No fee Protecting Your Computer Tips

When we start our trip computer and jump on board the internet we are told to buy anti-virus security software. Often a trial program will be packed with new computer that is set to expire after a short time. Then the program will ask for payment to keep you protected. The two most common programs that come preinstalled on new computers are Norton and McAfee. Although both programs are well respected by many users are also very expensive. -

There is no doubt that you need an antivirus software on your computer, but there are some effective products out there completely free that compare projects of high price. Yes, you read that right. Free antivirus software products that are just as superior as the expensive brands well known -.

As the internet evolves and so did the types of threats. Now there are more problems and ways to infect your computer than ever. This is a trend likely to continue. Our job as an Internet user is to become familiar with common types of threats and maintain our systems protected from them.

There are many types of security problems. These problems can come in many flavors and they change so quickly in this editorial would have been useless. In a short time from now the threats could be very different from what they are today. Trying to keep up with those details would be a full time job. Do not worry, we do not need to be security experts to be safe.

There are some common broad categories based most threats covered. Knowing this, we can learn to protect ourselves from each category, rather than each threat individually. -The most common areas that need to be addresses are the following:

Vulnerabilities in Microsoft

This exploit code inside your Windows, IE browser and Office products. The way to keep these risks to a minimum is to keep your Windows updated using the Windows Update service. I keep my Windows updates are automatically downloaded and installed, and released. This is free for owners of Windows and can be found in your control panel.

Virus

These are available in many types. From worms to trojans can cause huge problems on the users system. This is where the free antivirus software can keep you protected. At the time of this writing, AVG, AVIRA and AVAST are three of the winners room for free antivirus software. I used all three and settled with Avast as my protection software of choice. I also trust enough to install it on machines that assemble to customers.

Spyware and Malware

The elements that fall into this category can vary from - chaotic as viruses or simple tracking cookie from an advertiser who want to see where you're from or where you left. These bastards can sneak in from website graphics and invisible code, often without any warning at all. While Avast is one of the best anti-virus programs to also guard against spyware, it really does not do software.

Again there are free choices for spyware protection that work well as alternative high price! One feature that is more difficult to achieve in software is spyware free "real-time protection". I use Spyware Terminator which does offer real-time protection and seems to be doing a great job on my Vista machine work. You can do a search for "free spyware protection" and look for review sites that evaluate several programs available to choose from.

A trick often used by many companies * I * do not know what software is nice to force a pop up that looks like a system message announcing your computer is infected by viruses. The box has a single button, a link to remove the infection. This is actually a link that takes the clicker to a website that cleverly requests payment to solve the problem. Many times there are no viruses other than asking you to pay to remove it!

With all these security tools available free for personal use is frustrating to see so many people are led to believe that they should pay for security. We may not be able to stop viruses and other malicious code on the Internet, but we can do our part to protect ourselves and thanks to some great companies out there, we can do it for free .......