[Hidden-tech] who knows about botnets?

[Jonathan Dill]

On 1/8/07, Robert Heller <heller at deepsoft.com> wrote:
> Don't open E-Mail attachments, unless you are really, really, really,
> really sure they are ligit.  Even better, configure your E-Mail client
> NOT to display HTML E-Mail by default and NEVER automatically open
> attachments.  It is *best* to use a plain-text E-Mail client and reject
> all E-Mail that is text/HTML only.
Even better, use a web-based e-mail service to read your e-mail like
gmail so the e-mail is scanned by their antivirus software, you can
preview the subject and message headers before anything is downloaded
to your computer, and you have to explicitly download attachments.

Next best, take a look at running Thunderbird Portable from a flash
drive (unfortunately, for Windows only).  Since the whole app is
stored separately from the OS, it may be more secure, especially if
coupled with ClamWin to add another layer of virus scanning.  Plus you
can take all of your e-mail with you and run it on any Windows PC.
Also, you can "eject" the drive from your computer when you are not
using it, so if someone were to break into your computer remotely, the
information would simply not be available.

http://portableapps.com/apps/internet/thunderbird_portable

If you go with a U3 flash drive and the U3 version, you can purchase
3rd-party software to encrypt all of the data, but some people hate U3
because it needs to install a small amount of supporting software on
the computer (you can press Shift before inserting a U3 drive to
prevent this behavior).  There was a time when malware primarily cared
about searching the hard drive and would ignore something like an
external flash drive, but I suspect that probably has changed.

http://software.u3.com/Product_Details.aspx?ProductId=196&Selection=6&Lang=en-US

Firefox, OpenOffice.org, and several other "self contained"
applications that run from a USB drive are also available for Portable
Apps or U3 platform.

Jonathan