How to Fight the Malware Threats to Your Computer
There are many online threats to your computer. These include viruses and other malware including trojans and worms. Some of this is purely vandalistic, while much is done for criminal commercial gain, including spyware and downloaders. In order to protect your computer you need to have installed a software package to defeat the threats.
The main categories of software to consider are 1/ anti-virus 2/ genaral utilities, including anti-virus capability. An anti-virus package should be able to fix all attacks on your PC, including viruses, trojans and spyware. This task should only be entrusted to a recognised company, such as Norton, McAfee and AVG.
A second line of defence is always a good idea. Perhaps use a general utilities suite, with an anti-virus capability and a second specialist anti-virus package. For instance Norton Utilities or McAfee Internet Security Suite. Specialist anti-virus products include AVG or Malwarebytes’ Anti-Malware, both of which have free versions.
The anti-virus software must be updated frequently. The online threats are changing all the time and so the defences have to constantly adapt to meet the challenge.
One option is to use Norton Utilities, which includes a whole suite of maintenance software to keep a computer free of problems, as well as anti-virus protection. This includes such things as cleanup software to remove superfluous files, defragmentation, one button checkup, registry maintenance, file backup and other utilities which are very important in the fight against malware. Some software such as anti-virus and cleanup tools help avoid problems arising, while others such as backup and disk restore enable recovery after a problem has been removed. This could be backed up by a free version of Malwarebytes’ Anti-Malware or AVG’s anti-virus product.
Always keep your computers defences under review. If necessary use a paid version of anti-virus software as a backup, but free versions are currently very good.
Keep up the housekeeping of your computing by regularly defragmenting the disk drives, tidying up the registries and cleaning unwanted files. Make a backup every few days. These tasks can be done at night or whenever the computer is not being used for anything else. Set them to come on automatically to minimize labour.
Finally do not forget apply your weapons against the threats. If you do not apply them frequently, they are just an unused icon on your desktop.