Is there a thief in your computer? If the information on your computer is important to your business or has personal value (pictures, etc) it is, almost certainly, important enough to protect from Spyware, Malware and Viruses. Spies often seem more like a petulant child; maliciously damaging the programs and files you count on to run your business or support your personal records. Some are just mean! The potential for damage ranges from the annoying to those that can be very costly. They range from simple "spies" that watch and report your browsing activity to Key Loggers designed to support Identity Theft and fraud. The recent proliferation of fake or spoofed anti virus products has occasioned some concern. Such products often bill themselves as anti spyware, anti virus, or registry cleaners, and sometimes feature pop-ups prompting users to install them. How many of you install those handy little "Tool Bars" when they are offered? MANY of them host elements of "spyware" and, in most cases, even legitimate ones, demand a lot of resources from your computer, slowing it down. Strongly consider whether or not you want them on your computer. Do any of you have Bonzi Buddy, Kazaa, WeatherBug or Wild Tangent (to name a few) on your computer? These have been documented as containing spyware. Do you have a good anti-spy program installed and up-to-date on your computer? Some that you can consider good ones include:
If you have a trustworthy Anti-Spy and Anti-Virus program installed on your PC, GOOD. Be sure to keep it up to date. If you don't, do yourself a big favor and install them. If your data is important to you or your business, it's important enough to protect. Consider separate, non-connected media. That might be as simple as backing up to a CD/DVD or an external hard drive (might want to consider turning that off when not backing up) and "KEEP A HISTORY". Don't just depend on a single instance of a backup, as there is always the possibility that it can become corrupt or broken. I do a backup to a 1TB machine on my network each day and on the weekend, write my critical info to a set of re-writable DVDs. The VERY SMART, also do off-site storage in case of Fire, Flood, etc. As our esteemed Computer Repair guru J. R. Newcomb of Dragon's Point Computers tells us almost every Friday… Back-up, Back-up, Back-up! PROTECT YOURSELF.
Happy Computing.For more detail on Spyware, check out the link below: |