Every day, you hear of a computer security breach that either directly or indirectly affects you. It might be Identity Theft, as virus or worm, or key-logging and other malware like spyware, malicious code, and spam.
This guide will help you protect yourself and your computer system from what we’ll call “computer miscreants.” If you want more information on protecting yourself from privacy invaders, this Michael Fertik interview explains the fundamentals and importance of privacy protection.
Your system should consist of many prongs, the most important of which is guarding against “social engineering.” This is the human natural tendency to click on hyperlinks in unsolicited emails, that then launch Trojans, viruses, and other malware on your unsuspecting personal computer.
Besides “getting smarter,” you can protect yourself from much of this by installing appropriate software.
Anti-Virus
Anti-Malware
Anti-Spam
Software Firewalls
One thing that you’ll want to do right away, no matter what kind of computer or Internet access you have (dial up, cable, DSL, satellite, wireless, or “other”), is to get a hardware router that doubles as a hardware firewall.
There are many manufacturers of router/firewalls like Linksys, USRobotics, Netgear, and D-Link. The link below will take you to our general recommendations about how to configure your firewall.
Hardware Router/Firewall
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