Is Your Computer Safe from Viruses?

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The internet is a wonderful place to get information, stay in contact with friends and family, even do your shopping or start a business. But it also has many hazards.

The first hazard that everyone runs into is viruses. These little nasties can do all kinds of things, from being a mere annoyance to destroying your data, or worse yet, sharing it.

It doesn’t matter what kind of internet connection you have; everyone is subject to getting viruses. This is because many viruses do what is known as “spoofing” email addresses, where they forward themselves to every email address in an address book, but do not necessarily use the email address address they took the information from.

There are some very sneaky viruses out there. One email I have seen recently claims to have been found to be free of viruses after a scan from Symantec’s Norton AntiVirus product. This is particularly devious as many new computers come with this product preinstalled, although a full subscription must be paid for annually.

There are a few things you must do to avoid viruses. First, do not open any attachment you weren’t expecting. If you get an email from a friend with an attachment, don’t open it if you don’t know what it is. Go ahead and email them back to make sure it’s real. If it’s from someone you don’t know, it’s probably for the best that you do not open the attachment at all.

Be careful about using your preview pane. Some viruses have been known to open that way. You may be best off just viewing a list of the emails you have received and clicking only on the ones you want to read.

Finally, and most important, keep your antivirus software up to date. There are many good antivirus products out there. As stated above, Norton Antivirus is preinstalled on many systems, so this is an easy one to install, and Symantec does provide a very good product. My personal preference, however, is to use Trend Micro’s PC-Cillin, which many sites rank higher. There are several excellent antivirus products out there, such as Kaspersky's and Panda's products.

Any antivirus program you purchase will have to be renewed annually and should tell you when it is time to renew. You want it to be able to update itself with new virus definitions regularly, as new viruses come out all the time.

Antivirus protection is the absolute minimum you must give your computer if you go online. Next week we will take a look at some of the other steps you need to take to keep your computer safe and your internet browsing experiences more pleasant.

	Never!
	About once a year.
	A couple times a year.
	Once in a long while.
	We rotate the toys.
	Excess? What's excess?
	Other


	Web homewiththekids.com

Is Your Computer Safe from Viruses?

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