Viruses, Worms & Passwords - I'm Safe from those Flying Monkeys

Virus Protection.  Are you absolutely certain your personal computer has virus protection software running?  If yes, what virus protection software do you use?
Yes.  At home, I typically make sure we have AVG Free running on our machines.
 
Password Strength.  Go to Microsoft Password Check tool, enter your password to see how strong it is. How strong is your password? 

I tried several of the passwords I use, particularly for more important sites (I don't use the same password for more than one site).  All of them were strong, but only one of them was Best, according to the MS password check tool.

Firewall.  Does your computer have a firewall active?  If your machine is running a firewall, what kind is it?  What's the name of it?
No. We do not run a firewall on our computers.  But we do have a firewall.  What could that be?

Ad/Mal-ware.  Are you absolutely certain your personal computer at home has ad/malware protection software running?  If yes, what software are you using?
I don't have an ad/mal-ware shield running beyond what AVG offers.  However, from time to time, I do run malware bytes and another one (whose name escapes me at the moment). 


Spam.  Do you forward to friends and families strange photos, stories, please for help or security warnings?  If yes, how often do you check to see if the messages you forward are true or valid?I rarely ever forward anything to friends and family that I received as a forward.  It's just simply a waste of bandwidth, but that's just me.  In fact, if I receive forwards from friends/family, I'll often check snopes.com to see if it's true - and it's usually not.  Sometimes I'll forward *that* information back out to everyone that received the forward.   

Phishing.  Do you know what phishing or social engineering is?
Yes.  People fall victim to this every day AT WORK, and their work email accounts get abused by spammers who log into their work email accounts and send spam from it.  Each and every time that happens, our email servers send out roughly 150-200 THOUSAND spam emails, and our entire work domain gets blocked by other email servers (gmail, comcast, att.net etc).  That means anyone with emails at those addresses cannot receive email from our users.

Image.  Do you monitor your online image?  Are you absolutely certain your social network profiles are private?  Do you ever do vanity searches on the internet?
Yes. Yes. Yes.  As my career has advanced, I have a single username I use on most sites; that has become sort of a personal web-based identity that's important to me and what I do.

Data Backup.  Do you have a backup of your data?  If so, where do you keep that backup?
ABSOLUTELY.  There is data on our home machines which I consider 100% irreplaceable - primarily pictures of the family.  We have approximately 50,000 pictures of our kids dating back to 2000 when the oldest daughter was born, and we also have the largest collection of older scanned pictures in the family - some of those pictures data back to 1920's. I typically keep the backup drive locked in a filing cabinet at my office; far away from our home.