We here at The Neighborhood Nerd are always looking out for new viruses and malware that can cause harm to your computers. We’d like t take a moment here and give out some free advice on how to avoid needing to call us for a virus removal at all.
Several things can be major factors in your computer’s security:
- Anti-Virus/Anti-Malware software
- Use of both Anti-Virus and Anti-Spyware
- Update regularly
- Scan regularly
- Computer Usage
- Visiting adult or pirate websites
- Using music download software (Limewire)
- Play online gambling games (Party Poker)
- Play “free” online games (Gamevance)
- Computer’s specifications
- Memory and Processor
- Operating System
- Number of installed programs
There are a number of broad categories to avoid when surfing websites. Avoiding these things will help greatly reduce you chances of getting infected.
- Myspace: The main website is mostly clean, but any of the ads on the top or sides will have many different infections. Zwinky and the cursors and smileys specifically have some really nasty ones.
- Party Poker: And other gambling sites like it are stuffed full of spyware
- Pirate websites: places that support the downloading of illegal software generally don’t care about the law or what damage they do. Not many of these sites have viruses built into them, but it’s a large enough percentage to give note
Switching your browser from Internet Explorer to Mozilla Firefox or Google Chrome can also avoid many security vulnerabilities