Protect Yourself from Virus and Malware Attacks!

Lately it seems there has been a rash of infections amongst my personal group of friends and family members, so I thought I would post a few links for effective ways to increase the levels of protection from such events. My personal favorite, as anyone who knows me or has talked to me about such matters, is using virtually any version of LINUX instead of Windows, particularly if your computer activities are primarily focused online!

Buying Guide to Anti-Virus Software

http://www.esecurityplanet.com/features/article.phpr/3863251/Buying-Guide-Anti-Virus-Software.htm

(BTW, I've personally used and suggested AVG for years!)

Another good free Anti-Virus, now for Windows too!

http://www.clamav.net/lang/en/

LINUX users have used ClamAV for years, BTW!

My personal favorite choice for avoiding virus and malware attacks:

http://www.itwire.com/opinion-and-analysis/open-sauce/37292-the-best-way-to-fight-viruses-stop-using-windows

More good reading on this topic:

http://blog.eracc.com/2010/03/15/gnulinux-dont-call-them-pc-viruses/

And for those that want to know more, my favorite LINUX distributions:

http://www.linuxmint.com/

http://www.ubuntu.com/

http://pclinuxos.com/

http://www.mepis.org/

http://puppylinux.org

http://www.damnsmalllinux.org/

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Tomato Firmware makes a great wireless bridge!

Since my oldest son Bill told me yesterday that he didn't need the spare WRT54G wireless router I had, I decided to flash it with the latest Tomato firmware and turn it into a wireless bridge so that I can use the Laserjet network printer that has been sitting idle in the laundry room for lack of usable space to hook it up within reasonable cabling distance to a network connection. The other alternative, crawling underneath the house and running Cat5 cable wasn't too appealing, especially in the middle of a Michigan winter! The flashing process was relatively simple. After that was done, it took a while to configure the new bridge so that it could communicate with the existing router, and I had to switch network cables from the normal router to the bridge and back again about a dozen times before I got it all set up. Now every computer in the house can print directly to the Laserjet. No more copying files to a USB key and having Michelle take them to work to print them out!!! Of course, you do have to remember to turn the printer on first before trying to print to it!

Kudos to polarcloud for their awesome Tomato firmware -
http://www.polarcloud.com/tomato

And a hat's off to Wi-Fi Planet and Aaron Weiss for an excellent tutorial on how to set it all up-
http://www.wi-fiplanet.com/tutorials/article.php/3810281

Next project will be using my Tomato powered Buffalo WHR-HP-G54 with all of it's advanced network/traffic/monitoring capabilities to replace the stock Linksys router we are currently using!

All logos, trade names, trade marks, and photos of the same belong to their respective owners. The use of such material in this article falls under the Fair Use provisions of intellectual property laws.