I was reading in PC Magazine about their top free software (because I like free stuff and, yes, I love technology), and I took special interest in their “security” section. I found a few completely free tricks to check out how well your security software is performing, and I thought they were really useful. I picked out these three because they were free, fairly quick, and web-based, so you don’t have to install any special software to do it (with one exception). The three sites I’m recommending are NanoScan.com, ShieldsUP! from grc.com, and PC Flank. NanoScan searches for viruses and spyware that might already be on your computer, while the other two test your vulnerability to new threats from the internet.
As I mentioned earlier, all three of these were recommended by PC Magazine; therefore, I trust that they are safe. I also don’t claim to know anything about how good or bad this information is, but I think it’s useful to know where weak spots might be. Pretty much all I know about these tests comes from the sites that offer them. If anyone getting this message has other suggestions, or just plain knows more about this stuff than me, I’ll be more than happy to hear from you.
For the record, I currently run only AVG (also recommended by PC magazine, also free from www.free.grisoft.com) anti-virus along with whatever other software came installed with my Vista Home Premium operating system. After the PC Flank leak test and browser test, I decided to add Comodo Personal Firewall (also recommended by PC magazine, also free, www.personalfirewall.comodo.com). I hope that clears up some of the weak spots revealed by PC Flank.
Anyway, here’s what I found that I thought might be helpful to everyone:
Recommendation #1: NanoScan.com
For this one, I had to use Internet Explorer. For some reason, it didn’t want to work in Firefox, which is my usual browser. Anyway, here are the directions:
Go to www.nanoscan.com and click on the big “NanoScan my PC” button in the middle of the screen. If you have some security software in place, you will probably need to give the site permission to install a few things on your machine. This might include temporarily disabling a pop-up blocker (please do it for nanoscan.com ONLY, or be SURE to re-enable pop-up blocking once you’re done).
NanoScan will first scan your system, then compare those results against a database of known threats. Next you will see the results. Here’s what I got (and hope you get the same!):
Scan result
Summary: Your PC doesn’t have viruses
Time: 17 seconds
Antivirus: Grisoft AVG 7.5.516 (active and up-to-date)
Recommendation #2: ShieldsUP
1. Go to www.grc.com and click on the “ShieldsUP!” image in the middle of the page.
2. Scroll down a ways and, under “Hot Spots,” click on “ShieldsUP!”
3. After reading the fine print (there’s some good stuff in there), click “proceed,” and on the next page you will see something that looks like the following (this particular image has been resized, but you get the idea) :
4. Click on each of the first three options above, one by one, and you will get a scan as the site attempts to access your system. I also tried the fourth one (Messenger Spam), but nothing happened for me so I assume that my system is immune to that type of spam. The “browse headers” seemed like it would probably be useful, but it was a little to “techie” for me. Two other “services offered, “User Specified Custom Port Probe” and “Lookup Specific Port Information” seem to be more in-depth analysis that is available if the “Common Ports” or “All Service Ports” scans turn up any problems. But, again, these two options were just a little over my head.
Anyway, here are a couple of examples of scan results that I got. Again, all appears to be well with my machine, and I hope the same is true for you.
“File Sharing” Scan
| Attempting connection to your computer. . . Shields UP! is now attempting to contact the Hidden Internet Server within your PC. It is likely that no one has told you that your own personal computer may now be functioning as an Internet Server with neither your knowledge nor your permission. And that it may be serving up all or many of your personal files for reading, writing, modification and even deletion by anyone, anywhere, on the Internet! |
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Your Internet port 139 does not appear to exist! One or more ports on this system are operating in FULL STEALTH MODE! Standard Internet behavior requires port connection attempts to be answered with a success or refusal response. Therefore, only an attempt to connect to a nonexistent computer results in no response of either kind. But YOUR computer has DELIBERATELY CHOSEN NOT TO RESPOND (that’s very cool!) which represents advanced computer and port stealthing capabilities. A machine configured in this fashion is well hardened to Internet NetBIOS attack and intrusion. |
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Unable to connect with NetBIOS to your computer. All attempts to get any information from your computer have FAILED. (This is very uncommon for a Windows networking-based PC.) Relative to vulnerabilities from Windows networking, this computer appears to be VERY SECURE since it is NOT exposing ANY of its internal NetBIOS networking protocol over the Internet. |
This site does a pretty good job of explaining everything it’s doing, so I won’t bother with trying to repeat it all. Just go to pcflank.com and click on the different tests under the “test your system” bar on the left side of the screen. I found a couple of weakness using this one.
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