Sights and Sounds of Multimedia
By George Harding
PC-cillin Internet Security 2006 …
There are many products available today to combat the ever present threat from those who would invade your computer. Trend Micro’s PC-cillin is one of the best!
PC-cillin is several products in one: antivirus, protection against spyware, phishing and Wi-Fi intrusion, includes a firewall and more.
Antivirus is the core of the product. Trend Micro is one of the oldest companies offering antivirus protection and it does so competently.
Spyware is a drag on your system resources. A spy is usually used to capture information of one sort or another from your computer usage and to send that info to someone on the Internet. The info may only be used to find out what web sites you visit, or may be more dangerous. Identity theft is one possible dangerous use.
Phishing is another way to capture your information, but its usage may be more immediate and harmful. You are asked to submit your personal information to your bank, by way of an email that requests it. Banks never do such a thing, so if you receive such an email, you know it is an attempt to capture your information and use it to access your bank accounts.
Wi-Fi intrusion means using your Internet access by someone not authorized to do so, perhaps a neighbor, without paying for it. PC-cillin monitors your Internet connection to identify all users. You classify them as trusted or not. The non-trusted users are denied access. Another way to prevent unauthorized access is to encode your Wi-Fi info, a simple and effective method.
A firewall is another essential protection. Hackers can access your computer and your files. Worse, they can make your computer a drone for sending span to thousands of others. Windows includes a firewall, which will protect you from those trying to get into your computer, but won’t protect against unauthorized outflow. PC-cillin includes an effective firewall that protects you against both unauthorized incoming and outgoing access.
Installation was painless! The install starts with a preliminary scan of memory, the root of the C: drive and the Windows/system32 folder, along with a message to do a full scan after installation. The install takes about 2 minutes for the complete package, then you do a restart.
The software is licensed for only one computer; one must buy a separate package for each computer to be protected. How do they know? After the restart, the next step is to register and update the files. You don’t get the update if you don’t register. The product won’t give as much protection if you don’t register, and it’ll get progressively more out of date.
There is a getting started tutorial, which is helpful to know how to set up the software if the default is not what you want.
The full scan detected 30 cookies on my system. I could not find a way to delete them, but that is apparently not necessary.
The spyware and phishing features can always be supplemented by other programs. The current literature suggests that no one program does a complete job of identifying these, so running other specialized programs is advised.
I found PC-cillin to be very effective and more or less unobtrusive. All its actions occur automatically by default, which is the way it should be.
I would have liked to be able to install on more than one machine, but that’s not allowed. Remember, though, that User Group members can get a discounted price of $30 at www.trendmicro.com/en/offers/us/usergroup.htm. At this price you can afford to buy a copy for each computer!
PC-cillin Internet Security 2006 by Trend Micro www.trendmicro.com
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