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Increased security on home system

Good afternoon, I have security questions re. the following setup
Cable modem (ISP is Comcast) running through D-Link Airplus Extreme-G Wireless Router with WEP to my PC with McAfee Firewall installed. Additionally per a friends advice im using the Anonymizer software to mask my IP address.
My questions are,
Is this security adequate?
Do I need the Anonymizer (which is causing IE crashes occasionally?)
How can I configure my router for optimum security, Im reading the documentation and as Im a newbie this is all greek to me so far.

Thanks much!

ASKER CERTIFIED SOLUTION

r-k

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phototropic

You do not mention anti-virus software or spyware scanners. To make your system properly secure, you should install both.
Free av utilities:

http://www.bitdefender.com/site/Main/view/Download-Free-Products.html
http://free.grisoft.com/doc/2/lng/us/tpl/v5

free spyware scanners:

http://www.safer-networking.org/en/download/
http://www.majorgeeks.com/download506.html
http://www.ewido.net/en/download/

Whatever you decide to use, update it regularly, and run it at least once a week.

Good luck!

phototropic

p.s. I have never heard of "Anonymizer" so I can't comment on it. But if it causes IE to crash, it cannot be good news.

Rich Rumble

Anonymizer is fine to use... however in my opinion it doesn't do anything that really protects you... you can still get spy-ware even though your ip is "masked", because anonymizer fwd's you all the traffic anyway, all it is is a proxy. It's like having your friend ask that girl for her phone number for you, and having him bring it back to you after he's asked her. Not a great ananlogy but you get the idea, your asking for info via proxy.
M$ and many many security professions such as myself maintain that "Best Practices" help you an many more ways than the general public seems to be aware of.
http://xinn.org/win_bestpractices.html
http://www.microsoft.com/athome/security/online/logoff_admin_account.mspx
http://blogs.msdn.com/aaron_margosis/archive/2006/06/02/614226.aspx

I have a recent post here about the various RunAs applications that can help you adhere to the pricipal of running in least privileged
https://www.experts-exchange.com/questions/21872892/How-to-manage-Laptop-users-policy-in-term-of-local-administrator-right.html#16824348

I operate in the least privileged mode I can, still I like having an AV program for some fall-back. I use McAfee AV typically, it has great viri DAT's and even SpyWare dat's included. However I don't get spyware, I use firefox. The the very most I get javascript pop-ups, but using a few extensions available to firefox, I don't even get those anymore... http://www.xinn.org/annoyance_spy-ware.html
https://addons.mozilla.org/firefox/722/ https://addons.mozilla.org/firefox/10/
If you have the option of using WPA with your wifi, do it... WEP is an utter joke, it's slightly better than Rot-13 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rot_13
-rich

cbakkemo

ASKER

Thanks all, I seem to have screwed up the rating which shows as "B" however the info provided was excellent. Hope points are awarded appropriately... Thanks again!
C