This week, subscriber Peter Killick had a question about protection from downloads:

I was under the impression that my combination of a router plus a software firewall completely prevented anything ever being downloaded on my computer over the web without my approval, typically indicated by clicking a button. My router is a Netgear, properly and carefully set up and the default password was replaced on installation. My firewall is the underrated Ashampoo one – actually very efficient, and it always double checks any initial confirmation click on my part.

A firewall program plus a router does not necessarily prevent downloads. It only does that if the program is not authorized to connect to the Internet.

A program can call home or anywhere else, and can check for updates or anything else, if:

• If you have authorized a program to contact the Internet, or
• if the firewall program does not check outbound connections (e.g., Windows XP's built-in firewall), or
• if you have the firewall program set NOT to check outbound connection attempts, or
• if the firewall program was set by the manufacturer to automatically authorize specific programs to contact the Internet (one of the things I didn't like about way the "name brand" firewall programs used to work - and may still work that way, for example "pre-authorize Microsoft programs to connect to the Internet")

In other words, for legitimate programs, the same method that is used to download definitions updates is used to download program updates.

Unfortunately, the same thing is true of malware. If you have told your firewall not to bother you on an outbound request, it won't. It will accept any outbound attempt from your computer and assume it was legitimate. If the malware wants to download something, it can.

That's one reason why I think we all need to have antispyware that runs all the time and not just a program that scans only when we tell it to scan.

Subscriber Bob Byrne wrote to say:

Hi Terry!

Thanks for another great newsletter!
In regard to your router recommendation, I have used an Alpha Shield for some years now. Performance seems to be the same but in a smaller enclosure with the same filtering action. I have tried all the tests I can find to break in but none have gained access so far. I was shopping for a router when I talked to a hacker who recommended the Alpha Shield,saying he had not been able to get through it and was buying himself one.

Best regards
Bob Byrne

Long-time subcriber Ron Spruell wrote about Mailwasher Pro and Gmail:

I have been a MailWasher Pro user for several years. (I paid $20 to Nick Bolton, before MW became Fire Trust.) Generally each version gets a little better, and is free. It took a while to get a few of the 70+ generic Filters modified for my account. The White List and Black List are easy to maintain. My question is about Gmail. I would like to have access to my Gmail Spam Mail Box using MailWasher and Thunderbird. I would prefer to double filter the Spam messages using MailWasher. That way I could use MailWasher to filter everything. I don't like going to Gmail and having to scan through the Spam. I forget about it and there is always 400 to 600 Spam messages. I would prefer to do 10 to 20 at a time using MailWasher when I check my other mail boxes. Is there any turn off the Spam filtering at Gmail? Ron Spruell

Unfortunately, Google does not give us an option to turn off Gmail's spam filtering. Most people would not be interested in turning it off, but there is a sizeable group of users who want to use Gmail to consolidate their emails and then use their own spam filter.

Mailwasher Pro is an anti-spam program that connects, downloads the headers and will (optionally) show the first few lines of an email. It's main purpose is to allow you to handle spam while it is still at your ISP's mailserver, without ever allowing the spam onto your computer. You can try fully-functional Mailwasher Pro for free for 30 days. Download Mailwasher Pro here. It works on Windows 95, 98, Me, NT, 2000, XP annd Vista.

Subscriber John Petruska wrote to ask:

Terry I do enjoy your newsletter with all the good info & tips you give & share with us. I need to purchase a new monitor and am leaning towards a 19" Westinghouse on sale this week at Best Buy. Any suggestions and or tips of what to look for in a good 19" LCD monitor..??

I wrote back to say that I've been looking at monitors, too — my wife wants a new one. Let me suggest that you check out the monitor reviews at Amazon.com and at Newegg.com (I buy a lot of my computer parts at newegg.com.

I don't like to comment pro or con regarding specific manufacturers.

If you're using it for normal use, as opposed to quick-video-response needs of some of the action games, most monitors will suffice. I'd be concerned about brightness, contrast, horizontal viewing angle and vertical viewing angle. The last is extremely important in my opinion, as very few of the monitors have stands that go up and down - most of them are designed to tilt only, especially in the cheaper models.

Remember the old rule on monitor placement — it said that your eye level should be something like 2/3rds of the way up the screen.

But, if you wear bifocals, you may be more comfortable with the tilting screen that's lower than the old rule — you won't be craning your neck to see, assuming you will use the bifocal section. On the other hand, if you will be looking OVER the bifocals, you'll be worse off (bending the neck down) if your monitor is lower and can't be raised.

Bottom line: there's a lot of personal choice involved.

3.  My Computer Security Software Recommendations

Anti-Virus

I'm often asked about several other popular anti-virus or anti-virus combination packages. Yes, I realize that they are not in my recommendation list. "Enough said..."

For the last five years, until very recently, my personal choice has been ESET's small, fast NOD32 anti-virus program, which offers a FREE 30-day evaluation license. I consider NOD32 one of the best in anti-virus protection. Unlike some of its competitors, ESET offers multiple-year licenses also, and includes program updates in the multiple-year license.

Now, I've changed from my long-time programs NOD32 (antivirus) and CounterSpy (antispyware) to Sunbelt's new VIPRE Antivirus + Antispyware.

I've found that VIPRE puts even less load on my computer than the speedy combination of NOD32 and CounterSpy. I've also been impressed with the way its "deep scan" has found and eliminated risks that were stored in zip files, which is one of the latest malware email tricks.

Read more about anti-virus programs on my web site.

Related articles:

• Anti-Virus Programs and Online Scanners
• Free Online Antivirus Scan
• NOD32 Anti-Virus Review - A Look at NOD32
• VIPRE Antivirus + Antispyware Review

Click here for more information about VIPRE.

Firewall Software

While the Windows XP firewall is much better than no firewall at all, don't count on the Windows XP firewall to meet your needs. You need a two-way firewall, which the Windows XP firewall is not!. Microsoft woke up and supplied a two-way firewall with Windows Vista.

The Windows XP firewall does not control outbound communications originating from your computer — and you should want to have control if adware/trojans/spyware or even commercial products want to talk to the Internet. Whether they are calling home or spewing spam, you want to be able to control your computer.

Do you want Windows Media Player to call home every time you play something? It does! Do you use the Search function in Windows Explorer to find things on your hard drive? Did you know that every time you search, Windows Explorer talks to Microsoft?

I didn't know that when I ran ZoneAlarm, but the Sunbelt Personal Firewall flags that to me, and I can stop it or allow it to happen. Many other programs try to call home when you run them, too.

I recommend my choice for a firewall program, which is Sunbelt Personal Firewall.

You can try the full-featured "paid version" of Sunbelt Personal Firewall free for 30 days — after that, you can register it or, if you're using it on a home non-business computer, you can let it revert to the free, lesser-function license.

Sunbelt Personal Firewall is regularly $19.95 (with discounts for multiple computers and/or multiple years!) for a non-expiring license for the program and includes one year of their updates subscription.

Related articles:

• The Internet Versus You
• Do I Need a Firewall Program?
• My Sunbelt Personal Firewall Review

Anti-Spyware / Anti-Adware Software

CounterSpy, from Sunbelt Software, has received many kudos from the computer press for its always-running and periodic full system scans. It has been my personal choice for my PC's and my family's PC's.

Sunbelt's CounterSpy v2.5, both improved CounterSpy's performance against malware and reduced its impact on system resources and responsiveness when its scanning.

Sunbelt continues to release updated program versions — the current version is v3.1. Nicely, they do NOT install the updated programs automatically. You have to use the Update process in the program, which means that you'll know that something significant has changed.

Now, I've changed from my long-time programs NOD32 (antivirus) and CounterSpy (antispyware) to Sunbelt's new VIPRE Antivirus + Antispyware.

I've found that VIPRE puts even less load on my computer than the speedy combination of NOD32 and CounterSpy. My computer seems to have much more pep and power than it had previously. I've also been impressed with the way its "deep scan" has found and eliminated risks that were stored in zip files, which is one of the latest malware email tricks.

Related articles:

• Fighting Against Spyware & Malware
• My CounterSpy Review
• My VIPRE Antivirus + Antispyware Review

Anti-spam Software

In today's Internet world, the question is not "if" you will get spam, but "how much will you get?"

I use and now I recommend POPFile as my first choice for handling spam. POPFile sits on your computer, between your email program and your ISP mailbox, and handles emial as it downloads.

POPFile uses a different approach to handle spam than some other programs do — it does nothing to reduce spam. It is designed as an email classification tool — you train it to recognize spam and any other type of email that you want to classify. These classifications can help you sort your emails into appropriate folders in your email program.

Sunbelt Software, who makes the anti-spyware program CounterSpy (which I use and recommend) and the firewall that I use and recommend (Sunbelt Personal Firewall) also has a well-regarded, award-winning anti-spam program called iHateSpam for Outlook and Outlook Express. Since I don't use Outlook or Outlook Express for email, I haven't tried iHateSpam.

Mailwasher Pro would be my first choice to handle spam before it ever gets into your computer's Inbox. Mailwasher Pro uses on-line Realtime Black Lists mail servers sending spam recently, "training" by you of what you think is spam, and your own "friends" and "blacklist" lists. Note: I found that PopFile generally meets my needs and stopped using Mailwasher Pro, even though PopFile works AFTER the emails have been downloaded. If I used a dialup connection, I would be more interested in Mailwasher Pro.

Mailwasher Pro can even bounce spam messages, as if your email address was not valid, although the usefulness and appropriateness of this is questionable. There is a free version called "Mailwasher," but it omits the functions that I consider critical for this purpose -- such as safely previewing the emails safely before they ever get to your email inbox.

Related articles:

• Spam Filtering
• Keeping spam out of your Inbox
• Getting Control of Your Inbox
• How Can I Prevent spam?

Cable/DSL Router

If you have a cable modem or a DSL modem, you need to have another layer of inexpensive protection between you and the Internet. A cable/DSL router isolates your computer from direct connection to the Internet. Your computer can easily request your email, web pages, etc. through the router. The responses come back to the router and are smoothly routed to your computer. But, someone on the Internet side of the router can not initiate a connection to your computer — they can only respond to your request.

Even if you only have one computer to connect to your cable or DSL modem, I recommend that you purchase and use a cable/DSL router because of the protection it can give you against attempts to attack through some flaws in Windows itself.

A router isolates your local network, whether it is only one computer or several, from the Internet by actually making it a separate network. The router gets the "public" IP address and handles all your outbound communications and the responses to them. But, it blocks computers on the Internet side from being able to initiate communications with your computer! This will prevent you from falling prey to many worms that try to attack security holes in Windows itself.

For a wireless router, I recommend the Linksys WRT54G wireless router. I'm using the relatively new version 6 of this router.

If you don't want wireless, I recommend the Linksys BEFSR41 wired router, which I also use. Either way, based on my experience, I recommend Linksys routers for price, reliability and Linksys' habit of releasing updated firmware for their products..

See these related articles:

• Wireless Security
• Wi-Fi Hotspots and Computer Security
• Wireless Networking Problems & Wireless Networking Security

I wrote the original version of this article in June, 2007. This week, I'm expanding an article from mid-2007 —it seems that a lot of people want to remove carriage returns (form feeds) from their documents!

I bet that the most common time is when people want to forward an email that's already been forwarded a couple times. The original email inserted carriage returns after 72 (or so) characters on a line. Then, when the email gets forwarded, each email program doing the forwarding inserts "> " at the beginning of each line, so they get longer and longer, and get wrapped at column 72 again and again.

I had answered a question about Notepad++, a really nice — and free — text editor that's designed for programmers of any type (but is much better than the regular Notepad for everyone).

The question was "How can I remove formfeeds using Notepad++?"

Of course, you can always go to each one and then hit the Delete key or the Backspace key and remove them one by one. But, the goal was to do it more efficiently.

So, the answer was:

Steps:
1) Using your mouse, highlight a formfeed/carriage return by starting at the end of one line and highlighting to the beginning of the next line.
2) Control-C to copy
3) Control-H to open the Replace dialog box
4) Click in the Find What box
5) Control-V to paste the formfeed/carriage return
6) don't put anything in the Replace With textbox
7) Click on the Replace All button.


That gets them all.

However, that got me thinking about doing the same thing in other editors like Notepad, Wordpad, Microsoft Word and OpenOffice Writer.

With Notepad, the plain text editor that comes as part of Windows, you're out of luck — you can't do this. The "Replace" dialog box does not work with non-printing characters. The only possible option is to take them out one by one.

With Wordpad, the simple word processor that is also included in Windows (as C:\Windows\wordpad.exe or C:\Windows\write.exe), you're similarly also out of luck.

At least Microsoft Word and OpenOffice Writer are consistent here — the Replace dialog box doesn't work for any of them.

Microsoft Word has a better solution than OpenOffice for this function. Word has an Advanced button on its Replace dialog box that looks like the following images. The image on the left is the dialog box and the top of the Special (characters) list. The image on the right is the full Special list.

(click on the image for a larger version)

(click on the image for a larger version)

Microsoft Word also has a non-obvious solution: open the Find and Replace dialog box, click on the Replace tab, and type "^p" (that's shift-6 and a lower-case P) in the "Find what:" box. Word will recognize this as a code for Control-p and will interpret it as a paragraph mark.

OpenOffice Writer addresses this task in a a very strange way... Perhaps the best way to describe it is by quoting the help file, where I found the following procedure:

Removing Line Breaks Use the AutoFormat feature to remove line breaks that occur within sentences. Unwanted line breaks can occur when you copy text from another source and paste it into a text document.

This AutoFormat feature only works on text that is formatted with the "Default" paragraph style.

1.Choose Tools - AutoCorrect.
2.On the Options tab, ensure that Combine single line paragraphs if length greater than 50% is selected. To change the minimum percentage for the line length, double-click the option in the list, and then enter a new percentage.
3.Click OK.
4.Select the text containing the line breaks that you want to remove.
5.In the Apply Style box on the Formatting bar, choose Default.
6.Choose Format - AutoFormat - Apply.

It actually worked! I assumed that my default installation of OpenOffice 2.2 was set up properly (for this procedure), so I started at the 4th step. It worked just fine. But, this was a very unusual, non-intuitive process.

Winner, among Notepad, Wordpad, Word and Writer: Microsoft Word.

Overall winner: Notepad++

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