Written By: Patrick Grote
Date: August 1, 2003 (Previously Published)
Section: Hints and Tips

Last time we looked at things you can do to improve your PC. We're back with four more things!

SPAM EVERYWHERE

It is extremely hard to avoid spam these days. Every time you check for e-mail there's a deluge of offers to make money fast, spy on someone or visit the latest porno site. Spam not only frustrates us, but also makes the chore of keeping our e-mail boxes clean harder.

There are two ways of dealing with spam. For those of you who are new to the Internet you have the opportunity to save yourself from a ton of time. Whatever you do never use your primary e-mail address for the following:

1. Posting a new article on Usenet: This is where spammers live and grow. They harvest the posts that come across all the groups from alt.fan.artbell to comp.sci.programming.

2. Posting a comment on a popular message board: Message boards like the one on Dot Journal or Slashdot. Spammers canvass the boards and will pull your e-mail address.

If you want to do these things, using an e-mail address as a contact point, it makes sense to open a free Web based e-mail address. You can sign up for free e-mail at the following sites:

Yahoo Mail
Lycos Mail
Hot Mail

After you receive your free e-mail address, use it exclusively to post to newsgroups and message boards. One additional bonus of the free e- mail services is that they scan incoming messages for spam. The filters works remarkably well and you can control how they work.

If your e-mail address has already found its way to the spammer's database we're sorry. but there are still a few things you can do to alleviate some of the spam.

Use software that filters your e-mail before it hits your mailbox. Spam Buster from Contact Plus Corporation is very effective. It has a list of 17,000 spammer e-mail addresses and uses filters to determine the size and subject of the e-mails. Spam Buster sits in your System Tray and goes out to your mailbox at your ISP and cleans your software before downloading it. You have so much control you can cut down your spam to almost nothing.

The software costs $19.95, but you can download a 'free', ad supported version.

Once spam has reached the mailbox on your PC, use internal tools to delete the offending items. Outlook, Eudora and other mail programs have built in filters which can mark and delete spam.

You don't have to settle for simple deletion of the spam. You can retaliate. Spam Punisher is a free program that dissects a spam message and generates complaint e-mails to the spam sender's ISP. This is a great tool for ensuring that your complaint is lodged. A simple cut and paste of the spam into Spam Punisher does the trick.

SPYWARE ... THE SPY IS AMONG US

What would you think if your every click on the Internet was tracked? How about if someone knew every site you visited and how much time you spent online? Would you believe that this might be happening to you right now?

The software that tracks this is called spyware and it gets on your PC by using certain software programs or visiting certain Web sites called Carriers. Typically the carrier will warn you before installing spyware, but if you don't read everything during the install (including the software licensing agreement!) you won't notice it.

The insidious thing about spyware is that it works in stealth mode. You won't see anything in the System Tray and sometimes even if you look at the running programs in Task Manager it doesn't appear.

How can you tell if you have spyware on your machine? Grab the program AD-Aware. It's a free download and it will tell you which spyware is installed and how to remove it. There is a pay version that protects your system against spyware installs.

DRIVING PROPERLY

When you add a sound card, video card, CD writer or any other device to your PC, you'll need drivers. Drivers are the software programs that tell your computer how to access the device.

The Windows family of operating systems (OS) come with a base set of drivers, but within 12 months of any OS release, the drivers are mostly out of date. It's a good idea to do an annual review of your drivers to ensure you have the latest versions by visiting the technical support pages at each manufacturer's web site. You can also use a couple of web sites which identify outdated drivers.

Both Big Fix and PC Pit Stop will scan your system and determine which software and drivers are out of date. A link is provided to update your drivers. It doesn't get any easier!

If you prefer to manually search for driver updates, a couple of good resources are ZDnet's Driver List and DriverZone.

DAILY HITS FOR THE OLD BROWSER

There are a couple of sites which have become indispensable to many PC users. Bookmark these in your Favorites - they're terrific.

Dot Journal - Honest reviews written by real people.

cNet's Computer News - Great news for computer users.

No Nags Software - Excellent site for new freeware.

Reference Desk - All the reference tools you could ever need.

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