No Parent Left Behind

Tax Shelters, Bank Vaults, Safety Locks, Security Systems, Seat Belts… I’ve used them all. Why, because I want to be safe, I want to protect my money, my kids, & myself. Basically I want to keep my world safe. So why is it that I now also have to protect my computer? Protect my eyes from the Viagra adds, and kids from the rest. It’s not enough to just hook my computer up and go exploring, now I need to keep yet another thing safe.

Sometimes I wonder if I have enough time for all of this. I bet you wonder the same thing, and that’s why we are here. To Help You Out! Yep you.

How?— By giving you -Simple, quick, and effective advice on keeping your techno-world safe.

You bring the questions and we’ll bring the answers! What a deal huh.

Let’s get started–

There are 3 basic things you need to protect your computer, especially if you have it plugged into an Internet connection 24/7.

1. A Firewall.

A Firewall is just a piece of software that you load on your machine to keep people out. Think of your computer as a big house with lots of doors and windows. Now some of these doors and windows need to be open so that you can see outside your house, maybe check the weather, and so on. You also need a mail slot that allows mail to come in, maybe a doggie door for your pouch and so on. Computers are similar. They need places open too, email, website traffic, and the like. Each one of these “openings”, these virtual doors and windows, has a number associated with it called a port. Port 25 = sending mail, port 110 = receiving mail, port 80 = web traffic.

• Simply put, firewalls close up and lock down all the extra ports that you don’t use so that people can’t gain unauthorized “entry” into your safe little computer house. Make sense? Good.

2. Anti-Virus software

• Nobody wants a virus especially if it makes your computer sick. Basically there are a lot of reasons people write viruses. The biggest ones are to challenge themselves and then gain a reputation. There are rare cases when they get financial gain from a virus (one that harvests info from your computer that is then sold) but most of the time it is just to say that they did it.
• What to do? Get a good antivirus software that doesn’t slow down your computer.

3. A knowledge of good and evil (in the techo-world)

• This one is tougher. How are you suppose to know what is good and bad?
• First of all, be slow to click and quick to research.
• Be a little paranoid for now but don’t stay that way.
• Learn from this site and others how to be net-savvy.

Resources: My favs as of 2008

1. Firewall: Comodo Pro http://www.personalfirewall.comodo.com/

2. Antivirus: Bit Defender

http://www.bitdefender.com/site/Products/showSolutions/1/

3…Knowledge: This site. For faster knowledge check out the bundles. They’ll get you up to speed quick!