Using the right condoms for your PC

Funny title right? let us say logically, you might not be directly putting a condom on your Pc, but it simply means staying protected. If you use condoms to stay safe of course why won’t you wanna use the right condoms for your PC so as not to get infected?

Today, that means a firewall, an anti-virus product, and an anti-spyware product. You need to have them in place and you need to keep them up-to-date. For anti-virus and anti-spyware products, keeping them both up-to-date is nearly as important as frequent scanning with them. Since we don’t know what new viruses and spyware are lurking until they are created, the companies with anti-virus and anti-spyware products are always behind those who create malware. Only when a new malware item appears, can we get updates to prevent it from getting on our PCs or to remove it once it is there.

Keeping our PC safe requires that we are cautious. There are many ways to do so. we will be checking a few of them:

PROTECTING YOUR ACCOUNTS: Ensure to use an account that does not have administrative privileges. That way, if someone breaks into your PC, there is some damage control. Avoid the use of the account names which are created by default. Those are “administrator” and “guest.” Consider one account with administrative privileges for when you need to have those privileges but use another account that doesn’t have administrative privileges for your normal work.

USE STRONG PASSWORDS: Make sure to use passwords that give you protection. Try to make them 6-8 characters in length with a combination of letters (upper and lower case) and numbers. Avoid names of family, friends, and pets. Consider a trick like the first letter of each word of a sentence. It will NOT spell a word. For example, the first letter of each word of this sentence, “Read this first article on save PC,” would result in the password of “RtfaosP.” It is not a word, it is a reasonable length, difficult to guess, but easy to remember.

DISK CLEANUP: While not a virus or spyware prevention tool, this MS Windows utility can reclaim available disk space from the recycle bin, temporary files, and deleted files. With regular use, this utility can keep more disk space available.

DISK DEFRAGMENTATION: This MS Windows utility can reorganize disk space to put related files together for faster access. As files are written to disk space, they may not fit one-after-the-other. When that happens, the files are “fragmented.” The defragmentation process moves files in an effort to put related files next to each other. That means that more data that you want for a particular file can be read at once – translating into better performance. The first time that this utility is run, the disk space probably will be badly fragmented and the process will take a long time. When the disk space is kept in better order, the process will take little time.

ANTI-VIRUS UPDATE AND SCAN – All of us who use PCs these days are aware of the need for anti-virus software. Most PCs are sold with a choice of anti-virus software already installed. What is not so apparent to users of PCs, however, is the need for repeated updates of the anti-virus software. Whether the updates are “free” or via a paid subscription, they are critical to the proper function of the anti-virus software. If you run an anti-virus scan, it is only as good as the last update that was made to it before you initiated the scan. Anti-virus software, generally, is behind the 8-ball on worms & viruses. Until a new worm or virus is released, it is difficult to know how to defend against it. So, if you last updated your anti-virus software on January 1st, a new virus was released on January 5th, and you are running a scan on January 10th, your anti-virus software will not be prepared to trap the new virus, which was created after your latest anti-virus update. Good maintenance management should run frequent (daily is recommended) anti-virus scan, which are always preceded by a search for possible updates.

ANTI-SPYWARE UPDATE AND SCAN: Even newer to a safe PC is anti-spyware software. Most PCs are now sold with anti-spyware software. As with anti-virus software, whether the updates are “free” or via a paid subscription, they are critical to the proper function of the anti-spyware software. Good maintenance management should run frequent (daily is recommended) anti-spyware scans, which are always preceded by a search for possible updates.