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Antivirus Solutions
Avast Antivirus Home Edition - (Highly rated, only free for personal use)
Avira Antivirus (Not for business or commercial use)
Microsoft Security Essentials - Effective and trouble-free. (Not for business or commercial use)
Panda Cloud Antivirus -Effective and trouble-free. (Free for non-profit, home and school computers)
PCTools (Free Edition)
Comodo Free for non-commercial, non-business use (Free Anti-virus Poll Results Mar3, 2011) - Favorite after over 136,000 votes! Caution - comes with a firewall which can be a good deterrent but requires responses for sometimes routine events. The antivirus is still somewhat untested.
AVG Free Version (Home users, non-commercial one computer)
Commercial Software (Walmart) (OfficeMax) (CDW.com) (Antivirus Tests and Comparison results)
Companion Malware Solutions - Advertised as being low on resource usage but they may slow older computers. Immunet - Free Cloud based companion Malware solution. Threatfire - Free Companion Malware solution. As many Antivirus scanners don't detect Malware it is advisable to scan with an anti-malware software such as Malwarebytes, Superantispyware Portable, and others Also see Online Scanners.
Misc. Threats: Firesheep - A Firefox addon that steals login passwords from unprotected sites like facebook and twitter in public WiFi networks (coffee shops, hot spots, hospitals etc.) - Solutions: Use only Firefox in public networks and make sure you have two addons, Force TLS and Blacksheep.
Beware of pop-ups that that have "falsely" detected infections. These may be "fake" antivirus programs which are usually very serious Malware programs. Be familiar with what your antivirus program looks like. Never respond to pop-ups about viruses unless they are from your antivirus program! (Ctrl + Alt + Del out of those pop-ups) Never give out personal information when the solicitation is initiated by someone else. Never put birthdays, phone numbers, and other personal information on social networking sites. Beware of Phishing.
Virus - A computer program that can copy itself and infect a computer without the permission or knowledge of the user.
Worm - A computer worm is a self-replicating computer program. It uses a network to send copies of itself to other nodes (computers on the network) and it may do so without any user intervention.
Trojan - The Trojan horse, also known as Trojan, in the context of computing and software, describes a class of computer threats (malware) that appears to perform a desirable function but in fact performs undisclosed malicious functions that allow unauthorized access to the host machine, giving them the ability to save their files on the user's computer or even watch the user's screen and control the computer. Trojans also have payloads which can be of any the other threats mentioned here and which are usually harmful.
Malware - A portmanteau from the words malicious and software, is software designed to infiltrate or damage a computer system without the owner's informed consent.
Spyware - A computer software that is installed surreptitiously on a personal computer to intercept or take partial control over the user's interaction with the computer, without the user's informed consent.
* Use Open DNS it blocks threats before they reach your network, (for ATT DSL homes, works with many others too, it does not work with Hugh Net. It's easy to set up. -- For Hughes Net customers use K-9 content filter. * Have an anti-malware program. Malwarebytes (Malwarebytes is not active - good cure, no prevention), Others are available but may have a high degree of "annoyance factor" -- * Online Scanners. F-Secure -- Trend Micro HouseCall -- BitDefender -- McAfee Free Scan * Back-up your personal data! Window 7 has it's own backup program, greatly improved over previous versions. Or use the free version of Syncback. Also consider Online Backup.
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