Free stuff to help you stay safe online

AntiVirus program. The #1 essential for safety on the net. There are many systems available, paid and free, but the most important aspect is that they are updated regularly, preferably daily.
New viruses appear with monotonous regularity and you need to keep up with them.

My 2 favorite FREE systems are Avira and AVG, simply because they send automatic daily updates.

http://www.free-av.de/

http://free.grisoft.com/

Firewall. Essential #2. A hardware firewall built into a router is the best. Your computer is invisible to the net. All that shows to the rest of the world is the IP of the router itself. Even so, it still pays to have a software firewall on an individual computer as a second level of defence.

2 good FREE software firewalls are supplied by Zone Alarm and Comodo. Even if you don't have a router/hardware firewall, they will give you a decent level of protection.

http://www.zonealarm.com/store/content/catalog/products/ and click on the 'Zone Alarm' tab

http://personalfirewall.comodo.com/

To browse autosurfs efficiently you need to get a multi tabbed browser. This will allow you to surf several programs simultaneously. My favorite for this role is the FREE Mozilla Firefox 

http://en-us.www.mozilla.com/en-US/firefox/

as there are a number of FREE addons that will enhance the safety of your computer while surfing unattended.

The best of the best is NoScript. It takes a bit of getting used to as it automatically blocks all Javascript and Flash. You have to enable these on a site by site basis which is kinda tedious to begin with but only needs doing once per site. For autosurfing, just allow each of the main surf programs, but leave the content pages blocked. Some sites won't show completely, but it cuts out the risk of hidden malicious code getting onto you machine from some evil hackers site.

http://noscript.net/

Another useful addon is this Alexa mini toolbar. This allows you to see the google page rank and alexa traffic stats of the sites you visit. The better the ranking, the more traffic a site has. Saves you wasting time signing up for programs with low viewer numbers. With over 100 million sites out there, any site with an Alexa rank under 1 million is in the top 1% for traffic. Although Alexa only do daily statistics for the top 100,000 they do tend to update the rest weekly, unlike google who adjust their rankings approximately every 3 months. With the speed that things change nowadays why rely on out of date info.

http://www.quirk.biz/searchstatus/

There's a few other useful bits of info available from this neat addon, right click on the 'q' or the rankings to see for yourself. And it takes up almost no space on the toolbar.

This is not a comprehensive guide to net safety, but a good starting point for surfers who are learning about safety. No doubt there will be plenty of self appointed 'experts' who can tear holes in it but to be honest, I don't really care. Most of them are legends in their own lunchtime who never bother to do anything constructive, just enjoy being critical. Whatever.

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Last update : Saturday, 22 March 2008

Keywords : Panama, Articles, Safe Surfing, Alexa, Avira, Comodo, Firefox

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