Protect Your PC From Internet Hackers and Viruses

More and more today we hear about all of the viruses, worms and Trojans infecting computers. No one is safe. We all must have some level of protection. And even with all of the protection on the market, you still could be infected.

First, we need protection from viruses and worms that may be attached to our email, and there are a number of available products:

Trend Micro offers a free online virus scan that may find viruses that other anti-virus programs may not find, and visa versa. Panda Software also provides a free online scan (see below). You can download a free version of AVG AntiVirus from Grisoft or a free version of AntiVir from Avira.

There are differences in all of these products. Panda updates your virus signatures daily, Trend Micro every three hours and Eset Software's NOD32 every hour. Read an April 2003 PC Magazine review of five AV products.

For more information on anti-virus and virus hoaxes, click here.

Spyware
Spyware is also pervasive on the Web. These are small programs that can be added to your computer when visiting certain websites. These sites may also store cookies on your computer and add entries to your System Registry.

NOTE: Download and read an interesting article from Business Week's July 17, 2006 issue on spyware and viruses.

I recommend you install and use both Spybot and Ad-aware. One will find spyware that the other doesn't, and visa-versa.

Spybot - Search & Destroy can detect and remove spyware of different kinds from your computer. Spyware is a relatively new kind of threat that common anti-virus applications do not yet cover. If you see new toolbars in your Internet Explorer that you didn't intentionally install, if your browser crashes, or if you browser start page has changed without your knowing, you most probably have spyware. But even if you don't see anything, you may be infected, because more and more spyware is emerging that is silently tracking your surfing behavior to create a marketing profile of you that will be sold to advertisement companies. Spybot-S&D is free, so there's no harm in trying to see if something snooped into your computer, too.

Ad-aware 2007 Personal Edition is the award winning, free, multi-component detection and removal utility that consistently leads the industry in safety, user satisfaction, support and reliability. With its ability to comprehensively scan your memory, registry, hard, removable and optical drives for known data-mining, aggressive advertising, and tracking components, Ad-aware will provide the user with the confidence to surf the Internet knowing that their privacy will remain intact.

Firewalls
We also need a firewall which can be in a router or software installed on our computer, or both. McAfee and Symantec publish a personal firewall software package. ZoneLabs also sells software firewalls and includes a free version.

Note: If you're running Windows XP/Service Pack 2, it provides a built-in firewall and pop-up blocker. However, it only checks incoming activity--not outgoing as ZoneAlarm and other software firewalls do.