PC Security and You

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Foreword

PC security is everyone's responsibility. It used to be that a person would only become the victim of a virus by "swapping floppies" with an infected person/system. Now with the popularity of the Internet viruses are a hobby for some and a pariah for the rest of us.

It's not even enough anymore to not run "bad" files. Vulnerabilities in different operating systems and applications leave everyone open to passive attack. Never believe anyone when they say anything is completely safe. Nothing is completely safe. There are no safe operating systems either.

It's popular these days for those with a small amount of knowledge (often referred to as "enough to be dangerous) to recite popular marketing quips bashing Windows and extolling the virtues of another OS. The big difference with Windows and others is the interoperability. Web browsing for example runs through almost all applications on Windows because we as consumers seem to like that. Because of that a vulnerability in that area is a vulnerability for all of your applications.

This "shared vulnerability" is a good thing and a bad thing really. Some beat their chests and complain, but the rest of the world that enjoys Microsoft Word being able to save as HTML and their desktop being able to display "live" data and being able to publish a PowerPoint Presentation on the web as easy as two mouse-clicks ... well, they simply want it fixed.

No problem.

Fix it once it's fixed everywhere. See what I mean about good and bad?

So, if you like Windows and you don't want to have to learn a completely new operating system just to browse the web and do your finances, read on, this is for you. I'll explain what everyone else running those fancy operating systems already knows. Believe me, Linux users patch as much as Windows needs to be patched, those users are simply by nature most often more advanced users and they take it as a matter of course.

There are three main facets of PC security (for the purposes of this discussion). Physical and logical, antivirus and patching vulnerabilities. Since we're talking about patching let's discuss that first.

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