Wednesday, February 25, 2009

How to surf the net freely without anti-virus software

There's no bullet-proof way of surfing the net. The latest and greatest anti-virus software cannot catch 100% of malware out there. All it takes is just one trojan from some web site you just got redirected to. You can end up spending hours or days downloading security updates, scanning your hard disk or worst, reinstalling your OS.  Imagine having a disposable PC for the purpose of just surfing the net. Surf anywhere you want. Visit any unheard of website without worrying about getting infected. At the first sign of infection just toss it and use another disposable machine.

With VMware you can.

Download VMware server from http://www.vmware.com/download/. At the time of this writing, click on those link marked "free download" will give you a free VMware server.

Install the VMware server.

Create and install a VM with say Windows XP.  Configure it to your heart's content. This will be your Mother of All Virgin Machine(MOAVM). Don't surf the net with this VM. It's pure. Just shut it down and keep in your hard drive till eternity.

Make a copy of the MOAVM and use this copy to surf the net. In VMWare copying a VM is simply copying all the files under its directory.

Now you can visit any website you want, download anything you want, click any link without hesitation, because you don't care about infection anymore. You got 100 popups and the machine freezes. No problem.  Just toss it and use another copy of the MOAVM.  You don't even need to deal with updates for windows and any anti-virus software.

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