Got yourself a subscription to Norton or McAfee and think you’re safe from viruses and Trojans and such out on that there Internet?

Think again.

At a bare minimum you ought to also be regularly running Ad-Aware and Spybot, but even using these won’t make you 100% immune to predators (a practical impossibility, anyway.) Add Ewido Security Suite to your system. SpySweeper is another widely recommended software.

Oh, yeah, Firefox instead of Internet Explorer.

Those are the basics. Want more? Free online virus scans are available from Trend Micro and Panda. Use SpywareBlaster, SpyWare Guard, and IE/Spyad to help prevent the installation of spyware and browser hijackers. Trojan Remover is good, too. And check out CWShredder.

SpywareInfo.com is a tremedous resource if you want to dig deeper. Start with this article about preventing browser hijacking, and this article about removing browser hijacks. Be sure to leave a little something in their tip jar.

Yeah, I was up till 2 a.m. the other night trying to get some malware off my computer. Still not finished. It’s the vundo infection. Hey, WinAntiSpyware.com? Fongoo!

Edit (added Oct. 13, 2005) — I also urge you check out the Podcast of Episode 7 of Security Now, focusing on spyware.

Got another reading assignment for you, class. Yes, there’ll be a quiz at the end of the semester.

In case you haven’t yet heard, Seth Godin has a couple of free e-books worth downloading and reading. The first is “Knock Knock: Seth Godin’s Incomplete Guide to Building a Web Site That Works”, focusing on the importance of landing pages. The second is “Who’s There? Seth Godin’s Incomplete Guide to Blogs and the New Web.”

Takeaway for Marketers: Print these out and move them to the top of your To Read stack. Now.

VOIP (voice over Internet protocol) is heating up bigtime: First Google announced Googletalk, and now eBay says it will pay $1.3 billion in cash and another $1.3 billion in stock (plus up to $1.5 billion pending certain performance criteria) for Skype, which claims 53 million members but, according to this article, only 1.3 million paying customers. Still, that’s more than Vonage, which that same article notes has about a million.

What I don’t know about VOIP is quite a lot, but it looks to me like Google just got a smackdown. Maybe Vonage, too. At stake in the VOIP wars? How does hundreds of billions of dollars in lifetime customer value sound? The estimated 3 million VOIP customers in 2005 is predicted to increase ninefold to 27 million by 2009. Let the games continue.

I hope everyone took some time yesterday to remember and reflect on the events of four years ago. I was fortunate to spend the afternoon attending a performance of “Empty Sky … The Rising” at the Two River Theater in Red Bank, New Jersey. Described as “a 9/11 dance theater experience performed to eleven songs from The Rising by Bruce Springsteen,” the production was conceived and choreographed by Bob Boross, with proceeds to benefit The Memoria Project of Highlands, New Jersey.

It was a very well done production, extremely moving in places, joyous in others, and Bob did his source material proud — not an easy task, by any measure. The biggest disappointment was that more people didn’t see it: The theater at yesterday’s matinee was less than half full. What a shame. Even so, this deserves to become an annual performance tradition somewhere, somehow.

This week, Google announced that it had hired Vinton Cerf, a founding father of the Internet, as Chief Internet Evangelist. Great title, and this quote of his from the news release is pretty interesting:

“This medium will enjoy wider-spread use than television, radio or phones, and will ultimately expand beyond planet Earth. Google has always believed in doing things differently, and I believe that places us in a unique position to help bring even the wildest Internet visions into reality.”

“Expand beyond planet Earth”? Is that why Google’s buying up all the dark fiber it can?