Korean Job Discussion Forums

[cj1976]

I use Comodo free firewall and Avast anti-virus. Both are free to download and use indefinitely. They also use very little CPU resources and are easy to use.

[Underwaterbob]

Run Linux. Ubuntu kicks ass.

[IncognitoHFX]

Don't get AVG is you're an online gamer. It has a nasty habit of scanning all your incoming packets and verifying them as you play, which means a ping of 50 will shoot up to a ping of 400-500.

It took me a few months to realize that AVG was responsible and when I deleted it, my ping went back down again (no, you can't disable it either without uninstalling).

If you don't play games, then get AVG. It's free.

Also, avoid LiveCareOne like the plague. It likes to hijack every program on your operating system and generally act like an overprotective Jewish mother stereotype.

[Gatsby]

I just had a semi-frightening encounter with some weird problem. My hard drive was pulsing, pulsing, pulsing, churning away doing something I couldn't figure out. Some sort of program seemed to be running in the background that I couldn't turn off.

I am running anti-virus and anti-spyware programs, so I checked a lot of other possibilities, without success. Ran the microsoft malicious software removal tool, which is a good first step. I was afraid I would have to reload my OS.

Another free tip: Just delete all the cookies in your browser(s). That's where much of the spyware resides, though some hides in the registry. However, you may delete some useful cookies, so don't do this unless you have a problem.

I use Opera most of the time, but when I opened IE, I got all these warning messages from something called "Malware Alarm" claiming to be an anti-piracy program. Yeah, right. It even started to scan my hard drive, displaying a screen of it doing so, when I tried to close the program.

Suspiciously, the hard drive churning stopped for a while after opening IE and getting the Malware pages.

I tried removing it with the free Spybot, but it didn't remove all the problems it detected. Not sure why.

So I tried SuperAntispyware, also free. This time it worked, thankgod.

The trick is finding a program to scan your computer on demand that doesn't conflict with the resident antivirus program. SuperAntispyware did the job. I used to use AdAware, but they seem to have dropped support for the old version, and only have a resident version now.

Now my hard drive is quiet as a baby and my CPU monitor is quiet too.

So, given the junk floating around on Korean websites, you might want to give this SuperAntispyware program a try. This should be a first step if you have a slow computer.

And watch out for that hellish Malware Alarm. I think it was the cause of the hard drive pulsing, which I suspect was not actually doing anything harmful, just trying to scare you into buying their program, if you can believe that.


Edit:

Entered "Korea Herald" on google.com. Try it. Got a warning: "this site may harm your computer." Followed the google warning link and came up with these sites with tips on avoiding malware.

http://www.google.com/support/bin/answer.py?answer=45449&topic=360&hl=en&sa=X&oi=malwarewarninglink&resnum=1&ct=help

http://spywarewarrior.com/asw-features.htm#rec

http://www.spywareinfo.com/downloads.php

http://www.download.com/Antivirus-Firewall-Spyware/?tag=dir

[bassexpander]

I get problems with englishspectrum when I try to use it. My anti-virus goes nuts.

[Oreovictim]

[IncognitoHFX]

[JustJohn]

Sorry, but you can't call yourself an online gamer if you don't know what ping is. Ping is the round trip latency from your computer to the server. If your ping is high you will experience "lag." In twitch games like counter-strike a ping above 40ms will start to be noticeable, and over 100ms will put you at a distinct disadvantage. In games like WoW it won't make as much difference, and in strategy games it hardly matters. Due to importance of reaction speed in all cases.