WiFi Security

Be sure you connect to wireless access points safely!

We hope these articles help protect your identity and equiptment.

Anti-Virus Software

Anti-Virus Software consists of computer programs that attempt to identify, thwart and eliminate computer viruses and other malicious software (malware). Anti-virus software typically uses two different techniques to accomplish this:

1. Examining (scanning) files to look for known viruses matching definitions in a virus dictionary.

2. Identifying suspicious behavior from any computer program which might indicate infection.

Now that you know the jist of how these programs work, here are the top free programs.

AVG Anti-Virus Free Edition
AVG does a fabulous job of protecting your system in real time and with daily scans that can be set to run when you’re away from your PC.

Like all good virus programs, it also checks for new virus definition files once a day so you’re always kept up to date with the latest threats that come out.

Included in this program are additional tools like an e-mail scanner that will check your incoming and outgoing messages for virus attachments. Extras like this, along with top notch performance is one AVG Free is one of the most popular anti-virus solutions.

avast! 4 Home Edition - avast! Home Edition is another really good anti-virus package which is free for home/non-commercial users. The program requires you to register from the home page to obtain a free activation key by email. In my tests of avast, it worked nicely and had a great interface. In fact if you like slick interfaces, avast wins hands down over the freebies out there. Naturally avast also has a pay version. Good enough to make it a nice free alternative if AVG doesn’t work on your system.

Trend Micro Housecall - Don’t want to install anti-virus software? Try scanning your system for viruses online! A few online virus scanning services have popped up, but the best I’ve seen is House Call, by Trend Micro. This service will check your system, and clean infections for free. Sadly, this service only works on the Internet Explorer browser because it uses ActiveX technology.

NOTES

It’s best to choose and run only one anti-virus program for optimal system performance and to avoid conflicts. You also don’t want to slow down your system with two programs doing real time monitoring and scanning in the background.