Hello, Kossacks!
I've been neglecting the education side of Everyday Magic for a while now in favor of writing Net Neutrality-related diaries, and I finally have some spare time to return to it!
After reading OllieGarkey's recommended diary, I noticed that there was some advice being given in the comments that were well meaning, but were using some outdated best practices.
Hence, I'll be addressing some common questions regarding Windows PCs and the care and feeding of them in this edition of Everyday Magic, so that you can keep your systems running in tip-top shape, along with talking about passphrases and how to keep data protected by them secure in a not-a-pain-in-the-ass way!
I have Windows 7. Should I upgrade to Windows 8.1?
Yes.
The Modern tile interface is terrible, but your old school desktop is one click away, and the core operating system outperforms Windows 7 in every other aspect of computing, and for lower end systems like many have here, it's far better and less chunky than Windows 7.
On top of that, it has anti-virus and anti-malware built into the operating system, and both perform quite well and update right along with your normal Windows updates, which saves you time on maintenance and provides less risk by forgetting to download updates to your protective software.
If I'm not running Windows 8, which anti-virus and anti-malware should I be using?
Microsoft Security Essentials.
It's not going to protect you from everything out there, but it won't hit a bunch of false positives thanks to overzealous predictive software, it's extremely lightweight so it won't tank your performance (especially on older computers), and the only places where it won't protect you is if you're opening every attachment that hits your inbox (don't open it if you're not expecting it -- if it's from someone you know, ask them first if they meant to send an attachment prior to opening it if you're not expecting it) or going to the deep, dark, corners of the Internet looking for cracked software or religion.
Wait a sec. Religion? What about porn?
Yep. You're more likely to catch a virus from a religious/ideological page than a porn site.
Basically, your best protection strategy isn't to rely on software to keep you safe, but to use a little sense when computing. Also, don't use Symantec/Norton or McAfee anti-virus suites. With how they take over a system, I classify them as malware/viruses in their own right.
What about a firewall?
Same goes for firewall software -- Windows Firewall is plenty, since all a firewall should be doing is closing or opening communications ports, not looking for problems to fix.
Should I still be defragmenting my hard drive?
Only if it's actually a hard drive(HDD) with spinning platters. If you're using a solid-state drive (SSD), like most laptops come with nowadays, defragmentation will actually wear out your SSD faster as the memory used to make an SSD only has a limited number of write cycles, and all SSDs come with algorithms to maximize that lifespan -- and that includes where files are placed on the SSD, which is what defragmentation addresses.
Should I be using software like CCleaner to keep my computer speedy?
Probably not, unless you're still running Windows XP.
Don't get me wrong, it's good software and you're not (likely) going to harm your computer by using it, but its historical use was to clean up the cruft left behind by previous versions of Windows when it came to driver installations and upgrades, software installations, uninstallations, and upgrades, etc., which newer versions of
Windows don't leave behind anymore. That leaves CCleaner to do two things: clean out temporary/cache/history files, and remove keys from the Windows Registry.
Temporary files are used in most cases as caches to speed up parts of the programs that leave them around, or they're log files that are useful if your software crashes or has other problems/bugs. The overall slowdown from them is negligible, especially if you run the disk cleanup utility that comes with modern versions of Windows, and deleting your cache, program use history, etc. in the way that CCleaner does will remove the faster startup time tricks that much modern software benefit from.
Removing unused keys from the Windows Registry has zero benefit on any Windows system newer than Windows XP.
Should I be using a password manager?
Absolutely.
What's a password manager?
It's a piece of software or a service that stores your password in an encrypted fashion, and is unlocked by a single master password. Many of them also do password generation, which makes it easy to have a different password for every place you log into, while only needing to remember a single strong password. So even if there's a data breach at some place you frequent, you've only had one password compromised.
KeePass is an excellent piece of software for this task, or if you'd rather have it as a service accessible everywhere you have a browser, LastPass is pretty awesome, and comes with browser plugins that deliver your password database to you via an encrypted connection.
Even if you use one, you'll still need to come up with one really good password as your master password every few months or so.
So what's in a good password?
Use a passphrase instead. They don't fall prey to single word dictionary attacks, they generally have a high level of entropy, which is a measure of how hard a password is to brute force, and they're far easier to remember than passwords that are an unordered jumble of mixedcase, special symbols, and numbers that most people use incorrectly anyway.
People tend to either replace letters with numbers like 3 for e or 1 for i (dictionary attacks account for this) or place them at the end of the password (also accounted for in many brute force weighting algorithms). Uppercase letters generally appear at the beginning of a password (accounted for in both brute force and dictionary). Symbols are placed at the beginning or end and rarely in the middle. Finally, no matter how awesome you think that password is, 91% of users use a password in the top 1,000 most common passwords!
XKCD has a great comic explanation of why passphrases are better, and here's a couple of more detailed explanations of why the XKCD method is awesome, as long as you don't actually use the combination in the comic!
What about the security question?
Most sites will have a security question that can be used to authenticate who you are in case you forget your passphrase. There's one big problem with this, though -- if you answer the security question honestly when setting your account up, the answer is probably on your Facebook page! Most of these questions are things like your mother's maiden name, a school you've been to, a teacher you had, your favorite vacation, etc.
How do you get around this?
Pick one of those questions at random, lie to it, and remember your lie, or use a second passphrase generated like I talk about above.
I hope you all are having a great weekend, and that this has been helpful and educational! Please ask any questions you have in the comments.