How to avoid Spyware or Malware

I was surprised to find many of my family members were hit with spy ware this past Christmas. Well here is what I recommend to help prevent it. First, spy ware was designed to attack Windows Internet Explorer (IE). So I would highly recommend you get Mozilla Firefox as your web browser. If you are unwilling to change to Firefox I recommend getting some type of POP-Up blocker for Windows IE. This will help defend against Pop-Ups that contain most of all spy ware. Slim-browser, Google Bar, and Yahoo Bar all provide a Pop-Up Blocker and are compatible with Windows IE

Next, I recommend two program's Spy Bot S&D and Ad-Aware. Both these programs search for Spyware on your computer and help eliminate it if it does sneak through the cracks. Both programs are free and are free of additional spy ware that all other such programs contain.

Always have a firewall and Virus scan up and running. These programs will let you know if spyware is adding viruses or if a spyware program is trying to reach the outside world. Zone Alarm is a free firewall program that is widely used and highly recommended. AVG Anti-Virus is a free Virus protection, however I have had some problems installing lately, hopefully it has been fixed. It should also be noted that all major anti-virus companies such as McAfee and Norton offer a trial anti-virus that can be used to at least test and eliminate viruses that may be on the computer.

Never open an email that looks to be suspicious. These types of Emails have a tendency to have spyware in them as well. Turn on you Junk email settings that are provided by you Internet Provider, even yahoo has Junk email settings.

In addition, the web site PC Pitstop is an excellent tool to determine problems that may be occurring with your computer. This web site does ask to put a bit of spyware on the computer, this is only for the purpose of running the test and will have no affect on your computer (just to let you know Windows Update puts spyware on your computer, how else do you think it determines what updates have been added to your computer).

Two other programs I use are Eraser and Hijack This. Eraser is a nice program that erases the 1's and 0's off your hard drive. Unlike deleting, Eraser uses a system 7 erasing of the Department of Defense. What does this mean? Well deleting a file doesn't mean it is gone. If you delete a file it is still on the hard drive waiting for somebody to retrieve it. I have formatted a hard drive and been able to retrieve all of the contents with a retrieval program, however after eraser was done the program was ineffective in recovering any Data.

As for Hijack This, this program is a last resort. This program gets into the meat of your operating system and tells you what is running. I only recommend you use this if you know what you are looking for. Here is an article from PC World that tells about the ins and outs.

In the end the best way to protect yourself is not to click on Pop Ups and click yes to anything you are unsure about. If it says it is for free 9 times out of 10 it is not. So be safe the Internet is a Big Bad world after all.