Absolute PC Security and Privacy.pdf

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This book is dedicated to my brother-in-law Dennis and my sister-in-law Stephanie, for
putting up with the rest of the family.
Acknowledgments
Thanks to all the Sybex staffers and freelancers who have helped to shape and shepherd this
project, including but not limited to Brianne Agatep, Franz Baumhackl, Jim Compton, Ellen
Dendy, Joel Fugazzotto, Nancy Guenther, Tony Jonick, Jim Kelly, Mae Lum, and my old
friend Jordan Gold.
Introduction
I first conceived of this book when I got an e-mail from a friend—or, to be more accurate,
from her e-mail program. My friend hadn’t sent the message, which had a random Word
document and a virus-infected file attached; the message was sent by the computer virus that
was infecting her system.
It was likely, I thought, that my friend didn’t know her computer had been infected; she’s not
the most technically literate person I know. (She’s a retired music teacher, not a computer
geek.) So I called her, and told her that I thought she had a virus. Her immediate reaction was
panic, followed by a question: Did this mean she had to throw away her computer and buy a
new one
It didn’t, I replied; then I walked her through what she needed to do to remove the virus from
her system. Unfortunately, I soon discovered that the steps to recovery were harder than they
needed to be, and weren’t helped by the unnecessary technospeak employed by the company
that supplied the chosen antivirus software.
How, I wondered, was the average computer user supposed to deal with this sort of problem
on their own
This incident was followed by a similar one, where my brother’s computer became infected.
He is more technically literate than my music-teacher friend, and we got the problem fixed
relatively quickly. He also figured out how the virus had entered his system; it was through an
e-mail attachment from a friend that he had unassumingly opened a few days prior. Why had
he opened the attachment, I asked—didn’t he know that’s how viruses are spread Yes, he
answered, but he’s in the habit of clicking everything he receives via e-mail, especially if it
comes from someone he knows.
The virus incident put my brother on alert, however, and a few weeks later I received another
call from him. This time he’d received an e-mail from another friend, warning him that his
system was infected with some new virus, and instructing him to delete some supposedly