Top 10 Ways To Protect Yourself From Computer Viruses

executive summarize , written by Jim Faller

As more and more people are becoming comfortable using their computers at school, home or in the office it's only a matter of time before they encounter a computer virus. Here are our top 10 steps to protect you from computer viruses.
Use a high quality anti-virus program. There are many different anti-virus computers programs on the market some of them are better than others. Look to reputable computer magazines or websites for ratings to help you find the one that matches your needs.
Always use your anti-virus software. Make sure your anti-virus software is always turned on and scanning, incoming and outgoing email messages, and any software programs you run.
Keep your antivirus programs up to date. Keep your computer up to date. From time to time operating systems fall victim to security holes or issue updates. Backup your data regularly. Most windows computer users keep their documents in the "My documents" folder.
If you use floppy disks or USB drives on public computers like your school computer lab Kinko's, or even digital photo printing store make sure you scan them for viruses. Public computers are notorious for not being up to date and properly protected.
Be wary of email attachments. Treat any email attachment as potentially dangerous. Never open attachments from people you weren't expecting. Many computer viruses replicate themselves by reading the contacts from an infected computer.
Use text email if possible. While HTML email is prettier and allows you more control over formatting it also can carry computer viruses. Use downloaded freeware and shareware files or software with caution. Try to download them from popular reputable sources that scan the programs before they are uploaded. To make sure you are safe scan the program before you install it on your computer.
Be wary of links in IM or instant messaging software. Don't accept invitations from people you don't know and never click a link from someone you don't trust, they can easily redirect you to another website that will try to install a virus on your computer system.

How to Protect Yourself from Viruses, Adware, Spyware and Hackers

Spyware/adware is a new major concern for PC users everywhere. Infecting your computer silently (usually installed with programs that seem harmless), spyware and adware can collect personal information about you, as well as cause pop up ads to come up all of the time, changing your browsers home page, sometimes even completely disabling your computer's usability.

The first thing you can do, if you're an Internet Explorer user, is consider making a switch to the Mozilla Firefox web browser. Plus it is almost completely spyware “proof”, and is much more stable and secure than Internet Explorer. To do so, you'll want to download all available updates from windowsupdate.microsoft.com (if you use Firefox, you will need to fire up IE to do this since Microsoft doesn't like people to use other browsers, so they have “banned” Firefox from accessing Windows updates).

Now that you've got a secure browser and have Windows up to date, it's time to talk about the anti-spyware software. The following is a list of the top three players in the free anti-spyware software game:

Spybot Search & Destroy
Download from: safer-networking.org
If you're only going to download one program, get this. Spybot is known as the king of spyware removal – and is completely free, ran buy a guy who volunteers his free time to keeping Spybot up to date.

Lavasoft's Ad-Aware
Download from: lavasoftusa.com
Ad-Aware is technically a for-profit program, but they have a freeware version of their paid software, which is just as good, in my opinion. Microsoft's Newly Released Anti-Spyware
Downlaod from: microsoft.com
Not a must-have if you have the above two programs, but it actually is a pretty good program

An Easy way to Deal with Email Viruses and Worms

If you feel intimidated when someone tries to teach you something new on the computer, this article is for you!

In the course of my career, I’ve worked with many people who I knew were smart but were convinced that they couldn’t learn how to do new things on a computer. At some point, they’d convinced themselves that they weren’t one of those “computer people”. I have a degree in psychology. I’m not a math and science type of person, and if it weren’t for the patience of my tech-minded husband and friends, I never would have learned how to do these things.

The fact is, computers are such a part of our lives, that you can’t afford to think of yourself as not a “computer person”. The reason I think that a lot of people are intimidated when learning about computers is that so much of the instructions and directions are full of jargon and assume that people have as much technological knowledge as people who work with computers for a living.

All it takes is an open mind, confidence, and someone to explain things to you step by step in plain English.
Aside from using anti-virus software, there is another way to keep some email viruses or worms from driving you crazy and clogging up your inbox. If you would like to prevent these bogus Emails from reaching your inbox, you can set up rules in Outlook or Outlook Express to send them directly to the delete folder.
Although the Sobig virus seems to be under control, it might be good practice to do this now. That way when the next big virus comes around, you'll be able to filter it out right away. If you're smart enough to do your taxes and balance your checkbook, you can do this, trust me.

If you're using Outlook Express, go to Tools, then select "message rules" and then "mail". A box will pop up with buttons on the right side of the window. Hit the "new" button. Another box pops up with three windows. In the first box, click the box next to "Where the subject line contains specific words".
In the second box, click "delete it". Now in the third box it should say, "Apply this rule after the message arrives/Where the Subject line contains specific words/Delete it." Click on the words "contains specific words".
It’s very important to remember that this is case sensitive, meaning that if you put "abc" in, it will only delete emails with "abc" in the subject, and not "ABC" or "Abc". For the Sobig virus, there were seven subject lines that were commonly used. If you would like to read more about this, go to

Steps to Protect your MS Windows System from Viruses

Nowadays as the Internet and other networks are greatly developed computer viruses are distributed rapidly and intensively. Everyday several new viruses capable to damage considerably your computer system arise. Anti-virus specialists work hardly to make updates their software against new viruses as soon as possible. Only series of measures can give you reliable protection from the infection. Below are 9 steps to protect MS Windows based PC system from viruses.

1. Make regular backups. Virus creators regularly find holes in new computer products to use them for infection of computer systems. Some dangerous viruses can considerably damage data files or even erase entire file system. Make regular backups of your data files to separate file storage device. It can be separate hard drive, flash card, compact disc or another file storage device which you choose. To ease the procedure you can use some automatic backup software. And be ready if the system will die because of virus infection.

2. Be ready to reinstall your system if it dies because of viruses. 3. Protect your network connection with Firewall. Firewall is a software which blocks suspicious potentially dangerous connections to preventing viruses from network to penetrate into your system. Windows XP system has quit simple but reliable built-in firewall. 1) in Control Panel, double-click Networking and Internet Connections, and then click Network Connections. 2) Right-click the connection on which you would like to enable firewall, and then click Properties. 3) On the Advanced tab, check the option to Protect my computer and network.