Why You Need Protection from Viruses, Spyware, Adware and other Nasties

Is your computer running slowly? There’s a high probability it’s infected with some kind of virus or malware, even if you don’t think it is!

Independent surveys have discovered that close to 90% of home and small business computers are infected with some kind of spyware, adware, virus, keylogger, or other undesirable program. Even a high percentage of supposedly clean computers were infected.

Most people these days have heard of computer viruses, and understand the need for an anti-virus scanning program on their computer. But often even more insidious and sneaky are the latest spyware, trojans, and key-logging programs. Most anti-virus programs aren’t effective against these threats.

Computer viruses have been around for a long, long time — preceding the Windows operating system even. They used to be spread predominately via floppy disks, and by already infected programs passed on to other users. With the widespread use of e-mail, viruses were able to spread at incredible speeds.

Most viruses are destructive, or meant to do some damage to files on your computer in some way. They are usually also designed to replicate themselves and infect other computers, either via a network, or via e-mail. Some “viruses” were written just to demonstrate that the programmer could do it, as an ego boost. Others were designed to demonstrate a weakness in Windows.

Most of the better-known anti-virus programs are great, and as long as yours automatically updates and you do regular scans, your computer should be safe. From viruses. But here’s the crunch. These days it’s the spyware and other malware that’s more of a problem than viruses. They are harder to prevent from infecting your computer in the first place, and often harder to eradicate later.

Furthermore, there isn’t a single anti-spyware program that does everything, so it’s better to use a couple of different ones, each of which excels at a different range of nasties.

Unlike viruses, adware isn’t meant to be malicious. It’s designed to have two main functions, and as the name suggests, it has to do with advertising. Some adware is downloaded and installed with free-ware programs; some is sneakily installed when you visit web sites. It might present you with pop-up advertising, a new toolbar, or change the home page of your server to that of the advertiser. It might also watch your surfing habits collecting “market research” information, and send it to whoever will pay for it, so they can better target advertising to you. It’s like doing an electronic survey, except without your permission.

And there lies the problem. Mostly it’s done without permission. Programs are installed on your computer, often without you knowing. They change the way your computer works, and send unknown information about you to someone else. An invasion of privacy? Sure is! Moreover, now there’s another program using your computer resources – slowing everything else down. It might even be more than one. It could be ten, or twenty. Or more.

Spyware is like adware, but a bit more nasty. It’s more blantant, more obvious, more persistent, more sneaky. And harder to eradicate. At least it’s also a lot more obvious that your computer is infected, and that you need to take action! If you get lots of pop-ups, if your computer is a lot slower than it has been, and/or if your home page keeps changing to something other than what you had it set to, then there’s a good chance you have spyware.

There are other types of “malware” that are less obvious, but no less insidious.. Somewhat a cross between malware and viruses, trojans are programs designed to be active in your computer, allowing unscrupulous people access via the Internet. They could get full control of your computer, watch everything you do, and gather personal information about you. That’s just scary.

Keyloggers are similar, but designed to monitor and save all your keystokes, and send them to a third party. Things like passwords, bank account access codes. Also scary.

In some cases, it’s pretty obvious that your computer is possessed; in other cases it’s not. But that doesn’t mean you don’t have a nastie lurking there somewhere. Remember the survey findings mentioned in the introduction. Adequate protection is essential, these days.

Firstly, you need a good anti-virus program. All the major ones are excellent, but some have nice features that make them more desirable. You have to make sure it really does update automatically. And scan your whole computer periodically.

Next, one or more anti-malware programs are needed. No one single program does everything well.

And finally, a good firewall is highly desirable. The Windows firewall in XP is not adequate and should be replaced by something better.

There are some good Internet Security Suites that combine all those functions in one program. That makes them very convenient, but many are resource hogs and slow your computer down too much. There is one we recommend. But even so, it’s a good idea to use another anti-malware program just to be certain. There are free ones we recommend as well.

On a final note .. using Firefox as your default browser is a lot more secure than Internet Explorer. It doesn’t support active-x (deliberately) and can’t be taken over by rogue BHO (browser helper objects) the way IE can be.

Check out our other pages for more information about viruses, malware, and general computer nasties! For people who prefer to have control of their computer and ‘do it themselves’, have a look at this latest book. It covers all the things we talk about here and more.