Saturday, October 30, 2010

More housecleaning

The MVPS HOSTS file, October edition, was made available yesterday. You can get it at http://www.mvps.org/winhelp2002/hosts.htm.

Prior to installing it I recommend a monthly running of Spybot. When you start up Spybot remember to Update, Immunize, and then Search & Destroy. If you have been following my recommendations for a security baseline, then you should see this afterwards:


Although it might seem like a waste of time, I find it comforting to see that window once a month. My security baseline is different from most in my profession, but it works, and my system remains clean.
As a review, the reason for running Spybot only once a month, and just before installing the latest MVPS HOSTS file is that a part of Spybot's immunization process is to append thousands of extra lines to your existing HOSTS file. It is my belief that these are redundant and unnecessary as long as you install the MVPS HOSTS file. Remember, your HOSTS file is loaded into memory when you boot your machine, so you want an effective file but not one that is larger than necesary.

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