The former CEO of a Korean based computer software company was recently indicted on charges he sold a fake anti-virus detection program to 1.26 million computer users. Remember, getting your anti-virus software from a reputable company is about as important as every other step you take in the computer virus removal phase of your company’s operation. If your virus protection software is no good, you may as well have not bought anything at all.

There are plenty of sources out there for good and serviceable computer virus protection programs. Some cost plenty of money, some are reasonably priced, and yes some are even free-of-charges. Investigate which one is right for you. Consult people in-the-know in tech forums, read reviews at any number of online software review sites, and above all make personal face-to-face contact with people in your area and find out what it is that they use.

Be smart, don’t fall victim to a questionable company like this.

Fighting off Viruses – Advancements in Antivirus Software Suites
By Sukhvir Singh Bola

Protecting your computer from a virus is getting harder and harder each day. While it may border on the paranoid, it goes without saying that you can’t leave your guard down for one second. Even corporate giant Microsoft has found its own systems compromised on more than one occasion.

Remember the “good old days”, before the advent of the Internet and downloadable programs? Life was simple then in terms of computer viruses. With the primary way in which a virus could be transmitted being limited to floppy disks, the ability to catch and eradicate the virus was a lot easier. By today’s standards, it used to take quite a while before a virus was able to infect a computer and slow down the system. The antivirus software of that time was typically able to identify and eradicate viruses before they caused too much damage. Additionally, computer users were pretty savvy on how to protect themselves in terms of scanning all floppy disks before copying them to our desktop.

The Internet helped change all that. The Internet provided a conduit by which viruses could move from host to host with lightening speed. No longer could a computer user just worry about floppy disks as points of entry, but they now had to worry about email, email attachments, peer-to-peer file sharing, instant messaging, and software downloads. Today’s viruses can attack through multiple entry points, spread without human intervention, and take full advantage of vulnerabilities within a system or program. With technology advancing everyday, and the convergence of computers with other mobile devices, the potential of new types of threats also increase.

Protecting Your Computer Luckily, the advancement of antivirus software has kept pace with current virus threats. Antivirus software is essential to a computer’s ability to fend off viruses and other malicious programs. These products are designed to protect against the ability of a virus to enter a computer through email, web browsers, file servers and desktops. Additionally, these programs offer a centralized control feature that handle deployment, configuration and updating. A computer user should remain diligent and follow a few simple steps to protect against the threat of a virus:

1. Evaluate your current computer security system. With the threat of a new generation of viruses able to attack in a multitude of ways, the approach of having just one antivirus software version has become outdated. You need to be confident that you have protected all aspects of your computer system from the desktop to the network, and from the gateway to the server. Consider a more comprehensive security system which includes several features including antivirus, firewall, content filtering, and intrusion detection. This type of system will make it more difficult for the virus to penetrate your system.

2. Only install antivirus software created by a well-known, reputable company. Because new viruses erupt daily, it is important that you regularly update your antivirus software. Become familiar with the software’s real-time scan feature and configure it to start automatically each time you boot your computer. This will protect your system by automatically checking your computer each time it is powered up.

3. Make it a habit to always scan all new programs or files no matter from where they originate.

4. Exercise caution when opening binary, Word, or Excel documents of unknown sources especially if they were received during an online chat or as an attachment to an email.

5. Perform regular backups in case your system is corrupted. It may be the only way to recover your data if infected.

Recommended Antivirus Software There are numerous applications available to consumers. With a little research, you can pick the program that is right for you. Many programs provide a trial version which allows you to download the program and test its abilities. However, be aware that some anti-virus programs can be difficult to uninstall. As a precaution make sure to set up a System Restore point before installing.

Here are a few programs which typically receive high marks in terms of cost, effectiveness, ease of use, and customer service.

The Shield Pro 2005™ provides virus protection and hacker security through ongoing support and updates. When a virus breaks out, The Shield Pro 2005™ promises to provide a patch within 2-3 hours and a fix for the virus within 5 hours. You can set your computer to update viruses weekly and run a complete virus scan.

BitDefender 9 Standard provides antivirus protection, as well as Peer-2-Peer Applications protection, full email protection, and heuristics in a virtual environment. This provides a new security layer that keeps the operating system safe from unknown viruses by detecting malicious pieces of code for which signatures have not been released yet.

Kaspersky Anti-Virus Personal 5.0 program is simple to install and use. The user only needs to choose from three levels of protection. It allows updates as frequently as every hour while promising not to disrupt your computer. The program also offers a two-tier email protection feature and round-the-clock technical support.

PC-cillin Internet Security combines antivirus security and a personal firewall–for comprehensive protection against viruses, worms, Trojans, and hackers. It also detects and removes spyware and blocks spam. It even guards against identity theft by blocking phishing and pharming attacks.

AVG Anti-Virus Free Edition is a free downloadable antivirus program that has received high marks for its reliability. In the past, free downloadable antivirus programs have been viewed skeptically because of issues relating to its reliability. However, AVG from Grisoft, remains one of the best-known free anti-virus programs available. While AVG can not be installed on a server operating system and there is no technical support, it still makes a good choice for many home computer users. The best part is that since it is free, you can try it with no further obligation necessary.

Sukhvir Singh, An Affiliate Marketer checking out the hottest products online. We test the product for you, so you don’t have to. Please visit this page to learn more : http://sinsuk.bezoogle.com/pp/anti-spyware/

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Virus Removal Software and Information
By Michael Cottier

I hate viruses, and so does everyone else who has ever gotten them or will get one. Since 2006, 1 billion people have the internet, which means that there are now more viruses then ever.

Viruses come in many forms and with many different problems attached to each kind. Some viruses are designed to mess up your entire computer and destroy all data; others are made just to show you unwanted advertisements every once in awhile. Either way, they shouldn’t be on your computer and can be removed by you manually or by virus removal software. First though, let’s discuss the most common types of computer viruses and what they can do to you or your computer.

The most known and damaging virus type that exists right now is the worm virus. This type of virus can duplicate itself and it will use the email addresses from your address book, and send itself to those people. This means your friends and family computers could even become infected with this virus.

The next most dangerous type of virus is the Trojan virus, which is a sneaky one, hence the name. Trojan viruses sneak in by disguising itself as a program that provides a legitimate function. But really it is a virus that will damage your computer or steal personal information like passwords. There is also the backdoor Trojan virus, which if your computer was infected with it, someone could take control of your computer through your network or the internet.

Another more common virus is just a plain old fashioned file virus. File viruses can attach to real software, so that whenever you use the software, it will load into your memory and infect other files that are associated with that program. That means that the most important documents and data could be destroyed by one simple click!

The next type of viruses I will discuss is the most common on all computers today, and that is Adware and Spyware. Adware is basically just advertisements that are saved on your computer, and show them selves sometimes in a random pop-up or when you type in a web address that is incorrect. Spyware is actually the worst of the two because spyware can log your every keystroke, record every website you go to, and report your statistics back to an individual or company.

Those are really the main types of viruses that exist and are most common on the internet today. Using that knowledge in conjunction with virus removal software, you will be allowed to make sure every virus is removed and not still lingering around somewhere waiting to come out again.

Before I end this article, I would like to give you some very important tips that everyone should know, taken first hand from my computer experiences over the past 10 years.

The most important tip has to do with a computer crash from a virus. Bad people make bad viruses, and those very bad viruses will do things like deleting all of your data, destroying your operating system and maybe even actually altering you’re BIOS. Your BIOS controls a lot of technical details on your computer, like your CPU’s exact speed, system temperature and most of your components.

This is what you need to do to ensure you can recover from a virus like that. First off make a clone copy of your hard drives data every week, backup your BIOS once every time you change it or a part on your computer. By doing these steps, which actually take very little time with the right tools, you will be protected against bad viruses that destroy that information. All you have to do is restore the BIOS and fully restore your hard drive from the clone image you have, and your computer will be back to normal.

That is all of my information on viruses, and my biggest tip is, if you really want to protect yourself against viruses you need to get virus protection software.

Copyright 2006 Michael Cottier

If you want to know more about viruses and purchase virus removal software, then check out Michael’s page at http://www.computer-customizing-guide.com/virus-removal-software.html Also, learn more about computer customizing at his website http://www.computer-customizing-guide.com/

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Computer Viruses – How to Remove a Computer Virus from Your Computer
By Benjamin Nicholson

Computer viruses infect millions of computers every day. Viruses can destroy data, steal important information, and even make a computer completely unusable. When a computer is infected by a virus it is imperative that the virus be removed as quickly as possible.

If a computer is infected by a computer virus the computer needs to be scanned by virus scanning software. If you do not own virus scanning software than you may buy some software at www.norton.com.
If you do not wish to buy the virus scanning software at this point, than you may use a free virus scan which is located at www.mcafee.com.

In order to use the freescan;

1. Go to www.mcafee.com,

2. Click on home & home office

3. Under the heading of free tools
(at the bottom of the page), click scan now

4. Click scan now (accepting user agreement)

5. The program will download an activex control (make sure that they are allowed), click install when prompted to do so

6. Make sure C: Drive is highlighted and click scan

7. If any files are found by Mcafee to have viruses, go to that location on your hard-drive, and delete those files.

If you cannot access the Internet as a result of the virus or the computer is unusable, than other measures may have to be taken. If the computer is unusable, and you have another hard-drive on hand, than you may hook up the damaged hard-drive as a slave drive.

(Consult the user manual of your computer to see where your hard-drive is hooked up, and how your motherboard is setup). You will have to unhook your hard-drive, put a different hard-drive in as the primary drive, and hookup the damaged drive as the slave drive (make sure the computer is shut down and unplugged when removing computer parts, also make sure you are grounded (static electricity destroys computer parts)). Once this is done than you may boot your computer, and copy the necessary files over to the other hard drive. You may also run scans on your slave drive at this point, in order to remove the virus from the damaged hard drive.

Another way to remove a virus from your computer is to use the removal tools on www.symantec.com.

1. If another computer is available
(if the virus infected computer is unusable), than go to www.symantec.com

2. Click on the Security Response Tab

3. You can look for the virus that is infected on your computer. Once you find out what virus is infected on your computer (look for the behavior that the virus is exhibiting on your computer), you can click on the Downloads Tab

4. Click on Virus Removal Tools

5. Click on the virus that is infected on your computer

6. Follow the instructions on the virus removal page in order to remove the virus from the infected computer.

Benjamin Nicholson
CCIE Certified Network Engineer
http://www.grinnation.com
benjamnicholson@aol.com
http://www.grinnation.com/computerviruses.htm

Benjamin Nicholson is a CCIE (Cisco Certified Internetworking Expert). He has been working in the I.T. industry for the past 20 years, and most recently has been studying computer viruses and the impact of computer viruses and spyware on society.

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Spyware, Adware and Virus Removal First Steps: Get Rid of Temporary Files
By Frank Wrobel

There are many software programs available designed to remove Viruses, Spyware, Adware and other nasties from your computer. Uneducated users simply run these programs in the mistaken belief that once they do, all is well.

For the best results, and to optimise computer performance and efficiency, it’s best to eliminate the many temporary files and temporary Internet files that build up on one’s hard disk over time.

Temporary Internet Files result simply from visiting web sites. Each web page usually consists of a number of individual elements, including one or more images. A typical business page is made from a large number of individual images, even if only a single image is visible when the page is fully loaded. Each of these images is stored on your hard disk in the Temporary Internet Files folder, also known as the Internet Cache”. Other elements such as cookies and multimedia files are also stored here. Particularly useful in the early days of the Internet when only dial-up accounts were available, the use of this cache idea helped speed up access to web pages on the second and subsequent visit. Because images and multimedia objects take a lot longer to download than text, once they were stored in a local cache, they would be displayed directly from the hard disk, and didn’t need to be downloaded again. Web access was therefore a lot faster. There appears no way of automatically deleting these files, and so the number increases constantly.

Temporary Files appear for other reasons. In the course of normal operation by some programs, they require “working space” and will create one or more temporary files. When programs are installed, particularly from zipped or compressed files, they usually need a temporary storage area in which to store files during the installation process. It would make sense in both these cases, for the programs to delete the temporary files when finished. However, it seems that in a lot of cases, the obvious doesn’t happen.

Why should we care that we have all these unwanted files on our hard disks?

Firstly, they do take up disk space unnecessarily, and secondly they reduce the performance of our computers. But in the context of viruses, spyware, adware, malware and other nasties, there are two reasons why all these temporary files are unwanted.

Most of the “nasties” mentioned above, apart from viruses, infiltrate our computers whilst visiting websites. Objects downloaded from web sites sit on our hard disk in the Temporary Internet Files folder. Deleting these files, therefore, is the first step to eliminating nasties. Some viruses and nasties will install themselves, or a copy of themselves in the Temporary folder where no-one can find them. Have you ever run a virus or spyware scan only to find that the culprit comes right back afterwards? The other reason to delete these files … and there could be a great many of them over time … is to minimise the time the scanning software has to run by reducing the number of files it has to scan.

Fortunately, Windows gives us a simple method to delete these files.

Click on “Start” and “My Computer”. With the right mouse button, click on your primary hard disk, usually the C: drive, known in Windows XP as Local Disk (C:). In the menu that opens, click on the “Properties” selection at the bottom. The window that opens will display a graphically representation of your hard disk showing the total space, and the amount used and free. On the left is a button called “Disk Cleanup”. Press that button.

Windows will now check your hard disk and open another window showing how many temporary and temporary Internet files there are. If you click on “ok”, Windows will proceed to delete those files. It’s safe to do so. The recycle bin is also listed, and if you haven’t emptied it for a while, now is a good time to do so. Leave the other options unchecked.

Your virus scanning software and “anti-nasties” programs will now run more quickly, and in fact, you might find your whole computer seems faster and more responsive.

There is one limitation of the Windows built-in file cleaner though: it often doesn’t delete all files, and the only way of doing it is to manually delete them. That’ll be covered in a future article.

Frank Wrobel is a computer consultant with many years experience in supporting everything from home computers to corporate networks.
http://www.fixcomputernasties.com/

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