Info about Spam
Critical Steps to Protect Your Computer
Before you connect to the Internet, it's important to make sure that your computer is well-protected. The following will make your machine a difficult target for all internet threats.
• Run a Personal Firewall
It is a software designed to make your computer practically invisible to threats. Setting it up is the first thing and most impotant step you need do before attempting to connect to the internet. Failure to do so could get your computer infected on the very first minute of connectivity.
In most cases, operating system has a built-in firewall such as in Windows XP service pack 2 but to those that doesn't consider downloading a security software like Norton and McAfee Internet Security or Zone Alarm immediately by going to their specific websites.
• Activate Windows updates
This is so that Microsoft can update the system on regularly and fix security issues automatically. Turning on the updates varies on the system installed per computer but in general, it can be set up by going to the control panel than to system and finally on the automatic updates corner.
• Install and update the Antivirus Software
It is important to continually update your security softwares because unfortunately, there will always be new threats that will emerge and the updates will allow your software to detect these new threats and stop them before causing any problems. To do this, find the software icon on the system tray and a menu for updat will come up. Click it and it will install the newest update.
• Install an Anti-Spyware
Spyware is becoming a concern nowadays as it not only track your personal information and send to somewhere you don't know, it also slows down the speed and function of your machine making it unbearable to work with. Anti-spywares prevent such occurences and what is good about it is that it works on the background and automatically catch spywares while you work.
• Set-up a Free Email Account
This may not be as critical as the first four steps but it is highly recommended because it saves you the anxiety of providing an email address when you need to gather up information. In most cases, you get a lot of spam mail and maybe even viruses but the good part is it goes to this free email account and not to your main email. Since it is free, you can always delete the account once you get tired of all the spam mails and create a new one.
Following these steps will not only save you time and money as you use your computer but also save you from the inconvenience of having to deal with the Internet threats.