Beginner's Guide to Antivirus Protection
Unlike Dr. Evil in the film "Austin Powers," I use my technical prowess for good, not evil, despite my matching desire for "one million dollars." Unfortunately, there are people in the world who do not share this mantra and use their programming skills to create software that can destroy data on your computer or even take control of your machine, using it as a "zombie drone" to disrupt communication on other computers.
It is estimated that 100 million of the 600 million computers on the Internet are under remote control from hackers. The only way that you know you are infected is through a barrage of pop-up windows, or when your system slows to a crawl or frequently reboots. These programs are called "malware," which is a portmanteau of the words "malicious" and "software." Oh, "portmanteau" means a word that is created by blending two or more words together, but you probably figured that out.
If you have traded files or music on peer to peer networks such as Morpheus or Kazaa, then there is a good chance that adware has invaded your machine. Rather than replace your computer, or format your drive and reinstall your operating system, there is a chance that you can clean your machine by running a few software tools. Once your computer is clean, antivirus and ad-blocking software should keep the ghost out of your machine.
Spyware
Windows computers have enough annoying nuances that the addition of Trojan horses, adware and spyware can make a bad situation much worse. To clean them, you usually cannot run just one program. To make matters worse, you may need to follow instructions on Web message boards that document the specific steps in removing these bugs from your system, as even the best ad-removal software cannot strip some code from running systems. Some malware even watches for the removal of their evil payload and can re-install a fresh copy if the program is removed.
After the consumer technology advocate Steve Gibson created OptOut as an adware notification tool, Lavasoft was the first company to give away a spyware removal tool with their program Ad-Aware, released in 1999. Ad-Aware SE Personal is a free software program that does a good job detecting most bugs, but a few of them have slipped through during my tests. If you think that you have adware, give this program a try first, then move onto stronger utilities if it misses some bugs. Ad-Aware can be downloaded at lavasoft.com. You can find Gibson's site at grc.com.
If you can't get rid of all your bugs, or they keep popping up even after you reboot your system, then you may need to try other software to fix the problem. Spybot Search and Destroy is a strong contender and Grisoft's software has a utility that I've used with great success to clean up my system. Spybot Search and Destroy is available at spybot.info and AVG Anti-Spyware Free can be found at free.grisoft.com.
Antivirus
New computers typically come with some type of antivirus program which conveniently expires in 30 to 90 days. Technically, the program is still running, but once it has expired the software will no longer receive updates to the definition tables. This means that any new viruses released onto the Internet which then find their way onto your system may not be detected by the antivirus software. It is the equivalent to driving your car without putting oil in your engine. You do change your oil, don't you?
You can pay every year and continue to update this bundled software, but I choose to remove it completely and run Grisoft's AVG Free Edition Anti-Virus software. It has done a great job detecting viruses and is frequently automatically updated as new threats are found. These days, the company has gotten a bit tricky with its upgrade policy, trying to get you to pay for platform upgrades. You can always find the free version through Grisoft's website, but note that you may not be able to automatically upgrade from one version to the next. AVG Free Edition is available at free.grisoft.com.
Dave Mathews, "The Gadget Guy," has built and cleaned up thousands of computer systems, which all happily run AVG antivirus software. More stories can be found on his website at davemathews.com.
TECH GLOSSARY
Malware = Malicious Software or code that contains adware or Trojans.
Adware = Software which annoys you with pop-up messages to buy virus fixes.
Trojan Horse = Software that infiltrates your system and could do a myriad of things such as collect bank account numbers or use your machine to attack others with viruses.
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