I use mozilla firefox and have yahoo email. What are the preferred
security tools available (firewall, anti-spamming, anti-virus,
privacy) for these two programs. I have a toshiba laptop with core duo
2050 processor and one gig of ram. I'm using verizon dsl for internet
access.

Hello squirreldaddy-ga,

Please understand that there are many different answers to your
question, and the following is my opinion only based on many years of
experience.

Antivirus: Pc_cillin Internet Security (free 30 day trial, $49.95 after)
http://www.trendmicro.com/en/products/desktop/pc-cillin/evaluate/overview.htm

Spam: Use the Yahoo anti-spam plus the Spamarrest service (30 days
free, then $5.95/month, $24.95/6 months, $44.95/year or $74.95/2
years) This service works by having users authenticate themselves once
to prove they are not spammers.
http://spamarrest.com/

Firewall: (included in Pc-cillin Internet Security, see above)

Privacy: not needed in my opinion, but if you are sure you want this,
the best service is Anonymizer.
http://www.anonymizer.com/

You should also get and use the following free freeware programs to
protect yourself against spyware. They do an amazing job:

Ad-Aware SE Personal: http://www.lavasoftusa.com/software/adaware/
Spybot Search & Destroy: http://www.safer-networking.org/en/download/index.html

I hope this answers the question to your satisfaction. Please let me
know if you require any clarification and I will do my best to further
assist you.

All the best,

tisme-ga


Search Strat: personal knowledge

PC-Cillin is along the lines of Norton and McAfee for lack of protection.

If you want a decent antivirus the one you should be aiming for is

NOD32

www.eset.com

or if you require a free one choose avast.

www.avast.com

To see why I recommend it (apart from 10 years of experience using
every single mainstream antivirus and a lot of not so many mainstream
antivirus programs) check out http://www.virusbtn.com/index

mainly http://www.virusbtn.com/vb100/archive/results?vendor=VE14  for
NOD32 (it has failed 2 tests in 8 years, one of those was for suse
linux where NO ONE passed, the only windows failure was in 2000 when
only 3 anti virus vendors passed)

For Avast, although nowhere near as good as NOD32 they have not had a
bad showing since 2002
http://www.virusbtn.com/vb100/archive/results?vendor=VE9

I would advise you to get NOD32 if you are looking at buying an
antivirus solution, it has the best and fastest scanning engine with
the highest detection rate in the industry. Microsoft use it to scan
their code before compilation so I am lead to believe.

If you use Yahoo mail you already have a decent anti spam module
installed within the mail system so should not need a new one. However
spam arrest is a pretty good system.

Windows XP has a decent firewall built into it so you should be fine
with that, however using a software based firewall on the PC that you
are trying to protect is not the most secure way of doing things.
Depending on how you connect to the internet (do you use an internet
router?) you may already have a firewall built into the device that
connects to the internet so won't need to purchase more software for
it.

As for anti spyware adaware is a pretty good system, spy bot search
and destroy I have never found anything with even though I can see the
infection with my own eyes and end up deleting it by hand. I would
personally not advise spybot search and destroy however other people I
know have had good reports with it from what I have seen.
Another piece of software I would seriously advise you to install is
Microsoft Windows defender.

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=435bfce7-da2b-4a6a-afa4-f7f14e605a0d&displaylang=en

This is the best real time antispyware protection software I have used
in a long time (after being initially VERY sceptical of it).

I like the advice that was given out though, PC-Cillin is not the
strongest antivirus on the market and should maybe be changed to NOD32
and then add Windows Defender to the mix and I think you will have a
good set up there. It is the set up I use when I do computers for
friends and family. The only thing I would advise you to purchase is a
hardware firewall as a hardware device is much more secure than using
a software based firewall which allow the packets to hit the one item
you are trying to protect :)

--Keystroke-ga