October: National Cyber Security Awareness Month

Last night, an MSN friend told me two of her friends' hard disks were progressively being erased due to some virus while we were chatting. Don't let this happen to you. Always use protection!

Microsoft has declared this month National Cyber Security Awareness Month. Apart from the tips given, here are mine.

Best Practices To Prevent Bad Things From Happening
1) Use Firefox, and Internet Explorer only when necessary (free of charge).
2) Install Service Pack 2 for Windows XP. Turn on Window's Automatic Updates (free).
3) Use a firewall such as ZoneAlarm (free).
4) Use an antivirus software and engage the automatic updates (free).
5) Use a spyware and adware detection program like Ad-Aware (free).

These are the essentials. Of course there are other things that can also be weak links, like ezy-to-guess passwords, non-VPNed WiFi, opening attachments when they are not expected... I hope I haven't made you paranoid hahaa

Update (!): In other news, gssq struggles with spyware...