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GeneralRe: Windows 7 Pin
Mike Hankey29-Sep-19 2:44
mveMike Hankey29-Sep-19 2:44 
GeneralRe: Windows 7 Pin
buckrogerz30-Sep-19 4:20
buckrogerz30-Sep-19 4:20 
GeneralRe: Windows 7 Pin
Ravi Bhavnani30-Sep-19 6:26
professionalRavi Bhavnani30-Sep-19 6:26 
GeneralRe: Windows 7 Pin
abmv28-Sep-19 8:55
professionalabmv28-Sep-19 8:55 
GeneralRe: Windows 7 Pin
VE228-Sep-19 17:12
VE228-Sep-19 17:12 
GeneralRe: Windows 7 Pin
Dave Kreskowiak28-Sep-19 10:15
mveDave Kreskowiak28-Sep-19 10:15 
GeneralRe: Windows 7 Pin
#realJSOP28-Sep-19 10:27
professional#realJSOP28-Sep-19 10:27 
GeneralRe: Windows 7 Pin
kalberts28-Sep-19 11:04
kalberts28-Sep-19 11:04 
Which elements of the support are truly essential to you?

Not very much of it means anything to me. I once had a virus infection, of the kind that was called a "boot sector virus" (if you never heard of that before, ask your grandpa). After that it has been quiet. Probably because it is not my habit to jump around all over the Internet searching for dubious pictures and other dubious stuff. When I receive an email telling me that I have won the first prize in a lottery I never heard of, I click the "delete" button rather than the "collect your prize here" button. Every day I delete from 20 to 50 spam mails without even opening them. Even when something appears to come from a recognized company, I always hover over the links to see if the URLs are reasonable. If they are not, I delete the mail.

The same goes for links in web pages: For years, I have had the "hover before click" habit. If the real URL is different from the displayed one, or when the display text is in a "user friendly" format rather than a URL, but the real URL looks dubious, then I never click it.

Also: The "Local Area Connection" icon has for years had a firm position in the upper left hand corner of my screen. Before I start any Internet related work, I double click it to enable the connection. As soon as I am done Internetting and start, say, editing a document or open Visual Studio, I rignt click / disable the network connection. The network connection is enabled only when I am actively using it. In theory I am still not 100% safe, but I haven't had any boot sector virus on my PC lately Smile | :)

My PC is a tool for doing "serious" work (/hobbies), and for retrieving (reasonably) reliable information: I go to recognized, reliable web sites for information (yes, that includes Code Project Smile | :) ) and a handful of web newspaper and similar services, such as the weather forecast. As far as possible I avoid any web offering spying on me, so I have neither FB, Twitter, Flickr or similar accounts - and the Windows support wouldn't protect me from that sort of threats anyway. Another one of my good habits: If I am forced to log in somewhere, the minimum level of privacy protection is to immediately afterwards close down the net browser completely before doing anything else. Logging out, or preferably restarting the PC, reduces the risk of spying further. Even if you accept cookies for the sake of convenience, doing a weekly cleanup (or more often) of cookies from sites you do not recognize, is a worthwhile effort to keep you out of the eyes of those wanting to exploit you one way or the other. (Again, we are talking about threats that continued W7 support wouldn't help you against in any case!)

You still will have the protection against all the currently known malware; the ones that could be a threat are those developed anno 2020 or later. The less people use W7, the less the threat will be - no intruder today cares to develop malware attacking Win 3.11 vulnurabilities. Hardly Win95 ones. W7 will be safer and safer, as time goes on. The general proctection mechanisms have become quite good over the years, the new ones are essentially in the class "you asked for it, you got it". You opened a dubious web site, you accepted some attractive-looking special offer. And you did it logged in as a user having Administrator privileges...

Another essential point: I keep my data on separate disks, not on C:, and all the disks are backed up, incrementally, day by day, and the backup is offline (and offsite, but that is not relevant here). Ransomware is often be so simplistic that it only considers C:, but if that happens to me, I will simply reformat C: and reinstall all the software. All installers are saved on an external disk. If some ransomware actually attacks my 14 terabytes on other disks (yes, I am doing a lot of HD video editing on my PC. but I assume that you guessed that...), I might loose the edits I have made that same day, before I got around to make the incremental backup. I can live with that risk.

Bottom line: With good working habits, you will be reasonably well protected. There is no need to panic.

If you really have to surf around the Internet for dubious information, do it on another PC, maybe an old, clunky secondhand one that you got almost for free. If you "must" have the material you obtain that way accessible on your main computer, use a USB stick to move the JPEGs and MP4s over.
GeneralRe: Windows 7 Pin
VE228-Sep-19 17:10
VE228-Sep-19 17:10 
GeneralRe: Windows 7 Pin
Member 1079431330-Sep-19 1:21
Member 1079431330-Sep-19 1:21 
GeneralRe: Windows 7 Pin
Fever90530-Sep-19 3:30
professionalFever90530-Sep-19 3:30 
GeneralRe: Windows 7 Pin
Member 1079431330-Sep-19 6:07
Member 1079431330-Sep-19 6:07 
GeneralRe: Windows 7 Pin
Fever90530-Sep-19 8:14
professionalFever90530-Sep-19 8:14 
GeneralRe: Windows 7 Pin
Member 916705729-Sep-19 21:00
Member 916705729-Sep-19 21:00 
GeneralRe: Windows 7 Pin
Member 1226197329-Sep-19 23:44
Member 1226197329-Sep-19 23:44 
GeneralRe: Windows 7 Pin
Jose Armenta30-Sep-19 4:09
Jose Armenta30-Sep-19 4:09 
GeneralRe: Windows 7 Pin
GM8JCF30-Sep-19 6:03
GM8JCF30-Sep-19 6:03 
GeneralRe: Windows 7 Pin
VE230-Sep-19 15:09
VE230-Sep-19 15:09 
GeneralRe: Windows 7 Pin
GM8JCF1-Oct-19 7:42
GM8JCF1-Oct-19 7:42 
GeneralRe: Windows 7 Pin
Bruce Greene30-Sep-19 6:15
Bruce Greene30-Sep-19 6:15 
GeneralRe: Windows 7 Pin
hyperstriker30-Sep-19 9:18
hyperstriker30-Sep-19 9:18 
GeneralRe: Windows 7 Pin
VE230-Sep-19 15:12
VE230-Sep-19 15:12 
GeneralRe: Windows 7 Pin
rjmoses30-Sep-19 20:19
professionalrjmoses30-Sep-19 20:19 
GeneralStored Proc-to-Model Code Generator - Final update Pin
#realJSOP28-Sep-19 2:54
professional#realJSOP28-Sep-19 2:54 
GeneralRe: Stored Proc-to-Model Code Generator - Final update Pin
pkfox28-Sep-19 3:13
professionalpkfox28-Sep-19 3:13 

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