The protection on my PC

There are thousands of ways to protect your PC from problems and attacks. I have spent many years trying and testing software to have a relatively secure and smooth working system. All of the software I rely on is FREE and does the job very well.

So now I will go through what software I use and why you should use it.

Firewall

Every PC that connects to the internet should have a firewall to prevent strangers from getting in to your system and corrupting it or placing spyware software on it to monitor your browsing activities.

Anti-Virus

Viruses - A virus is a small piece of software that piggybacks on real programs. For example, a virus might attach itself to a program such as a spreadsheet program. Each time the spreadsheet program runs, the virus runs, too, and it has the chance to reproduce (by attaching to other programs) or wreak havoc.

E-mail viruses - An e-mail virus moves around in e-mail messages, and usually replicates itself by automatically mailing itself to dozens of people in the victim's e-mail address book.

Worms - A worm is a small piece of software that uses computer networks and security holes to replicate itself. A copy of the worm scans the network for another machine that has a specific security hole. It copies itself to the new machine using the security hole, and then starts replicating from there, as well.

Trojan horses - A Trojan horse is simply a computer program. The program claims to do one thing (it may claim to be a game) but instead does damage when you run it (it may erase your hard disk). Trojan horses have no way to replicate automatically.

Anti-Spyware

Spyware is any software that employs a user's Internet connection in the background (the so-called 'back channel') without their knowledge or explicit permission.
Spyware can dramatically slow down your internet connection and hijacking spyware can redirect your home page or search attempts to spyware web sites.
Spyware can be very dangerous and even format (wipe) your hard drive.

Here is a link to an extensive explanation on spyware......
http://www.unwantedlinks.com/what_is_spyware.htm

firewall >>

My PC Setup