Every person that uses their computer to get on the Internet, to get email and surfs websites must have security in mind. Whether your a home user or a business the general concept remains the same. You need protection from threats on the Internet, Viruses and Spyware.

Antivirus

If you receive email on your computer you should have an Antivirus program. Viruses come in to your computer via email, sometimes as attachments, sometimes not. So just saying that you don't open attachments is not enough.

There are some devices (not software) now that do Antivirus but they are not mainstream yet or are really priced towards Corporate users. I like the idea of hardware protection as you know from my Firewall article, less software running in the background bogging down your computer, but it's just not there yet.

The best thing I can tell you from my experience is that you want a stand alone Antivirus program. Not one of these "Security Suites" that have 5 different things that gets installed on your computer. Norton AKA Symantec and McAfee are well known for this. They end up installing a firewall software, spam software, privacy software and antivirus software all on your computer when you just want a stand alone Antivirus.

Trust me when I say all these things make your computer run really slow. I have seen it so many times that someone will go out and get Norton Internet Security and install it and it will either make the computer crawl to a halt or it will crash the computer completely, does this happen to everyone, no, but I get a lot of calls to come fix this very problem.

I have used a lot of different Antivirus programs and currently the one I really like is called NOD32 from www.eset.com I don't get kick backs from them so don't worry about whether I can be objective. It's just a small lightweight program that does a great job. It does not slow your computer down at all even though it's running in the background.

Here's a story, I was working on a clients computer that was totally infected with viruses. The computer had Norton Antivirus on it and I did a full scan with Norton. Norton came back and said no viruses found. I pull the drive from the computer and plugged it into my bench computer and did a scan with NOD32. NOD32 found 11 viruses and removed them.

Another problem with Norton and McAfee "Suites" is that for some reason after it has been installed and running on a computer for awhile, the computer starts acting weird. Weird like programs not responding or freezing up, not printing, networking features stop working. Sounds like Spyware right? Well when I run across these issues I have see it more times that the weirdness goes away as soon as you uninstalled Norton/McAfee.

Bottom Line

• Stay away from Norton and McAfee, they are "Bloatware".
• You want a stand alone Antivirus program.
• Backup your computer all the time, should you get infected you might have to do a clean install.
• Know where your Windows and Applications installation CD disc's are along with serial numbers.