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No matter which anti-virus program you choose, this is the first and perhaps most important step in protecting your computer from attackers.

When it comes to defending against computer viruses, worms, and Trojan Horses any of the above listed products, along with many other reputable and quality anti-virus programs, will protect your computer from becoming infected. Once you have installed anti-virus software on your system, the protection is fairly automated, but you must be certain to keep the software updated and to run it frequently and respond to any warnings it gives of a potential infection of your system. With most anti-virus software you can set it to run checks on a pre-programmed schedule and respond automatically to detected threats. At an absolute minimum you should update your anti-virus definitions and run a full-system scan at least weekly. Scanning your system everyday of course simply improves your security.

Spyware & Adware

Having taken steps to protect our computer system against viruses, worms, and Trojan horses by installing a quality anti-virus software one might assume that the majority of the on-line threat has been mitigated, but that assumption overlooks the threat of spyware and adware.

Spyware is a program that is installed on a computer, usually without the knowledge or permission of the computer owner, which gathers personal information about the user of the computer. This personal information ranges from tracking what web-sites are visited, to attempts to record passwords, credit card numbers and similar information to be used for criminal purposes.

Adware is a program which displays advertising of some type whether or not the computer user has consented to the display of the advertisement. Adware may be installed surreptitiously, or may be consented to by the computer user as a condition of obtaining some other product (i.e. ad supported software).

Spyware and surreptitiously installed adware is a problem not just for the information it gathers, but because spyware and adware programs use computer resources and degrade the function of the computer on which they reside. Spyware and adware programs can also frequently cause operating errors or complete system crashes. According to the Webroot Software Spyware Education Center (http://www.webroot.com/resour ces/spywareinfo/) and quoted in Wikipedia "As of 2006, spyware has become one of the preeminent security threats to computer systems running Microsoft Windows operating systems.

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