It’s all about security today and who is looking over your shoulder.
After I made the
colossal mistake of upgrading my six-month-old computer from Windows 7 to
10, I discovered just how much I appreciated my files.
I’m not a conspiracy person. I don’t look at contrails made
by jets and see mutant strains of DNA populating the atmosphere. But by golly,
my adventure into Win 10 made me a believer in Spies R Us—meaning companies
checking out your history and algorithms and such.
To see my journey down the road to Holy Moses, Batman, see my blog here.
Before I took the bait and upgraded to Win 10, I had no idea Microsoft was
so intrusive. Now I realize that automatic updates are the devil’s spawn. I check the recommended updates manually once a
week for anything labeled “Security”. An Important
or Optional update always rates
another look and research.
One of the updates, KB3035583 is labeled important. Lookee here what it actually is, a way for Win 10 to worm its way back into my ‘puter.
Grrrrr...
I’ve discovered how essential it is to make restore points. And backing up. Redundant backups.
I have a marvelous external drive for backups, a 2 terabyte
Examples:
Amazon Cloud Drive, ICloud, and Google Cloud. And probably a few more I set up and
can’t remember.
Carbonite is an okay program for backing up, but it drained
my computer’s functions. Uploading slowed my computer to a sick turtle. I gave
up on them.
Although I eschew letting something else decide, in this case
setting up a program to backup automatically gives a bit of solace.
Virus and Internet
Security. Since there are so many programs and an equal number of loyal
customers for each, I won’t try to tell you which ones are good or bad.
I use
Symantec’s Norton Internet Security. It provides the stuff I need to protect my
‘puter and does the when, where, and how much backups to the Seagate. I set it
up and let it do the work. Easy Peasy.
Since the Windows 10 fiasco, I’ve been less trusting and
more inquisitive regarding how my system should work. I hope I’ve learned
enough to avoid such missteps in the future.
5 comments:
I still back up the old fashion way - onto a cd. I don't trust the Cloud.
An external drive with at least one terabyte is $60 at Amazon. It holds computer image and all the emails, photos, music, and files you have.
It stays connected to my computer at all times and comes with its own program for backups.
Really a great investment. I highly recommend.
Which reminds me, it's past time I should have backed everything up to my external hard drive. Luckily, my computer is so old that it's missed the whole Windows 10 thing.
After hard drive crash number 2, I moved EVERYTHING I value into Dropbox. I work strictly from there. Which I've actually come to love, because I can easily get to everything on more than one device, and can share files faster and easier with "my people."
As for security, I use two programs. But one program hates the other, so I have to reinstall both every time the one updates. Ha ha ha.
Dropbox is great. It's one of my "...probably a few more I set up and can’t remember..." programs.
Regarding programs not playing nice: I can't do much of anything in IE. Chrome seems to like my Norton better. McAfee definitely hates me and all the minions that work for me. Also, McAfee and Bing want desperately back into my 'puter. Sheesh. I hate those persistent little buggers. Just Leave. Me. Alone.
Post a Comment