Basic Stuff

We strongly recommend:

• Every user have an antivirus program installed and that this is updated automatically approximately weekly. We use the latest Norton Systemworks.This product contains an antivirus program that is constantly updated with your subscription. It also monitors the system periodically for viruses that might have slipped through, and in addition does a system check periodically for the integrity of the system. (Windows is not good at maintaining its integrity.) When problems appear, Systemworks attempts to fix them for you. Systemworks also has a popup ad filter that it installs.
  
  
• You should also have a firewall that protects you system from periodic intrusions from hackers. As long as you are on the Internet, people can use your system as they wish unless a good firewall is there. Most routers have a hardware firewall that protects your address. We also use a software firewall that protects any unidentified software from using our system. We use Norton Security and a hardware firewall in the router.
  
  
• If you are using a wireless network, you should be using it in an encrypted mode.
  
  
• Define a backup system that works for you.
  
  
• We suggest using the Partition Magic product to put your data on a separate disk drive; that is, partitioning your single hard disk to two virtual disks. If this is done and your main operating system must be reloaded, the data is still intact.

When we work on ministry systems, we charge a user to recover the system if both the firewall and antivirus are not installed and updated. This can be several hundred dollars.There's no sense in us helping you chase the horse if you left the barn door open. Moreover, is some cases you won't catch the horse; that is, you've lost your data.

Kill the Spam

We use to experience about 90% of our mail as spam each day. We've written to congresspeople at the state and federal level and voted a few (three) out because they didn't seem to be able to hear I had a problem; but it didn't do much good. By the next election, the issue will be even more critical.

Another alternative is to use an ISP that filters spam out for you. Our hosting system does this for us. You can look at the spam trapped and recover the mistakes, but you can't adjust much.

Removing Spyware

Advertisers, shareware, and even Microsoft often will place hidden programs on your system that feed back information about your system to them. Some of these hidden programs are like trojon horses, creating what are known as "back doors" and leaving your system vulnerable to hacking that not even anti-virus software can detect. The Spybot program can detect such software and delete it. Spybot is free and can be downloaded from http://security.kolla.de. The first time we ran it it we found 54 pieces of spyware on our system. Spybot should be run periodically to clean your system. Warning: Some software programs will no longer run if their embedded spyware is removed from the program. Spybot will allow you to restore programs if they have been removed by cleaning, but you may no wish to restore this type of program.

Right now, we've switched to PC Doctor. It gets high reviews and we love it.

Reading PDF Files

This program enables you to read Acrobat (PDF) files when they are posted as part of a web site. It's free, and we recommend installing it to your system. Files published ast PDF files on a web site maintain their original format and fonts (whether these fonts are on your system or not). This makes the program valuable for users publishing on the web. The program is free.

Macromedia Flash

The Flash player enables you to read the animated movies on many sites. Flash is used on many of our pages, and is already installed on most browsers that you purchase today. If it is not on your system or you wish to upgrade an older version, you can get it free and it's here!