Richard writes:

<<I use my computer mostly for email.

Lots of Yahoo mail lists..

I do some browsing, but not a lot, and usually news or
music sources.

I use MSN which apparently has some anti-virus checking
on email and the free version of AVG antivirus.

Is that enough?>>

In a word, ---No.

Yahoo is a prime target for hackers, spammers, etc, simply because of its
popularity.

If, by "music sources" you mean file-sharing, downloading music files, this
is a very high-risk area, and you should be ready and willing to reformat
your hard drive frequently.

MSN I don't know anything about, that depends just what you're downloading.
Being popular, it's probably subject to the same risks.  With Microsoft's
reputation for security (or lack thereof) I'd put it also in the
medium-to-high risk area.

I don't personally use any of these areas.

Soooo---yes you need all the protection you can get.

A computer I looked at recently, where its owner had much the same usage as
yourself, turned out to have over 200 items of spyware, trojans, etc, none
of which he had the slightest inkling about.  Except the thing had ground
almost to a halt.  All these things were obviously transmitting info out of
his computer, and ticking away merrily in the background, thus slowing his
browsing down to a crawl.

At the very least, get yourself a decent firewall such as Zone Alarm (free).

You don't say whether you have broadband or dialup.  If broadband, multiply
my comments by 4.

Why?  Because hackers don't usually bother too much with dialups, because
of the slowness. With broadband, you're a sitting duck.  But that's not to
say the subject of security should be ignored by dialup users ---of which
I'm still one. We're still pretty vulnerable.

There's plenty of excellent security freeware out there, as repeatedly
mentioned in this Digest. Help yourself to it.

My choice, for what it's worth:

Spyware Guard or Spyware Blaster, AdAware, Spybot, Zone Alarm, TrojanHunter
(this one's not free), HijackThis, A-Squared, AVG or Avast.  Each has its
weak and strong points.

Currently I'm trialling:
  Mwav (as a backup antivirus---it uses the excellent Kaspersky engine)

TDS3 Trojan hunter. It looks impressive. Opens with "Good morning Operator.
Would you like a coffee?"
I reply "yes please" but to no avail. ah well, such is life in the demo world.

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