I know people whose lives are like soap operas—a series of sagas, full of drama and angst, each one feeding and building on the one before. In general, I am not one of those folks. If I attempt to write my life story, it will likely be a collection of disjointed, boring chapters. (What do you expect? I worked as a CPA for 20 years!) The paragraphs describing the past three months, however, will be tightly wound around a common theme: that certain 18-year old young lady so near and dear to Terry’s and my hearts. Life is not lacking in drama and angst when viewed through the eyes of an 18-year old!

In the last 90 days, we’ve survived Senior Prom, Spring Choir Concert, Baccalaureate, 18th birthday, Senior Trip (Washington, D.C.), Graduation, College Enrollment, Apartment Hunting (and Leasing), Car Shopping (and Buying), New Job, Moving Day(s!), and a Boyfriend or two (or maybe they were just friends who happened to be boys). You’d capitalize these words, too, if you were riding the roller coaster they represent!

Many of you know of her desire for, and our efforts to find, a good digital camera for her 18th birthday. If you’ve attended the Digital Imaging SIG, you know some of the valuable web sites we used in choosing the camera. Last month I wrote of how we used our computers to aid the car search. When she announced she had found the apartment she wanted to rent, I showed up to look at the apartment with a list of questions, and a floor plan of the apartment that I had printed from –where else? – the web. (Even Terry rolled his eyes at that!)

Our graduation gift was a certificate promising a new laptop computer some time prior to fall semester. We needed more time to research, shop, and, well, PAY, for the appropriate laptop. Her desktop machine was 3 years old, still very usable, though “running slow”; it would get her through the summer. Well into our research, and feeling ahead of the game for a change, we eagerly awaited Sunday sales fliers and frequented online price comparison sites. And then one Sunday night in June, it stormed. We woke up to NO WATER; lightning has a way of going to ground, which happens to be where our well pump is. Somewhere in the midst of the several calls it took to arrange repairs, the phone rang, and our Dear One announced that while lying in bed listening to the storm, her computer “made a funny noise and started to smoke”. “When it rains, it pours” came to mind, though in hindsight, maybe “no rest for the weary” would have been more appropriate.

As luck would have it, significant rebates were offered the very next week on the laptop, memory, router, and flash drive we wanted, and we spent an exhausting, exhilarating Friday acquiring the items. The hard drive in the “fried” computer contained many files (music and pictures) that were not (ahem) backed up. We were fairly certain the hard drive was not damaged, and it seemed a good idea to mount that hard drive in Terry’s desktop so it would be available on our network. Then she could connect the laptop to the network and transfer her files from the old drive to the new computer. Being all too aware of her impatience once she received her laptop, we decided to scan the old drive first to make sure the files were safe.

It seems we harp on security issues constantly, and certainly three years ago when we purchased her desktop, we had turned Windows Automatic Update on, installed anti-virus and anti-spyware programs, and instructed her on how to keep her computer “safe”. WELL. Automatic Update somehow “got turned off” and it was obvious that XP-SP2 had not even been installed, not to mention most of the critical updates since that time. The Windows Firewall was probably never turned on, since in those days, we thought it was ON by default, rather than OFF. The first anti-virus scan found 73 viruses on the drive, many of the names recognizable as the tech news horror stories of past months. Ad-Aware found 165 Critical Objects and innumerable Negligible Risk entries. Warnings about more viruses persisted for about 24 hours, so Terry went to http://www.pandasoftware.com and ran their free ActiveScan. (Look for the link to ActiveScan at the bottom of the left-hand column). ActiveScan found another 65 malware instances, and 3 more viruses. The free ActiveScan deletes the viruses, but not the malware. You can, however, save the malware report in a text file and then manually delete the files. No wonder the computer was “running slow” and couldn’t stay connected to the Internet for more than a couple of minutes at a time!

Daughter was present during part of the removal process, and she found it incredibly boring to sit at the desk and answer the antivirus program prompts. Terry was not terribly excited about having such a sick disk in his computer. (I disconnected from the network…why take unnecessary chances! ) “An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure”, Terry said in trying to impress the need for security measures. I’m not sure the impression was very deep, though, since the lightning more or less solved the problem and gave her a clean slate!

The new laptop now has a desktop folder containing shortcuts to SpyBot Search and Destroy, Spyware Blaster, and Ad-Aware. Avast Antivirus is always running, and ZoneAlarm has been installed as the firewall. Automatic Updates are turned on, and will be installed without user intervention. She has promised to be more proactive this time, and with her new “always on” cable connection, she will have to be. I’m in the process of writing detailed instructions, complete with screen shots, on how to use the programs. When finished, you’ll find the instructions under http://www.iconusersgroup.org/tutorials/ (At online press time, I'm still writing these tutorials. The preceding link will be live as soon as I finish!) If I am going to go to the effort to create the instructions, it only seems fair to share them with you. After all, when it comes to computer security, there’s really very little difference in the thought processes of an 18-year old and the average ICON member. None of us really want to take the time to deal with it, but if we don’t, our computers “run slow” and worse. Will YOU be struck by lightning before you get interested in learning how to protect your data?!