Jack Twilley wrote in message ...



It is interesting that your primary concern is to keep your
information secure -- that is indeed a very valid concern. The
approach you describe is the one that was followed at the defense
contractor where I started my career. It works very well for many
many cases and is "the right way" to handle most kinds of classified
information. However, there is a concern which isn't addressed by
your system, which is being a good Internet citizen and preventing
your computer from being used for Evil. You could care less if the
machine gets hacked, but if it gets hacked and used as an open proxy
for delivering spam or as part of a distributed denial of service
attack, your negligence leads directly to the economic losses of
others. That's something worth considering.

In this respect I do what everybody else with any common sense does. I
have Norton Anti-Virus up, running and current and I trash e-mail
attachemnts from folk I don't know as they come thru the gate. If
after that I'm still considered negligent then so be it.



Brian sells stamps, yadda, yadda. I have yet to run into a
Brian transaction or an instance of passing out any other type of
Brian sensitive info which was stymied by doing it offline.

In some ways it's harder to do business offline these days, but just
as you can still use a pulse telephone without Touch-Tone, you can
still use the phone instead of the Internet.

No question about it. I got along just ducky for my first 55 years
without the Internet and I expect to squeek thru a few more years
without some of it's conveniences.



Jack.

Brian w3rv