GearUp Before entering the Arena of Internet!!

Hi all …

Always use Protection

When we had no internet in my place … ie pre-dawn period of even the Dial-up, we ( me and bro ) were happy with the things going on , i mean the system , no virus stuff ..etc etc… and we didn’t install any of those Anti-Virus or Firewall or anything…
But when we got hold of the nimble Dial-Up , Everything changed..

Today we live in a world were even the slightest mistake on any of the chains ( Antivirus , Settings , Firewall , Browser , Phising site ) could potentially compromise everything … right from the Identity theft to Whole system compromise..

Today is a world were internet is considered to be second Earth or Second Life .. and living there is somewhat different and any wrong move can have devastating effect .. and potentially loose all your second life.

So how do we protect ourselves ??
How do we know we have made mistake ?
How do we know our identity is not been misused ?

Here are the Few basic things you should be having or doing before you even open up the internet..

>>> 1. ) Firewall is a must !! If you are working on a XP machine .. I would greatly suggest you get ZoneAlarm Security suite which comes with Antivirus along with it … its the best XP can get and if you want to add… always have ” Spybot Search & Destroy “. Just in case you you wan to know other alternatives .. just visit www.Filehippo.com , a good site where you can see what are the other software to try and a good site to know whether the current software has  the latest update.

>>> 2.) So with first line of defense setup its up to us to take some of the basic steps to protect ourselves , for reference you can see this article “!0 10 Things You Should Have Stopped Way Before !!!

>>> 3.) Have a good Browser… Yes , When we first used internet there wasnt much choice to make , there were only two most prominent browsers , they were Internet Explorer and the infamous Netscape Navigator.. with the latter now absolute , Internet Explorer has come a long way today .. but there is a catch to it .. since its the browser which comes along with the Operating System , the users of IE is tremendous, So this males the hacking community to go after the most popular ones… Even though today’s IE is very stable and secure , still its the most hunted browser by the Black hat community !!! So now comes the question… Which browser to use ?? If you ask me there are two options … one is the open source ” Firefox ” and another is the Popular ” Opera ” . Each has its own ups and down.. for me opera is a browser which is secure and FAST !! if you are on a GPRS / DIALUP / or anything less that broadband , i would suggest you to go for Opera , Its cache function is the fastest of all browser and many of the features introduced by opera are spectacular and trend setting.. Even i have heard many saying that Firefox has constantly copied some of the features of Opera… So where does Firefox comes ?? — ADD-ONS !! Period.. Yes the Firefox is a browser where add-ons is the thing to go … the collection and functionality of the ADD-Ons are exotic and mind boggling … Firefox is for multi taskers , guys who know what they are doing kind , … Is it secure ?? yes its damn Secure !!!!!..

>>>> 4.) Update Everything .. when was the last time you have thought of updating your OS ?? anti-virus , Firewall … ???

Update

Why do you think they ( the software companies , community ) release updates ??? because there is a hole in the software which needs to be fixed!! So if you haven’t updated for a while , please update it … !!  this will secure your system nearly 95 %. But also keep in mind , when you are doing update after a long time , say more than 6 months , be careful to read the instruction , since sometimes there are chances things to go wrong ..so my best advice is do it one at a time… If you planning to update a anti virus .. do it .. and if its ask for a restart , do it .. and then go for the next one … this would solve most of  the problems . Always have a backup of your documents , files on a rewritable DVD !!!

>>> 5.) With all the above things done .. for the last time , check that your network connection or the personal folders are not shared.. coz even with all the above said , a simple mistake like this can compromise all the personal data s… And also keep a eye over the firewall setting , anti virus setting , coz some times we might have turned them off and would have forgot to revert it back…

Well I think i have covered nearly everything before one must thing of accessing the internet or one must have fulfilled to stay alive in the second world !!!

If i had missed anything please do mention it … and thanks a lot for reading through

If you like my articles , please bookmark my site and visit regularly !!!