Wednesday, March 30, 2005

Back Again!

The last few weeks have been a little difficult because of a virus. Actually a trojan which is not at all damaging, but spies on the computer. You get a feeling of being watched once you know that it is there. Sadly spyware is all over the place now, and one can never really be sure of getting on top of the problem.

Our usual, well known, antivirus software did not seem to be much help in detecting and getting rid of this particular virus. So we went looking for an alternative.

We have downloaded the free software from Grisoft and been running this in the office for the past few weeks. I have to say that it does seem to have done the trick! The disturbing thing is the number of viruses that it locates during the day. It makes me wonder what was happening before.

We have also noted a major difference in the number of viruses that are picked up depending on how we access a website. Normally we channel everything through AOL and the security level is very high with no viruses getting through to our system. But then there are times when we want to use Internet Explorer on the back of our AOL link. And this is when the problems start, even with the highest security controls imposed we are still under constant attack. So now we only use IE when absolutely necessary and then only for short bursts. And the Anti Virus software is kept busy!

If you are a personal user then you can do no worse than follow this link http://free.grisoft.com/doc/1 for the free download. It's well worth running this in tandem with your usual anti virus software.

Nigel