Antivirus Tips
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With no one governing body in charge of online activities, the Internet has become rife with viruses, hackers, and fraudulent acts. It’s more important now than ever to keep your computer as safe as possible.
The banking industry has re-affirmed a policy that makes online banking customers responsible for losses if they have out of date anti-virus or anti-phishing protection. Section 12.9 says: “Keep your PC secure. Use up-to-date anti-virus and spyware software and a personal firewall.” Below are some tips on how to keep your computer as safe as it can be.
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Anti VirusNew machines usually come with free trials of an Antivirus Software such as Norton or MacAfee. Beware that these trials can only last for a couple of months and can leave your machine unprotected due to a lack of up-to-date virus definitions.
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| AVG Antivirus is a free Anti Virus program that offers basic on demand virus checking and free daily virus definition updates. This can be downloaded and installed (without registration) by selecting this link onto your machine to provide you with up-to-date virus protection. After the installation and the updating of the antivirus, it is usually recommended that you perform a full system scan. | |
Spyware(Sometimes called adware) collects information about you without appropriate notice and consent. If you are running a machine with Windows Vista installed, you will already have protection from this using the tool “Windows Defender” If you are running a machine with Windows XP, you will need to download this tool and install this manually by clicking on this link and clicking on “Get This Now” Button.
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FirewallBoth Windows XP and Windows Vista come pre-installed with the Windows Firewall. Sometimes however this gets disabled by other programs. |
| A good way to check that your Firewall is enabled, is by going to Start, Control Panel, Windows Firewall. This will then show you if your firewall is on or off. | |
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Windows UpdateAn up-to-date windows machine can not only fix problems and bugs in Windows, but also make it secure from well known vulnerabilities. You can check to see if you Windows is up-to-date by opening Internet Explorer and selecting the Tools menu and click on Windows Updates |
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A loading bar should start to check your computer for needed Updates; after this has finished scanning it will display two buttons. Click on the Express Button. After this it will display a list of critical updates, make sure they have all ticks by the side of them and click on the button Install Updates. This will then start the download and installation of these files. This may require a reboot, and you will have a choice at the end whether to reboot now or later. By Jean Van Wyngarrdt |
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