Newsletter Archives

May, 2006

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PC Tips & Tricks #5
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Last month, we explained how to protect your PC from unwanted attacks by using a firewall. This month, we're going to discuss anti-virus software’s role in keeping your PC safe. (If you missed last month’s newsletter, please visit our archives at http://www.digitalfilerecovery.com/archives.html.)

A firewall will protect your PC from unwanted attackers and prevent rogue programs from accessing your internet connection without your permission. Anti-virus software will protect you from malicious programs that have made it onto your PC – for instance, opening infected email attachments or running programs from an infected CD/floppy disk.

Technically, there are three main types of malicious programs – viruses, worms and Trojan Horses. If you want to find out more about the differences between the types, we’d recommend you visit http://www.webopedia.com/DidYouKnow/Internet/2004/virus.asp and http://computer.howstuffworks.com/virus.htm.

The most popular, free anti-virus software on the market is AVG Anti-Virus and can be downloaded at http://free.grisoft.com/doc/1. The free version has limited functionality but there is a professional version with more advanced feature also available. (Visit http://www.grisoft.com/doc/Single/lng/us/tpl/tpl01 to find out more.)

Of course, there are many other anti-virus applications on the market. Here are some of the more popular ones:
Norton AntiVirus
McAfee VirusScan
Trend Micro PC-cillin

You can find trial versions of these and more by visiting http://www.download.com.

Aside from anti-virus software, you should also do the following to prevent your PC getting infected:
• Don’t open email attachments from people you don’t know.
• Be very careful when running programs from unknown sources. There are programs on the internet with hidden malicious code in them.
• If you use Microsoft Office, don’t allow macros (code within Office documents like Excel and Word) to run unless you know they’re necessary and safe. To protect your PC from macros in Excel 2003, click on Tools/Options then select the Security Tab and the Macro Security button. The security setting should be High but if you want to be able to choose which macros to run, select Medium. You can find out how to prevent other unwanted macros from running by checking their help files.
• Never run executable email attachments from unknown sources. Files like Word documents (.doc), spreadsheets (.xls) and images (.gif and .jpg) are data files and cannot damage your PC (so long as you also protect yourself from macros as mentioned above). However, files with the extensions .exe, .com and .vbs can all contain potentially unsafe code.

What are the most important things to remember with anti-virus software?
1) Make sure it is always up to date. (All good anti-viruses can be configured to automatically update themselves.)
2) Always have it running. Your anti-virus protection should be running in the background at all times to ensure that your PC has the best chance of spotting & blocking a virus as soon as your PC is exposed to it.
3) Scan regularly. Make sure that your anti-virus is setup to perform a system scan regularly and/or you perform a manual virus scan regularly.

That's the second step in securing your PC. Next month, we’ll talk about protecting your PC from Spy/Ad-ware.

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