Vaccinating against viruses
Are you more likely to get a cold when the only people you interact with are
your own family members, or when you spend your days mingling with large
groups of strange people? Yeah, well, if your kids are in grade school, hanging
out at home isn't safe either, but you get the point. Vaccinating your com-
puter against viruses is important if you're using it only in your home or
office, but imperative if you're taking your computer out to play in public.
Plenty of virus protection programs are available, so you won't have any
trouble finding one that does the job. But purchasing and downloading a util-
ity is only half the battle. You must also keep your utility up to date. Every
antivirus utility worth its salt offers updates; some even offer to download
the updates automatically. If you fail to update regularly and often, then your
antivirus utility becomes obsolete and nearly useless in no time flat.
A few of the better-known and highly rated virus-protection programs also
come bundled in complete Internet-security suites. Here's a short list of some
top-notch antivirus programs available to you:
Trend Micro PC-cillin: This highly rated antivirus product includes a
personal firewall. This utility also monitors your wireless connection
and notifies you if someone is making an attempt to connect to your PC.
You can check out all the features and benefits by browsing to
www·trendmicro·com/en/home/us/personal.htm
.
AVG Anti-virus: Developed by Grisoft, this well-reviewed utility is
offered to private individuals (that's you and me) for the unbelievably
low price of free. Being cheap, I use this utility, and at least in my opin-
ion, it does a good job. If you need a utility for business or commercial
use they also offer a reasonably priced utility that's full of features the IT
guys find useful. You can find the free utility at
http://free·grisoft·com/doc/1
.
McAfee VirusScan: McAfee is one of the best-known names in Internet
security, and VirusScan is both an antivirus and an anti-spyware utility.
The only drawback that I've seen is that it doesn't actively block the
type of browser hijacking that either redirects you to unwanted and un-
requested sites or serves up behaviorally targeted ads. McAfee also bun-
dles this utility in a full Internet security suite that includes a firewall
and spam blocker. You can find this utility at www·mcafee·com/us.
Norton AntiVirus: Developed by Symantec, this highly regarded utility,
which also includes anti-spyware capability, is available as a standalone
product or in a full Internet security suite that includes a firewall. The
antivirus utility blocks spam and checks outgoing e-mail for viruses as
well. The Symantec Web site can be found at www·symantec·com/
index.htm
.
Part IV: Securing Your Information
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