Ask A Vet Question

Ask Ottawa veterinarian Dr. Marie a question about the health of your pet online. Then continue to converse back and forth with her until you feel your question is answered satisfactorily.

Dr. Marie has been practicing small animal medicine for over 10 years now. She is compassionate and cares for the animals and the wonderful people who own them. She is experienced in treating dogs, cats, guinea pigs, hamsters, rats and mice. She is skilled in surgery, dermatology, ophthalmology, dentistry, behavior and medicine. Dr. Marie has taken courses in Orthopedic Surgery as well. She really enjoys solving complicated medical cases such as animals with difficult diseases like Cushing’s Disease, Addison’s, and those frustrating itchy dog cases that are hard to figure out.

She also has an interest in oncology and gives compassionate and knowledgeable advice whether you are interested in chemotherapy, radiation or simply palliative care.

Her latest venture, this online vet advice site has helped many people who have veterinary questions and need to ask a vet a question and get a response quickly! Need to ask an online vet? Veterinarian, Dr. Marie is here to help.

You can also browse her growing selection of free articles on pet health, including cats, dogs, and hamsters (“pocket pets”).

Ask-a-Vet: Online Veterinary Help for Your Pets is a post from: PsychNet Reviews and Recommendations

©2010 PsychNet Reviews and Recommendations. All Rights Reserved.

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Part 2: Keeping Your Computer Safe

 Once you’ve ascertained that your system is clean, or removed whatever malware infections were found, you’ll want to keep it that way. Here’s how to do that.

Install a real-time antivirus scanner

Over the years, I’ve used most antivirus programs and suites. I was for a long time a fan of Norton AntiVirus but as time went on NAV became increasingly bloated and resource hungry to the point where it could slow even the speediest system to a turtle’s pace. Recently, I’ve seen ads for the latest version claiming that it now has a smaller footprint and is less resource-intensive. That may be true but I think Norton lost me as a customer a long time ago.

I also used McAfee AntiVirus for a while. My complaint about McAfee was that it produced too many gave me too many false positives (identifying a file as containing a virus when in fact it was clean). It also seemed to become increasingly bloated and slow as time went on.

Most recently, I gave up on my long-time favorite, AVG. This used to be a very nice, compact, efficient, and fast AV program, available in both a free version and a commercial Pro version. A couple of versions ago, however, Grisoft began to emulate Norton and their product became huge and cumbersome, and,  worse, less accurate in identifying malware in my experience. Interestingly, at the same time they seemed to have gone to some lengths to make it more difficult to find the download link for the free version, although it continued to be available.

I then went in search of a new replacement which would have the following characteristics:

1. It needed to be fast and efficient with a small footprint (i.e., not resource intensive).
2. It needed to be effective at identifying and intercepting malware with a minimum of false positives.
3. It needed to be a stand-alone antivirus program, rather than an all-in-one security suite (more about that below).
4. It needed to offer automatic updates and real time antimalware scanning.

As a result of my research, I narrowed the field down to two or three, including Avast!. I tried Avast first and my experience to date has given me no reason to change (i.e., I never did get to try Avira although it is well rated).

Other antivirus programs that are generally well-rated include NOD32, Kaspersky,  and Avira.

As noted, I recommend against one-size-fits-all security suites. In part, this is a longstanding prejudice against jack-of-all-trades technology, going back to my stereophile days. I prefer to get the best individual components that meet my criteria and my general experience has been that the best antivirus program is not necessarily the best firewall, anti-spam, or ant-spyware solution. Also note that it is not a good idea to have more than one antivirus program active at the same time since they may conflict with one another. If you do install a suite, disable or uninstall any stand-alone products previously installed.

Once you have selected and installed an AV program, do an initial total system scan and then and have it set to autoscan any files that are created, all files from your diskette and CD-ROM drives as they are copied or installed, and all incoming email (if you’ve done everything else right, you really don’t need to scan outgoing email but you can usually set your AV program to do to be extra safe if you wish). Then do a full system scan at least once a month as a safety net, or any time you are concerned that you may have visited an unsafe website.

Activate Windows Firewall or Install a Third Party Firewall

From its introduction in Windows XP, the built-in Windows firewall has been the target of a lot of undeserved bad press, primarily because it monitored incoming connections only, not outgoing connections. On the other hand, the primary reason for monitoring outgoing connections is to prevent unauthorized scripts from accessing the net. If you follow the recommendations in the current series and use a bit of common sense, monitoring outgoing connections isn’t essential, and the Windows Firewall will cloak your ports to external probes.  (To prove this for yourself, you can test your defenses using try the free utilities at Gibson Research, in particular Shields UP!, with all but the Windows Firewall disabled). If you are using any of the various versions of Windows Vista, the version of Windows Firewall shipping with that operating system also monitors outgoing ports.

I am currently using the Windows Firewall in combination with a router. Note that you should not have two software firewalls active at the same time.

Still, there are some who feel that the Windows Firewall just isn’t enough. If you believe you must install a software firewall, I would recommend the free Comodo Personal Firewall which now comes bundled with Comodo’s antivirus program. Previously, I’ve used Norton Personal Firewall (which no longer appears to be available as a stand-alone but must be purchased as part of a suite) and ZoneAlarm. Again, I found that both of these products became bloated and sluggish over time. You can obtain similar products from McAfee and others, again usually as part of “internet security suites”.

 If you use a third party firewall, once it is installed, go through any list of “safe” programs it may have created on setup and delete or disable any entires you know nothing about. If they are legitimate programs, you’ll later get pop-up warnings from the firewall informing you that “program-name.exe” is trying to connect to the internet and asking you if you want to allow that to happen, so if it’s genuine all you have to do is say “yes – it’s safe”.

Activate Windows Defender

Install and run Windows Defender. I’ve found this to be an entirely satisfactory antispyware utility and this runs on startup as my default. If you wish, you can also download and install Ad-Aware and Spybot Search & Destroy. Disable real-time scanning for these so they don’t clash with Windows Defender and run them monthly. Another option is SpywareBlaster.

Monitor Programs That Autostart on Windows Boot

For Windows XP, install Mike Lin’s freeware Startup Control Panel 2.8 to easily see what programs are starting up automatically when you boot. Disable any you’re not sure you want (if they absolutely must run, you’ll find out soon enough and the utility allows you to easily re-enable it). While you’re at Mike Lin’s website, also download and install Startup Monitor: this little program sits in the background of your system and warns you when any program tries to install something to load automatically at system boot, with the option of allowing or disallowing that function.

For Vista, or as an alternative or augmentation to Mike Lin’s utilities, download and periodically run Autoruns for Windows or the more comprehensive but perhaps less user-friendly for novices SysInternals Suite, both from Microsoft. Other useful diagnostic utilities from Microsoft include RootkitRevealer, Process Explorer, and Process Monitor. Another option is WhatInStartup from Nirsoft.

You can also install HiJackThis! from TrendMicro. However, be very cautious about deleting things detected by this utility unless you know what they are. HiJackThis! detects both harmful and useful or needed add-ons.

Download and install ShellExView from Nirsoft, a small utility which displays the details of shell extensions installed on your computer, and allows you to easily disable and enable each shell extension. You’ll find a large number of other useful freeware utilities at the Nirsoft site.

Spyware Doctor AV

PCTools Internet Security

Basic Computer Security 2009 Part 2 is a post from: PsychNet Reviews and Recommendations

©2010 PsychNet Reviews and Recommendations. All Rights Reserved.

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To mark their current Viva tour, Coldplay is making their new album of live music, Left Right Left Right Left, available free for download until September 19th, as a thank you to their fans.

You will need to enter your email address and country location here to download the album (approximately 55 Mb).

Thanks to Daniel at Psychlinks Psychology Self-Help and Mental Health Support Forum for the tip!

Download latest CD from Coldplay for free is a post from: PsychNet Reviews and Recommendations

©2010 PsychNet Reviews and Recommendations. All Rights Reserved.

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