How to use Windows 7 safely after uninstalling its support from Microsoft
Today we talk about how to use Windows 7 safely now and in the future, there is no perfect operating system Even with Windows 11, there is always the possibility of security or data breach. Our goal here with Windows 7 is to minimize the risk and minimize the potential harm to start we need to talk about Windows updates we just want to use updates that are officially released by Microsoft while unofficial service packs look great there is a risk that they may have malicious code that is intentionally embedded or not be the safest way to use only updates that have been officially released by Microsoft
For a clean installation of Windows 7, install the patches that are pre-required to fix the Windows update feature, then update the entire system, this process may take a few hours to complete After installing the initial round of updates, check for updates again and install any additional updates found Repeat the process until no more updates are found After that, we need an antivirus, the most way The safety to use the Antiquated operating system is to run the antivirus, so we will use Avast.
I get this comment or something similar in every mention of antivirus software that doesn't need an antivirus if you use common sense, just don't click on anything suspicious, don't pair software, don't click on ads, etc. There's a school of thought that antivirus isn't Needless if you're sane and careful enough about what you're doing online just visit legitimate websites with Official software stores and monitor the links you click on with a degree of scrutiny, it is likely that you will not encounter any malware or viruses
Because our goal is to use Windows 7 in the most secure way, we want to use antivirus, then we need a minimum web browser Do not use Internet Explorer, the latest version of Internet Explorer available for Windows 7 is version 11. Which has not been updated in many years there are a number of other browsers that work better than Internet Explorer and expose the system to much less risk, perhaps the best option is your browser, but it is not the only viable alternative to Internet Explorer support for Internet Explorer 11 ending on June 15, 2022
This means that any new vulnerabilities identified for the browser have not been patched and Microsoft will never be to maintain security we need to replace Internet Explorer while we are in the topic of web browsers it is important to review the browser settings because the default configuration is likely not the most secure keep not updated automatically updated browsers like some software for most browsers you can check and apply updates in the "About" section Check Your browser settings in any browser you choose, there are settings for privacy and security
We want it to look at these settings and modify them to be more careful and restrictive let's start with Edge and highlight some points of interest starting with the strict setting of tracking Prevent tracking in Microsoft Edge protects users from online tracking by restricting the ability of Tracking tools are used to access browser-based storage as well as networked websites Trackers to collect information about your browsing Some trackers collect your information and send it to sites you haven't visited.
Switch on sending Don't track requests and turn off Allow sites to check if you have payment methods saved under Use secure DNS To determine how to search for the network address for websites, select Choose a service provider and choose a security-focused DNS provider like cloudflare or enter your preferred provider from here we want to switch to improve web security and set it to strict Now let's take a look at Google Chrome settings Under Privacy and Security, click Security under Safe Browsing, select Enhanced protection, then scroll down to the Advanced section, switch to Always used secure connection and use secure DNS,
Choose a custom and select a DNS provider to focus on security like cloudflare or enter your preferred provider then we want to switch to cookies and other site data and switch Sunday No order tracking as your browsing traffic moves to Firefox In the settings menu click Privacy and security under Enhanced tracking protection, select strict under Send websites, select the Do Not Track signal you don't want to be tracked, select Always now to switch to General tab, scroll to the bottom below Network Settings, click the Settings button, scroll to the bottom of the next window and select DNS enabled over https, select
Security-focused DNS provider like cloudflare or enter your preferred provider Next we need to talk about which ads you block more specifically Edge has several ad blocker options available to clarify we can use Adblock Plus which you might notice after adding the extension that websites don't have many ads on it but that's just on the surface Adblock Plus has some settings extensions that are worth taking a look at under the General tab Select Block additional tracking block push notifications and Block social media icon tracking, then scroll down to the Accepted ads section,
And this is a personal preference that displays acceptable ads that allow ads to run on YouTube so that your favorite creators You can make a few extra dollars when you watch their videos now to switch to the Advanced tab in the filter lists section, you can add additional lists, there are some great filter lists available from adblockplus.
org like blocking anti-phishing malware notifications and more in the same vein as ad blocking and security there's a tool called Spybot Search and Destroy it has a feature called browser fortification the process has a great progress bar and you really feel like something has happened that makes you safer online what you do is add entries to the windows hosts file that effectively prevents connection to these domains you can add entries Manually to file hosts as browsers tend to ask if you want to save usernames and passwords when logging into
website, the built-in password managers lack a number of methods but the idea is excellent, there are third-party tools like keepass that can manage your passwords it even has a feature that can generate new passwords for you in different strengths and lengths that no one likes entering passwords and the average user has more than 100 passwords in the use of password manager, which is a must if you want to remain Safe online, use two-factor authentication for any service you provide for two-factor authentication operation Yes it's an extra step when signing but it's worth the hassle, especially
If you are still using Windows 7. This extra step can be the difference between security and sorry I would be remiss if I didn't mention VPNs I'm sure you've seen a lot and variety VPN advertising like this one surfing the internet can be risky business so why not protect yourself and browse anonymously with a hidden IP the bottom line is that it would be safer to use a VPN than any other consideration is that Internet Explorer It is still installed and can be opened, so in Internet options we want to increase the security settings to
High level and privacy settings to block all cookies in this way If Internet Explorer is exploited, there is less chance of a successful attack and avoid using legacy web technologies such as Java flash ActiveX and Silverlight Many high-traffic websites use elements made of Java or Flash making them a big target in terms of cybersecurity, for example, many Facebook games have been played on Flash, and these technologies have been moved away from Having little need for Java.
or Flash so you will not miss a lot of not using these technologies on your Windows 7 computer the safest path is to disable flash if the browser you are using still supports it there are some settings that we want to change to protect others PCs that are on the same network as our Windows 7 we first want to turn off network detection this will prevent unwanted communication with other computer on the network, then we want to disconnect from the network if you use your Windows 7 to perform tasks that do not require an Internet connection,
It is best to disconnect from the network if there is some potential security problem on the same network as your system or your system is compromised, it can pose a threat to other computers on the network if you disconnect from the network this reduces the risk of another setting that we can change for the network adapter that uses a security-focused DNS service in the ipv4 properties, select Use the following DNS server address, then enter the IP address of cloudflare which is 1.
1.1.1 or IP address If your preferred DNS provider to further improve security the next area we want to explore are the most important user accounts Vulnerabilities can only be successfully exploited if the user is logged into an account with administrative privileges so what we want to do is create a new user account Strong user so that we can install the software but not an administrator who has access to the internal parts of the system that can be exploited it has been Set us all with our new user account along with user accounts, there is a user account control in this setting can become
A bit annoying but has tweaks I highly recommend leaving the setup enabled for final and enterprise versions of Windows 7 there's a built-in feature called BitLocker that lets you encrypt your hard drive there are many benefits to that because we're aiming for security I recommend encrypting your hard drive with BitLocker Now to turn on data execution prevention protection or data protection implementation protection or is designed to prevent malicious code from executing on parts of computer memory that are meant to keep data instead of malicious code can be placed in these parts of memory during a buffer overflow attack and may
An attempt is made later to execute it from this site to get maximum protection from dep, make sure it runs for all applications If a certain application becomes unstable with dep turned on, you can selectively disable it for that application, then we can turn off autoplay when autoplay is enabled and remove it Media such as a USB flash drive connected to the system, it may try to do some functions specified by the setting, and this may cause malicious code to be executed on the system Without user intervention, turning off this feature reduces the risk when using any type of removable media
There is a tool to consider in its use called Microsoft's enhanced mitigation experience toolkit, a tool that helps prevent the successful exploitation of vulnerabilities and software. Putting another layer between the attack and the exploited program seems as good to me as possible, we want to consider the productivity software we use as the productivity of operating systems.
Works on Windows 7. It may not be the best option because it hasn't received any kind of security patch in many years there are better alternatives to this and open source options that pose less security risk maintains a restore point in case the computer gets some kind of virus malware ETC system restore may save you having to do a full format in recovery it's a three-step process after the virus infects the system or the malicious code is executed on your computer, the first step is to disconnect from the second step of the network
is to disable the antivirus and the third step is to try to restore the system, note that the antivirus needs to be disabled first because it may cause the system restore to fail, the next thing to consider is to save some tasks for systems that are currently supported by developers for online banking, for example, it may not be the best app for Windows 7 if these tasks can be saved for your Android smartphone, Windows 11 or Anything the developer currently supports to continuously improve security these are strategies for how to use Windows 7 safely forever