10 FREE WAY TO KEEP YOUR PC SAFE - 1st WAY
1. Get Free Anti-Virus and Anti-Spyware Protection
If you want to protect your PC against viruses, you have to pay for it...and pay for it...and pay for it. Anti-virus makers these days charge annual fees, rather than a one-time purchase price, so you'll end up paying hundreds of dollars to protect your PC against viruses during its lifetime.
That is, unless you know which applications to use. It's true that companies like McAfee and Symantec charge in this manner, but there are, in fact, two free anti-virus programs that can do everything: offer real-time virus protection, scan for viruses, and automatically download the latest anti-virus signatures for maximum protection.
One is Grisoft's AVG Anti-Virus Free, which has a companion anti-spyware program. Both are free for private, non-commercial, single home-computer use.
Another widely used free anti-virus program is Avast 4, free for home, non-commercial use. Avast even works with the beta of Windows Vista, something that few anti-virus programs are capable of doing.
As for anti-spyware tools, there are plenty of free ones out there. Ad-Aware Personal and Spybot Search & Destroy are excellent choices, as is Microsoft's Windows Defender. Anti-spyware programs don't always catch the same malware, so it's a good idea to scan your system regularly with at least two anti-spyware apps.
