop has a lot of serious features and they are very well laid-out, so even a dunderhead like me can use them. PopUpCop enables you to block all sorts of potential nasties such as scripts, flash animation (which I LOATH), ActiveX controls, and Java applets. There’s a bit of trial and error in learning how to use this, but getting that confounded flash animation out of my face, keeping those popups off my screen, and safeguarding me against malicious code was worth a few minutes of poking around and configuring stuff.

I don’t know many people who use this program, so I guess I’m a contrarian on this one.

6. Firewall: ZoneAlarm
www.zonelabs.com
Price: Free

The free version isn’t as powerful as the pay version, but it seems to take care of the basics pretty well, particularly blocking programs from dialing out unless you approve them.

(Ed Stephens, Jr. is an economist and columnist for the Saipan Tribune. Ed4Saipan@yahoo.com)