windows April update - BEWARE

[david63]

I just thought to communicate with people you needed an email address,

Only if you want to communicate via email

Seriously, there are basically two ways to use email. One is to use an email client which is a program on your PC where you download all your emails to so that you can read them and/or create emails. The other option is to use what is known as "Webmail" where you access your email via your web browser - the difference being that all of your emails will reside on a mail server somewhere.

There are advantages and disadvantages to both methods. With Webmail you can access your emails from any computer anywhere in the world. The downside being that the big two in Webmail are Google and Microsoft (there are others) who many believe have access to your emails - also being those two they are prime targets for hackers.

The advantage of using an email client is that you are in control of your email and it is only on a mail server for the minimum amount of time. The disadvantage is that unless you have a good backup regime you run the risk of loosing your messages. One other advantage of an email client is where you have multiple email addresses you can manage them all in one place.

[Mervyn and Trish]

So which box am I sitting in David? I use gmail and hotmail. The latter I'm pretty sure I can access through my browser. But in practice I use Outlook on my Pc, tablet and phone, where I view emails from both and can still see them off line.

[Kendhni]

Just to expand on David's comments. Email clients and webmail are just two different ways of presenting exactly the same data. With an email client you download the emails to your device and use a program (or app) to view and respond. With a web mail service you use your web browser to look at and respond. The original emails all still reside in exactly the same place - for outlook and hotmail addresses that will be Microsoft servers, for gmail and googlemail addresses that will be google servers and for yahoo that will be yahoo's servers. The webmail equivalent for google is gmail.com; for yahoo it is mail.yahoo.com and for Microsoft it is outlook.com (I think).

Since I travel a lot it makes more sense for me to use a browser to access my email (the only exception being when I am in the office I use Outlook).

[Kendhni]

So what's your view Ken? Would my PC be safe protected by Windows Defender alone? I've never been sure which is why I have AVG.

The answer to that is yes and no. Virus detectors are continually being updated therefore at 9am this morning AVG might be the best, but at 10am an update is released for Avira so it might be best, then at 3pm Microsoft releases an update for defender which makes it the best etc. There is a bit more to it but hopefully that gives you an idea.

While the Windows 10 inbuilt virus detector rarely wins awards at being the best, it is very lightweight and seems to work pretty well. If I create a system I usually enable this and install malware bytes (free) - so far, that combination has been pretty reliable for me.

[Mervyn and Trish]

So what's your view Ken? Would my PC be safe protected by Windows Defender alone? I've never been sure which is why I have AVG.

The answer to that is yes and no. Virus detectors are continually being updated therefore at 9am this morning AVG might be the best, but at 10am an update is released for Avira so it might be best, then at 3pm Microsoft releases an update for defender which makes it the best etc. There is a bit more to it but hopefully that gives you an idea.

While the Windows 10 inbuilt virus detector rarely wins awards at being the best, it is very lightweight and seems to work pretty well. If I create a system I usually enable this and install malware bytes (free) - so far, that combination has been pretty reliable for me.

Thanks Ken.

[prefdavid]

Upgraded my Windows 10 laptop yesterday with Microsoft coming on remotely to perform the upgrade. First they had to delete all the update files that had already been downloaded as that would have caused numerous problems, then downloaded the latest version of the upgrade. They then uninstalled Avast before applying the upgrade which went smoothly.

Only anomaly is despite uninstalling Avast, it's still showing as running despite not appearing in my list of installed programs.

Also now finding that Microsoft are advising a firmware upgrade needs to be applied to the security processor, so they're going to call me back tomorrow to assist with that upgrade as it's another non trivial operation.