Ten Free Ways To Keep Your PC Safe

[Will.Spencer]

Ten Free Ways To Keep Your PC Safe
Aug 18, 2006 - By Preston Gralla

You don't have to spend a fortune to protect your PC from viruses, Trojans, phishers, scammers, and snoops. In fact, you don't have to spend a penny. Here's how.

From the moment you turn on your PC until the moment you turn it off, it's under assault. Hackers try to break into it; viruses, Trojans and worms try to crawl into it; spyware tries to watch everything you do. Then there are wireless dangers, snooping co-workers, and worse.

What to do? You could spend hundreds or thousands of dollars on software and services, and spend countless hours trying to keep yourself safe...or you could instead read on. We'll show you ten simple ways to protect your PC without spending a penny.

While some of these products are free versions of commercial packages, others are provided free of charge by hardworking individuals. If you find their services valuable, you can choose to give them a donation. But that's entirely up to you.

Ten Free Ways To Keep Your PC Safe

1. Get Free Anti-Virus and Anti-Spyware Protection
2. Check Your Security Online
3. Get Free Wireless Network Protection Software
4. Use A Free Firewall
5. Encrypt Your Data
6. Protect Yourself Against Phishers
7. Disable File Sharing
8. Surf The Web Anonymously
9. Say No To Cookies
10. Protect Yourself Against eBay "Nigerian Scams"

...

[Fry]

For 6 and 10 especially, how do we go about protecting ourselves?

[Will.Spencer]

Protect Yourself Against Phishers

Protect Yourself Against eBay "Nigerian Scams"

:p

[darviria]

Point 4 - there is no free firewall worth using, this site has good explanations:

http://www.samspade.org/d/firewalls.html

And I completly agree, those things are just a waste of system resources


If you have a router, it could have a firewall on it, if it has, enable it, this will give you a lot more protection than one of those firewall programs will, an even better solution is to buy a proper firewall unit or convert an old computer into one. Also, a dedicated firewall box or a firewall on your router protects your whole network and if configured properly won't conflict with other things, what you need is a physical barrier between your LAN/computer and your internet connection.

[Will.Spencer]

You must seperate free firewalls from free personal firewalls.

Consider my situation. I visit a lot of client offices and plug my notebook into a lot of unknown networks. In those situations, I don't have a network firewall to protect me, only the personal firewall on my notebook.

Nvidia is now building firewalls into motherboard chipsets. That changes the personal firewall equation once again. Of course, that doesn't help my notebook yet!