On 2/1/2015 5:38 PM, SMS wrote:
On 1/30/2015 7:20 PM, Mayayana wrote:
You don't say what "accounts and settings is. It
looks like settings for a cellphone. given what you
said about AV I'd assumed you were talking about
Windows.

A couple of thoughts:

* I'd agree about avoiding anything from Symantec.
It's all bloated junk. Avira causes too many false
positives. I've installed Avast for friends, as the lesser
of the evils. Personally I don't use AV and would never
use Malwarebytes. It's not that I don't think people
should use them. It's just that they take a lot of
resources and don't work very well. The whole idea is
outdated. But for people who don't know how to protect
from malware, AV is better than nothing.

A great many users fall into the trap of renewing their Norton or McAfee
"protection" every year and then get very defensive when it's pointed
out that equivalent, or better, protection is easily available for lower
cost, or free. McAfee actually scores pretty well in independent tests.
The independent test labs no longer test Symantec because there is no
longer a standalone Norton Anti-Virus program.

They don't test Norton?

http://www.av-test.org/en/antivirus/...ows/windows-7/

On 2/1/2015 4:44 PM, Ron wrote:
On 2/1/2015 5:38 PM, SMS wrote:

A great many users fall into the trap of renewing their Norton or McAfee
"protection" every year and then get very defensive when it's pointed
out that equivalent, or better, protection is easily available for lower
cost, or free. McAfee actually scores pretty well in independent tests.
The independent test labs no longer test Symantec because there is no
longer a standalone Norton Anti-Virus program.

They don't test Norton?

http://www.av-test.org/en/antivirus/...ows/windows-7/

Go back and read it again. Look about two thirds DOWN the list and
you'll see it.

On Sun, 01 Feb 2015 14:25:34 -0800, SMS
wrote:

On 2/1/2015 1:21 PM, Oren wrote:
On Sun, 01 Feb 2015 09:13:33 -0800, SMS
wrote:

Browser add-ons like Ghostery block things
like "Facebook Connect."

For giggles I installed Ghostery FF add-on this morning out of
curiosity. I'm impressed. Opt-in and allow the purple bubble that
shows what trackers were blocked from tracking you.

https://www.ghostery.com/en/home

It's amazing just how many different trackers one web site can have!

Yes. It's about money. I was aware of all the data mining and
targeting. I tried another FF add on, but was not satisfied. Ghostery
seems a better solution for blocking them. I like it, even though I
only installed it this morning

On 2/1/2015 6:23 PM, Unquestionably Confused wrote:
On 2/1/2015 4:44 PM, Ron wrote:
On 2/1/2015 5:38 PM, SMS wrote:

A great many users fall into the trap of renewing their Norton or McAfee
"protection" every year and then get very defensive when it's pointed
out that equivalent, or better, protection is easily available for lower
cost, or free. McAfee actually scores pretty well in independent tests.
The independent test labs no longer test Symantec because there is no
longer a standalone Norton Anti-Virus program.

They don't test Norton?

http://www.av-test.org/en/antivirus/...ows/windows-7/

Go back and read it again. Look about two thirds DOWN the list and
you'll see it.

I'm the one pointing out that they do test Norton.

On Sun, 01 Feb 2015 13:12:56 -0800, SMS
wrote:

You don't understand.

First of all, e-mails tend to be ignored because people get so many
e-mails. Unless you set up e-mail filters to sort them and depend on
people to include the organization name in the subject line so they can
be sorted.

I have 5 email accounts.

1. My own personal one for friends and relatives.
2. For my small business
3. For contacting businesses (which is the one that gets spam and
mailing lits that I did not want.)
4. Specific for mailing lists that I want to be on.
5. Misc. (for whatever dont fit any of the above).

The band could have one just for band business, free emails are easy to
get.

I dont ignore any emails, unless they are obvious spam. I apply filters
for repeated spam, such as LinkedIn I have everything from that site,
or using their name, blocked.

On 2/2/2015 1:28 AM, wrote:
On Sun, 01 Feb 2015 13:12:56 -0800, SMS
wrote:

You don't understand.

First of all, e-mails tend to be ignored because people get so many
e-mails. Unless you set up e-mail filters to sort them and depend on
people to include the organization name in the subject line so they can
be sorted.

I have 5 email accounts.

Wow, that would go over real well with parents and students. Talk about
making things more complicated.

SMS wrote:

Some recent posts in other threads in alt.home.repair indicate that
there is some lack of awareness of the need for browser extensions and
applications to manage privacy.

I read all the suggestions by in this thread including those of SMS
and Mayayana in particular. While most are good ideas they all involve
huge amounts of effort which gets added to the maintenance one has to
do on a regular basis. The complaints about the laziness of the
average user ignore that he's already inundated with upgrades to
numerous programs including the O/S and browser each of which requires
analysis to ensure that the upgrades don't disable or change other
carefully installed ad-ons or modifications.

Sometimes you can't even tell that disaster is a few keystrokes away.
For example I eventually upgraded Adobe Flash plug-in for Firefox
because of the annoying whining and -- whoops -- another add-on that
changed the color of "read" articles stopped working not only for
future items but for all those (thousands) I'd read in the past ten or
so years. They all reverted to the unread category. The solution for
the future was to re-install the add-on. There is no solution for the
past items. What a mess!

What's necessary is all-out war on the spammers, trackers, privacy
violators, bloat ware installers, and generally programmers who want
to keep their jobs. (My son, who's in the spamming business, goes
ballistic when I tell him, "Software is forever".)

But this isn't a war you can win on an individual basis. Really you
need help. An honest company that can stop the bad guys in their
tracks by making their efforts futile. For example, by telling a nosy
inquirer that you're not using AdBlock Plus or Ghostery or similar and
returning plausible but erroneous information to the sender. Any ad
the sender thinks he making your computer display will simply drop
into the bit bucket. Since most of these pages are in fact ads
themselves I see nothing immoral about lying to the owners.

Probably,with some minor exceptions, the days of the protection for
free seem to be over. It's unlikely that anyone trustworthy is going
to write (say) a sample hosts file complete with annotations as to
what each item means so it can be intelligently customized by the
user. Similarly if the anti-ad, tracking, etc package becomes popular,
Google and other schemers are likely to find a way around the
protection. Like an arms race someone will have to update the software
regularly to deal with the scum.

So the answer has to be some form of payment (horrible though that
thought is), not donations (don't work) and certainly not ads. And it
must pass the general approval test. The more comments and whining the
better provided that the originator actually takes notice.

***********

And, slightly off topic: Those who suggest using the ISP as an email
provider ignore the fact that one would like to change ISP's
occasionally without killing all the contacts one has established over
the years. Further one of my email accounts is with Verizon, my ISP.
They have no anti-spam functionality and they keep wanting me to
change the port. I just ignore them and so far all (except for the
spam) is still well.

Nor is it practical to use a free email account. Last time I checked
they all seem to be in Bangladesh or other third-world countries and
are likely of short longevity. Nope, we're stuck with gmail or
similar.

************

And even further off-topic (although someone mentioned it) is the
inexcusable use of interpreters like .net. About 5 years ago I changed
my back-up program and one of the parameters I insisted on was that it
was written in a compiled stand alone language (Assembler, C, or
similar) and only relies on the O/S for something everyone has to rely
on it for (like writes to media). It also has to be portable and
produce a back-up file that can be used just as is. I.e. it's a
vanilla copy program (no compression or special file format) but it
doesn't copy identical already backed-up files.

I'm not going to turn this into spam so no names but it is right
priced (i.e. free) and with the addition of a replaceable hard drive
(several of them) I have a fast easy copy of my entire system. Change
that prevents change is possible.

On 6/2/2015 8:57 PM, wrote:
SMS wrote:

Some recent posts in other threads in alt.home.repair indicate that
there is some lack of awareness of the need for browser extensions and
applications to manage privacy.

I read all the suggestions by in this thread including those of SMS
and Mayayana in particular. While most are good ideas they all involve
huge amounts of effort which gets added to the maintenance one has to
do on a regular basis.

Actually there is little maintenance if done right. I have taken these
steps on my kids' computers (one who is off at college) and have made it
so they don't have to do anything.

I did pay for Malwarebytes because the paid edition lets you
automatically schedule scans. But it was only a few dollars per system.

Adblock Plus does not require any manual updating.

Ghostery does not require any updating though sometimes new trackers
need to be disabled it doesn't matter much if they get through for a while.

FBP automatically updates.

MSE automatically updates.

The one that needs manual updating is the hosts file, but again there's
no urgency. Doing it every six months or so is sufficient.

| I read all the suggestions by in this thread including those of SMS
| and Mayayana in particular. While most are good ideas they all involve
| huge amounts of effort which gets added to the maintenance one has to
| do on a regular basis.

I think there's a limit to what one can do without
some work. It's a complex system. There's a joke
in the programming world that the ideal design for
business software is "one button, no directions".
The problem is that a program with one button can
only do one thing. Computers are very complex and
capable machines. We can't have it both ways. That
desire is part of the reason that tablets are successful,
but tablets also reduce functionality, software options
and control.

I don't think it's so different from anything else.
If you want to control it you have to make an effort.
If you want to eat healthy food you need to study
not only nutrition but also the food business. You
can't just trust that Dunkin Donuts or Panera Bread
is offering something edible. They're corporations
in the business of making money. The same goes
for most farmers and grocery stores.

Home repair could also be used as an analogy. If
you want a good house you need to learn about
upkeep. Or you need to find someone you trust and
pay them to do it.

You can save a lot of work by using tools, like
NoScript for Firefox. But even getting that far is
a level of tech expertise that only a tiny fraction
of people will ever master.

I provide an information webpage for people interested
in privacy. At the beginning I explain that there could be
3 categories of people delineated: People who don't care
about online spying, people who care but don't want to
make an effort, and people who care and do want to make
an effort. Most people are in the 2nd category. Ostrich
mentality. They think that caring will somehow be helpful.
The only people who can be helped are the ones in the
3rd category.

| And, slightly off topic: Those who suggest using the ISP as an email
| provider ignore the fact that one would like to change ISP's
| occasionally without killing all the contacts one has established over
| the years. Further one of my email accounts is with Verizon, my ISP.
| They have no anti-spam functionality and they keep wanting me to
| change the port. I just ignore them and so far all (except for the
| spam) is still well.
|
| Nor is it practical to use a free email account. Last time I checked
| they all seem to be in Bangladesh or other third-world countries and
| are likely of short longevity. Nope, we're stuck with gmail or
| similar.
|

This is a great example of the problem. You want
honest, non-spyware email, but you don't want to
make any effort. (Verizon has switched the port
once, maybe twice over the years. The latest change
is to make it more secure. It requires two minutes
of paying attention on your part to make that change.)

Google says, "Hey, go with us. It's effortless." So
you do. OK, but don't then complain about sleaziness.
I have ISP email. If I changed ISPs then so what? I'd
have to let people know. Most of my email I do through
my own domain. I pay yearly to keep ownership and
pay $9/month for hosting. Again, you can get cheaper
or even free web hosting, but if you want real service
without sleaze it costs a bit. It also requires learning
a bit about how to have a domain hosted. You can also
get real email for a couple of dollars a month from an
independent company. My techy niece is using something
called hushmail lately. I haven't looked into it, but it
looks like it might be a good choice.

Telling everyone that we're stuck with GMail is just
fooling yourself. I'm not stuck with gmail. I've never
used free webmail and never will. On some of
my email accounts I auto-delete incoming webmail. If
people want to reach me they need to use real email
to do it.
I don't agree that the sleazy webmail companies
(Microsoft, Google, Yahoo, especially) have a right to
essentially rifle through my desk and copy my papers
at will. You going along with that sleaze is *exactly*
what makes it possible for them to do it.