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A free lunch?
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By David Fairhurst
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Throughout the last few years the threat of viruses and spammail on computers has been more widely publicised. Even if yourarely use computers you would be surprised the effect it couldhave on your home or business. The cost of protecting you andyour business due to the sheer 'fear factor' imposed on us bythe media seems quite high. However this is not the case. It'sthe cost of not protecting yourself which could be the greatestof all!
With technology advancing so rapidly in order to combat thethreat of hackers, viruses and spyware, often it seems quitedaunting to deal with all the problems we can face in our homesand businesses. Often we simply have no idea what to look outfor and even with our attempts at 'fire-walling' and 'virusscans', unethical hackers are still getting through andcorrupting files on PC's worldwide, and this affects even hugemulti-national corporation, not just the home user. Anunprotected machine can be infected within a matter of minutes -computer experts have tested this theory by setting up acomputer with no protection and putting it on-line. Withintwenty minutes various hackers and bugs were probing the systemlooking for weak spots to get into the system.
Recently it has been suggested that by 2007 the internet willcrash as it will not be able to cope with the sheer volume ofirritating spam and viruses people are putting on it. This seemsunlikely at first but when reports suggest that 70% of theInternet is currently taken up by spam we begin to understandwhy. The time to take a stand against the spread of viruses,spam and spyware is now, and it is down to every user worldwideto do their bit to help.
With businesses giving us incentives to use their serviceson-line (as ultimately it costs them less and it is moreconvenient for us!) the threat of intrusion into our computersis becoming ever more serious. Banks, insurers, and even smalllocal businesses are taking their products and services onlineand taking advantage of e-commerce in order to reach a widermarket. Customer confidence in this new marketplace is not goingto grow unless the average user feels safe online.
There are a lot of free tools out there on the 'web' thatpromise to clean your machine of spyware, malware and viruses.Some of them are good, some of them bad and others are downrightugly!
Unfortunately some unethical hackers have got in on the act ofproviding free software (don't confuse these people with ethicalhackers who provide their services for free by writing softwarethat anyone can use and is genuinely useful to everyone!). Beaware that the 'free spyware removal tool' you have justdownloaded and installed may be just a mask for a backdoor toyour machine!
How do you tell the difference between good 'free' software andbad then? Well...it isn't easy most of the time, but if you lookfor software developed by the 'free and open source foundation'you won't go far wrong, as all of this software is 'open source'and so the code written to make the software is viewable byanyone - this means that unethical hackers can't hide any nastysurprises in the software.
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