internet security
Is Society’s Internet Addiction Affecting The Children?
February 3, 2010
This generation of kids (and in fact even the ones before them) have often been portrayed as fat couch potatoes by the media at large, children who are slowly loosing the ability to use language and their legs correctly and who are developing a distorted view of the world based on bad communication skills, the Internet being for porn and mass killings with terrorists in Russian airports.
There will always be people to defend them – mostly a mix of gaming enthusiasts, the occasional scientist and games manufacturers PR departments – but the results of a recent survey are fairly condemning where they show that kids are spending nearly eight hours online every day!
Continue reading »Microsoft Security Essentials – The Best Free Anti-Virus / Anti-Spyware Software?
October 24, 2009
This one slipped out quietly, as most people don’t even seem to know it exists.
Anyway, fact is, Microsoft now give you complete anti-virus and malware protection, free of charge. So is it any good? Well that’s a very difficult question to answer, because unlike many other kinds of software, anti-virus is typically proven to be good over time, in the real world and with demonstrated resilience. Microsoft Security Essentials (MSE) hasn’t been out that long, so its competency is yet to be proven.
I must say though, I already like it more than any of the other free offerings. It does exactly what AV should do, it installs without fuss and it leaves you alone. I wouldn’t necessarily advise you to bin the likes of AVG or Avast just yet, but I’d certainly recommend it over horrid, paid-for bloated-beasts like McAfee or the satanic monster known as Norton.
Continue reading »Windows 7 Review – Part 3: Security
October 21, 2009
Ah, User Account Control – arguably the most irritating feature of Windows Vista. Sure you had the option to turn it off somewhere deep in the control panel, but then you had a balloon demanding your attention in the bottom corner of the screen telling you to ‘Check your security settings’. When Vista was in development, Microsoft made a point about security, but the answer wasn’t exactly great. So what’s changed in Windows 7?
For starters, UAC is still here, but it’s more subtle than it was in Vista, as you have the option to choose between 4 levels of notification: Always notify when programs install software, make changes to your computer or if you change Windows settings (Vista…); the default option which is the same as the top level apart from not notifying you when you change Windows settings; the third level, which is the same as the default settings, except it doesn’t dim the screen when UAC appears and the fourth level, which doesn’t notify you at all. Unlike in Vista, there aren’t any annoying balloons demanding your attention on the quick launch bar when you turn UAC off either.
Continue reading »Norton Internet Security 2009 Competition
May 5, 2009
Virus protection and Internet security is one of those things which is one of those things which we all know we should do something about, but many of us don’t do it or at least not very well – in fact this was on of the areas we first covered here at Zath when we wrote about stopping viruses, spyware and adware…aka being able to use your pc again!
With that in mind, I thought that this latest competition might prove useful to plenty of you out there!
Symantec have kindly given Zath ten copies of the latest version of their Norton Internet Security suite which rather than just being a simple anti-virus product like many programs out there, it features a whole host of protection for your Windows computer including:
Continue reading »How To Be Safe Online – Internet Security/Safety For Students
April 28, 2009
Yesterday I brought up the issue of technology giving us more than we can handle with the case of highlighting Swine Flu, but it can also have worrying implications with our safety and how susceptible we are to giving out our personal emails.
In a recent survey commissioned by ‘Get Safe Online’ it was found that internet users in full time education were far more vulnerable to online crime and security threats than any other demographic, which may be surprising as both the people in question and the general population see them as being ‘very computer literate’.
We have all got the spam emails from our friend who is stuck in Nigeria and needs £3000 to get back, and apart from the first time where we went through our phone book to find out if any of our friends were on holiday in Africa we delete them instantly. But although this may seem like the most prominent threat, and although it is so widely publicised, young people are still falling foul to the internet.
Continue reading »
