Recently, I’ve been a guest presenter for “Doc’s Place Live”, hosted by my longtime friend Dave Dockery. “Doc’s Place Live” meets at the Tampa Bay Computer Society’s resource center in Largo, Florida every Friday morning from 10am to 12noon (Eastern time). Using their audio/video equipment, the presentation is streamed live for those who can’t be there in person. We’ve had some troubles with the live streaming on occasion, but this past presentation went very well and there is a recording available for on-demand viewing.

I have to admit, that the actual talk wasn’t as much about security as it was about how software – good and bad – gets on to our machines without us knowing, or inadvertently consenting to software we don’t want. I used an example of a simple Flash Video Player that also installs the Yahoo! Toolbar by default. While this particular installation program offers users the choice not to install the Yahoo! Toolbar, many don’t offer choices, or make it difficult to figure out what exactly is being put on your computer.

What’s insidious about this is that months later, when the computer starts to slow down from the weight of such programs, people have no idea what happened. “I never installed anything from Yahoo!,” a user might protest, and they would be correct. Some other installation program did, with no affiliation with Yahoo!. The toolbar is not a virus, nor is not spyware, and no Anti-virus tools will flag this, or protect the machine from software the user most likely does not want. After all, the user did consent to having it installed, probably without reading the End-User License Agreement or carefully reviewing options the setup program offers.

This is why I promote a concept of “active management” of your computer. Get familiar with the Windows tools that show you what is installed, and what is running. Learn how to uninstall programs you do not use or need. Most of the time you don’t need additional software; what’s built into Windows will work just fine. Too often, I hear of people saying “I downloaded this program to help me speed up my machine,” and my pat reply is “the cure for too much software is not more software.”

If your computer is running slowly, or you are having unexplained problems, go clean it up yourself – go to the Control Panel, choose “Programs” (Add/Remove Programs in Windows XP) and start uninstalling the applications you don’t use. Don’t worry – if you find you really need it, you can reinstall them later.

Another tip is to keep your desktop clean. Many applications (including some from Microsoft) put shortcuts to their programs or websites on the desktop in an effort to ensure you’ll see it. We get accustomed to these icons and over time, our desktop is filled with stuff. You can safely delete all the shortcuts on your desktop. That’s part of actively managing our computers and knowing what’s on it.

Finally, I showed two tools that help users understand what’s currently loaded and what’s automatically loaded. The first is Task Manager, and it’s a built in tool that you can access by right-clicking on the task bar and choosing “Start Task Manager.” You could also press CTRL+Shift+ESC to activate it.

The other tool is Autoruns, part of the Sysinternals tool kit, now distributed by Microsoft. This tool displays all the programs and components that are launched automatically, often without any indication to the user. I recommend turning on two options in this program: “Verify Code Signatures” to check which programs have a digital signature. Secondly, turn on the “Hide Signed Microsoft Entries” to prevent the display of the many internal pieces of Windows that need to be launched. By turning this on, you’ll only be presented with software that you’ve added that is not considered part of the base Windows operating system.

Map to TBCS Resource Center

Watch the presentation for more details and please send me your feedback and suggestions for future presentations.

Next week, Friday August 28, we’ll be presenting on Internet Search Tips and Tricks, showing how to make the most of your searches online. Join us at the TBCS Resource Center in person at 10am.

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