[Aggy]

I read on the gaming forums someone recommend that I never use a windows account with admin rights for my regular daily internet use. They said, use an account with no rights and you don't even need to have an antivirus program.

I think that is insane, I'd never not have and AV program... but are they right about the admin rights? Should I create a windows account without rights and use that one for most of my internet browsing?

Right now I have Symantec Corporate edition; but the university is going to move to Trend Micro in January. I use Firefox with AdBlock Plus and Flashblock. I'm thinking about adding NoScript. Symantec does a full scan every day and Windows updates automatically. I keep Windows firewall on. I don't cruise porn sites or download music from questionable sites. Mostly I stick to shopping at trusted companies, banking, World of Warcraft, one or two forums and maybe some youtube.

Once in a blue moon Symantec will catch something and quarantine or delete it, but other than that, no problems. The Symantec icon will sometimes tell me it is "disabled" but I think that's a bug. Also, the scan window is absent; I think these naggy problems must be part of the reason the university is changing to Trend Micro.

But I have had no infections for several years now as far as I can tell. Am I sufficient for security or should I be using a no-admin privilege account too? Am I just lucky I haven't been compromised or am I doing things right enough?

[mrss]

It only takes a little more effort to set up and use another account. It's just a little bit of extra safety and if it doesn't hamper your PC use, what's the down side?

I recall reading that the big fuss about the most recent IE7 exploit initially had to do with chinese hackers trying to steal war game credentials. News articles referred to WOW as the archetype, but it was some popular chinese RPG. And the exploit was more successful with admin accounts.

Last summer, I was googling for a new PC motherboard and landed on a vendor that had been hijacked to serve up antivirus pop-ups instead. So you never know. They came up in Netscape, but not in Firefox. That was when I retired Netscape as a browser.

[Aggy]

Thank you, I don't know what's stopping me, other than the pessimistic notion that if I mess with any of my Windows settings I'll somehow crash my whole machine. But I should be able to handle it... after all I successfully reinstalled Windows itself not too long ago. I should have made such an account then.

I know WoW is the target of lots of keyloggers and hackers, so I purchased a WoW authenticator. It works beautifully and now I don't worry about my WoW accounts being hacked.

I'm more worried about bank accounts than anything. After all, that's real money, not game gold.

[RootbeaR]

Originally Posted by Aggy

Thank you, I don't know what's stopping me, other than the pessimistic notion that if I mess with any of my Windows settings I'll somehow crash my whole machine. But I should be able to handle it... after all I successfully reinstalled Windows itself not too long ago. I should have made such an account then.

I know WoW is the target of lots of keyloggers and hackers, so I purchased a WoW authenticator. It works beautifully and now I don't worry about my WoW accounts being hacked.

I'm more worried about bank accounts than anything. After all, that's real money, not game gold.

I always used a limited account for a bit more security, but you still need all other defenses in place. AV etc...

[darcdante]

Yes, definitely use a different account than the admin account. It can really help protect you from a bunch of different types of threats.

[lunarlander]

Access Control Lists (ACL) on the file system and registry prevents anyone with a standard/limited user account from making system wide modifications. I use a standard account for my day to day work, and only go into the admin account to install software or to check the logs.