Leosghost - 1:00 am on Oct 26, 2009 (gmt 0)

Maybe their all just trying to sound smarter than the next guy

.. No ..that is what you are trying to do.;)

btw its "they're" not "their" ..practising accurate grammar is important if one is trying to attract search string enquiries via the search engines ;) ..presuming one actually is a "webmaster" and actually has a website ?

You have had the same advice multiple times now ..in one form or another ..

..don't run as admin ..

run as (a)user ..

set other accounts as (another)user ..

the "admin" account you keep for yourself when you really have need to use it ( linux works like that ;))..it protects one from what may be ones own ignorance or foolishness..;)

FWIW ..I have xp ( nlited to what I want it to be ) ..vista ( vlited to what I want it to be ) ..and 7 ( which can be vlited as it's so close ;) to what I want it to be ..( now 10 machines in total ) and I'm posting this via linux mint 7 "gloria" .. ( because that is one of the the safest ways to everyday surf ..even when you do know how to lock down doze :) .plus ( and critical to why I use it ) its the distro that I install for friends and so if they phone it's easy to mirror them whilst I explain in whatever language we are working in ...without me needing to reboot a machine..

there are many other /admins/mods/members or readers here who know to do the same or similar ...( and some of us originally from what one could consider to be the "other side of the net" watch and learn from some fora and their regular posters here ..and have a great deal of respect for them )..many more read certain fora here every day than post ..there are many experts here in many fields ..you want to know who knows what ? search ..don't ask people to post again and again because you cant be bothered to learn how a search engine works ..this isn't the first time since your join date that some of us have had this conversation ..

re .."outward" ..by the time you have to worry about what might be going on via outward traffic ( such as your credit card numbers etc ) you may already have "time bombs" or "logic bombs" ( some versions of which can be downloaded incrementally loaded over more than one occasion and eventually recompiled via commands into sleeping cross shell mutating exes )that will shut your system down whenever the code writer decided that s**t was going to happen to you ( or whatever else was the desired behaviour )..some are long term ..and "do stuff" while they are counting down ..

rather than asking who agrees with you ..find out ..search the old threads concerning security here ( this is after all one of the largest concentrations of experts that exists on the net on various subjects ..many of us are members of other specialist fora ..and not always under the same nicks as used here ..and some of the posters here are in themselves major players upon the world IT stage in their own areas ..that is what makes this place interesting ;)..many "walk the walk" as opposed to merely "talking the talk" ..and which IMO is why Brett lets it continue ..why the admins and the mods put in the time and why some of us stay ..( we never know what we might learn or discover from a newbie poster ..or from analysing a thread ) ..or threads ..across many fora here ..

this ..inspite of the often times ennui of threads begun by such as yourself ..thinking there is an "easy way" ..

BTW#2 ..what is so hard about setting up passworded admin and separate user accounts ..?

I only know of a few non "WGA" versions of doze installs that dont allow setting of other than admin accounts ..( and they are full of near invisible "phone homes" to the "crack teams" that "released" them ) hopefully that isn't the problem here ..:)

there is an expression in English ..which is my first language ..

"sometimes it is better to just put down the shovel and stop digging the hole deeper" ..

it takes you less than 5 minutes to set up an admin account ..then make yourself a user ..make others into other users ..and keep your admin login to yourself ..for when you need it ..takes just another 15 minutes to set up dual boot linux ..with multiple accounts ..and then you could get on with enjoying the company of your visitors ..rather than worrying about them taking advantage of your lack of security knowledge

which made you post here in the first place ..but you didn't get the easy answer that you wanted ..

BTW#3 whatever any other "tech support forum" says ( this isn't a tech support forum ..it is a community) ..the reason that you wont get many votes for norton "anything" is that it is crap on domestic machines ( desktops ) ..( but reasonable on servers )....the server versions are not in the same price league ..

No one is going to encourage you to use something which actually increases the spam and malware that the rest of us get our servers hit with every minute ..norton's domestic products are like having a photo of a pitbull stuck to your gate ..only you are fooled ..the bad guys already know it is crap ..and that really there is no protection on your place ..it does block ads though ( out of the box )..it just doesn't tell you that ..and it throws false positives everytime it looks at more than 50 lines of js :)