‘Tis The Season For Malware Attacks

As Valentine’s Day grows near, so do the ongoing email attacks that are coming into the inboxes of unexpecting PC users everywhere. At my house however, this has not really been a problem. All of the POP mail here in my hole is combed heavily with the Bayesian filter known as POPFile, which runs on an old Zonbu Mini now powered by Ubuntu. My wife’s Mac, however, relies on Gmail to do the work and overall has performed well to prevent this sort of stuff from getting through.

But what about all of those people out there still rocking along with their XP or older Windows installations, likely running something “super secure” like Outlook Express with all of the HTML readability enabled to ensure maximum damage can be done with ease? Who speaks for them? In truth, the end user is generally on their own and the sad fact of the matter is that with each holiday, we see people running into the same problems with malware year after year.

Years ago when I was getting ready to retire my own PC repair business, I made it a point to switch people over to OS X if at all possible, or at least lock down their existing XP systems as much as possible. I often found that simply creating a Limited User and designating them as the “Internet” user worked wonders for avoiding malware surprises.

Then again, I guess there is no perfect solution for all circumstances. With that said, what do you use to protect friends/family/clients from their own bad PC usage habits? Are you simply playing damage control as it happens? Or instead, perhaps you have a tidbit of wisdom to share with the community? Whatever it may be, hit the comments and tell us about how you keep those around you safe as malware comes “a knocking.”