I was at a client’s office the other day when I noticed an error message pop-up on the receptionist’s desktop. Before I could even get a look at it, she clicked “OK” and the message disappeared. I asked her what that was and she said “I don’t know. Stuff like that comes up all the time. I just click ‘OK’.” Needless to say, I was not amused that this apparently had been going on for sometime and that I had not been notified about it. She responded that her PC at home does the same thing, she just thought it was normal.

Messages from your PC mean something. Sometimes they indicate a problem, sometimes they just notify you of what’s going on in your PC. In the case above, the dialog message she received was warning her that that the hard drive (where all you data is actually stored) was beginning to fail, of course it wasn’t in plain English so she didn’t know that. My point is, to simply dismiss a dialog without reading the content can be extremely dangerous.

Another case of “click fiendery” came in the form of a user running as an administrator, who answered “yes” or “OK” to seemingly every message he received from the Internet. This included ads from webpages that told him “You may have a virus. Click here to check.” This action installed malicious software (a virus) that then pestered him continually with pornography and ads on how to remove the offensive software, for a price. His excuse was that he was just tired of having to answer dialog boxes all the time. Just so you know, he was running anti-virus software already, but even that won’t prevent every bad thing that can happen to your PC.

The problem has gotten so bad that studies are being conducted to see just how gullible the average user is. You can bet your spyware and virus writers will be happy to get that information.

Unfortunately, it seems that the dialog box is overused in today’s programs. Even I myself, fail to understand why, when installing the latest large software company’s product, I have to answer questions repeatedly during the install. One would think that all the questions about where and what to install could go at the beginning of the install. So we become perturbed, and we click wildly to get the dialogs to go away so we can get back to our work. I understand your frustration, I really do.

The solution though is quite simple. SLOW DOWN. Easy for me to say, I’m not on a deadline right now. But the truth is, it’s become necessary for us to take a moment and actually READ the message we’re being given, then to apply some common sense to it.

YOU MAY HAVE A VIRUS. CLICK HERE TO CHECK. “Do I already have anti-virus software? Does this look like my anti-virus message?”

THE DEVICE DISKS/HARDDISK0 HAS ENCOUNTERED A HARD ERROR AND DATA WAS LOST “What data was lost? Is my stuff backed up? Maybe I should call someone who knows what this means.”

So the next time you ‘re presented with a dialog box and a message you weren’t expecting, take the time to read and understand it, or you may find yourself with plenty of time to think about it while your PC is getting repaired.

Every once in awhile, I will come across someone who insists on not running anti-virus software because “it slows down my PC.”

Although I will agree that anti-virus software does slow down a PC significantly, in my opinion, the benefits to an Internet-connected Windows PC outweigh the performance loss.

To be completely fair though, I do not advocate the use of “everything” security packages. The vast majority of these seem intent on locking down your PC so tight, no one – including you – can use it. These security packages tend to include a lot of software I find redundant and unnecessary, such as:

• Firewall – Both Windows XP and Vista come with perfectly adequate firewalls for the normal home user. In fact, most home users don’t even need a firewall on their PCs, because most are protected by a gateway device using NAT. As for business users, your network administrator should have a hardware-based solution, if not, call me.
• SPAM protection – In order to filter the SPAM form your mail, these packages must download it first. If you have to download it anyway, what’s the point? The idea is to prevent it from ever hitting the inbox. Most Internet Service Providers (ISPs) and hosting providers have server-based tools to allow you to prevent the junk from getting to your box, as well as providing you a way to check the junk folder for anything useful that might have slipped in there. If your hosting provider isn’t filtering or your ISP doesn’t offer filtering, it’s time to find a new one.
• Spyware/Adware protection – these types of programs are usually downloaded on impulse. That new screensaver or weather program looks so neat you just have to install it. A day later, you’re wondering why you have pop-ups for Viagra all of the sudden. Dealing with these problems is an as-occurs situation and precious system resources shouldn’t be expended looking for Potentially Unwanted Programs (PUPs) all the time. Spybot – Search & Destroy is an excellent, free program just for this purpose.
• Identity protection/Antiphishing/Backup/Web Protection – I lump all this together, because I don’t believe any of these products should be coming from your anti-virus vendor. I like the idea of my anti-virus programmer concentrating on how to keep viruses out of my machine, not on how to protect me from my own stupidity. “Do one thing, and do it well,” is part of the Unix philosophy, but it applies to any program. There are plenty of free products out to handle these issues and if you really wan to pay for them that bad, I’m sure someone will sell you a program to do one of the above.

Back to the task at hand. For home users, there are several high-quality, free, anti-virus solutions. Did I mention, they’re free? Yes, AVG is just one (and my preferred) of the many anti-virus companies that has figured out that home users are the number one source of virus infections, and that if they eliminate the home user threat, the likely-hood of a paying business customer becoming infected goes down dramatically. Now you’re not going to get advanced features like scan scheduling and multiple updates, but do you really care? No, you just know you need to be protected. So do it.

If you’re a business user, please do not install any of the free anti-virus products on your business PCs. None of them I’ve looked at make allowances for business use and for good reason. If they give away their best product, how are they going to be in business to provide you with updates? Business class programs come with advanced features you’ll probably want anyway, such as: centralized administration, email notification, custom scan settings, etc. The features are vital for keeping your business PCs in top shape.

One final note, if you’ve ever spent a single day down because of a virus, you probably lost more money that day than you would have spent on anti-virus software for your entire office. If you need a quote, please call. I’ll be happy to get you a quote to fit your needs, free of charge, complete with contact information, so you can buy direct from the vendor.