Defending The Kingdom

Your computer is hopelessly lost to adware and spyware and viruses. I know because I’ve seen computers like yours. If you upgraded to Firefox as I suggested in the last post, you’re headed in the right direction, but there is more to be done.

Now you need to download two programs (free, of course) that will kill anything that manages to get by your defences.

Spybot Search and Destroy

This extremely well maintained and frequently updated program eliminates all the most common spyware, adware and tracking cookies that infect all computers from time to time. Basically, Spybot will catch whatever your antivirus program misses.

Adaware

Because one anti-spyware program is not quite enough, Adaware will catch anything that Spybot Search and Destroy might miss and vice versa. Both programs are excellent and rarely miss the chance to extinguish the life of spyware, but even the best program will miss something now and again.

Now that you’ve got both of these programs on your computer, you just need to remember to update them often and run them even more often.

Let me make this very clear: you need to be an active participant in keeping your computer clean by running these programs at least once a week and more often if you’ve been infected with a load of spyware recently. They will not actively monitor your computer to catch the bad guys while you sleep.

In upcoming posts, I will recommend free antivirus and firewall programs so that you can finish building an impenetrable fortress around your electronic assets.