Windows 95

Windows 95 and windows 95b (OSR2) are now essentially obsolete. They are barely supported by Microsoft and what little support still exists is expected to be discontinued in the near future. Neither version of Windows 95 is sufficiently secure for use on the internet, even with all the latest patches and security updates applied.

We strongly recommend anyone using Windows 95 to upgrade to Windows 2000 or Windows XP as soon as possible. If you cannot do so, you must ensure you are running Winsock 2.0 or your system will be vulnerable to many simple denial-of-service attacks. You will also need to disable File & Printer sharing and remove the Netbios protocol from your connection properties or malicious users will easily be able to read and write data to your disk.

The version of Internet Explorer which shipped with Windows 95 is also obsolete and subject to some severe security issues, you should upgrade to at least Internet Explorer 5.5 or better yet use an alternative browser such as Netscape Navigator.

Outlook Express is not a secure mail and news client in any incarnation (including the latest version) and should really be avoided. There are many alternative news & mail clients, many of which are available for free download.

A personal firewall can help reduce the likelyhood of a compromise however Windows 95 is not a good platform on which to run firewall software. Ideally if you must use a windows 95 machine to access the internet it should be sited behind a NAT router or a secure firewall/gateway.