HN Explorer

Ask HN: What's the personal computer security solution you recommend most?

4 points by helloworld11 ↗ HN
Hello everyone. What's the security solution or software (private or open source) some of you here at HN would recommend most for deeply protecting a personal PC or laptop as free as possible of malware, spyware and so forth? Plenty of commercial options exist obviously, but my suspicion of their qualities and own business-related data-grubbing and clumsiness has gone nowhere but up in recent years. Any suggestions would be very helpful.

8 comments

[ 4.5 ms ] story [ 26.2 ms ] thread
cpach
For Linux and Mac: Just be mindful of what you install and from what sources.

For Windows: Defender is the best choice IMHO.

And keep backups of your data.

If you want something foolproof, iPad or Chromebook are good choices.

helloworld11
Thanks for the tips. And anti-malware solutions like malware bytes or other third-party programs aren't something you recommend? Some circumstances make downloading files without worry tricky.
account-5
VMs for that with an account with no admin rights.

To add to the parent I also use adblockers and turn off JavaScript

msh
What kind of files? If office documents opening them in google docs/sheets is the safe option.
kleer001
> And keep backups of your data.

Frequent backups. Test them occasionally.

Redundant backups for precious data.

helloworld11
Thanks for the extra input! Any particular backup testing protocol you recommend? These are just personal external hard drives. I also backup to cloud storage, everything that's on the drives. Photography mostly, terabytes of photography.
kleer001
> backup testing protocol you recommend?

Just the naive way you'd restore a backup. Spot check restore files. Nothing crazy technical or unintuitive. Make sure the darn thing works every once in a while.

This perspective comes from talking to a tap backup operator at a major visual effects studio. Turns out someone somewhere was backing up to tape for years and it was all garbage, but they didn't find out until years and years and jobs and jobs later when they tried to do a restore.