Hello again.

Here I am again to bring you usefull information about how to keep your computer clean. I also bring you (as I believe I said that already) Discounted Anti-virus solutions from Amazon.com (just take a look lower on this page... in fact i try to attach a little shortcut to this type of products at the bottom of each article i write here.) So, let's begin with ...

Install and use anti-virus programs

Sometimes there are peoples that come to your house to sell you something or asking you a favour to use your phone or something else. Here you have to make a decision if you let him in or not. Once they are in, they may steal your valuable goods so if you know that person you will let him. But what if you don’t? Usually, peoples look at the person that want to sell them something, analyze them and based on what you see, you decide if they deserve to enter. This is called profiling.

Antivirus programs work in the same way. These programs look at the content of each file on your home computer, searching for specific patterns that match a profile – called virus signature – of something known to be harmful. For each file that matches a virus signature, the anti-virus program offers several options on how to respond to this situation. You can disinfect the file (removing harmful parts from its content), or you can destroy the file.

Remember we have referred to those people that can steal from you once they are into your living space? There are some ways to find out if person like this is in your neighbourhood. (For example: TV or newspaper report) You will start to look for a person like this until you are sure he got caught.

Anti-virus vendors find out about new viruses and provide an updated set of virus signatures. Your anti-virus program checks from time to time for this updates. (The definitions file must be updated at least once per week). Now your home computer automatically learns about this new virus and begins check every file for its signature and for all older viruses. Don’t forget to scan your home computer for viruses at least once a week.

Viruses can change their form (signature) once they are discovered. Same thing like our person that tells us that he wants to sell us something, can molest you in any way once he enters into your space. After a bad person does something bad, they usually change their hair style, colour etc.

If you update your signature file in a regular manner, you might be able to disinfect any new virus that has penetrated your home computer. If not, you might be forced to destroy the infected file and load a new copy from your backups or original distribution media.

At your house, you look at who rings at your door or at what you find into your mailbox. You do that sometimes closely and with caution, sometimes you don’t pay much attention.

Viruses can get into your computer in many ways: floppy disks, CD-ROMs, emails, websites, downloaded files, computer networks. All need to be checked each time you use them. So when you put a floppy disk into your home computer’s disk drive, check it for viruses first. When you receive an email, check it for viruses. I will refer more in the Task 5 – Use Care When Reading Email with Attachments for more info about email. When you download a file from the internet, scan it for viruses first. Your anti-virus program may let you specify all of these as places to check for viruses each time you operate on them. Your anti-virus program may also do this automatically. All you need to do is to open or run the file to cause it to be checked.

Like you walk around in your home just to be sure that everything is okay, you need to “walk” around your home computer to see if any virus appear. With all anti-virus programs you can schedule daily tasks and you can enable real time protection of your system.

Most anti-virus programs let you schedule periodic scans of all your files on your home computer on a regular basis, daily for example. If you let your computer turned on over night, consider scheduling a full system scan during that time.

Sometimes a virus signature doesn’t match any of the known signatures but it may have some of the characteristics of the virus. Good anti-virus programs have more features that extend their recognition capabilities beyond virus signatures. Check out our anti-virus program recommendations. These called heuristic tests help you to keep up with viruses that you don’t have in your definition file yet. It is like somebody rings at your door and after you see him you think: “hmm… something’s fishy with this guy. I am not going to let him in…”

When you buy a new computer, you might have installed a trial version of an anti-virus program on it. After a short period you will need to purchase this program to a full version. To decide if your installed anti-virus deserves to be purchased (or maybe you would like to see other anti-virus products) be sure you will follow these steps:

1. The DEMAND test: you must see if you can scan a particular file in any moment you want, for example, when you want to send an attachment (this is a part of KRESV test – we will talk about this test later)
2. The UPDATE test: Does your antivirus update its signature file automatically? Daily is best
3. The RESPONSE test: When a virus is found what options offers your anti-virus? Can your antivirus program disinfect the infected file?
4. The CHECK test: Can your anti-virus program check every file on your computer? Automated?
5. The HEURISTIC test: Does your anti-virus do heuristic tests?

These tests are called DURCH tests (see the first letter of every bolded word above) and help you to compare anti-virus programs. Once you are decided, install it and use it with all its capabilities enabled.
Intruders are the most successful in attacking all computers – not just home computers – when they use viruses and worms. Installing an anti-virus program and keeping it up to date is among the best defences for your home computer. If your financial resources are limited, they are better spent purchasing a commercial anti-virus program than anything else.

That's it for today. I hope this is another really usefull information. I hope it is not too boring (in fact i am trying to keep my articles as short as possible, but i really want that people understand this kind of things and keep their computers clean.

Thank you very much again for reading it. See you next week.
J.J.