Edited February 4, 2008

Recently, we’ve had a little bug that made it difficult to remove Boxbe protection from Gmail accounts. The bug has been fixed, but I thought this might be a good opportunity to tell everyone how to disable Boxbe for your email account (particularly Gmail). We know some people may want to discontinue service after trying it and we’ve made it easy to enable and disable accounts.

How it works

We’ve added a filter to Gmail to selectively forward email to Boxbe and send email from senders on your Guest List back to Gmail. You can turn this on and off on the site by going to the Boxbe Dashboard and click “Disable” next to the email address you want to disable (this works with the other addresses, too).

Next, you’ll be taken to a screen that you’ll have to enter in your Gmail password.

If for some reason, that doesn’t work, click through to the next page to get the details on how to turn Boxbe for Gmail off in Gmail.

To turn off Boxbe for Gmail manually, follow these steps.

First, go to your settings from within Gmail.

Second, once inside your Gmail Settings, click “Filters.”

Finally, find the Boxbe filter (this will be the one that says “Do this: Forward to username@boxbe.com, Skip Inbox, Delete it”

Once you’ve removed the filter, Boxbe won’t be protecting your Gmail account anymore.

You can always re-enable the account on your Boxbe Dashboard.

So, besides using Boxbe to screen your email, here are the top five ways to protect your PC from botnets, spyware, and other malware.

1. Buy a Mac

Seriously. Last year, Symantec’s official blog caused waves by saying “Simply put, at the time of writing this article, there are no file-infecting viruses that can infect Mac OS X.”

This isn’t to say their couldn’t be malware for the Mac, it’s just that their isn’t any currently. Compared to the millions of viruses for Windows, that sounds pretty good to me. For many users this isn’t possible or desireable, so keep reading for things that you can do to secure your Windows installation.

2. Upgrade to Vista

One of the claimed benefits of upgrading to Windows Vista is increased security. Symantec has backed Microsoft up with a white paper [PDF] (and a site section) that has a detailed Vista security audit and their assessment that there have been no known Vista viruses to date.

3. Install security updates

One of the interesting things about bots, spyware and other software designed to exploit your computer, is that most people become infected after a fix has been released from Microsoft. Why? Well, let’s just say that creators of malware aren’t all super geniuses.

When an exploit is revealed, there is a gap in between when a fix is released and when users actually download and install the fix. That opening gives hackers an opportunity to create a program that exploits the very problem that was just patched.

Generally, I’d advise people to wait when it comes to installing recently updated software as sometimes the fix can be worse the original problem. However security updates should be installed right away.

4. Install and use anti-virus and anti-spyware applications

Most anti-virus and anti-spyware software can be scheduled to run at specific times of day. If you eat lunch at the same time every day, consider scheduling the software to run then. It could also serve as a helpful reminder to actually eat lunch.

And don’t forget to keep your virus and spyware definitions up to date. Having outdated definitions is kind of like not having protection at all.

5. Don’t open email attachments from untrusted senders

And frankly, sometimes even from trusted senders if they aren’t technically savvy. I can’t believe that this still needs to be mentioned but these attachments aren’t opening themselves.

Bonus: Turn off your PC at night

PCs these days have a number of power saving modes that make it acceptable to leave your computer on all the time. I had gotten in the habit of leaving my home computers on all the time to guarantee instant access whenever I needed them.

If your computer has been compromised by a spam bot, leaving your computer on 24/7 gives these bots more of an opportunity to send their illicit messages. While it won’t get rid of the spam bot, it certainly will cut back on the messages sent.

Finally

Short of turning off network connectivity to your PC, many security experts believe that malware is becoming more widespread and common, everyday computers have so much power that it is far more likely for a botnet to go undetected than ever before. The internet is still a wild wholly frontier, keep yourself safe out there.

photo from Flickr user brookenovak

Before you get started, you should have your outside account information handy to add into Gmail.

Here’s how you set it up:

Click on Settings in the upper right corner of Gmail.

Click on the Accounts tab

Within the Accounts tab, click Add another email address.

Enter your non-Gmail address:

Now, if you are using another major email provider, like Yahoo!, Gmail will auto-fill some of the options for you.

Otherwise, enter in the relevant data. You should be able to get this from your email provider’s website.

Applying a label as new messages come in is a good way to keep track of messages from different accounts.

To finish, click Add Account.

Gmail allows you to add up to 5 email accounts so, if you have several accounts, Gmail might be a good way to consolidate email into one central location.