wiredfool

It’s good to see that Microsoft is going to be flipping the switch to turn on the XP internal firewall by default. In the long run that is going lower the number of people affected when something like this week’s exploit happens again.

It looks like there are at least four ‘minimal care’ practices that should be followed:

• Firewall, default to closed.
• Up to date Security patches.
• Virus Checker – updated including email.
• Spyware/popup blocker.

The last two could be taken care of using alternate mail readers and web browsers. The last three items are going to require ongoing maintence, which is one of those things that has to be completely automatic for the majority of people to deal with.