Protect Yourself From The Bad Guys

I’ve spent parts of the last several days updating our computers and their subscriptions to products that protect us from the bad guys.

We use Norton’s SystemWorks on all our computers. It makes it easy from me to clean out the worthless data, make sure we have current anti-virus protection, defrag the hard disks, fix problems with Windows ( we use XP Pro ) and it keeps my registry fairly clean.

I had to update to a newer version a couple of nights ago and didn’t get started until about 12:30 AM. Daughter #3 just would not get up and I was determined to get it done before I went to sleep. I ended up calling their telephone tech support at around 1:00 AM just for kicks. The error message on the screen that said ” Dude, this installation just ain’t gonna happen ! “, didn’t have a thing to do with it.

It’s 1:00 AM here and there is no way of knowing what time it is wherever their support is located, I thought.

Call anyway, a little voice said to me. It’s free call and you might get to wake somebody up ! Cool, I like waking people up in the middle of the night, so let’s get to ringing.

After going thru the voice menu for about 1 minute I end up on the line with a gentle soul from India. He’s sorry I’m having trouble getting the old version to uninstall, but if I will just go to this website he’s trying to get me to type, we can uninstall EVERY instance of Norton’s products and then the new version will install.

Sure it will…heard that before. So we try to understand each other’s accents. Imagine if you will, a country boy from the hills and hollers of Kentucky and a gentleman from India who speaks the Queen’s English. I tell him, go slow and enunciate, I don’t speak English, I speak Kentuckian !

I finally get to the site he wants me to visit, click on a special top-secret link to a world beater of an uninstall program and download that puppy. Run it once, re-start…run it again, re-start and then the new version will install, he says.

I let him go after he gives me a case # and get to the running of this super-secret program. After running it twice, the new version installed like it was supposed to.

Thanks my Indian friend ! Imagine, installation help at 1:00 AM. Free. FREE ! Symantec rocks !

We also use Zone Alarm as our firewall and I had to recently update to a newer version. It seems to be doing it’s usual good job of keeping out the bad guys. If you are operating sans firewall, you’re doomed to have problems. Not maybe, not if, you will get got !

We also use Spybot Search & Destroy. It’s free and gets some of the uncoolies out when paid products won’t.

SpySweeper from Webroot is also in our arsenal. It keep out some of the evil ones and roots out a lot of tracking cookies and such.

Make sure you fight the evil empire with all the up-to-date tools you can find.

For more and regular info, check out Spywaredude. It’s a Bloglogic creation and they have an RSS feed for your viewing pleasure.

If you’ve got any killer apps that do the hard work for you, leave us a comment and let’s make everybody else aware of them.