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Using a computer without proper training is like driving a car on a busy road without having lessons first. Something nasty is sure to happen before too long!

Hopefully, with a computer, nobody’s going to get killed. But the mess that will inevitably follow from using one when you don’t know what you’re doing could be quite devastating. At best, it’s going to be very inconvenient. At worst, it could cost you a lot of money in lost work – and possibly even lost customers.

There are two important areas that most computer users tend to ignore: viruses and backups. Failure to fully understand all the issues involved in both of these subjects is sure to lead to problems sooner or later. In this post, I’ll talk about viruses and similar problems. I’ll write about backups in a later post.

Some of the things I talk about in this article are very slightly technical. Unless you don’t speak English well, if you don’t understand what I’ve written then you’re not going to be able to maintain your computer in a secure way – and you’re almost guaranteed to get a virus sooner or later. So if there’s anything you don’t understand, don’t just ignore it – learn about it! Antivirus software won’t save you if you don’t know the basics of computer security and use your computer accordingly.

Most computer users (and by this I mean most Windows users) think that if they’ve got anti-virus software installed they’re safe. Unfortunately it’s not that simple. There are various estimates, but it seems likely that anti-virus software finds less than fifty percent of the viruses that could infect your computer at any particular time.

You would probably be much better off throwing out the anti-virus software and learning how to use your computer in a safer way.

Unfortunately, Windows doesn’t encourage that sort of behaviour – unlike Mac OSX and Linux. So you’ll probably have to learn a completely new approach to using your computer. If you use Mac OS or Linux, you might as well stop reading at this point because the rest of this article only applies to Windows…

The menu items referred to in this article apply to Windows XP and they may be slightly different if you use a different variety of Windows. But the principles are the same and you should be able to work out which are the equivalent menu items in your version of Windows.

The first and most important thing to do is to make sure you’ve got Windows automatic updates turned on. You should be able to do this from the “Windows Update” item in the start menu. Personally I prefer to control what’s going on on my computer at all times, so I set the automatic update options to notify me when updates are ready, but not actually do anything until I say so. However, if you’re not bothered about it, it’s best to set it to automatically check for updates every day and automatically update your computer when necessary.

The reason why this is important for security is because there are new weaknesses found in Windows security all the time and, when they come to light, Microsoft produces a fix to prevent people from using them to hijack your computer. If your computer isn’t updated every time a fix is available your security is at risk.

The next step is to take away your administrator privileges. The normal way to set up Windows when it’s installed is with one user who has the power to do everything on the computer – including install new software. This is a serious flaw in Microsoft’s approach to security and neither Linux nor MacOS make it so easy to do this.

In general, if you can’t install software it’s almost impossible to accidentally install a virus. It’s probably not completely impossible, but it reduces the chances of it happening to an insignificant level. So what you have to do is to create a new user for yourself – a user without administrative powers – and always work on the computer as that user – preferably by having to log in and type in a password when you start up the computer.

There should be a user called “administrator” or something similar, who has all the administrative powers. This account should have a password. If you need to do any administrative functions – like installing software – you should log out as yourself (or switch users) and log in as administrator. Doing this should increase your awareness of the fact that what you are about to do is potentially dangerous. When you’ve done the adminstrative tasks, log out as administrator and log back in as yourself to carry on working.

You will need to set up Windows automatic update while you’re logged on as the administrator.

This way of working is absolutely essential. If you don’t do it you are considerably more at risk of getting a virus!

Thirdly, never install software unless you’re absolutely certain you know where it’s come from and that it doesn’t carry a virus. Downloading software from Microsoft’s download site should be safe – so long as you type “microsoft.com” into the address bar of your browser (not the search bar) and get to the software download that way. Installing commercial software from a reputable company, which you’ve bought on CD, should be safe. Apart from that, there are very few other places where you can safely get hold of software.

The following sites are safe (and recommended) for downloading software:

http://mozilla.com/firefox - for downloading the Firefox web browser – an improvement on Internet Explorer – and free!

http://mozilla.com/thunderbird – for downloading the Thunderbird email client – an free improvement on Outlook Express.

http://openoffice.org - for downloading OpenOffice – a free drop-in replacement for Microsoft Office. In my opinion it’s better than Office, too!

There are several other sites which are safe. But if you don’t know anything about a site, don’t download software from it!

Never download “cracked” commercial software. Cracked software is software that normally costs money to buy, but someone’s worked out a way to install it without paying – usually with a cracked licence key. This sort of software often contains viruses. There’s plenty of it floating around on the web – but if you think it’s a good deal, you’re wrong. It will cause you endless trouble if you try and use it.

Set Windows to always show the file extension – that is the “.exe”, “.jpg”, “.mp3″, etc, endings to file names. Windows comes with this turned off by default, which doesn’t help with security. You can change that setting by opening up a file browser window (e.g., double click on “My Computer”) and then going to Folder Options (in the Tools menu). Click on the View tab and un-tick the option Hide extensions for known file types. Then click the Apply to All Folders button. After that, you will always see the file extension.

Be wary of email attachments. Even if you know who it’s from, a file you receive as an email attachment could contain a virus. If the computer it was sent from is infected by a virus, it could be passed on that way. Don’t be too paranoid about attachments though – if you open them in the right way, they’re fairly safe.

The right way to open an attachment is to start up whatever application they would normally be opened with and then open them using the Open File option in the File menu. For example, if it’s an mp3 music file, you will probably play it using Windows media player. So save it to the desktop or somewhere where you know where it is and start up media player from the Start menu. Then open the File menu in media player and select Open File and play the mp3 file that way.

The same goes for image files – use Windows picture and fax viewer (or something similar, if it’s installed on your computer).

An alternative, easier way to do this is to always save the file to (say) the desktop and then right click on it with the mouse. This will give you a menu – go to Open With and select the application you want to use from that menu. If there’s no Open With option that probably means the file is a program – and not what you think it is – so don’t open it.

The reason why this way of opening files is safer is because sometimes a file looks like an image or a music file when it’s not. If you’re alert – and you’ve set folder options to always show the file extension – then you should spot this. But you may not always be as alert as you should be and it’s much better to develop safe habits and reduce the risk of accidentally opening a file that can install a virus in your computer.

If you created the file yourself, then it’s probably safe to open it by double-clicking on it. But if you’re not absolutely certain about it, don’t do it – use the Open With menu option above.

These are just some of things you should be aware of if you want to keep your computer free of viruses. It’s not everything, but it covers the basics. If you need help with any aspect of computer security, or would like us to train you to use your computer safely, contact us.

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