I’m one of the saps still paying for and using a dial-up Internet connection.
I orderd a Yahoo DSL and received the equipment, but 2 weeks later I was transferred to another city, so I never installed it and cancelled the contract and paid the fees. I threw the equipment in the Dumpster.
I probably could have taken it with me and set it up in my new location, but I was taken aback by the transfer, and I admit I’m a pretty naive about compooters.
Anyway, it’s become more and more apparent that I need a high-speed connection. Just about any video is off-limits unless I want to sit around for 20 minutes while it loads. Same with music, photos and just about everything.
I’m missing so much interesting content.
However, one advantage to having a dial-up is that no hackers or crackers are interested in my computer. I never have any trouble with viruses.
So, I’m looking for some input, (and this may be a General Question), but what I would like to know is this: If I get the high-speed connection, am I going to have to obtain the latest protection software and keep on top of that whole situation?
There’s no fundamental difference between a TCP/IP connection made over dial-up vs. one made over cable/dsl/wireless/fibre/whatever. Hackers don’t know you’re dial-up (they don’t generally attack one machine at a time). so the only real protection that offers is that if you’re not connected very long, there’s no time to download a nasty.
That said, many high-speed connection “modems” are in fact routers, and offer you a little more protection. Even so, I’d recommend buying a cheap cable router (think $40 or so) and sticking it between your shiny new cable modem and your computer. This will protect you quite handily from anything that may be trying to get in by external hacking.
For viruses, trojans, and other actively-downloaded malware, the same techniques that are keeping you safe now will keep you safe when you’re faster. Just remember that all those newly accessible large things (programs, video, sound files, etc.) can be infected, too (or the site you get them from is), so don’t drop your vigilance.
There are some very good free antivirus packages available (Avast, Avira and AVG). I use AVG at home, and have done so for a number of years. All three compare favourably with paid-for packages fro mthe likes of Symantec and McAfee.
Avira recently topped a group test of paid-for and free packages, with AVG not far behind.
All three will schedule regular updates automatically, so you shouldn’t have to do much to keep them up-to-date.
You should also update your operating system with the latest patches. If you’re running a flavour of Windows then just head over to the Windows update site and pick up the latest patches.
Use updated web browsers as well, the newer versions of Internet Explorer seem to be much more secure than older ones. Or use Firefox, it’s a good and probably safer alternative to the dominant IE.
And make sure you’re running a firewall, like ZoneAlarm.
As already mentioned by Timewinder, it doesn’t matter whether you’re on dialup or high-speed; hackers who send out a virus onto the Internet don’t know what everybody has. When we had dialup, we still had problems with viruses and malware.
It was recommended to us, after we got broadband, that we never leave the computer on all night, to prevent Evil Things from installing themselves while the 'puter is unattended. So we shut it down at bedtime.
Also, explore how you shut down your computer’s access to the Internet fast in an emergency. For us, we’ve got a button on top of the blinking thingy that we hit–blammo, no more Internet. I actually used it once, when BitDefender suddenly gave me multiple sequential popups that something was attempting to install itself.
