Our Motto is: It's Not Broken -- It's Dirty
When someone brings me a computer to work on guess what is wrong with it about 90% of the time? You guessed it...spies and viruses. It use to be all you had to worry about was getting a virus. If you didn't open an email with an attachment from someone you didn't know you were pretty safe. Well, that was the good old days (even though it was only three or four years ago). Now days spies can be worse than getting a virus. They can steal your passwords and other information from you computer, cause you computer to slow down to a snails crawl, cause popups change your home page and download other programs on your computer without your knowledge. Identity thief is one of the fastest growing crimes these days. What do I do about it you say? Well ....you could just shut your computer down and not get on-line anymore, but these days you just about can't live without being on-line. The kids have to do research for their homework, maybe you pay bills on-line or buy that one thing on Ebay that you haven't been able to find in your area. Whatever the reason it's not very feasible to just not be on-line anymore. So again you ask what do I do?
AntiVirus Protection
Well to start out you get virus protection. There are quite a few different ones out there now. The most known one are Norton Anti Virus and McAfee. But right now PC Magizine rates BitDefender as the best value at around $30 dollars. Also another good one on the market these day is Panda. The reviews I've read rate Panda pretty darn good and it can be bought on Ebay for about half the price of Norton. I run Norton on my wife's computer and Panda on mine.If you can't afford to buy any virus protection right now at least download the free version of AVG Virus Protection. It does a pretty good job for being free. Of course any programs that you buy are going to do a better job and have more/better options.
Firewalls
The next thing you really need these days is a firewall. A lot of people think they don't need one if they have dial up Internet service but any computer on-line should run a firewall. If you get spies and viruses (or I should say when you get spies and viruses) a firewall can keep them from sending important information out. Just like virus protection there are a lot of different ones out there both free and ones you have to buy. A few good free ones are Agnitum ,
Sunbelt/Kerio ( The Sunbelt Kerio Personal Firewall will keep on working after the first 30 days, only in a more limited mode, but free. But you register your email with Sunbelt Software so they can send you the license via email.)
and ZoneAlarm. I use ZoneAlarm . The only problem with the free version of ZoneAlarm is that if you have dial up Internet service you can't share an Internet connection with it. If you are going to share an Internet connection you will have to buy ZoneAlarm Pro which is what I do. You will have to have the paid version on the main computer but you could still run the free version on the computers connected to it.Good paid version are ZoneAlarm,
Sunbelt/Kerio
and the Webroot Desktop Firewall. Webroot has proven itself to very good in the spyware prevention field.
Spyware Protection
OK, Now to what I think is about the most inportant thing and that is spy protection.As I said earlier spies can slow your computer, cause popups, change your home page and send information like your credit card numbers, bank account numbers and passwords to a hacker that is just waiting to rob you of your money or steal your identity. Ad-Aware has a free version out that does pretty good but when it comes to spies just one doesn't get all of them. Each company has their own idea to what is a spy that can't be trusted so it is best to run at least two or three different spyware scans. I use the free version of Ad-Aware, CounterSpy and my ZoneAlarm Pro(paid version) also scans once a week. I really like the CounterSpy program. For $20 you get a year subscribtion with a weekly newsletter that keeps you updated on what's going on in the spy world. PC World rates CounterSpy as the best buy. Read below how PC World rated CounterSpy and other programs.
Sunbelt Software's CounterSpy and Webroot's Spy Sweeper caught and cleaned more than 80 percent of adware and spyware infections and finished well ahead of the competition.
| Anti-Spyware Scanner | Scanning efficiency 1 | Detects suspicious processes in memory | Prevents changes to Registry run keys | Protects against home- and search-page changes | Protects against Hosts file changes | Other 2 |
Supports scheduled/ startup scans |
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| Best BuySunbelt Software CounterSpy 1.0 $20 | 85% | Y | Y | Y | Y | Y | Y | Y | Posted the highest detection rate in our tests. Offers a wide range of real-time protection, including script blocking and preventing infections from the addition of Browser Helper Objects. | |||||||||||||||
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Webroot Software Spy Sweeper 3.2 $30 (
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81% | Y | Y | Y | Y | Y | Y | Y | Has the second-highest overall detection rate. Includes a shield to block the Windows Messenger Service, which is often exploited to serve targeted ads. 3 | |||||||||||||||
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Lavasoft Ad-Aware SE Personal 1.0 Free (
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65% | N | N | N | 4 | N | N | Y | Free scanner provides above-average detection. Real-time protection is available only in the $27 Plus and $40 Professional versions. | |||||||||||||||
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InterMute SpySubtract Pro 2.6 $30 (
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56% | Y | N | Y | N | N | Y | Y | Slightly above average in detection. Includes comprehensive history cleaning and secure shredding of deleted files. | |||||||||||||||
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Safer Networking Spybot Search & Destroy 1.3Free (
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54% | N | Y | Y | Y | N | Y | Y | Former Best Buy didn't perform as well as the current leaders. Free scanner provides average detection rate, plus real-time prevention components to guard against infection. | |||||||||||||||
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Computer Associates ETrust PestPatrol Anti-Spyware 5.0 $30 ( 
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48% | Y | N | N | N | N | Y | Y | With a detection rate of slightly less than 50 percent and limited capabilities, this product failed to distinguish itself. | |||||||||||||||
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Aluria Software Spyware Eliminator 3.5 $30 ( 
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32% | N | N | N | N | Y | Y | Y | A below-average scanner, Spyware Eliminator provides a unique blacklist of offending sites and ActiveX controls to protect users. | |||||||||||||||
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McAfee AntiSpyware 1.0 $40 5 (
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22% | N | N | N | N | Y | Y | Y | This product had one of the lowest overall detection rates, and the real-time protection failed to block or detect anything in our tests. | |||||||||||||||
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Allume Systems Internet Cleanup 4.0 $30 ( 
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5% | N | N | N | N | Y | Y | Y | Almost completely ineffective at removing or preventing spyware in our tests. Provides features to block ads, pop-ups, and cookies, as well as Internet and system history cleaning. | |||||||||||||||
