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Rad Community Technical Discussion Boards (Computer Hardware + PC Software) >> Norton Ghost 2003, Ghost v8.x + Ghost Solution Suite (GSS) Discussion Board >> Safe & Secure Internet Experience http://radified.com/cgi-bin/yabb2/YaBB.pl?num=1142358958 Message started by Pleonasm on Mar 14th, 2006 at 11:55am |
Title: Safe & Secure Internet Experience Post by Pleonasm on Mar 14th, 2006 at 11:55am
We all know the basic necessities of ensuring a protected Internet experience, such as using a firewall as well as anti-virus and anti-spyware software. Beyond these fundamental (and important) activities, what can a user do to further enhance the safety and security of her or his Internet activity?
Below is a list of simple tools, tips and techniques that collectively help to deliver a safe and secure Internet experience.
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Title: Re: Safe & Secure Internet Experience Post by Rad on Mar 14th, 2006 at 1:03pm
Excellent, Pleo.
Well organized. Love the bullets. Worth a sticky. |
Title: Re: Safe & Secure Internet Experience Post by MrMagoo on Mar 15th, 2006 at 12:52am
Great list.
While increasing the security settings of Internet Expolorer is a great step, I prefer to use a completly different browser. There are several other browsers with better security and better features available for free, so switching browsers is really a win-win experience. I used Opera (http://www.opera.com) for several years and it just keeps getting better. Recently, my favorite browser has become Firefox (http://www.mozilla.com). Also, I'd like to suggest a free alternative to Total Net Shield. Tor (http://tor.eff.org/) is being devolped by a group of volunteers. It offers reasonable privacy without the hefty price tag of professional programs. Finally, I refuse to let the oppertunity to plug Linux go by. I recently switched my entire computer to Linux as an expirment and have become a total convert. For those seriously concerned about security and privacy, Linux is superior to Windows.[url][/url] |
Title: Re: Safe & Secure Internet Experience Post by Pleonasm on Mar 15th, 2006 at 11:50am
MrMagoo, your post describing Tor is quite interesting and valuable. I hope that the project succeeds, because the world needs a free anonymous Internet communication capability. Based upon my reading of the Tor documentation, I see three primary differences as compared to Total Net Shield.
The first is speed: “Tor is never going to be blazing fast. Your traffic is bouncing through volunteers' computers in various parts of the world, and some bottlenecks and network latency will always be present.” It’s a subjective assessment on my part, but my impression is that Total Net Shield actually improves your Internet speed (about 5% to 10%), probably because all traffic to/from the proxy server is compressed, resulting in higher effective bandwidth. The second is more sinister, and harder to assess. Since the anonymous network is built through an informal association of “volunteers” around the world, there is the possibility that one (or more) of the servers in the chain is actually logging your traffic and thereby reducing your anonymity. To be fair, this concern is mitigated by the fact that there are several ‘hops’ in the communication path, and that the public key used for encryption is changed frequently (but who controls the corresponding private part of the key pair?). The third is ease-of-use and support, a weak point for almost all such free applications and services. Nonetheless, Tor seems to be a good choice for users who only feel the need to occasionally achieve Internet anonymity, or who are not willing or able to pay the subscription fee for a service like Total Net Shield. Internet Explorer 7 – coming for Windows XP later this year - claims to provide a much higher degree of security than version 6. We’ll need to wait and see. Personally, I have the (numerous and confusing) security settings of Internet Explorer 6 configured to be quite restrictive for the general purpose “Internet zone,” and grant “Trusted zone” status to the small set of honorable websites that I often visit. Such an approach has served me well so far, but I admit that it is probably beyond the comfort level of most PC users. Linux may provide a more secure environment than Windows XP, although I have seen technical discussions that argue both positions. Again, the new Windows Vista operating system claims to have a significantly improved security model than XP, but the evidence is yet to be accumulated. A key (and obvious) limitation of Linux is that it is not Windows – i.e., it doesn’t run the breadth of applications that are available for the Windows platform. While there are many ‘equivalent’ applications for Linux (e.g., OpenOffice versus Microsoft Office), it just isn’t the same, and the learning curve to transition to another set of applications has kept me within Windows, for better or worse. |
Title: Re: Safe & Secure Internet Experience Post by MrMagoo on Mar 16th, 2006 at 12:59am
There are definitly drawbacks and risks with Tor, but I felt it was worth a mention.
As a network administrator, I hope for the sake of my customers that IE7 really is as good as Microsoft is talking it up to be. An improvement in security and useability would go a long way toward making my job easier. Meanwhile, you don't have to wait for a better product if you are willing to simply try one of the outstanding browsers available. Most of the features going into IE7 got there because people saw them in other browsers and liked them and Microsoft had to include them to stay competitive. There have been many studies arguing both ways on the security of Windows vs. Linux. Having used them both, managed and secured networks with both, and attempting to exploit both in academic settings, you cannot convince me that Windows is nearly as secure as the most of the Unix and Linux varients. You simply cannot make a system as useable as Microsoft has made without opeing some holes. As far as you and many other people sticking with Windows because it is what you know, I understand. It took me a long time to take the plunge, and it was not without frustration and drawbacks. I understand that for some people there are more important things in life than relearning how to use a computer. I do, however, feel it was worth it. Incidently, what finally convinced me to migrate was the feeling that Microsoft had succeded in trapping me in their product because of the difficulty of transitioning and their refusal to cooperate with open source. I have also found Linux is far easier to use than I thoght it would be and it has a far shallower learning curve than I expected. Perhaps if you tried a Ubuntu Live CD you might soften your views on it. You can try the Live CD without altering your computer. http://www.ubuntu.com/ I'll say nothing more. I hesitated to mention it because I knew a discussion such as this was likely, and it is detracting from the original valuable topic of this post. |
Title: Re: Safe & Secure Internet Experience Post by Pleonasm on Mar 16th, 2006 at 12:15pm
And another security consideration . . .
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Title: Re: Safe & Secure Internet Experience Post by Rad on Mar 20th, 2006 at 5:03pm
From the dept of Computer Science at Princeton Univeristy .. impressive.
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