News 25% of pcs are botnet infected

http://www.bit-tech.net/news/2007/01/26/25_percent_of_PCs_are_botnet_infected/

 

Very little chance of me getting infected... unless bit is infecting me, I don't stray too far. Helps to reformat every so often as well.
That number is quite high, a bit worrying when you think about it.

 

your solution to anything *ware is formating ?!

kinda backs up the statistic when people think fixing a problem is better than preventing it

 

Nah, I prevent it too. It just cleans all the extra crap that accumulates when you install things. But when I have two HDDs, one is for the OS, the other is storage, I usually reformat once I finish a couple of games before I install the next. Down to one HDD so havn't done it in a while.

 

Yeah well at least it doesn't back up the statistic of people having a malware infected computer! I was having a similar discussion yesterday with specofdust and my argument is that you can never be too sure with malware/virii these days they're getting more and more complex and can hide quite well, I feel safer just formatting the lot and having piece of mind. Plus a good ol format keeps things running smooth

 

Yep, try as you might by using anti-virus/anti-spy/anti-malware software it's unlikely that you'll ever catch it all.
As ChromeX says, a format helps to keep thing running better too. My install must be atleast 6 months to a year old now and it's starting to run pretty badly, which reminds me; it must be time for a re-install

It's pretty sad though that its possible that so many machines are infected due to essentially people just not knowing what they are getting themselves into/running as an admin account all the time or other similar security breaches.
I could only hope that none of my family are suffering from it but it's people like my dad who are likley to be the cause of such issues, he called me up lastnight because the "virus checker was slowing the system down so I un-installed it and the problem went away", yet it was AVG which is totally un-obtrousive and was functioning fine after I installed it and was playing with the system.
Some people never learn

 

The way to keep a well running pc in my opinion is :

1. Antivirus and Antispyware realtime scanning.
2. Be careful where you go on the web.
3. Registry scan at least once a week or after installing/uninstalling anything. (I find it to be the biggest reason for a slowing down machine)
4. Virus and spyware scan once a week at least. (I'm sometimes a bit lazy here and do it once a fortnite, done no harm here)
5. Keep things tidy, delete files you don't need, delete shortcuts that aren't needed etc.
6. Reformat once every 6 months to 1 year.
7. For those confident enough (most on here) use nLite to get rid of most c**p in windows (movie maker, outlook, drivers for endless devices, games, fax etc.) before starting.

Dunno if that actually helps someone, but meh.

 

..Do you even know what a botnet is?

 

I consider myself pretty safe... Whenever I'm away from the computer my screensave runs... my screensaver happens to be an Avast antivirus screensaver. I happy.

I also make sure not to go on dodgy pr0n sites...

 

I last checked about 2 years ago. Right before I got a mac

When I get a new intel mac and install windows on it for testing websites, i'm gonna have it strictly fire-walled so it can only access the domains I specifiy.

 

In my experience there's a few things that help me not even needing an antivirus program:
1.) Not using outlook
2.) Not using IE
3.) Being behind a NAT device. (that trusty router that keeps me online)
4.) Don't click on weird stuff.

It just so happens that I'm better of without any antivirus this way.

OC, in a don't-try-this-at-home way my parents place as well as my brother's notebook have got installed some antivir (would never trust them with esp. 4 )

 

I remember my next door neighbour complaining about the slowness of his system a year or so ago, "Ad-Aware found 20,000 critical items"

I actually almost died from laughter! There's no greater risk to PC security than a 15 yr old female sister!

 

well what are you going to do when vista comes out as a serial key is only open for 10 installs/reinstalls after that you need to buy new. and i think it wont be long after vistas launch of people developing malware/virus's ect for vista probs trying to develop it now on the vista RC2

 

As opposed to a male sister

 

Symantec Ghost... or similar. Make an image after a clean install, and when you reapply it after a malware infestation, the computer is none the wiser. Unless of course you use the sysprep option to run the mini-install after ghosting. But you only need that in the one image, dozens of computers scenario.

 

meh.. I was just thinking the same thing

 

I find its fairly easy to stay safe online, just don't visit too many dodgy sites and don't download dodgy email attachments.

Of course a hardware firewall (as well as Windows built in one) also helps.

 

Only my lappy still runs WIndows, but I use Opera and Spybot with Teatimer, plus it's all behind the hardware firewall, and have never had a problem. Both desktops are theoretically dual boot (win / nix) but in reality never get booted to Windows.

This is the result of making computers user friendly for the masses, masses of people using computer who aren't competent to do so.

 

I look at this stuff differently, to be honest.

My priority is patching, 100%, if there is a new hotfix for XP, its on my machine (assuming it warrants it; and i have to look at them all for work anyway)

If your machine is patched, you can be connected to the internet, and not worry about anything getting though, even without a firewall. (assuming a secure password)

I also have a smoothwall install on a crap machine acting as my router which offers a firewall, and SNORT (along with other features, but these are really the most relevant)

Firewall supports uPnP, so utorrent is setup for random ports.

MS windows XP firewall disabled, though i feel that it is the best firewall out there (assuming you keep your machine patched, and know how to safely browse websites; if you are a beginner at computers, the windows firewall won't cut it though)

I usually don't bother with AV or anti-spyware programs.

Everything important is done on the actual XP install (e-mail, C++ dev, web dev, gaming, schoolwork, simple/safe web browsing)

anything else i feel would clutter my main OS will be done in a VMWare instance, so that if anything gets messed up, its a 2 minute process to clean up.

once said shady program has either proved to me that I like it enough to put on my computer, or use it enough to warrant putting it on my actual OS install, I will then copy it over.

downloading torrents and such will be done on the main computer, unless the file is really sketchy. From my personal experience, torrents are extremely safe, and I have never gotten infected from running a movie/music/app/game that was grabbed from torrents.

 

I'm not infected I hope... all I know is that I get a lot of spam and gmail blocks it all, hooray! I think even colleges are spamming though (they know my name and send out a weekly email )

Stoopid malware, why do people have to be so mean?