Safe Internet Access For Windows Users

If you are like me, you know someone who has brought you their compy loaded down with crap and running about as fast as an 33Mhz Intel DX chip and asked you to make it better. Its rather rare that one can clean up a Windows box after it has been infected and reinfected over and over again, so its usually easier to recover all of their files and reinstall.

Of course, once you hand over that clean machine, they’ll just make the same mistakes again and in 2-12 months you’ll be back in the same position of rescuing them yet again. The root cause of this stems from inexperienced people wanting to do things with their computers and falling for any pitch they see for some tool that is riddled with crapola. They click the banner in IE (bad), they download the file (badder), they run the installer (worsest), and they use that software (cataclysmical!).

You see installations of file sharing apps, millions of ridiculous web browser toolbars, fake ad blocking software, fake anti-virus and anti-malware software which is actually a virus or malware, stupid phishing schemes, and tons of other crap pushed endlessly at the uninitiated. What is needed is a little education and some alternative tools to the ones they are being bombarded with on the general intartubes.

That’s what this page is about. First, I will talk about some simple rules you can follow to protect yourself from 99.5% of internet-based attacks or scams and then I’ll have a list of solid, proven, capable, often free software which you can use in place of the crappy offerings usually made to newbies.

NOTE: If you are a Mac or Linux user, congratulations! You aren’t free from harm, but you’ve spared yourself 100% of the crap that breaks or subverts Windows machines. Read through, though, since there are some really good tips here and there are Mac and Linux users who virtualize Windows on their machines.

The Rules:

STOP USING INTERNET EXPLORER! I cannot stress this enough. Internet Explorer is the #1, ichiban, primo entry way for almost all crap on your Windows machine and it will never, ever be your friend. Microsoft integrates all of its scripting technologies into Internet Explorer in order to make it do stuff that open standards can already do but they don’t control. Not only is this unethical, but its dangerous because Microsoft’s scripting languages generally have unfettered access to Windows, which is how crap gets installed without you knowing. See the next section for alternatives.
Do NOT open email attachments! It is VERY easy to fake the sender on an email message and get malware in front of you to open. Some cute image of kittens and puppies playing together which makes you smile is likely masquerading as an install for a botnet node to turn your machine into a spamming machine or scraping your data and internet access records for your financial data. Your friend may have even actually sent it to you! Don’t let your pals be your gateway to internet security. That’s your job!
Do NOT allow scripts to run! If you work with someone, they need to send files to you using your work email account and then verify that they sent it to you. Spreadsheets and word processor documents don’t need scripting to perform their job function, so if you get an alert asking you if its ok to run scripts, DON’T DO IT!
Do NOT use file sharing services! So-called file sharing services like Limewire are havens for malcontents and most music and software up there is infected with something unpleasant. If you want music, buy it. If budget is an issue, borrow CDs from your friends or check them out at your local library. Using file sharing services is asking to be used.
Do NOT engage in piracy! Frankly, the people pirating software, movies, and music are way beyond your skill level and will eat you alive if you try to play in their sandbox. Besides, the movies and musics peoples love making examples out of people in a shockingly random fashion, so if you are copying Titanic for your friends and sticking it online, don’t. Its just stupid and its hard to do.

A Note To Parents… From A Parent

In all honesty, its pretty rare that older folks like us are the ones who are pirating software and media. Its our kids. The allure of free stuff with no controls is often far to enticing for our youths, and its up to parents to control it. I know what this is like, having a 12 year old daughter who lives entirely too much on the internet. She’s no malcontent, though, but controlling her time on her computer is a real challenge. I do, however, get systems in the office all the time from neighbors who’s machines are choked full of crap from their kids.

The fix is not to monitor them or lock them out. They will outsmart you. This is not to say you are stupid, but unless you specifically work in the IT trade you simply don’t have the genes to recognize the good and the bad and the right and the wrong in this internet economy. Kids who grew up with PlayStation controllers in their hands instead of rattles have an innate sense of how this stuff works, and they will walk around you with ease as you try to keep them out. So, what do you do?

The simple answer is to keep them otherwise occupied. Don’t give them time to spend on the computer. Make sure they have other technology tools to achieve similar results like an iPod Touch, a mobile phone, a PSP, DSi, or what have you. There’s a new thing called FloTV and there are gadgets and gizmos galore to choose from. You still need to give them destinations, though. Sports, art, social work, movie and game nights. Just think back 30 years and I’m sure you can come up with something.

There is one final key, and you’re not going to like it. I certainly didn’t when I stumbled into the reality. Get off your ass. Get up and stop watching cable or surfing the intartubes for the latest deals on shoes or car wax. Stop sending pictures of your cats to everyone. We parents are the primary form of behavioral source material for our impressionable kids, and when we sit around watching Battlestar Galatica or an Iron Chef marathon on the Food Network and tell them to do their chores, its a little more than crass and hypocritical.

I’ve lived as a lump for most of my life, but I’m starting to get out for my daughter’s sake. I’m sure you can do it, too. Once that starts, you might be surprised to find out how unimportant the internet becomes.

The Tools

Here we are now. The list. The tools. That which you need to get stuff done without risking life and limb. This list is not complete and likely never will be. It will grow over time and people smarter than me will submit suggestions, I’m sure. This list is, at the moment, limited to Windows programs because that’s where the risk lies and it is Windows sieve-like properties which have prompted me to generate this page in the first place.

NOTE: I don’t have the time to validate whether or not these programs work with Windows 7, but I can say that most applications work fine on the Windows 7 systems I’ve been testing, even the 64-bit version. Some applications, however, do have problems installing. There are some sites out there which track these things, so I will link to the best of them so you can use them as a resource.

Web Browsers

Mozilla Firefox - This is the single most common alternative browser by a long shot. If you think that sites are still written to only work with Internet Explorer, you’d be right, but that number is now so small, you may never come across one. Firefox also has loads and loads of powerful and helpful add-ons which do all kinds of things that Internet Exploder can only dream of. [DOWNLOAD]

Apple Safari - This ever improving, speedy browser from Apple is another popular alternative. You cannot extend it as well as Firefox, but its faster and more efficient. The power behind Safari is Apple’s own WebKit which powers most other alternative browsers in this list. [DOWNLOAD]

Google Chrome - Google has been in this for a little while now with their WebKit-based Chrome browser. Its really a lot like Safari, but even less extensible. Oddly enough, it works great with Google-based services like GMail and Maps. [DOWNLOAD]

Email Clients

A SPECIAL NOTE ABOUT EMAIL: I need to diverge from these proceedings for a moment to talk about email. Most people think of email as an electronic version of postal mail. It gets delivered and that’s it. That’s the way it was designed to operate initially, but it has changed since those early days. Email is an important part of our daily communication, and when we don’t have access to it, we can be short of important information.

Doing email the old way means that you get copies of all of your messages on one computer and then delete them from the server, also known as POP3. Once that mail is on your computer, you can’t see it anywhere else, and that’s a problem in this age where we have access to the internet all around us. The solution is either in the form of using IMAP, which lets you view and manage your mail directly on the server, or you can use a web service.

Web mail sucks, but most people seem to get drawn into it anyway in the form of HotMail or Yahoo! Mail and its honestly terrible! I am an advocate, however, of GMail from Google. Its a solid system, its been reliable, and they offer loads of storage and a clean, streamlined interface. They also offer remote access to your email using one of the clients listed below. Finally, Google’s spam stripping routines are top notch.

Mozilla ThunderBird - Here we are with another Mozilla pick, but they do make a really great email client which is worth looking at. Its easy to set up, works with pretty much everything, and doesn’t drag down your system. The new version 3.0 is vastly improved over the previous version, as well. [DOWNLOAD]