It might not be as gruesome as the name suggests... but if you fail to protect your computer from hackers, you run the risk of spammers hijacking it to send out junk email, entirely without your knowledge. In fact a large proportion of spam these days comes from Zombie computers.
With always-on Broadband connections becoming more and more popular, infections are becoming more common too. To stay safe, make sure that the PC has a firewall and that it is switched on! If you don't like Windows firewall that is built in to XP and Vista, you can download many free versions that are equally as good, if not better. I personally use Zone Alarm, which you can download for free (for personal use) from http://www.computeractive.co.uk/vnunet/downloads/2128997/zonealarm
It is also possible if you are using a wireless brioadband router, that the router has a firewall built into it. My tip -don't use two firewalls at once, they can interfere with each other and either let nothing in at all, or let nasties in through the gaps.
if your computer is, in fact, a zombie, not only will it run a lot slower, it's also using up your broadband or dial-up connection, which you are paying for, so as well as being a zombie, it's also a vampire!
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
2 comments:
Didn't the chap who ran ZoneAlarm used to have a security check that you could run on your pc to see how (in)secure it was?
I have vague memories of it finding my printer before I switched on the firewall. Frighteningly the test then offered to me the option of them printing a test page on my printer.
Now that IS scary!!!
Post a Comment