Personal Computer Security: Using Uncommon Sense

Good article with sound advice. Thanks for posting it.

I found this particularly interesting:

Another trap to avoid are the TV commercials promoting a faster computer free of viruses and spyware. These are actually ransomware scams where the program doesn’t actually clean anything, but keeps demanding money to keep your computer safe. The parent company also theatens anyone that reviews them in a negative light, which is why I have not named them directly in this article. Not surprising, considering their reputation. There are many malware programs pretending to protect your security; research them first before using any of them.

I have seen the TV commercial for "MyCleanPC". I didn't realize that it was owned by CyberDefender, which reminded me of the article by Microsoft MVP Steve Burn: ******* Blog: CyberDefender: Want your money back? Forget it!.

Corrine said:

. . . the article by Microsoft MVP Steve Burn: ******* Blog: CyberDefender: Want your money back? Forget it!.

It appears that the domain for Microsoft MVP Steve Burn's h_pHOSTS is in the ban list here.

The article was interesting, I passed it on to a normal user who I know has had some problems in the past.

The sad thing of it, was in the comments section where it started to degrade into an OS Jihad about Linux and windows and the like.

To be honest, what has hurt Windows OS in general is the fact that it is coming out on a lot of computers at a lower price point, it took the wind out of Macintosh when Windows started adopting more of the nuiances of Mac's OS and finally just having the coding tools out there for even the most neophyte type person to start coding things.

The funny thing is... Macintosh started out having the most virus problems during its heyday because PCs had only DOS from IBM and not a nice Windows OS until after Windows 95 came out and made accessibility to the internet much easier than Mac OS 6 did until later on.

While PCs did have networking abilities, it wasn't until Windows 95 started to take steam that really made Windows become the front runner for businesses, especially with cheaper hardware over the Mac. Mac also had its niche market which didn't spill over much for others.

Now that PCs are literally 'dime a dozen' and coding malware/viruses for it is easy, it is the easier target to hit. The really funny thing I found was the Linux advocate who touted Linux's superiority neglected to understand that the direction of the article was towards the 'average user' who don't want to deal with 'setting things up'. Linux is not a horribly difficult OS, but it lends itself better for people in the IT world more than John Q Public who wants a black box that works. And unfortunately, with a large population leaning towards Windows or Mac, you don't have many people looking actively for Linux distro installers.