Cleaning the Net—Kindly advice…

By Kevin Hartman, Systematic Solutions

This article isn’t exactly directly related to Solomon but instead touches upon making it safer to use the Internet. Whether we are looking for program updates, retrieving financial updates and reports, using email to communicate with business contacts, or even just checking the traffic to get home more quickly, the Internet in some aspects has become critical to our business. Just as the importance of the Internet has risen, the proliferation of junk as well as malicious tactics to disrupt work has grown as well. I wanted to provide some tips to help protect you and your network from some of the most common problems.

Editor’s Notes: This information is presented without any warranties or guaranties. Our goal is provide useful information to our readers. Please note that any changes which you make to the security of your workstation / network are taken at your own risk; and the author of this article and the editor of this ezine are not liable for any unintended consequences.

Please note that these are opinions and experience and are not meant to take the place of professional security consultation. These things can help you, but if you are not a technical professional they can also be dangerous to your systems. The simple ones should be safe for almost anyone familiar with Windows computers, but you should carefully read any precautions and the information included with any files you download. Issues with these programs should be directed to the makers of those programs. Things that I mark as more dangerous should be ascertained as to whether that level of security is needed and then a network professional familiar with stronger Internet security than I am should be consulted.

Safe:

The first thing to address in Internet safety is being careful with email. Most users know not to open emails that contain attachments when they are not expecting any to help avoid viruses. But viruses can be mental as well. With the increase of identity theft it is important to avoid giving away login information. If you get an email that says you need to refresh your login information do not use links provided in the email to do so, regardless of how professional it looks. Close the email, open your browser (typically Microsoft Internet Explorer a.k.a. IE, or Netscape Navigator), go to the main web site, and login normally. If you really need to change your information there should be something there that tells you. I have gotten so many of these bogus attempts to swipe my identity it just is not funny. Don’t fall for it!

Fairly Safe:

Just browsing the Internet causes a lot of pop-ups and ads and even programs that install themselves behind the scenes. Block unwanted ads and parasites by using a modified host file. You only need to be familiar with copying and renaming files. Start by looking for the file HOSTS in C:\Windows\System32\Drivers\etc\Hosts. Rename the file and then download the replacement here: http://mvps.org/winhelp2002/hosts.htm. If you have an odd network setup you might need to transfer some settings between the files and you may not be comfortable with that. You can always put the old one back if it does not work well for you. But typically what you will find is that all those annoying pop-ups are now blank. They all say either Forbidden or File Not Found. You do not have to deal with them anymore other than closing the windows. More importantly the sites installing ads or programs that hijack program functions are blocked from working at all.

One of the nice things about the Internet is that people have banded together to fight these things. I like checking the Security forum of Tech Support Guy (http://forums.techguy.org/) if I come across a problem that seems related to browsing. Especially when you have already gotten some program that hijacks operations like going to new web pages. If you open Google.com and instead get popnav or shopnav, you’ve been hijacked! Yuck. You will need to download and run several free programs like Ad-Aware (basic) from http://www.lavasoftusa.com/ and SpywareBlaster from http://www.javacoolsoftware.com/spywareblaster.html. Both programs work sort of like anti-virus programs where they can be updated regularly with a new data file that includes the latest troublemakers. Make sure you look for an update button and get the latest data file regularly. Ad-Aware searches and destroys the files and programs installed to track what you do on the Internet by spyware companies. SpywareBlaster tries to prevent them from ever working.

Tricky:

If these programs don’t entirely fix your problem, you may need to get Hijack This! from the download section at this site: http://www.spywareinfo.com/~merijn/index.html. This can be a tricky program because it allows you to make changes that affect the processes your computer runs. I don’t suggest actually changing anything. Instead, run the program and save the log file. Post that log file on the Tech Support Guy Security Forum mentioned earlier and let them know the problems you are experiencing. They will be happy to help figure out your exact problem. You may even find your same problem by examining the previous posts.

There are several settings you can make in your web browser to protect yourself. I only have IE available so I can only comment on that, but Navigator should have some security settings as well. The trickiness is that making poor setting choices can cause you to block access to some sites that you need. Make these changes only with the help of a network professional or at your own risk. In IE, choose Tools->Internet Options. Now, there are Security and Advanced options tabs that have a lot of specific information changes that can affect how IE runs certain web sites. These settings change between versions and are tricky so I won’t deal with those. The simpler thing is to block cookies coming in from web sites using settings on the Privacy tab. These cookies track what you select and they also store information like what you have in your shopping cart. So they can be good and bad. I like to select the Advanced button and set it to override the automatic handling and prompt me whenever any cookies are going to be written, like this:

After that, when you go to a new site (that uses cookies) you will get a message if it tries to write a cookie on your computer, like this:

You can select to block or allow that cookie at that time, and you can choose to always make that same choice whenever the site is visited. You can choose to block sites that you don’t think should be tracking anything important and accept those like shopping sites that need to track what you want to buy. If you make a mistake, you can change that particular cookie by going back into the options, going to the Privacy tab and selecting the Edit button. Then you can change whether you block or allow a site.

(Double-click in Managed Web sites to get the address to move into the Address of Web site field.)

Dangerous, but necessary:

It would be dangerous to install this kind of software yourself, but check to make sure your system has a good firewall such as ZoneAlarm or WinRoute. Windows XP even comes with a very basic firewall. But I leave the actual installation to a networking professional as the settings can be tricky and it is easy to get them wrong and leave your computer unable to connect to the Internet. It is almost essential to have this installed however as without it a hacker could connect to your network through the Internet and steal information or disrupt your programs (including accounting systems). If you don’t know or aren’t sure if you have one, talk to a networking professional immediately, especially if you have an “always-on” connection. Some ISPs have them set up to protect their users and a network professional should be able to tell you if they do and whether it is sufficient for your needs.

Hopefully with this information your Internet experiences can remain useful and informative.