I would like to seek your opinion relating to increasing spam on my computer. The spam issue has grown into a major problem, with almost all received email being spam. So, I have several questions which I hope you could answer. First, if I purchased a new computer how can I be sure the spam problem will not continue with the new computer? Second, would switching to Linux fix the spam problem, which Linux distribution do you recommend, and is the firewall in Linux good compared with the comparable Windows products such as ZoneAlarm? Third, if I installed Linux in a dual-boot configuration with Windows would this be a more secure setup, and is there evidence suggesting Linux is a more secure operating system and less susceptible to viruses and spyware/adware? Fourth, is it worthwhile to purchase a hardware firewall or router for my Transact broadband connection, and will this help reduce the amount of spam? Fifth, are there any other options to reduce spam, apart from changing my email address, as the current anti-spam software which I am running seems to be very ineffective? Sixth, why doesn’t my antivirus software stop spam? Finally, my computer is running very slowly at the moment, so is there a way to track-down the cause of this slowness and speed up the computer performance? Thanks for taking the time to answer my long list of questions!

This is certainly a comprehensive list of very good questions, so we will deal with each question separately. In reply to the first question asking whether the spam issue would stop on a new computer, the answer is no. You would have the exact same problem with spam as you are encountering at the moment. This is because spam has nothing to do with the computer itself, but is instead linked to your email address which has been harvested and subscribed to spam email lists. No matter what computer you use to check your email, be it your current computer or a new computer, you will still receive spam as you are checking the same email account. Therefore, don’t purchase a new computer and expect the spam problem to stop…because it will not.

Your second question asked whether switching to Linux would fix the spam problem. Again, because the spam is being sent to your email address, no matter how you check the email address (on a different computer, or a different operating system) you are still checking that same email account and thus will be receiving the same spam messages as under the other computer or operating system. That said, Linux is quite a good operating system and, if you have some free time, is well worth exploring. As you have discovered, there are several different distributions of Linux available, some which are relatively easy to use (very Windows-like) and some which are the more hardcore variants for serious users. If you are interested in getting started, a few distributions to check out are Ubuntu (www.ubuntu.com), Linspire (www.linspire.com), and Fedora (fedoraproject.org). Even better, if you want to try Linux without going to the trouble of installing the operating system on your hard drive, some of the distributions can boot and completely run from a CD without anything being installed on the hard drive. While these ‘live CDs’ will run quite a bit slower than having Linux installed on your hard drive, this will at least allow you to have a go with Linux, to see if its right for you, before re-partitioning your hard drive and installing Linux. You can generally find Live CDs on the cover CD of computer magazines in news agencies, or they can be downloaded from various Linux distribution websites. In particular, the Ubuntu download (www.ubuntu.com/getubuntu/download) includes the Live CD, so this might be a good starting point. In addition, it seems Ubuntu can be installed on the computer from the Live CD, allowing you to install the operating system if you like the looks of it.

You also asked for comments on the firewall in Linux. The Linux firewall is a somewhat different beast to Windows and is based around a concept called iptables. The iptables are simply a list of firewall rules, specifying what type of traffic is allowed and what traffic is disallowed. On the face of this description, it doesn’t sound like a very user friendly solution. Rest assured though that most Linux distributions come with graphical interfaces for the firewall and iptables configuration, allowing the user to relatively easily configure the firewall. Whether the Linux firewall is more secure than Windows equivalents is a difficult question to answer since it depends on how the firewalls have been configured and the particular firewall being used. So long as you are running a good firewall on Windows, this should essentially protect you as well as a firewall on Linux.

Your third question asked whether dual-booting would be a more secure configuration, and whether there is evidence suggesting Linux is a more secure operating system. Answering the first part of the question, simply dual-booting two operating systems will do nothing for system security. However, if you are talking about running Linux as the primary operating system instead of Windows, there is a lot of debate over the security merits of Linux over Windows. I do not wish to provoke a debate on this subject, but some will argue that Windows is a much more popular operating system and is therefore subject to more exploitation than other operating systems. Furthermore, there are comparatively few viruses, spyware, and adware which affect Linux (again, most probably due to the smaller number of users who have Linux on their computers). Also, most of the time you will use Linux under a non-administrator (non-root) account, meaning sensitive system files cannot be accessed without re-logging-in as the root user. This is in contrast to Windows XP, where you almost always need to log in as the system administrator in order to perform tasks on the computer (although, this has been somewhat addressed in Windows Vista with the introduction of User Account Control). Finally, since (most) Linux distributions are open-source, the code is open for interrogation from users. Therefore, security vulnerabilities are usually discovered and fixed relatively quickly, potentially providing more security. However, many home users dislike Linux since it does often require a significant learning curve to understand the system, compared with Windows which is a simple to use system. Also, some applications, particularly games, are only available on Windows, and are not available for Linux. So, to decide whether Linux is for you I suggest the best option is to try Linux for a few days/week, preferably from a Live CD to minimise inconvenience, and see if this operating system suits your needs.

The fourth question asked about a hardware firewall or router for the Transact connection. While this will not affect the flow of spam, I still strongly encourage and recommend all broadband users install a broadband router, even if you do not have a home network, simply for the security benefits which broadband routers provide. Broadband routers which allow multiple computers to be connected to the router and share an internet connection, use a feature called Network Address Translation (NAT). This allows multiple computers on the internal network (i.e. the home network) to share the one public internet connection. This means that any inbound traffic is stopped at the NAT router, until it decides where to send the traffic. NAT will only allow traffic to come back into the network which was requested from a computer inside the network (e.g. if a computer inside the internal network requests a web page, NAT will allow the web page response to be sent back to that computer). However, if traffic attempts to enter the network which has not been requested, NAT will realise it has not been requested and simply discard the data. So, as you can see NAT acts as a traffic-cop for your internet connection, only allowing requested traffic to be sent to the computers behind the NAT router. Therefore, this stops unsolicited traffic from being received by your computer(s), thus providing a great deal of protection. So, for this reason I suggest all broadband users have a NAT firewall router on their internet connection.

Addressing the fifth question about reducing the amount of spam, the only way to really reduce the spam level is by either changing your email address or using spam filtering software. As you have no doubt read in previous columns, spam filtering is far from an exact science. Such software relies on probabilities to determine the likelihood of whether a message is spam or not. Therefore, there is quite a bit of hit and miss. The best suggestion I can offer is to look around for alternate spam filtering software, and read reviews and user opinions of the software before purchasing (or even better, see if a free trial version of the software is available). However, if the situation has gotten to the stage where the spam situation is unrecoverable, your best option would be starting fresh and obtaining a new email address from your ISP. Once you have done this, be very careful to whom you distribute your new email address. I would suggest getting a second email address (e.g. Hotmail or Gmail) and using that address whenever you need to submit an email address online for anything, and save your ISP address for personal and other trusted correspondence. This means if the spam situation on your other (free) email address becomes overwhelming, you can simply create a new free email account. You also asked about why your antivirus software does not stop spam. In fact, you have inadvertently answered your own question ‘“ antivirus software is designed to stop viruses, not spam. While some spam messages may contain viruses, which the virus scanner should detect and stop, most spam is just unsolicited advertising and is therefore not virus-infected, and beyond the job description of antivirus software.

Finally, we can discuss why the computer may be running slowly. This could be due to a number of factors, mainly an old operating system installation or many applications running in the background. Dealing with the first situation, which is the most likely after many years of computer operations, Windows unfortunately builds-up a lot of information from old programs being installed and uninstalled, and the range of system operations which have been conducted over the years. This build-up takes a significant toll on the performance of Windows and can slow the system down. If this sounds familiar, the best option in this situation is to do a complete reinstallation of Windows. Another possibility, if the operating system installation is not particularly old, could be that there are too many applications running in the background. This could cause a decrease in system performance, resulting in slowness of operations. In this case, try reducing the number of programs running in the background by closing such programs, including non-essential programs running in the Windows system tray. Having less programs running in the background should free-up more system resources allowing for improved system performance.