BCUG Guest Speaker

Charles Prince, avast! Evangelist

"Computer and Internet Security"

MEETING DATE: December 20, 2013

This month, we will learn about PC and also internet security that includes malware, software for detection and prevention, and much more. While the program is geared towards beginner and intermediate users, almost anyone can learn something from the program.

Known as “CharleyO” on the avast! Forum, Charles O. Prince is one of the 15 most-active avast! Forum members, with more than 6,500 posts since he joined in early 2004. Like his fellow forum members, as well as many others, Charley helps avast! users around the world with their technical questions. We are going to allow Charley to paint for us a bigger picture as to how he came to be such an avid supporter of avast! over the years, but we will also learn a bit about the general topic of personal and Internet safety and security from his point of view.

While Charley is primarily interested in helping others use and understand the technical aspects of avast!, his knowledge and enthusiasm bridges an important gap in our own technical abilities. That of choosing wisely from what is available, and using antivirus and antimalware programs to help protect us. Charley will give us his own history and personal findings in the use of these programs, and answer questions you may have about why his choices are the “wisest.”

With such a background, Charley is a valuable speaker for us not only to end the year, but to begin a new year hopefully with more attention to our PCs’ health. There is nothing wrong with making a resolution to go forward safely and to be able to handle any problems that may arise due to viruses and malware.

We are hoping that Charley, a seasoned and experienced speaker and traveler to forums both in the flesh and online, will encourage us to find a system of upkeep that works for us. Whether you save to an external drive, your hard drive or even to the cloud, you need to be wary of downloads and nowadays, uploads as far as safety and security. We are hoping that Charley will address issues brought on by public exposure on social networking sites, and even photo sites that many use to store personal pictures. There are many issues to be dealt with when it comes to our computers, and Charley is the speaker who will help us out. While problems such as viruses and malware are here to stay, we have more and more tools to defend ourselves, and Charley will help us to begin to sort things out.

Charley lives in southeastern NC and in his spare time he enjoys computers and games, pro football, reading, learning, etc. He is looking forward to meeting us and seeing our part of New Jersey, as part of his travels.

Come hear about Charley’s experiences and come away a bit more confident in your ability to avoid disaster on your computer. This will be a great year-end talk and one that you shouldn’t miss.