Links to other sites that may be useful

Please note that Xper Associates has no relationship with any of the sites listed below except those marked with a ** or *** and strongly recommends that you cross-check any information contained within them before assuming their content is valid.

Please read the basic advice at the end of this page about practical ways of backing up your PC before you use ANY of the products that may be on offer at these Web Sites.

Spam filtering

• www.mailwasher.net/ Free (for personal use etc.) Spam filter
• www.symantec.com/sabu/nis/nis pe/ Norton Internet Security
• Mail filtering services are available from a variety of companies but it would not be appropriate to provide links to them without some knowledge of your requirements. Please use the Spam Contact form to get in touch.
• Interesting ONLY if you want to see what sort of triggers make an e'Mail get marked up as Spam: spamassassin.org/tests.html Credits due to SpamAssassin who produce an Open Source Spam filtering tool in use at the Servers that we use.

e'Mail hosting known to provide an Easy to Use facility for Aliasing, Auto-responders etc.

• site-4u.com Domain registration and Mail hosting services***.
• www.unitedhosting.co.uk Hosting services. This company does not offer a specific e'Mail only package because they normally host Web Sites on a domain. However, they do host the Xper Associates site and have provided good service and facilities.

FireWall - real time intrusion prevention

• www.zonelabs.com Free (personal use etc.) version of ZoneAlarm
• www.firetrust.com Professional version of ZoneAlarm
• www.symantec.com/product/ Symantec products - you may be interested in a "bundle" rather than just the FireWall - for example:
• www.symantec.com/sabu/nis/nis pe/ Norton Internet Security

Virus/Worm related sites

• www.sarc.com Latest anti-Virus threats
• www.symantec.com/avcenter/hoax.html Hoaxes and how to deal with them
• uk.mcafee.com/ McAfee has more to offer that Virus protection but the equivalent bundle to the Norton suite was difficult to find

MS Windows file extension / association issues

• antivirus.about.com/library/blext.htm Common list - 30+ are dangerous!
• www.filext.com/index.php Searchable

MS Windows security holes and fixes

• www.microsoft.com/technet/security/Bulletin/MS04-013.mspx Outlook Express - cumulative fixes April 2004
• support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;Q307594 Outlook 2002 "Plain text" option
• www.microsoft.com/technet/security/msrc.asc allows you to register for Microsoft security bulletins
• www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=8b081f3a-b7d0-4b16-b8af-5a6322f4fd01&DisplayLang=en Personal Folder backup for Outlook (not Express)
• support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?kbid=291387 Outlook Express 6 changes - including Plain Text option
• www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/pro/using/howto/communicate/stopspam.asp Stopping Messaging Spam (simple text on grey background with a simple OK button)

Defeating: Trojan Horses, Keystroke Trackers, Dialers Phishing tools and Pop-up Ads

Although it would be ideal to have one tool for the purpose, these two together are better in combination than each alone.

• www.safer-networking.org/en/index.html SpyBot Search and Destroy Trojans, Pop-up Ads, keystroke trackers and other intrusive software.
• www.lavasoft.de Ad-Aware performs a similar task as SpyBot but uses very different algorithms and detection methods.

General reading about on-line privacy, security and related topics

• www.oreilly.com/catalog/websec2/chapter/ch08.html is a detailed introduction to on-line privacy and security

Domain registration

• site-4u.com Domain registration and Mail hosting services***.
• 123-reg.co.uk Domain registration services. Includes some aliasing / forwarding / auto-responder facilities.

Links above marked with a *** are to a site managed by one of the Xper Associates that presented at the Spam Seminar.

Note that all other relationships with companies above are affiliate status in that we are not recommending their products but may receive a very small fee for passing leads on to the site in question. All such sites are marked above with a **. The use of these links is to establish whether our guidance and Web Site linkages are effective. All monies raised will be contributed to a local charity on an annual basis.

Taking system backups - the safe way to try out new software

Please also note that you should take a full system backup of your PC and the data you have on it before installing this type of "system level" software. Because of the extent of the Service Packs that Microsoft are delivering as part of Windows Update (which in today's Web world is no longer an optional service) your hardware may also need to be upgraded. 128MB of RAM is a minimum for any Windows system (e.g. 98SE, 2000) and 256MB is now an absolute minimum for Windows XP.

If you only have one physical drive in your PC and it is used for business data and processes that would be disrupted if that PC failed then it is recommended that you add a second hard drive at a cost of less that £60 for the hardware - excluding fitting and formatting. The 2nd drive should be regularly maintained as a set of "Mirrors" of your existing hard drive using a tool such as PartitionMagic. Norton Ghost can be used and is especially useful for backing up to DVD as it can compress a drive as well as create a backup suitable for off-site storage.

You should also back up your (User) data, the following is a basic list, there are more but those require more in-depth discussion / consultation than a Web Site can offer:

• e-Mail storage for Outlook users this can be made safer and much easier to backup and restore if the Store Folder is kept outside of the 'Documents and Settings' folders and ideally not on the 'C-Drive' at all.

  You must close down Outlook before doing such a backup but when complete the whole of your mail - InBox, Sent, personal folders etc. is held in the single Store folder copy that you can write to a CD-RW (less than 500MB) or DVD-RW (less than 4GB).

• Windows Address Book cannot be moved in most versions of Windows and as such you will need to periodically Export the WAB onto your backup media.
• My Documents is where later versions of Windows (XP for instance) are relatively insistent upon storing files that you create or simply save. The problem is that this can become very large, especially as the default is to have the 'My Videos', 'My Pictures' and 'My Music' folders underneath the main 'My Documents' folder.

  It is strongly recommended that this should be kept off the 'C-Drive' because the latter becomes impossible to perform a full disk backup. A separate partition is a minimum requirement for a 'Home' user but for any user that has business-related data of any significance then this should be a separate hard drive as suggested above.

• My Favourites should be backed up separately if it is not within the 'My Documents' folder.