Protecting your PC from the Evils on the Web

Posted by RobBrothers on May 26, 2010 under Uncategorized | Comments are off for this article

Most of you, I hope, are using some sort of internet protection suite that provides anti-virus and firewall protection for your PC. If not I highly recommend you do so. There are some very good, inexpensive options available at most big box retail stores and on-line. Often times your high speed internet provider will offer protection as part of your monthly subscription but you may have to seek it out and install it.

For those of you who have lost data due to a virus issue the decision to spend the money annually makes perfect sense. It is inexpensive (although not always foolproof) insurance against devastating data loss. We tend to use Trend Micro or Symantec (Norton).

If you can’t justify buying a protection package, you can piece one together on your own.  AVG provides a good anti-virus program that is free for personal use. Try pairing that with ZoneAlarm firewall. It has been favorably reviewed by Seth Rosenblatt at CNET in this article.  You may also want some sort of spyware removal tool. Spybot is one that we are pretty familiar with but there are several others available.

Whatever you do, you should take routine backups of your data and be careful opening email and surfing the web.