Re: How to prevent malware from running on your PC

On Thu, 22 Sep 2005 10:01:24 +0100, "Jason Edwards"
<none1@invalid.invalid> wrote:

>So as I said previously we're stuck with the present situation.
>I don't have any simple answer to it.

I've long wondered why the Dells and the Gateways, etc., haven't
designed and released high security desktops. I dunno what their
contracts with MS block them from doing.

Back in 1999 when I first started using using Win 98 and became
interested in security isues. I soon made up my mind to try a long
term experiment. I was used to using Free Agent and Netscape
so I lucked out and never used OE or IE. I disabled services and
made sure only TCP/IP was bound to my adapter(s). I never used
a firewall or realtime antivirus. After awhile I got DSL service and
continued on the same way for years ... taking the same approach
with Win ME and then Win 2K Pro. I dropped Netscape in favor
of Mozilla, Firefox and Opera. Later on , I started using IE very
sparingly only for trusted sites that didn't render well otherwise.
I've never experienced any problems at all with spyware or malicious
code of any kind.

So I wonder what stops PC vendors from offering a safe and
sane PC for home users who just want to get work done, d/l
POP3 email, and do research on the web. As long as users
"keep their noses clean" and avoid the crap high risk users
get involved with like P2P and porn ... they should have no
problems.

What I'd like to see is a machine that's safe to put on the
internet in its default condition, equiped with alternate
internet apps, and a spare drive for use as a cloned backup.
It should also have the backup/restore sw (I always
used XXCOPY with Win 9X/ME). And a nice convenient
registry backup/restore such as ERUNT that I use with
Win 2K. It should _not_ have any System Restore doing
any kind of automatic backups. That sucks :) Users must
take at least take complete control and responsibility
for backing up.

Art
 
http://home.epix.net/~artnpeg
Received on Thu Sep 29 20:10:09 2005