Actual letter in PC Magazine

[carbonmotion]

It's not that bad for all PCs. For instance, mine sits behind a hardware firewall, I use software to filter out all ads and pop-ups, I have anti-virus software running constantly (it can be over-sensitive, but best to be safe), I run Adaware every so often and watch which websites I visit. Oh, and I only use Opera for surfing - IE is confined to Windows Update.

Hmmm, that's still quite a lot. With a little effort and common sense, it's not hard to avoid spyware and viruses. Unfortunately many PC users don't seem to be that wise.

How can anyone have 122 viruses and 200 spyware files? Does he surf porn all day?

hutt thats why macs rock you can surf all the free porn sites your want never have to worry about spyware and viruses. kinda linke removing the last barracade to freedom of mass media... if you can call porn that.

 

[0098386]

my dads 2 desktop PCs (one of which im on now) suffer badly from viruses and spyware.

its all well when people say "oh if you acted responsibly online you have nothing to worry about", try telling that to my 12 year old sister and 15 year old brother who do nothing but search for freeware games when online.

im putting a wireless network in soon so i will never need touch a PC again. spyware kills systems, and the system resources on this shows that all my dads attempts at keeping bad files at bay are costing a huge amount of overall performance. and then theres the virus scanner downloads which appear every day slowing down the connection... *sigh*

 

[Mav451]

Yeah, in this case some of it is preventable. Alot of spyware actually comes through in the downloadable free "game" downloads. Even if you use Firefox for everything else, if they willingly are choosing to run those shady or "dodgy" apps, there's not much you can do.

I personally still do not employ a "real-time" Virus scanner b/c of the massive memory imprint it leaves. If I am running any .exe, it MUST be from a legitimate source. Otherwise, if it is small enough, I use something like Yahoo! to email it to myself so it is scanned online.