Have Anti-Virus and Anti-Spyware installed and schedule regular updates and scans

It is actually very typical for your computer to get a virus or spyware installed on it from time to time. This is why it is critical that you have anti-virus and anti-spyware to scan your computer and remove them.

There are numerous products that cover both anti-virus and anti-spyware. In fact, with spyware it does not hurt to have more than one product that you periodically run on your computer (typically you can have only one anit-virus product on your machine). You can schedule them to run at night when you are asleep so they don't slow down your computer during the day. Some free software available are:

Note: many websites install legitimate software on your machine to help you better interact with the website. This also gets labeled by anti-spyware programs as a low-threat spyware. If you remove it, or leave it on, there is typically no harm done. It will just reload the next time you visit that website.

Windows Vista has a product called "Defender" and this is a good product to have turned on to protect your machine from spyware. You can configure Defender on Windows Vista by following this path:

Start --> Control Panel --> Security

Example Threat: if you are not vigilent about keeping certain spyware off your machine, you could have software loaded on your PC that is "recording" your keystrokes as you type. Why? So that when you go to your on-line banking or make a payment at another website, it might record your logon, password, or credit card number!

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