Do You Need Anti-Virus/Anti-Spyware Software on Your Computer ? Absolutely!

With the large-scale and sophisticated virus and spyware attacks taking place over the Internet you may wonder how to best protect your computer. New attacks occur every few days and as they grow in number the likelihood increases that your computer will become a victim, unless you’re protected. Fortunately, there are simple steps you can take to protect your computer against viruses, spyware and other malware.

What is a Virus - A computer virus is a computer program that can copy itself and infect a computer without permission or knowledge of the user (Wikipedia.org, 2008). Many viruses and other malware are sent over the Internet and can be installed on your computer through an email, by logging into a malicious website or even from code hidden in a graphic file. Some viruses do no specific damage to your computer and are just demonstrations of a computer hackers ability to install the code through the Internet on your computers. Malware, on the other hand, is a type of virus specifically designed to damage your computer. Damage can be small or large, and symptoms vary from spontaneous rebooting to deletion of some or all files on your hard drive.

What is Spyware - Spyware is the type of malware that records your online activity and secretly sends it back to the malware author. This could be as simple as keeping track of what Web sites you visit, or it could mean reporting your online bank account details leading to identity theft.

Anti-Virus/Spyware Software - Anti-virus/spyware software is available as freeware or from commercial authors. Generally, commercial products offer the best protection because they are constantly updated to guard against new virus threats. Anti-virus programmers examine new virus files as they are reported, determine patterns in the code called signatures, and then create a code that will detect the signature of the virus and clean it from an infected computer. Commercial vendors usually sell yearly subscriptions to their updates so renewal is a must if protection is to be kept current.  Most commercial vendors have bundled anti-virus, anti-spyware and firewall protection into Internet security packages. Some vendors allow installation of their software onto 2 or 3 computers, a good option for home uses who often have both desktop and laptop computers.

Best Practices in Using Your Anti-Malware Programs - Make sure that you set up your anti-malware software to automatically update its database of mal ware signatures.  If you don’t, you are missing out on the protection that has been added by the vendor since your database was last updated. You may be protecting yourself against all known viruses up to that point, but you’re allowing anything that has been written since that time to walk right in.

Free anti-malware programs are also available, but as in most things, you get what you pay for.  The freeware vendors do not have the same resources as commercial vendors to research and update their programs.

Searching the Internet for reviews and recommendations by users and experts before buying is highly recommeded, but look at multiple review sites and try and verify that the reviews are independent.