Wireless all- In-One for Dummies- P9

Wireless all- In-One for Dummies- P9:I still remember when I got my first cordless phone. Suddenly, I didn’thave to run to the kitchen when the phone rang, I just carried the phonewith me. I could make a phone call from wherever I was. Wireless meantfreedom, and this is just a phone that I’m talking about!
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Wireless all- In-One for Dummies- P9 Visiting the Windows Security Center 219Figure 3-5:The FirewallSettingswindow.Figure 3-6:Vistapromptsto allow aconnection. Book IV Chapter 3 The dialog box shown in Figure 3-6 is light on details. You’re being asked to decide whether or not an application should accept connections. If you Protecting Your allow it, the Windows firewall will allow incoming connections into this Computer application. To be clear, the application has requested the privilege of accepting con- nections. The first question you should ask is “Did I just launch that applica- tion?” If the query came while you were in the middle of browsing the Web, then you should be extra cautious. However, in this case, I ran the program. If you’re not sure which program generated the alert, then check the dialog box because it’s listed there.220 Visiting the Windows Security Center After you determine that the alert was as a result of a program you chose to run, you should ask “Is this the type of program that accepts network connections?” On the Internet, a client (your computer) connects to a server to get some information. The connection is always made from one side to the other, and having a connection come in to you if you’re a client is rare. Therefore, if you see an alert asking you if you’d like to accept connections, you should qualify the last question by asking yourself why someone would want to connect to me. You want incoming connections on the following scenarios: ✦ When you’re running some server software such as an FTP server. ✦ When you’re running a peer-to-peer (P2P) file-sharing program that shares out parts of the file as you download the rest. ✦ When you’re running some remote control software and want people to be able to control your computer. It’s also important to note that if you’re behind a router, then people from the Internet can’t make direct connections to you and wouldn’t be able to connect to the application anyway. There are exceptions to this, such as if you’ve enabled port forwarding (see Book IV, Chapter 2). If you want to allow the application to receive connections, then click Unblock. If not, click Keep Blocking. Using automatic updates Software isn’t perfect. Actually, if you spent some time as a software devel- oper, you’d be continually surprised when it works at all. A popular quote among developers is “If we built buildings the same way we built software, the first woodpecker that came along would destroy civilization.” Despite Microsoft’s biggest efforts, bugs exist in Windows. Some of them are pretty tame such as “screen doesn’t redraw properly.” But some of them are pretty bad like one that surfaced in late 2008 that allowed anyone that could connect to your machine to take it over. Oops. Patches are pieces of software that fix bugs. Think of using patches as patch- ing up a hole in a wall, or in a bike tire. Microsoft releases these patches every month, and you can download them to make sure your computer’s software is up to date. Visiting the Windows Security Center 221 The problem is that Microsoft software often has bugs and, therefore, it tends to release a lot of patches. Chances are you won’t remember to download every single patch every month. Figuring out which patches are necessary is also a problem. So Microsoft introduced Windows Update some time ago, and more recently, made it install patches automatically, should you allow it. In Figure 3-7, the line corresponding to automatic updates has been pulled down to show some more details.Figure 3-7:TheWindowsSecurityCentershowing theautomaticupdatesoption Click on the Change settings button to bring up the automatic updates con- figuration, which is shown in Figure 3-8. From here, you have two options: Book IV ✦ Install updates automatically: In this mode, Windows checks for Chapter 3 updates periodically and installs them. ✦ Let me choose: Gives you more flexibility on how you apply your Protecting Your updates. Computer If you choose the Let Me Choose option, the screen in Figure 3-9 appears. You can select one of the following options: ✦ Install automatically: This option is almost the same as the one in the previous menu. Updates are downloaded and installed without your intervention. ...