Sandboxie - It just might save your PC one day

With the ever increasing amount of malware and spyware on the internet, it is really hard to keep your pc free from all the baddies. I still remember that evening when I was trying to look for a program that I desperatly needed when I by mistake clicked on a link that I shouldnt have. Just a second after the ill fated click, my mouse pointer grew a brain of its own, my desktop turned scarlet and my taskbar was mine no more! Being the adventure seeker that I am, I took this to be one of those "learning" moments in my life and spent around 3 hours trying to fight the malware Trojan.Vundo . It surely was stubborn but it finally realised that I was more stubborn. Charging like a mad rhinocerous, I finally subdued it and managed to banish it to the dark realms it had creapt out of. Well the tiresome exercise did leave me with alot of experience and red eyes of course. I finally returned to bed, satisfied that I had avenged my pc.

Now, being a few months wiser, I have got McAfee Total Protection 2008 installed on my pc and I religiously check it every day to ensure that it is up to date as far as the virus definitions are concerned. But for those of you that are techie enough, know that you could have the best antivirus/antispyware/antimalware software installed on your pc, with the latest updates installed, but your system can still get compromised. These protection softwares use an engine that uses history and heuristics to find virus patterns. So at times they might not identify malware/viruses that do not have the same patterns as any that were previously seen. And you might be the first of the few that might get their machine toasted by them! By the time your security software vendors find out about it and release the updates, your pc might have flat lined!

Dont you just wish at those times, you had a universal UNDO button that you could use to reverse all the damages that that virus/malware did to your system?

Well say no more because there is just such a software called Sandboxie . It runs programs in a space of its own. In this way everything that the program does is partitioned from the actual system and can be easily reversed because these changes are not committed. It is a really good software to check out. I have just started using it and I love the concept of it.

Have a safe festive season

Week 28 Article 01 - What is the best anti spyware/malware software in your opinion?

Hi guys and girls.

SPAM, Spyware and Malware seems to be making the news pretty much everyday now. If its not your dying long distant cousin trying to offer you your share of the fortune for a small transfer fee, it is some nigerian selling Rolex for a couple of dollars! And who can forget those websites that start a popup craze and infect your browser with spammer software.

Now, this week I would like to take your views on what do you think is the best antispyware/antimalware tool that a computer tech should have in his/her so-called "toolbox" so that he/she can fight these parasites? Please do include in your comments if the tool you are describing is a freeware, trial with free updates or one needs to purchase it before using it.

So lets open the floor for discussion shall we.