brief tips to protect your computer from viruses

Many of us have had a bad time dealing with computer viruses and, as a result, have learned that viruses can cause a lot of damage to our computers: at best, they slow down our machines; at worst, they corrupt our files, leading to a permanent malfunction of the whole system. But how to protect our system from these harmful electronic creatures? There are several techniques out there. Some of them are quite obvious; some others are less known by the users at large.

Firstly, it is important to install a good antivirus (either proprietary or free) which is known to work properly dealing with all kinds of viruses. To determine the quality of an antivirus, you can browse the web, searching for specialized sites. Secondly, it is not advisable to download proprietary protective software from sites distributing illegal material. By downloading an illegally distributed antivirus, you may save money, but it can become a serious risk, considering this software can contain viruses itself or may not be updatable. Another practice that should be avoided is to download executable files such as keygens and aimbots. These applications, very popular among kids and teenagers, are frequently used by cybernetic criminals, who are aware that these executables generally require the de-activation of the antivirus real-time protection.

The activation of Windows Automatic Updates is another aspect that is to be considered. However, I will move with caution here because, even though there is wide consensus about the importance of this feature, some experts are uncertain about its usefulness, arguing that it may compromise the users’ privacy. Finally, I would advise to be careful when visiting an unknown webpage. Whenever you use a search engine and look for popular topics like movies or music, you will obtain thousand of unknown websites as search result, which will lure you into visiting them. Many of these sites are what they say they are. Nevertheless, you may stumble upon sites which will inject malicious code into your computer as soon as you load their first page.

To avoid this, you can follow certain procedures. First of all, you should activate the web-surfing protection included in most web browsers. In doing so, you will be warned every time you are about to visit a website flagged as “dangerous”; thus, you will be given the option to visit it or to decline. Secondly, it is a good idea to install utilities such as Deep Freeze, which create a virtual system on your computer. In this way, whenever you want to visit a dangerous webpage, you run this application and, when you are done, you can restart your system: any code injected during the surfing will be gone. A word of advice: since these applications create a virtual system, all the data (either wanted or unwanted) stored during the session will disappear as soon as you reboot your computer.

The tips depicted above are by no means comprehensive. However, by following them, you will keep your computer free from all kinds of viruses. Consequently, you will save money and time.