Public Discussion of Internet Security Issues YOU are invited to read the comments left by others and reply with your own thoughts, ideas, and experiences. This has become a wildly successful gathering of people interested in understanding, exploring, and discussing issues, products, alternatives, and anything surrounding Internet Security.

Announcing the Officially Unofficial ShieldsUP! Discussion Forum FAQ The gang who hangs out over in the ShieldsUP! discussion forum, led by Chris Baker, have produced an incredibly informative (and pretty funny) assemblage of Internet security wit, wisdom, and facts: The ShieldsUP! Forum FAQ Before you go over and join in the forum, you really should take a few minutes to read what they've created! I think you'll be glad you did!

Problems?  Questions?  Weirdnesses?
This online discussion forum allows you to pose your questions and share your ideas, experiences, solutions and discoveries with others. We will be reading and staying current with what's here, but this is an un-moderated forum where we invite everyone to pitch in and contribute their thoughts and answers to questions or to point people in the right direction.

The Discussion Groups Search Feature is Currently Off-Line. On July 7th, 2000, we switched to Microsoft's News Server. In the long-term this will bring significant benefits to users of our website and private newsgroups. But, Microsoft's Active Server Pages (ASP) "technology" (which everyone else uses) is so shockingly insecure (and "wrong") that I just couldn't bring myself to use it. Therefore, until I have the chance to write my own, secure, interfaces to the underlying newsgroup index, we cannot offer a full-group search feature.

TWO WAYS to browse or participate:

 Use ANY standard Internet News Reader!
This forum runs on a standard Usenet News Server to which you can easily point any standard Internet news reader. This is, by far, the recommended means of participating, since the volume of traffic has increased to the point where web-based access is really not feasible for following discussion threads, tracking delayed responses, and seeing what you have and haven't read.

There's a VERY GOOD CHANCE that you already HAVE a news group reader in your system! The standard installations of both Netscape Navigator and Internet Explorer include news readers. If you've never used them, now's a terrific time to see what it's all about! To find out, simply click these "news" links below, or enter their addresses into your browser's URL window:

Internet Security & Privacy topics:
news://news.grc.com/grc.shieldsup

Spyware topics:
news://news.grc.com/grc.spyware

If the links above don't work, you can manually configure any news reader: Simply configure the server name of 'news.grc.com'. Then set your reader to use 'anonymous logon', get the groups available on the server, and you'll find the 'shieldsup' newsgroup. Dig in!

 Or, you can certainly use the web-based interface we've provided . . .
Click the "Discussion Forum" button below to jump to the web-based ShieldsUP! forum interface. You might want to do this, initially, just to get a feeling for the forum before setting up a news reader and getting really serious!

To continue, please see: Be Notified!