Dang! Got Hacked

[gun sane]

Some blankety-blank got in to my 'puter and did a look around.  I just wanted to tell you that if something posted under my TGO username is offensive, it isn't from me.

P.S.  Benefactor Lounge Politics posts excluded.

 

[analog_kidd]

One simple thing everyone can do is to use a DNS service like Quad9 or Cloudflare to help avoid malicious web sites where malware may live.

How does it work, you ask? Well, the whole internet is made up of IP Addresses, but we humans can't remember something like 67.227.201.56, so our computers use DNS as a database of easy to remember names that represent IP Addresses. So when I visit tngunowners.com, my computer asks the DNS Server what IP Address that is, the DNS server looks it up and tells my browser, and sends me to the site's IP address.

The quad9 DNS server maintains a long list of bad websites. If your computer tries to go to a bad web site, it will ask the DNS server, "hey, what IP is www.badSite.com?" and the Quad9 DNS server, who knows it's a bad site, will just return an IP that doesn't exist, and you'll just get a "page not found" error.

It's not fool proof, but it's a really good start.

Other DNS providers, like "Cloudflare for Families" do malware blocking, and also offer blocking for adult content, so all the naughty sites will also be a "page not found". I don't think Quad9 has the adult filtering, but I think their malware is better, so use whichever is better for your situation.

You can set the DNS settings manually on each computer. Just find where your ip address is configured and you will see a place to add a DNS server IP. Usually there is a place for two IPs, it will use the 2nd one as a fall back if the first is not available. It's probably set "automatically", but you can over-ride it. Fill in both places with the DNS Server IP's, and restart your computer.

The better way is to go into your router settings, and look for something called DHCP. DHCP is what gives every device on your network an IP address, but you can also configure things like what DNS server to use for each device. Setting the DNS server here will ensure that EVERY device on your network will get the secure DNS server setting. WARNING: this is not for the feint of heart. If you don't know how to make these changes, ask someone who does. You "could" break your internet for the whole house. Really, it's not that hard, tho.

You can find the IPs to use here:
https://quad9.net/service/service-addresses-and-features

https://blog.cloudflare.com/introducing-1-1-1-1-for-families/