Re: OT: disabling API's to prevent keystroke logging

Hi!

William, I didn't want to say it but I agree with you.

Why? Is that a bad thing? <grins>

 I think worrying about keylogging beyond good firewall/antivirus
/antispyware programs is getting paranoid.

It really is. I hope that as concerned as the original poster is that
they have taken to heart some of the advice offered here. I don't
stand to gain by anything that I say, and the advice I offer is
provided in good faith (but with no guarantee as to anything) and at
no cost to the person who asked. I've tried hard to offer reasonable,
sound advice with little bias.

Once you've taken reasonable precautions, asked the questions about
any software you are planning to use to see if it fits your
requirements and secured your computer as you deem fit, you've really
done just about all you can do. After that, it's in the hands of the
people and systems handling your information.

You can do very little about those, and to expect any sort of law or
legislation to do anything about it is foolish. (Trust me on this one,
as I've got good reason to say it.) You have to hope that the sytems
in question are being operated in a competent manner, where good
security practices are seriously enforced.

 I won't say it's stupid

Neither would I. Being concerned about security is never stupid,
although it can be taken a bit far.

but I think the keylogger would have to first get onto your
system and then report out and a good firewall will stop it
from getting on your system

And that's a start. Getting the keylogger into the system is the hard
part. The easiest way is to gain access to the actual system and find
a way to plant it. Drive by downloading is also possible. I'd call a
drive-by download of such software more difficult and less likely than
someone gaining access to the computer.

I'm not a huge fan of firewall software that does application level
blocking because it can cause a false sense of security and many users
won't have any idea if a given process should have access to the
network. The complexity of it over a built in solution also puts me
off--the more something does, the less successfully and reliably it
may end up doing it. If you do use such software, I recommend pairing
it with a hardware device or "appliance" that also provides firewall
services.

That's another posting entirely.

William
.

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