How Secure is Your Home PC?
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by: Guest
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Everyone talks about having a safe and secure PC. The
discussion usually centers on Anti-virus protection, Firewalls and a strong
browser that will reject pop-ups and other web-based auto-downloads. But I
thought of another aspect of security that is almost never talked about: the
ability to track harmful changes and recover lost data.
Let me preface this discussion with how I came to
realize this little loophole in my PC security: her name is Jenny and she
is 13 years old and home from school for the whole summer!
There is a lot that can happen to your computer - whether on
purpose or by accident - that can have an affect on its performance,
and perhaps on your safety. For example, if the wrong files get deleted, you can
have a seriously corrupted system. If someone downloads what they think is a safe file,
and it turns out not to be, you could become infected with a bad virus.
Other events can result in your being locked out of your own bank
account or your private passwords and personal information opened
up to anyone that cares to look.
As, I said, Jenny is home for the summer. First thing I noticed, more so
than last year (her final pre-teen summer) was that she was spending lots more time
on the computer than ever before. Aside from normal parent involvement and diligence, I let
her do her thing. But as the hours increased, I found myself asking, "what is
she doing online - and what is she doing to that machine?" Because,
I noticed the machine running a bit slower than usual and I
couldn't find a folder.
Then it dawned on me - not only do I need to step up my
own involvement and knowledge of what she's doing all day. I should have a
record of everything that happens on that machine. I need a type of
computer monitoring software.
That way, if something happens - to her or the machine - I can fix it.
Good daddy skills, right? Well am I glad I did that!!! Turns out
the little devil had discovered a file sharing site and was
overloading my computer with crappy music and video files
(some of which were completely incorrectly titled and not all that appropriate
for a 13-year-old). She was hiding everything in a sub-sub-sub folder. Vixen. I confronted
her. Told her to stop or I will blacklist the site. I also
reminded her that daddy has over 2,000 albums to listen to and that today's music
is crud. But I also had a serious talk about copyrights, illegalities and how people
will plant things in those files that will hurt a computer. Bottom line is that
this incident was very minor, but your mind can wander about had bad
it could have been... Or what if the vengeful
RIAA
came-a-knocking?
Guess
who'd
have
to
answer!
The program I found and bought is href="http://www.pcpandora.com/">PC Pandora 5.0. I only mention them here because they
solved my problem very very quickly and efficiently. In fact, the next
time "little J-dog" (I can't believe that is her nickname among friends) went on
the computer after I had installed it, I saw everything. It's a monitoring
software program that takes actual snapshots of the computer screen. Nothing left to the imagination.
Past the screenshots you have areas to check websites visited, emails sent and received, instant
messenger chats, keystrokes logged (awesome for passwords), peer-2-peer files traded (bingo!), programs accessed and more.
It's a pretty neat little package and pretty affordable (about half what it
coasts to fill up the family motorcade with gas).
Also,
you
can
try-before-you-buy
for
2
hours.
Check out the href="http://www.pcpandora.com">PC Pandora website and their href="http://blog.pcpandora.com/#PC Pandora Blog">blog and some of the other
sites I've listed below. If you have a teenager in the house - you need
this monitoring software on your computer!
Oh, and the missing folder - that was my bad. But I used
another Pandora program called Recovery to find it. It's a free data retrieval
program you can download at the Pandora
Recovery website.
About the Author
Paul is a normal dad, with a teenage daughter, committed to keeping all kids safe online.
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