How to make your computer A lot safer in the web

July 26, 2006 at 9:22 am (Tech Blogs)

By: Blaise Cedrick Gomez

There are many ways on how to make a home computer safer from viruses and hackers, and it all actually boils down to how much you are willing to spend or invest in you precious computer.

First, you must have an anti-virus program.

What’s an anti-virus?

Basically an anti-virus is a program that scans all of your files and programs and

Looks for a virus threats in your hard drives. These programs can be updated regularly. They usually have what they call “Virus Definitions” that should be updated.

What’s a virus definition?

The virus definition is one of the most important part of an anti-virus. This is the file with which your Anti-virus depends upon when scanning your hard drive for viruses. It’s like a cartographic sketch of a criminal that the police officers rely on to recognize them, and eventually catch them. 

Where can I get an anti-virus?

Well, right now there are many places in the web where you can download an anti-virus. You can start searching at Yahoo, Google and Ask Jeeves, there you can choose from a large variety of software vendors i.e. Symantec, Mac Afee and many more. Or you can opt to go the nearest computer shop to buy one.

Do I really need to buy one?

The answer is yes and no, yes because you might need a better type of virus protection that most likely the commercial anti-virus have, features like a more comprehensive log of viruses. This is most likely the best choice if you want more control in your computer’s activities. And no because you can get FREE anti-viruses, one that I could give to you is AVG free edition; it’s a decent program with most likely one of the best virus definitions there is (that is in my opinion…). You can get it at www.grisoft.com and if you would like to upgrade your AVG into the pro edition you can easily do that too.

Pro. Or Home?

Now, this question can only answered by the user himself, because as I have said earlier it boils down to your own needs and your budget. Most of the time the Professional Editions are more expensive mainly because they have more functions than that of a Home Edition. If you are only planning to buy one for a home pc then you can buy the Home edition. Same goes to other editions of anti-viruses. Just always remember that you first need to know your needs in buying this software, because if not you might be just throwing your money for an over kill anti-virus. And most likely you won’t be able to use all of the functions of the Pro. Edition if you’re just an ordinary home person.

What should I look for?

First you should look for a software that have has an update function, for your virus definition (refer to the earlier paragraphs for the meaning and use of this). Then for outlook users you might want to look for an e-mail scanner function, this basically scans your incoming and outgoing e-mails for viruses. And then look for the expiration dates, some of the anti-virus programs has their expiration dates. And you might need to renew your license at least once a year. I think Norton has this kind of thing. One more function you might want to have is ”Quarantine” functionality because with this function you’d have an option to just quarantine the infected file and just deal with it later or if the file that got infected was important you would not accidentally delete it. As far as I know these are the most basic functions that you should look for.

I have an anti-virus that is outdated should I update it or just buy a newer one?

It all depends on your preferences, I have once run a Norton 4.0 in my computer when my computer accidentally uninstalled my 2004 version and could not re-install it because my installer was missing. So, I got to take the risk of running a 4.0 version in it though it was outdated it protected my pc very well, and the only thing I did was to update it regularly. Though Norton 4.0 did not have those more advanced functions it worked for me. I think you should buy a newer version if you’d like to have the more advanced function t