XPost: alt.windows7.general
From: G6JPG@soft255.demon.co.uk
(For some reason, these posts have reappeared on my system/server.)
In message , Steve Hayes
writes:
>On Wed, 07 Dec 2016 23:06:07 -0200, Shadow wrote:
>
>>On Tue, 6 Dec 2016 18:51:11 -0000, "NY" wrote:
>>
>>>I realise that XP didn't suddenly become any less secure the day after MS
>>>withdrew support, but since that date presumably various backdoors have been
>>>found which make XP less secure than it used to be.
(There is the POS hack [or hacks].)
>>
>> Think about it. If it had that many backdoors, there would be
>>a massive botnet established on the 10-15% of computers that still run
>>XP. And yet ....
Indeed!
>> Firewall + uninstall Flash and Java + install NoScript on your
>>Firefox (or Palemoon 2.65) browser.
>> Xpy is useful for closing a lot of useless and dangerous
>>"features".
>> Do a Malware scan from a LiveCD AV (Kaspersky Rescue Disk is
>>good) once a week.
>> Keep any software you download for a week, then upload it to
>>Jotti or Virustotal before installing. You will avoid the zero-days.
>> I just removed 240 "malwares" from a friend's Win 7 computer
>>(most were duplicates in the restore folder, but it's still a lot)
>>---> Brains. The most important, but something you can't install on a
>>customer's PC....
(-:
>
>When my old desktop computer died I had to buy a new one, but I bought
>it without an OS installed, and just restored the Acronis backups from
>the old one, which had Windows XP. That saved me an enormous amount of
That is interesting. I thought even XP had hardware-change detection to
prevent it just being "cloned". Did/do you have a volume-licenced
install? If not, did you have to reactivate with the activation server,
and if so how did that go?
>setup time -- finding all the discs with the original programs could
>take a long time for a start. Yes, I should ber better organised, and
Indeed! And even if you could find all the discs (and downloaded
installers), even _remembering_ how to change all the settings so that
everything runs as I'm used to would be a pain for me.
>have them all neatly stored in one place, but I'm not and I don't. So
>I still use XP.
So do I, and _without_ the weekly scan or wait-a-week. (Not that I'm
recommending anyone _not_ do those.)
>
>I still use Pegassus Mail for e-mail, which I've set to text-only,
>which cuts the risk of infection a great deal, to judge by the amount
>of malware that doesn't make it to my inbox, and even when it does,
>gets deleted unread.
I use Turnpike, which _can_ interpret HTML, but only the text-formatting
aspects (no scripts or other code). (Actually it displays buttons so I
can select the plain-text or HTML version, for _some_ emails - which of
course only works if the sender's software includes both, but lots do).
Can Pegasus not be set to display "safe" HTML in a similar manner?
>
>I use NoScript as well -- apart from anything else, it saves bandwidth
>-- many news sites have videos that play automatically and can consume
>enormous quantities of data while you're not looking and just reading
>the story.
Unfortunately, a lot of sites won't function properly without it )-:.
(It even needs a more up-to-date browser in some cases. My main browser
is Firefox 26, but I keep a Chrome - last XP-compatible version - to get
at some sites. Even Google maps.) I don't look at a lot of news sites.
>
>So in the 12 or more years that I've been using XP I haven't had a
I don't think I _ever_ have, even back in '98[SElite] days.
>virus infection yet, despite the fact that I get about 10 malware
>e-mails a day.
>
0 to 2 here, I'd say. (Usually at least one phishing one, but that's
OS-independent of course.)
>
--
J. P. Gilliver. UMRA: 1960/<1985 MB++G()AL-IS-Ch++(p)Ar@T+H+Sh0!:`)DNAf
A man does not have to be an angel in order to be saint.
Albert Schweitzer (1875-1965)
--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
* Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)
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