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Home > Help & How To > 7 Simple Ways to Protect Your Computer from Danger and Disaster > Page 1
If you ever walk by a magazine rack with computer magazines, you’re
bound to see covers plastered with colorful text reading “Protect
Yourself Now: 66 Ways to Stop a Hacker”, “The Top 10 Ways
to Stop Spyware”, or “The 101 Newest Threats to Your Computer
and How to Stop Them.” It seems like every computer magazine I get
in the mail has these headlines on the cover. To be honest with you, I’m
tired of it. It’s getting really annoying. It’s even becoming
laughable because it seems like the headlines are just being recycled
each month trying to scare you into buying the magazine (or renewing).
There are so many more fun and interesting topics I’d rather see
on the cover. Why are the same doom and gloom headlines plastered on magazine covers every month? Because people don’t take the easy and necessary steps to protect their computers. If you’re reading this, you’re probably one of them. Your excuse is probably “It won’t happen to me” or “I don’t do anything that important on my computer.” Your mood may change your mind when a hard drive failure or a virus destroys the resume you’ve spent the last week working on. Like I said, I’m really tired of the recycled headlines. I’m also tired of hearing the sob stories from people that failed to protect their computers. Sound harsh? Maybe, but taking the necessary steps to protect your computer is not hard and you don’t have to be a system administrator to do it. So here it is, The Geeky Jock’s 7 Simple Steps to Protect Yourself from Danger and Disaster. Follow these and I won’t have to hear your sob story, and, you can finally rest easy when you read those annoying headlines. Did I mention 6 of the 7 are completely free? 1. Vaccinate This means get an antivirus program and keep it up to date. Forget about dealing with Norton and McAfee and having to buy a new subscription each year. Just head on over to Grisoft.com and download AVG Antivirus Free Edition. I’ve been using this for years and have been virus-free. It’s easy to use, is updated often just like the other guys, and it works. Be sure to set it to automatically update new virus definitions. Also, you should only have one antivirus program running on your computer, so uninstall any old ones. Oh yes, one more thing. Please save us all the trouble and do not open emails with attachments that you are not expecting to receive. This careless mistake is still the biggest reason viruses spread. 2. Slay the Spies If you get a constant barrage of pop-up ads or you get redirected when you try to go to a web site, you’ve probably experienced the wrath of spyware. Or, you may have no idea it’s there and it’s sending personal information about you back to a server. Spyware can get on your computer in many ways. One of the most common is piggybacking on top of “free” software you download. A lot of times “free” software is free because you agree to terms in the license agreement (you know, that thing you never read and just click Yes to) that give it permission to install other programs. If you did read it, you would find that you are agreeing to also install a program that tracks your web surfing or any other number of things. Spyware is bad, but luckily there is good, free software out there to rid your computer of it. Download AdAware and Spybot Search and Destroy. Both scan your computer for spyware, adware, and any other bad-ware and then give you options to delete them. There are other good anti-spyware programs out there too. Unlike antivirus, it is safe to have more than one of these programs on your computer at the same time. |
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