johnhook

ejames82,

I agree with ejames82's advice. If you're running XP without any Internet Security software, make sure to ENABLE XP's built-in firewall. There are lots of good protection features in IE that can block potential threats, privacy invasions, bad scripts, unsigned sites, etc.

If your Internet activity is restricted to KNOWN secure sites (banking, e-commerce, general browsing) and you're NOT going to any warez sites, downloading any freeware, shareware, warez or other dangerous software, you're NOT running any P2P filesharing programs like LimeWire, eMule, Bittorrent or the likes - then you're probably OK on a dialup connection with limited, known-safe Internet activity. eMails are another source of worms, trojans and malware scripts so be sure to NEVER open up emails from ANY source unknown to you - regardless of how legit or tempting the subject of the email might be.

If you're still worried about malware and infections - I would do the following:

1) ALWAYS keep current backups of your data and full backups of your PC.

2) Install a decent AntiVirus/Internet Security Suite on your PC such as NOD32, McAfee Security Suite or Norton Internet Security.

Understand that installing AV/IS suites (especially Norton) WILL slow down your PC's performance. I'm told good things about NOD32.

Unrelated to your question about AV/IS/Protection software; I was a dial-up user for MANY years - dating back to the old 300 Baud modems when there wasn't a publically accessible internet and BBS sites were basically all you could accesss. I have gone through ALL of the dialup technology advances; 1200 -> 2400 -> 9600 -> 33K ->56K. Having been on a wide variety of broadband connections, I would NEVER go back to dial-up access! You are so limited by what you can do with dial-up that one you experience broadband, you'll never go back to dialup.

If you're in a remote location where broadband is not available, I would put pressure on your local telephone company, cable TV (in any) provider and or your wireless/cellular provider, DEMANDING some type of broadband internet solution. You need to ban together with others in your area and demand broadband from your telco or cable TV provider (if you have a Cable TV provider). Too many of these big "Ma Bell" telephone companies and cable companies are so motivated by profit that they can't cost-justify building or extending their broadband network access into remote or rural areas. This is wrong considering the huge profits they're making from urban and suburban areas. Broadband over digital cellular is an option of you have digital cellular access in your location - but these plans are generally quite expensive. I would start with your telephone company. If they can bring you dialtone for your 56K dialup access, they have the capability of offering DSL if there's a market in your area.

- John