The Truth About Anti-Virus/Anti-Spyware Software
Think that your Anti-Virus/Internet Security Suite software is going to keep you fully protected from malicious programs? Think again!
All of the security software titles, claim to be the best at stopping malicious software from running infecting your PC. Unfortunately, there is not any one security program, that can catch all malicious programs.
The threat used to be from virus-laden e-mail attachments. It has been burnt into or memory banks, "Don't open e-mail attachments from people you don't know". And for the most part, PC users have done just that. Today, viruses make up only about 3% of the total infections world wide. The biggest threat today, is from malware.
Malware is written in many different programming languages. Most are designed to do one of two things, either turn your PC into a slave to send out more spam and malware or, part you from your hard-earned cash. One piece of malware you may have seen, we call it "SCAREWARE". Scareware, is the type of malware that when it infects your PC, a window will pop up on your screen that pretends to run an Anti-Virus/AntiSpyware scan. It then reports, it has found numerous trojans, worms and lists legitimate Windows system files, as being malicious programs. It will then instruct you to, "Click Here" to remove these malicious programs. When you click on the link, you are taken to a web site and for $50.00 - $100.00 and your credit card number, this program, will remove these infections but, it doesn't. By the way, eventhough you can access the scareware's website, you are unable to go to any other webiste. This program will prevent you from accessing the Web, any security websites and more times than not, will shutdown your Anti-Virus/AntiSpware/Internet Security Suite.
This is just like the Nigerian 419 Scam. You know the letters, "Dear Sir or Madam, your relative passed away while in my country and left you a hefty sum of money", this is a scam too. It scares you into thinking your PC is infected with all of these bugs, when in reality, the main infection, is that bug that is telling you you are infected. Once the creators of that bug have your money and credit card number, they can make incremental charges for "Updates", as often as they want. If they have say... 10,000 PCs infected with their bug and they make $10 charge on all 10,000 credit cards, they will pocket a cool $100,000 with a simple push of a button.
The best way to protect yourself, use the latest Anti-Virus/Internet Security Suite software. This means, purchase or download a free edition of the latest Anti-Malware programs. We have several on our Links page. All the programs we list are FREE. They do have the option for purchasing them but, you can download, install and use these programs for FREE. You still only need one (1) Anti-Virus program on your PC. You can have multiple Anti-Spyware/Anti-Malware programs on your PC at one time. Go to our links page, download ALL of the software listed under the heading, "Anti-Spyware". Once you have the latest version of a security program, you need to keep it updated on a weekly basis, or on a daily basis, depending on how much you are on the Internet. Last but not least, run a scan with all of the security programs.
These malicious programs are getting more sophisticated every day. The programs are getting better at bypassing all security software. These programs are the works of large criminal groups here in the US, the UK, China, the Ukraine, Russia and other parts of the world, and not by some bored teenager, sitting in his Mommy's basement. Some are even state sponsored like, China. The Chinees and Russian governments have even hacked into our nation's electrical grid system.
With the level of sophistication of these programs, all PC users need to be vigilant with their security software. Even if you do all the right things, you can still be infected. How? These criminal groups have programmers that, search for flaws in programs that run on a Windows-based PC. Whether it's Internet Explorer, Adobe PDF files, Word, Excel or even a flaw within the software that controls say.... your video card, they will find it and exploit it.
Best thing to do is to keep all of your software up to date. Each software manufacturer creates patches or incremental updates for their software titles. Even Microsoft updates Windows once a month with security patches.
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