Maintaining Computer Health

Hello. I wish I found this website before I painfully spent the whole day
rebooting and re-installing my hard drive! In a span of 1 year I have done
three system reboots on my family computers (shared between teen age boys and
girls) because of viruses, worms, trojans. The latest reboot was due to
severe spyware/adware infestation.
Currently, I have Norton Virus 2003 (for viruses), Linksys Firewall Router
Hardware(for hackers), Spyware Blaster (for spyware prevention), Google Tool
bar (for pop ups). I was also able to down load Window Patch 2 (I think)

So my questions are:

1. What more can I do to prevent this from happening again (in terms of
software protection)? Should I download the other spyware/adware programs
(spy bot, adware, CWshredder) even though I have not yet experienced spyware?
2. What type of websites should I tell my family not to go on (porn, music
sharing, etc..)? Is there a list somewhere?

Thanks in advance for any prevention tips.

Jay wrote on 17-Aug-2004 5:19 PM:
> Hello. I wish I found this website before I painfully spent the whole day
> rebooting and re-installing my hard drive! In a span of 1 year I have done
> three system reboots on my family computers (shared between teen age boys and
> girls) because of viruses, worms, trojans. The latest reboot was due to
> severe spyware/adware infestation.
> Currently, I have Norton Virus 2003 (for viruses), Linksys Firewall Router
> Hardware(for hackers), Spyware Blaster (for spyware prevention), Google Tool
> bar (for pop ups). I was also able to down load Window Patch 2 (I think)
>
> So my questions are:
>
> 1. What more can I do to prevent this from happening again (in terms of
> software protection)? Should I download the other spyware/adware programs
> (spy bot, adware, CWshredder) even though I have not yet experienced spyware?
> 2. What type of websites should I tell my family not to go on (porn, music
> sharing, etc..)? Is there a list somewhere?
>
> Thanks in advance for any prevention tips.

Quik-Fix from www.pivx.com can help close some still-open IE
vulnerabilities. You might consider switching the kids to limited
accounts to prevent their installing software that contains spyware and
to reduce the amount of damage that malware can accomplish if it gets
through your defenses. Also make sure that Windows and IE remain
up-to-date by turning on Automatic Updates.

--
Kent W. England, Microsoft MVP for Windows Security