Keepin' it safe...

So now that I have told you a little about the potential hazards lurking in the dark corners of the Internet, it is time that I shed some light on what you can do to protect yourself.

So to revisit my last post, there are three basic threats that you should be concerned with...

1. Viruses (Self replicating malicious programs)
2. Spyware/Adware (Software that has been surrupticiously installed on your machine that will do a number of things including: moniter your surfing habits, record keystrokes, initate multiple pop-up ads, etc...)
3. Hackers (The folks that spend most of their waking hours trying to get into your machine.)

Remember the motivation for most of these threats has become financial gain. It used to be notoriety or even pranksters, but now it is a multi-billion dollar business. Spammers need machines to send out their garbage and are willing to pay .15-.18 cents a month per machine... This means YOU. Ever wonder why all of a sudden your machine is running like molasses? Well its probably because you are sending thousands of emails an hour unknowingly.

ANYWAY...

You need three essential things to protect yourself...

1. A good antivirus program. I recommend AVG, or Avast both are free and both are in my not-so-humble opinion signifagantly better then what is widely available... You can download a copy by clicking one of the following links: AVG or Avast
   
2. A good anti-spyware program. Microsoft Windows Defender is what I use. It is also free... Typically, I do not recommend beta versions to end users, BUT I have used this for quite some time and have found it to be both comprehensive and bugfree...
   
3. A Router. Erroneously called a hardware firewall, it uses a technology known as network address translation. I will spare you the techie details and tell you simply this, it makes your computer much harder to hack. Better still is an actual hardware firewall. I recommend the Zyxel P1

Well, that won't make you bulletproof, but it is a good start...