Carol wrote:

>I'll have Zone Alarm running, and then will immediately update Avast. >>


You should be OK as long as you do that before the first run of your
browser. Remember, once you give ZA permission for any program to access
the internet, ZA will thereafter allow anything to come in via that program.

I think it would be more important to have your spyware up and running also
before you first access the internet. Then update your a-v and
anti-spyware. All this before giving the browser access to the internet.

One problem you might face is installing your DSL modem.  Some
installations advise you to disable your a-v and/or firewall before
installing the modem.  Problem is, half-way through the installation, they
then ask you to hook up your phone line.  At that point, you immediately
become vulnerable.

On a friend's new computer recently, I followed that advice to the letter,
only to find that before I could re-enable the firewall, the computer had
been hacked by a trojan.  Seems crazy advice to me.

In that case, since it was a new computer, I reformatted, started all over,
and this time kept ZA active whilst installing the modem.  Seemed to work
OK and this seemed to me much the safer way to go.

Does anyone have a better alternative?

Don Penlington

 From the Beach at Surfers Paradise in sunny Queensland.
Computer tutorials, local scenery,  and other things at my website:
http://users.tpg.com.au/deepend/index1.html

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