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vgood post, thansks for the infos

Critical topic. I found Steve Gibson's site useful. One nice feature is Shields Up testing, which checks your ports and can stealth them for you so probing computers cannot find your computer with a routing ping. Here's the relevant page:

https://www.grc.com/x/ne.dll?bh0bkyd2

Click Proceed and wait for the testing to finish. It will look like nothing is happening for a few seconds.

I use AMG for antiviral and rootkit detection because it is free and good. Kaspersky gets higher reviews from enough people to consider paying for it. I have yet to find a good reason to pay for Norton. I also run Spybot Search and Destroy and SpywareBlaster. Other spyware programs have gotten higher reviews than Spybot for detection but free is free.

In addition to www.grc.com, majorgeeks.com is a fantastic resource for security freeware. They also have registry cleaners and a bunch of other useful freeware products. If your computer has slowed down a semi-automated registry cleaner can sometimes help a great deal. I had a computer with a hard drive malfunction such that I could not access a forgotten random string password that was being automatically posted into a field. Majorgeeks under Covert Ops had a small program that revealed the hidden characters and allowed me to salvage the situation.

One of your best detectors for being zombied is the disk light on your computer. If that is blinking rapidly when you aren't on your computer, you may have a problem. Time to go to an online malware detector since your on board programs may be compromised. Some people will only use online malware detectors.

Any other advice Entity? Anybody else?

On the sites i play the most I only withdraw to my bank account. So i can deposit using neteller MB and so on but i can only withdraw to my bank so as long as people are not dumping money on my account im secure. I also use Nod32 (kick ass antivirus) and ZoneAlarm (fire wall).

If you use firefox you should get NoScript imo.
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/722

If you use firefox you should get NoScript imo.
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/722

this!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!1111111

also, please elaborate why letting the poker client save the password is bad. this is very arguable

this!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!1111111

also, please elaborate why letting the poker client save the password is bad. this is very arguable

If someone gets on your computer and the password is saved in stars/full tilt or whatever site you play on, they can easily edit your account preferences (password, email, etc...)

this!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!1111111

also, please elaborate why letting the poker client save the password is bad. this is very arguable

It's not arguable at all. It allows anyone who can gain physical access or remote access to your computers the ability to login to any sites that are on there. This is especially important for laptop users but also a pretty standard precaution for desktop users. There's no upside besides convenience for letting it save the password, but there's quite a bit of downside.

Security on a computer will almost always be come at the expense of convenience, but IMO that's ok.

Rob

so as long as people are not dumping money on my account im secure.

This is the main method that people use to get money from your account to others. The bank-only method is nice, but it's providing you with a lot more of a sense of security than it is actual security.

Rob

It's not arguable at all. It allows anyone who can gain physical access or remote access to your computers the ability to login to any sites that are on there. This is especially important for laptop users but also a pretty standard precaution for desktop users. There's no upside besides convenience for letting it save the password, but there's quite a bit of downside.

Security on a computer will almost always be come at the expense of convenience, but IMO that's ok.

Rob

I probably should have written a little bit more.

While i totally agree that it is important to protect yourself from physical access to your computer, I dont need this step, since my Windows is password protected (i know that this is useless) and my whole hard drive is Truecrypt encrypted, so noone can access my computer or even only my hard disks.

As far as remote access goes, getting remote access on a (updated and protected) computer is a lot harder than sneaking keyloggers/clipboard loggers onto there, which have the power the capture the password you would type/copy&paste into the poker client.

There is measures against it ldo, like clipboard loggers, Keepass also has an option to protect yourself from this.

I probably should have written a little bit more.

While i totally agree that it is important to protect yourself from physical access to your computer, I dont need this step, since my Windows is password protected (i know that this is useless) and my whole hard drive is Truecrypt encrypted, so noone can access my computer or even only my hard disks.

As far as remote access goes, getting remote access on a (updated and protected) computer is a lot harder than sneaking keyloggers/clipboard loggers onto there, which have the power the capture the password you would type/copy&paste into the poker client.

There is measures against it ldo, like clipboard loggers, Keepass also has an option to protect yourself from this.

In your case it doesn't matter much if you let it remember the password or not. But for a user who uses total encryption on their drive and has a secure (I'm assuming) Windows password, well, let's be honest -- this article wasn't written for you, was it?

I've helped to infiltrate bot and zombie networks back when I worked for the University of Washington so I do know how hard it is to get remote access on an updated/protected computer, but again, that wasn't the point of this article; the point of the article is to get each and every one of you to have updated/secure computers -- the rest, at that point, is mostly pedantic.

You make great points when you start with the assumption that people secure their computers; I started with the opposite assumption, which I see on a daily basis when helping people get setup with applications using Teamviewer or Mikogo -- many of the users I have helped haven't even installed XP SP2 yet, let alone security updates.

All of that said, there's still no benefit besides convenience to leaving "remember passwords" on. In your case it adds a negligible amount of risk with a bit of benefit, but in most cases (that I address in this article) it adds a lot of risk with very little benefit.

Rob

I find trends housecall is very good at boosting your security. Not only for virus and spyware it also spots flaws in your windows setup and gives links on where to get various updates that you might have missed.

I'm using TrueCrypt on my PC, and it makes that if there is anyone who steals my computer so they can not see the contents of my computer.

TrueCrypt is a free open-source program that can encrypt files or entire hard drives if it is
what you want, and that is what you want ).

I would clearly recommend those who are interested in TrueCrypt download Steve Gibson podcast about TrueCrypt http://www.grc.com/securitynow.htm episode No 133

Steve Gibson gives a very good idea of what TrueCrypt can.

Peter

Wrt somewhere to save your poker and passwords... I 2nd TrueCrypt.
Go download it, it's excellent. http://www.truecrypt.org/

I stuck it on a USB key, installed PortableApps and KeePass portable, exellent no hassle solution for all my passwords

a good and properly configured router should patch most of your security leaks, my netgear for example got a perfect TruStealth rating