Computer Security –
Part 2Now that we have your computer protected from viruses and the like, let’s talk about the other things that can cause you problems. One issue is spyware, which are just cookies placed in your computer to track sites you visit. They call them data miners, and companies use them to track what sites you visit for marketing purposes. In a sense, they are harmless. But do you really want Google or virtually every site you visit putting a cookie in your computer so they can track where you go? It’s none of their business.
Cookies
The most important thing you can do is to clean out your “cookie jar” every night before you shut down your computer. Here’s my procedure: 1. I go into IE, click on tools, options and “Clear History.” [I’m running Windows XP-Pro.] While there, be sure your history is set for 0 days. Whenever you reboot, all the places you have visited that day will disappear. There’s really no need to leave them there. 2. I then click on “Delete Files,” which deletes all the hundreds of temp files that are created at various times. I play bridge online, and that builds up quite a few temp files. 3. Then (with XP), I go to Settings and View Files and click on the latter. That shows all my cookies. I manually delete every cookie that doesn’t hold a password. You also can just click on the button that says Delete Cookies. But I have nearly 20 password cookies that I really don’t want to delete. When that’s all done every night, I then do a disk cleanup, trash all the junk and then shut the computer down.
Anti-Spyware Software
There are other ways to help you with this task, however. Two pieces of software everyone should have include Spybot S&D (Search and Destroy) and Ad-Aware SE. This site (http://safer-networking.org/en/index.html) is where you can obtain Spybot for free. You can get Ad-Aware SE (the very latest version) at http://www.lavasoft.com.de. Be sure to use the .de suffix, which stands for Germany. I suggest running Ad-Aware first, deleting all the data-mining cookies, and then running Spybot to see if it picks up anything else. Using both of them, your computer will be very safe.
Other Software and Tips
Another related, but not quite the same, piece of software is PC BugDoctor. A Google search will tell you where to find it. It scans your entire system, including your registry, and cleans out everything. This one does cost money, however. But I bought a lifetime subscription, and think it was worth every penny I spent.
Once you clean out these nasties, clean up your hard drive with Disk Cleanup in your Start Menu. And remember to defragment the hard drive every month. If you have Windows XP-Pro, there is a registry optimizer on it that is wonderful. But Windows XP, either Home or Pro, has many useful tools once you get to know the system better.
If you are still using Windows 98, which I did until early this year, there is a free registry cleaner that works only on Win 98. I have it posted at http://www.lallybroch.com/programs/. Go there and look for EC 1.7, which stands for Easy Cleaner 1.7. Download it to wherever you store downloaded software (and you always should do that in case the program gets corrupted), and then just install it. It is a simple little program designed by a friend of mine in Finland. Though it has several options when its screen opens up, you only want to use two of them: Clean Files and Clean Registry. It is 100% safe, and if you are using Windows 98, run this program. Someone did once and just under “Clean Files” came up with something like 10,900 files to eliminate. So she was afraid to and shut it down. I told her to go ahead and do it, she did and her computer runs 100% better than it did before. Same with Clean Registry…you may come up with a ton of files. Do not worry, just delete them.
