In a message dated 10/9/2006 8:51:21 PM Pacific Daylight Time, [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: I hvae no credit cards listed on the web, fortunately. I dont buy ANYTHING on line - well, I did once or twice, but I avoid it as a whole. IF someone tried to take "large amounts of money" from my bank account they would be in for a big surprise! LOL!
I dont use explorer - I took it off the desktop so I couldnt even hit it by mistake. I installed Firefox right away. While much of what you say I'm sure is right, I can't even fathom it... When I get on line I only go to my personal homepage, my cafepress store, photo.net, ebay and craigslist. or to look at pics you guys put up. I never go to any sites have anything to do with entertainment or sports - I don't open attachments or forwarded mail. And I'm keeping my old dial up account for email - for a while at least. ann ======= That will cover most security holes, ann. It really well -- common sense is always the best defense. :-) I do think, however, some of the MS updates are worth it. The first ones, later ones often have to do with Outlook and IE. If one doesn't use them the risk is much, much less. Especially Outlook. It doesn't hurt to go to the update page occasionally and look over the patches. One can pick and choose which to install. Many are useless for a majority of us. I highly recommend though, that you create a system restore point before downloading/installing any update. Go to help on your XP menu bar, then Pick a Task, then Tools, then System Restore, then Set a Restore Point. That saves the current state of your computer so you can set it back if something goes wrong. Actually it's not a bad idea to do it before installing any new program. I forget and don't do it enough. I've probably accepted about 6-8 updates since I started with XP about four-five years ago. Many are to plug security holes in Outlook, so I don't bother with those. Some are foreign language patches, and I don't need those. And some are to plug holes in IE, which I do use occasionally, rarely, but occasionally, so I evaluate those on a case by case basis and see if I think one or another is important or not. And occasionally there is one that is more general, not applying to either Outlook or I.E., and helpful. Yous take yous choice. But always create a restore point first. Avast isn't bad. Marnie aka Doe -- PDML Pentax-Discuss Mail List [email protected] http://pdml.net/mailman/listinfo/pdml_pdml.net
