The magazine of the Melbourne PC User Group
Cybermedia Guard Dog Deluxe
Bernadette Houghton
 bernieh@iaccess.com.au

The Internet offers such a myriad of possibilities for so little effort - you can shop, chat with friends and wander the world from the comfort of your own home. However, it's easy to forget that such liberation comes fraught with dangers. Not only could your computer be damaged in some way by hostile programs, details about yourself and your computing habits could be floating around in cyberspace to be potentially misused. You could find yourself bombarded by unwanted junk mail, your files infected by a virus or your financial information viewed by strangers. This is where Guard Dog Deluxe comes to the rescue. Just like a real, live guard dog, Guard Dog warns you of any suspicious activity when you're using the Internet.

Guard Dog is partly an anti-virus program, but much more than that. It aims to create a "firewall" around your computer, protecting your computer's privacy and security from multiple fronts.


Figure 1. Guard Dog's main screen


Figure 2. Guard Dog's initial interview

How it works

Guard Dog installed smoothly on my machine, using the standard Windows setup procedure. After asking half-a-dozen painless questions about my desired security features, it retired to the background, re-appearing only when it detected a potential hazard. Whenever this happened, it barked and popped up a dialog box describing the problem, asking me how to proceed, and usually recommending a specific course of action.

Guard Dog has several monitors, each of which you can configure independently:

  • Cookie Blocker alerts you when Web sites you've visited attempt to store information about your browsing habits. Such "cookies" can be retrieved by Web sites the next time you visit them; sometimes this is good, as Web pages can be personalised; other times it can be fraught with danger, as the information can be used for other purposes. Cookie Blocker permits you to decide whether or not to accept a cookie from a particular site, and recommends which you may safely accept and which are best blocked
  • MyInfo Filter prevents your browser from insidiously transferring your personal information from one Web site to another. This could happen if you enter information at one site then follow hypertext links to other sites. It was a real eye-opener to realise how often this was happening


Figure 3. Cookie Blocker


Figure 4. Clean Up
  • Clean Up covers your tracks after you exit the Internet, deleting history files as well as any files that have accumulated in your browser's cache
  • Internet Access Monitor controls which applications on your computer are permitted to access the Internet. This can prevent unauthorised programs from secretly connecting to the Internet; for instance, a program that sneakily gathers information from your computer then sends it off when next you log on
  • File Guardian alerts you when unauthorised programs attempt to access your mailbox and any other nominated files. I was able to use this feature to protect some critical files on my computer, such as my finance data. However, File Guardian is not really suitable for wholesale guarding of files (e.g. everything in /DATA) since each file must be specified individually. Oddly enough, when DOS programs attempt to access guarded files, a Windows alert pops up, and when Windows programs try to access guarded files, a DOS alert pops up!


Figure 5. File Guardian


Figure 6. Virus Check
  • Automatic Virus Check scans your computer at pre-determined times for viruses in executable or archive files. If it finds a virus, it offers to delete, clean or skip the suspect file, and also recommends the best course of action. You can manually invoke Virus Check to scan for viruses on specific drives and folders. Unfortunately, I couldn't test the effectiveness of Virus Check since--luckily for me, of course--I don't have access to any viruses!
  • System Monitor alerts you if a program or ActiveX control attempts to reformat your hard drive, delete multiple files, or perform other malicious activies. It will also alert you if your Web browswer attempts to connect to what Guard Dog recognises as a hostile Web site.
A part from these background monitors, Guard Dog offers a user-invoked Security Check-Up which assesses existing security holes in your computer setup. It's up to you then to plug these holes. However, while Guard Dog appears quite adept at identifying risks, and its monitors almost always recommend the best course of action, there are a few gaps. For instance, Guard Dog found 32 cookies on my computer, but couldn't tell me how to find and remove them. I'm an experienced enough computer user to

know how to do so anyway, but many newbies might be frazzled by this.

GuardDog will update your Netscape or Internet Explorer software automatically, and includes a limited version of Oil Change, CyberMedia's automatic software updating program. This enables you to download and install the latest version of Guard Dog for the next six months.


Figure 7. Configuring Guard Dog's monitors


Figure 8. Security Check-Up results

Assessment

Guard Dog is easy to configure and didn't appear to slow my computer down. One of the best things about it is that it almost always recommends what you should do about any security risks; I'm sure most computer novices will appreciate this. While I can't speak for Guard Dog's virus-effectiveness, the other monitors really worked. They identified several risks on my computer that I'd been blithely unaware of, and alerted me to some very sneaky things that were happening behind my back while I was on the Internet. I used to think I had a good grip on my computer's security; now I'm quite paranoid, and I can tell you that there is no way I'm taking Guard Dog off my computer!

Reprinted from the June 1998 issue of PC Update, the magazine of Melbourne PC User Group, Australia

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