Spyware Search and Destroy

Posts Tagged ‘Prevent’

Computer Viruses, How to Detect, Remove and Prevent Them

Today I want to talk a little about the dreaded computer virus. The goal of this article is to teach you, the home user, the fundamental skills needed to help detect, remove, and most importantly prevent viruses from infecting your computer. As the owner of a computer consulting business, I have seen 1st hand how much damage computer viruses can do. To help protect yourself from a virus attack, it will be necessary to understand exactly what a virus is. A virus is essentially a software program designed with malicious intentions, to copy itself and spread from one computer to another. What makes a virus so dangerous is what they are designed to do.

A virus, once installed on your computer, can easily corrupt or delete data from your computer. This can be anything from your latest Word document to the irreplaceable pictures of your loved ones. We will get into exactly what a virus can do later in this article. Now that you have an idea of what a virus is and what it can do to your computer, lets discuss how your computer gets infected. I have heard countless times from people, ” But I did not open any email attachments, how can I be infected?” While it is true that a majority of viruses are hidden within email attachments, they can also be downloaded into our computers in the form of images, videos, or even instant messages. I have personally removed a virus from Cd’s, jump drives, and floppy disks.

Lets talk about ways to help protect your computer from viruses. To protect your computer from these threats it is vital that you have an anti virus program installed and up to date. I have seen many times in the field computers that have anti virus programs but still are infected with a virus. Let me point out that not all anti virus programs are equal. I will not discuss in this article which anti virus program you should or should not use however email me and I will be happy to help you in that aspect. Your anti virus program will do you little good if you do not keep your definitions up to date. New virus are being identified all the time so it is vital to keep your anti virus program up to date on the latest threats. Another proven method is to use a firewall.

A firewall is essentially software or hardware that is designed to filter out information that is being sent to or from your computer. Think of a firewall as a Guard at the end of your driveway, before anyone enters your home they must first pass a set of rules or security checks you have given before they are allowed to enter your home. Some of the software-based firewalls include Norton Internet Security, Zone Alarm and Trend Micro. You may be using a hardware firewall and not even know it. If you have a LAN (Local area network) then chances are you have a router of some kind. Most routers come built in with a firewall, which is very effective at protecting your computer from viruses. Another technique used to help prevent viruses is to keep your computer up to date. If you are using a windows based PC, check Windows Update often for any security patches that are released.

Do not open email attachments if you do not know the sender, this is asking for trouble. Lets move on to identifying infected computers. As a PC technician, it is my responsibility to quickly identify the signs of virus infections. Computers with virus infections will often show some of the following symptoms. Please note, that the issues listed below may be caused by several problems, such as spyware, and are not specific to viruses. Your computer may be slow to start or shut down. You may be missing data on your hard drive or, in worst case scenarios, lose all data on the drive. You may experience strange error messages or you computer will shut down unexpectedly. Your fonts may be distorted and overlap or you may experience difficulties in printing.

These are just some examples of the harm viruses can do. Now the most difficult part, removal. This is a topic worthy of its own article as there are many different procedures in virus removal. I will discuss with you the very basics. If you think you are the victim of a virus do a thorough scan of your computer. It may also be beneficial if you scan your hard drive while in safe mode. This is usually accomplished by tapping F8 at start up, but refer to your computer’s manual for instructions to be certain.

If you do not have an anti virus program, first thing to do is get one! In the meantime you may use the services of an online virus removal tool. Many of the popular anti virus programs offer this service. My intent of this article was to help inform you of the dangers virus threats can pose, as well as giving you the knowledge to help detect, remove and prevent these threats. I hope I have accomplished this, and you can walk away after reading this article, feeling more confident of your abilities to protect your computer from virus threats.

How to Prevent a Computer Virus and Protect Your Email?

Viruses and other malicious PC threats can easily infect our computer systems. Basing on my personal experience and study from the Internet, I would like to share some tips about how to prevent computer virus and safeguard your email.

How to Protect your Computer from Viruses?

1. Never open the attachment from the unknown email or unexpected email, even if the attachment seems to be a.jpg image file. This is because Windows allow users add multiple suffixes on the file name, while many email applications usually display the first suffix only. For example, if you see an attachment named wow.jpg, its full name actually is wow.jpg.vbs. Therefore, to open this attachment will result in the running of a malicious VBScript virus.

2. Before you insert a floppy disk, CD-ROMs and other removable media, make sure they have been scanned for viruses. And, make sure your computer can automatically check for viruses when the removable media inserts or emails and network file are received.

3. Guard against fraudulent virus. If you receive an email from your friend which claims that there is a most lethal new virus and requests you to forward this warning email to all your friends. This may be a fraudulent virus actually. You are suggested to turn to the antivirus software vendors, such as Symantec’s website, to confirm the claim.

4. Use other forms of documents, such as.rtf (Rich Text Format) and.pdf (Portable Document Format). Common macro viruses spread through Microsoft Office programs. Therefore, the less use of these files types will lower the risk of being infected by viruses. Try to use Rich Text to save your files. This does not mean that simply use.rtf suffix in the file name, but that in Microsoft Word use “Save as” command, and in the dialog box select Rich Text format to save the file. Although Rich Text Format may contain embedded objects, it itself does not support Visual Basic Macros or Jscript. The pdf file is not only a kind of format available in many platforms, but also more secure.

5. Use the client-based firewall or filtration solution. If you are using the Internet, particularly the broadband, and you are always online, then it is very necessary to use a personal firewall to protect your privacy and to prevent the unexpected visitors to access your system. If your system does not have an additional effective protection, your home address, credit card number and other personal information could be stolen.

6. If there are share files set with full access by users in the local area network, viruses may very easily come in. This also brings the frequent access of the infected computer to the share files, and results in network congestion.

How to Protect your Email Security?

Improve the security level of the email client. If you use Outlook Express, please change its security level like this: Tools – Options – Security – Select the Internet Explorer security zone to use: Restricted sites zone (More secure). The setting for Outlook is similar to OE: Tools – Options – Security – Select the Internet Explorer security zone to use: Restricted sites zone (More secure). As for Foxmail, please go to Account Properties – Fonts & View – select Embed Internet Explorer to view HTML message.

To maintain your computer security, you need also pay attention to update your Windows from time to time. Microsoft always has updates released for its Windows vulnerabilities, so you can download and install those updates to keep your system from vulnerability risk. Alternatively, you can also use some security tool, such as Spyware Cease to update your Windows with ease. Spyware Cease is also a good spyware removal tool to protect your computer security. Anyway, you can just try yourself and believe in what you see.

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Prevent ContaVir From Infecting Your Computer

There are a lot of benefits to having your computer protected by a legitimate antispyware program. One of the biggest benefits is that your computer won’t get infected by rogue antispyware programs like ContaVir. Getting infected by any kind of malware is always frustrating, but being infected by rogue antispyware can really make you feel dumb. They are very crafty programs and they do their best to scam you.

ContaVir is a particularly crafty antispyware program. It has many websites working for it, which is bad for you. Many of the rogue websites that work for ContaVir are full of adult oriented materials. Whenever you visit one of these rogue sites, a warning message will pop up and ContaVir will try to load itself onto your computer.

There is another way that ContaVir can find its way onto your computer. If your computer is already infected with Trojan horse programs, then one of them may download ContaVir without your knowledge.

Whenever ContaVir first infects your computer, it is only in its “trial” form. This trial version offers a free scan to you after it creates pop up warnings on your desktop. These warnings are somewhat fraudulent. Though they tell you that your computer is infected, the messages aren’t talking about ContaVir or the Trojans that it may be working with.

The free scan that ContaVir offers produces a fraudulent report that is designed to scare you into buying the full version of ContaVir. ContaVir only wants your money and it offers your computer no protection whatsoever. In fact, it may even download other malicious programs onto your computer.

This is why you need to make sure that you have a quality antispyware program that you can trust. If your computer is properly protected then ContaVir won’t be able to infect it. If you are already infected with ContaVir, then a trustworthy antispyware program can remove ContaVir for you.

SpyZooka is a quality antispyware program that you can trust. Blue Penguin Software, Inc., the company that made SpyZooka, has been in good standing with the Better Business Bureau for years. Since SpyZooka has a robot that hunts down new forms of spyware, SpyZooka is always up to date on the latest spyware. That is why SpyZooka is the only antispyware program that is guaranteed to remove 100% of spyware from your computer. There is no better kind of protection that you could buy.

To scan your pc for free and find out if you have ContaVir click here.

How To Prevent Computer Virus Hoax ? Remove Computer Virus Hoax Quickly To Fix Your Computer

Computer Virus Hoax is a kind of malicious application designed to compromise your computer by hijackers. Computer Virus Hoax is added with malicious codes and spreads through the Internet, and is usually brought into your computer through browser security gaps, and it can obviously slow down your computer speed, and interrupt your from normal surfing on the Internet. Once you have Computer Virus Hoax on your computer, remove it immediately!

Do You Have Computer Virus Hoax on Your Computer?

Many computer users may always get alert from their antivirus software that Computer Virus Hoax is detected, but can’t be removed and quarantined. Or, the Trojan appears again after deletion, which annoys people very much. Here, specifically against this type of threat, I would like to introduce some technique on automatically removingComputer Virus Hoax. Before automatically removing Computer Virus Hoax, you need a program that is able to remove this Trojan quickly. This allows you to remove Computer Virus Hoax once for all.

Best Way to Remove Computer Virus Hoax Right Now!

To prevent and remove Computer Virus Hoax, and other Internet viruses, Adware, malware on your computer, you are highly suggested to use Spyware Cease, if you really want an actually-work spyware removal tool. More importantly, it has been proved to be powerful with its Online Scan utility and is able to remove Computer Virus Hoax and almost all the other computer threats. You can always get dedicated technical support from Spyware Cease support team whenever you have a spyware problem. This is really nice for most of us who are not very good at dealing with tough spyware threats, isn’t it?

You are sincerely suggested to free download Spyware Cease to run a scan and remove Computer Virus Hoax on your computer right now. You are able to use a good and trusted security tool to get rid of the annoyingComputer Virus Hoax, Adware, spyware and any future spyware threats. Before you try other programs, give Spyware Cease a try, and you’ll be surprised!

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