password security

[Guest]

When I am on the internet using a password-protected Administrator account,
am I moderately safe from hackers/spies and the other bad guys until the
password is cracked ? TIA. John

 

[JS]

NO!

JS

"I agree that you have to be careful abou"

 

[Ken Blake, MVP]

When I am on the internet using a password-protected Administrator account,
am I moderately safe from hackers/spies and the other bad guys until the
password is cracked ? TIA. John

No. The fact that you are using an administrator account is
irrelevant, and the fact that it is password-protected is irrelevant.
Internet protection has nothing to do with either of these.

 

[Doug Knox - [MS-MVP]]

No, because any application, ActiveX control or other executable that you
may launch in the process of browsing is running with Administrator level
credentials. Anything you can do, it can do.

 

[Vanguard]

When I am on the internet using a password-protected Administrator
account,
am I moderately safe from hackers/spies and the other bad guys until
the
password is cracked ?

You are already logged in. Malware doesn't require that it logs you out
and then it logs back in. If you download and run the pests then they
can act immediately WHILE you are logged in. They don't care what is
your login password. Some don't even require you to be logged in so
your Windows login password is irrelevant to them. If you don't use
protection while surfing or when installing any software, especially
from unknown or untrusted sources, expect to get infected.

P.S.
You couldn't pick a real moniker for yourself and had to make it
something of a sub-topic to your Subject?

 

[Guest]

Many thanks to those who responded. To Vanguard: I am sorry that I do not
know enough of the etiquette to understand your P.S., If you care to tell me,
I would appreciate knowing where I went wrong - and I apologize anyhow.
John

 

[Vanguard]

"I agree that you have to be careful abou"

Many thanks to those who responded. To Vanguard: I am sorry that I
do not
know enough of the etiquette to understand your P.S., If you care to
tell me,
I would appreciate knowing where I went wrong - and I apologize
anyhow.

In an input field for username, your name, display name, or what you
chose to call yourself (i.e., your moniker), don't describe yourself or
enumerate an opinion. Just pick a name, and use something that helps
identify yourself (just "John" won't help differentiate you from any
other John - but "John" is certainly a better *name* than "I agree that
you have to be careful abou" which got so long that it got truncated by
Microsoft's web form).

If you are concerned about getting infected or don't trust whatever
layered suite of security software that you have implemented (assuming
you do have some) then you might look into using Sandboxie to help
protect you from infection, or do your browsing within a virtual machine
(VMWware Server and Virtual PC are free). If a pest gets installed,
it'll be in the VM and when you exit the VM then the pest is isolated or
gone (if the VM allows reverting to a prior snapshot).

VMWare Server lets you save a snapshot, so create one after installing
the OS and doing all the updates to give you a base state to snapshot.
When done with the VM and you want to revert back to your base state
snapshot to undo everything that changed. Virtual PC doesn't have a
snapshot feature but you could create your base state VM and then save a
backup of the folder under which VPC saves the files for that VM.
Sandboxie is something akin to a VM but it runs under your current OS
(rather than in a separate instance of the OS as do VMWare and VPC).
Just be aware that after the one-month trial that Sandboxie will degrade
into nagware: still fully functional but it will bitch occasionally
trying to prompt you to buy it. There is also Microsoft's SteadyState
(free) that gives you a protected environment that you can let get
polluted and then reboot to get back to your clean environment. It
works very similar to ShadowSurfer (but I don't think ShadowSurfer is
free anymore).