[silliwabit]

I understand that I am way behind the times, my life was so much easier that way, however recent developements in my life have made my ignorance of this machine, not only hazardous to a coupla teenagers I know but everyone around them as well. So I am asking for a little help learning how to restrict where they can get to on the web, and how to keep track of where they do get to on the web. If this is posted somewhere and I have missed it please just point me in the right direction. Since I myself have already made a lot of mistakes with this machine I plan to gut the whole thing and start all over. Just as soon as I learn how too. In the meantime I need to
A) figure out what AV to use, and I have already found a bunch of links here to help me with that but any helpful advice would be much appreciated.
B) Figure out the safety stuff that is already in here and how to use it
Anything else that I should be thinking of in advance of gutting this thing and starting over? I am sure there is but Ive been sitting here reading on this thing for a while and now I have a lot more questions than I originally started out with and quit frankly have no idea where to begin. Any help at all is greatly appreciated. I realize ya'll must be very busy and Im in no rush at this point, so if you can get a minute to drop me some advice, Im all ears. Thank you very much, and happy holidays all Kimi

PS in case your wondering, no its not easy to admit your ignorance to bunch of people you dont know.........:embarased

 

[Glaswegian]

Hi

This Article is a good place to start - should be enough there to keep you going for a while.

 

[bat21]

Actually it's not big deal to admit you're way behind with PC security. Most people are. Read the article mentioned, then get up to speed with some basic PC operating principals and articles by searching on google for "PC security", "Basic PC security", "XP limited accounts", "configuring XP for security", "configuring internet explorer for security" (or IE), "Blocking sites in IE", "Blocking user access in XP", "administrating user access in XP", "securing admin account XP" (for you).

Consider some parental monitoring software to install if you think the teens might want to get funny with the PC, and or some history/keylogging/site logging software that you can trust.

For the same reasons really good hackers are successful in negative ways you can be successful as a PC user/administrator in a positive way -- use your social skills to be very nice to other users as to coerce them to run with [B limited accounts [/B] and accept your restrictions on the PC. Honey always keeps the buzzing bees happy. Make sure they can't see or get admin information on the computer.

For a paid AntiVirus I recommend Kasperski (the suite will work well as an all-in-one and has a great firewall)).

For free I recommend AntiVir (avira) and Comodo firewall (free).

Use an MVP Hosts file to block sites, and install IE Spyad, and use AdAware SE, and Spybot, and consider one paid spyware application like spysweeper or Spyware Doctor.

Keep the OS updated with Windows Update. Keep AntiVirus updated and spyware apps updated and scan often.