By Susan Bradley/Windows Secrets Newsletter
Web-filtering services can provide additional security and protection from malware.
Several vendors now provide this valuable service.
Either you’ve heard the stories or you’ve experienced it yourself: a fully patched Windows machine gets infected by rogue-AV malware (a virus disguised as an antivirus app). Before anyone realizes that the “AV scanner” that popped up on the screen is an AV scam, the damage is done — and hours or even days are wasted removing the infection and repairing Windows.
In most cases, PC users who acquire this type of contagion share some of the blame. They make the mistake of clicking a malicious Web link — in an online search result, an enticing image on a seemingly innocent webpage, an ad for some free product, an e-mail, and so on.
Getting infected is especially annoying when you thought you’d fully protected yourself by regularly patching Windows, applications, Flash, Java, and browsers — along with your antivirus software.
If you’re wondering what else you could possibly do (short of pulling your connection to the Internet), I recommend adding Web-filtering services offered by DNS providers.
DNS providers offer free, personal Web filtering
Whenever your PC connects to an ISP, the company updates your gateway/router with the information it needs to connect with the ISP’s Domain Name Services (DNS) servers. (DNS is the process by which numeric website addresses are translated into website names you can understand — such as windowssecrets.com.) Along with DNS, some ISPs (such as Comcast) include Web filtering — also called content filtering — for additional security.
This post is excerpted with permission from Windows Secrets.
