How to make your computer secure

If you use your PC to access the outside world (eg. the Internet) which you must be otherwise you would not be able to read this, you are likely to be attacked by viruses, worms, trojan horses, hackers etc. for this reason you need at an absolute minimum a reliable anti-virus program, it is advisable to have a firewall and an anti-spyware program as well.

Another thing that not many people consider is that the browser they use is liable to be attacked, as the majority of people use Internet Explorer, mainly because it is bundled with Microsoft Operating systems, those that write these malicious programs write them to attack Internet Explorer.
This one of the reasons why a lot of computer professionals use Firefox a free downloadable browser that is more secure and easier to use than Internet Explorer, give it a try.

If you bought a branded PC there is a good chance that it came with a free demo of either Symantec or MacAfee internet security programs, these work for a few months and then you have to purchase the licence to carry on using them.
Although they are quite good at their job they tend to be very difficult to configure if you need to change the configuration at all and they are also relatively expensive to use, another problem is that they are difficult to remove if you don't want them any more, just removing them through the add/remove in the control panel does not remove them completely.
There are many options available on the Internet for alternative programs that are good and reliable and much cheaper than those two big ones. Several of them even have free editions that although basic are more than adequate for a domestic user (these are normally only legally available for install on a single PC that is only for domestic use, not used commercially)
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An Anti-virus program is installed on your PC to detect and eliminate viruses.
The largest carrier of viruses these days is email, so it is advisable to have all incoming emails scanned for viruses and any attachments scanned before they are opened on your PC, However any disk that you load onto your PC, unless you are 100% confident of its authenticity should be scanned before it is opened.
A lot of viruses are hidden and even the sender of the attachment or disk may not know that it is there.
As I mentioned earlier there are a great many Anti-virus softwares on the market, I will now list a few of them, but whichever you choose it is absolutely essential that it is up dated frequently.
They are : Avast This has a free home edition.
A.V.G. This has a free home edition.
Kaspersky
Comodo.
Panda

These are just a selection of the many that are available, just do a search through your favourite search engine and see just how many there are.
A lot of these also have anti-spyware and firewalls.

You are probably asking the question "What is a firewall?" well the answer is fairly simple it is a piece of hardware or software that blocks the ports on your PC to incoming traffic unless you specifically tell it to allow that traffic.
There are 2 basic types of firewall, hardware and software.
A hardware firewall is a physical device that is installed between the internet connection and the PC, if you are using a router rather than a modem there is a good chance that it will have a firewall built into it. A router will connect your PC to the internet through a network point rather than a USB port, assuming of course that you are using a broadband connection, if you are using a dial up connection you will be using a modem.
A software firewall is a program installed on your PC that will monitor incoming and outgoing traffic, if it is unsure whether or not to allow the traffic through it will pop up a message asking if you want to allow that traffic. Generally it will block incoming traffic unless it has been told specifically to allow it.