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My PC Security - help me decide, your comments very welcome!


razz

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Do you personally make use of both MVPS Hosts File and SpywareBlaster?

 

I use both and have been using both together for many years.

 

I'm confident that windows 10 is overall quite secure as long as you stay on the mainstream side of the internet. 

 

Look at some YouTube antivirus, anti-malware/malware test videos and you'll be surprised at how easy Win10 is to infect. Win10's hype about being secure isn't a reality, and not one single Windows OS has ever been "secure" which is proven by the longevity of malware. Windows is a malware magnet plain and simple, and Win10 is not the cure. Etch-A-Sketch might however be secure, as long as it isn't shaken! :lol:

 

I've been a huge fan of Disk Imaging for a long time and would wholeheartedly agree with that. Not just to get rid of malware, but to also recover from simple things like installing a program you thought was good and finding out it just about takes over your computer, or find you have a serious glitch after installing MS updates.

 

It's the easy way to undo issues. Whenever I try a different antivirus I don't even bother uninstalling them anymore, I just restore my disk image and about 15 minutes later everything is fully restored. Like you not having Microsoft Updates has greatly made my system more stable, and I don't have to worry about some botched buggy update patch causing issues.

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I have no doubt that windows 10 can be insecure if your doing things like downloading random email attachments or plugging in random flash drives. However I cant remember the last time I actually had a real virus on one of my own computers. Quite a while ago I got tired of spending so much time/effort securing/maintaining windows that I just figured I would try doing the least amount possible (keeping it updated, using a different browser, letting defender do its scans) and nothing really changed. I didn't see viruses then and I don't now. Granted I'm not browsing crazy websites or using bittorent,ect. I spend most of my time either on youtube, microsoft office, or whatever game I'm playing at the moment. 

 

I do nuke my computers every six months or so. Mostly just because windows still tends to slow down after a while without a good cleaning. 

I can reformat most of my computers in about an hour(apart from windows update) and have all my apps back installed. I don't really use image back ups because I like going through and not having to worry about updating old programs and stuff. Everything is just up to date as I install them. (apart from my steam library which I keep on an external before I reformat) 

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I'm on the exact same WinXP install I did back in January 2010, simple because of disk imaging software to restore from. I have no plans of ever doing a format+reinstall of Windows on this computer again. Now a format and install of Linux may be in my future if I ever find a distro that doesn't seemingly commit suicide which is only something I've only experienced in Win98 when it would get VxD issues.

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I've tried so many different linux distros and they never seem to work right no matter what kind of hardware I put them on. Its either a sound, graphics, or some other issue that will cause everything to break. I'd rather just pay the $100 for windows and get something that works. I get people who are passionate about linux and know there way around the unix command line, but I don't and don't really have the time or will to learn how to trouble shoot the random hardware issues that always seem to arise.

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Slightly off topic (sorry fellow mods!) but I have a short cut to the Windows Event Viewer on my machines which I have a quick look at a couple of times a week . Looking under the Applications and Sytem area lets me know if any of my apps etc are causing issues.

 

On Win 10 you can also look at the Reliability Monitor.. it's a great little tool.

 

Support contact

https://support.ccleaner.com/s/contact-form?language=en_US&form=general

or

support@ccleaner.com

 

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On Win 10 you can also look at the Reliability Monitor.. it's a great little tool.

 

Thanks hazel.  I found a handy explanation of how to create the shortcut in windows 10, for those not in the know.

 

https://www.tenforums.com/tutorials/75768-create-reliability-monitor-shortcut-windows-10-a.html

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I use both and have been using both together for many years.

 

Excuse my ignorance   :wacko: , but in reference to using both MVPS Host file and SpywareBlaster, how does your system know which Host file to go by?

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HOSTS file is a file used system wide regardless of the software used on the system. It's why many antivirus and anti-malware software will see a modified HOSTS file as a security risk or infection. When using a HOSTS file you don't have to input sites to block into your web browsers you can use just that single HOSTS file to block the connection to sites you deem bad from loading in any web browsers, or to block software from phoning home, etc.

 

SpywareBlaster has nothing to do with the HOSTS file at all, it doesn't write anything into the HOSTS file whatsoever - maybe they however should come to think of it. SpywareBlaster blocks bad websites in your web browser the exact same way you'd enter into say Internet Explorer, or Firefox (installed versions only) a site you wanted the browser to block (in some cases a site will only be partially blocked). The one extra thing SpywareBlaster does is set ActiveX killbits so some malicious installations won't work.

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Something else to add for security is Avira Browser Safety which works with WinXP up to Win10:

* It's available here for Firefox on Avira's website, it's not available on the Firefox add-ons website however.

* It's available here for Chrome & Chromium in Google's Chrome Webstore.

 

The reason I added it into Firefox Portable and SRWare Iron Portable is from the various YouTube videos I've seen of it blocking all sorts of malicious and phishing sites. If you don't visit any bad sites it will however not bother you one bit.

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Something else to add for security is Avira Browser Safety which works with WinXP up to Win10:

 

* It's available here for Chrome & Chromium in Google's Chrome Webstore.

 

Thanks for the tip Andavari.

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