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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.
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.
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.
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
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