Viruses, spyware, and phishing scams have become part of our daily Internet browsing these days, is a fact that if you are using a Windows machine to browse the Internet it won’t be too long before it gets infected with all kind of spyware or viruses, and it becomes an easy target for someone wanting to steal any valuable information like, credit card numbers, bank accounts, passwords, usernames etc from your computer. Hackers also might have other purposes to break into your system, like using it to target another computer on the same network, or just to simply utilize your computer resources for other purposes only known to him.

Home computer users are the most victims on these types of attacks, because home users don’t take the proper steps to properly secure their computers to prevent them, having an antivirus on a computer has ceased to be an option and has become a necessity if you care about the health of your system, or about your private information that you put to risk every time you open an Internet browser without making sure your antivirus is properly installed and updated. Just like you care about your car or your personal hygiene so you should take care of your computer wellness, remember that everyday we are becoming more dependant on computers, so everyday there is more at risk if you don’t take care about your system vulnerabilities.

Why antiviruses prevent Internet attacks? Because most Internet attackers don’t code their own virus programs, instead they use already made virus codes to make the attacks, and sometimes these viruses are already well known and registered as threats on most anti-virus vendor’s database, that’s why is vital to keep the antivirus definitions updated regularly, so your antivirus knows the latest Internet threats.

So how do you go installing and updating an antivirus? Most computers purchased today come with an antivirus installed and activated for certain amount of time, 1 year or 2 year subscriptions is the norm, after that time you need to renew the subscription or the antivirus will ceased to work. Sometimes antivirus software get corrupted or affected and you need to reinstall them or run a repair utility to make them work again, at least once a week you need to make sure the antivirus is properly updated and is running on good conditions. Most antiviruses comes with an easy updater wizard usually found on the file menu, run that wizard to make sure you have the latest virus definition threats registered.

 

If you don’t have an antivirus or the one you have is already expired; these are good free ones you can use;

1. AVG: free for personal use

2. Avira Antivir: free Personal Edition

3. Avast: Free Home Edition Classic

If you don’t like free software, you will need to shell out a few bucks for a Symantec or MacAfee anti-virus, it does not matter which route you choose the whole idea is to always have an antivirus installed and properly running on your computer. in my experience using AVG for 3 years now, it works great, it takes little resources from your computer, and requires minimal interaction from the user, meaning, you don’t have to manually update it all the time. In fact, I can go far by saying that AVG has proved to me to be more effective than Symantec and MacAfee antiviruses.

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This entry was posted on Thursday, October 25th, 2007 at 2:12 pm and is filed under Random. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.