Welcome to Zombieland

Day Two of Leave: Had great fun this morning. Due to one of my mates back problems we went surfing at Trigg. Nice. Offshore. Hollow. Due to weakness in my board when I damaged it on the reef I lost one of the fins and surfed like a dog.

Anyhow, today I am venting my anger at the Trojan / Spyware programmes that got through Vet antivirus program. I've become a Zombie. Possibly from one of the guys on the Chris Rea mailing list or possibly from a link I’ve followed thru via a Blog. Maybe from the spam that is hitting my PC in droves.

Foolishly when setting up my wireless connection - I thought the firewall on the PC that the modem is attached to would offer the needed protection. You actually need a firewall on every pc.

I’ve now:

Installed Mozilla Firefox – It’s a better Browser the IE – stops adverts
Intalled spybot, ad-aware, spyware doctor free from cnet.com
Intalled a second firewall – Sygate – free from cnet.

I’ve also since learned that there are some inncent looking sites that can’t be trusted. After running these programmes – apparently the ‘Lego’ online-store installed a tracking cookie – to watch my internet activity and purchase behavior on my PC by stealth. Not impressed.

Something I also have learned from my own foolishness is never to respond to spam senders – either abusing them (even in a nice way of course). This simply lets them know that your email address is active – and they will use it to perpetuate spam.

I’m now probably a pawn in cyberspace selling free-meds; Viagra and cheap loans - from my company's email address.