I am listing 9 ways you can protect your precious computer and your work from various virus and spyware.

1) Always use an anti-virus software. Norton Antivirus might be the most widely used one at this point but there are other good ones. Use this anti-virus program, this is extremely important.

2) Use a firewall. Firewall can be a little annoying when your program constantly asking you for permission before doing anything. However, these firewall programs have improved quite a bit and they are not as annoying as they used to be. A firewall comes with Norton and so if you buy the whole package, you will get one. In addition, both Windows XP and Vista have firewalls built in within them. Those are pretty good too. However, you should be careful because many of the creators of these spywares like to attack the windows operating system since a lot of people are using them. Therefore, I suggest you to use a separate commercial firewall rather than using the windows provided ones.

3) Use legal softwares only. Illegal softwares you should avoid. By using legal softwares you can also make sure that you have the most recent copy of the software. In this way, you decrease the amount of attacks on your computer.

4) Along with an anti-virus program and firewall, use an anti-spyware. There are free softwares out there for both anti-virus and anti-spyware, but becareful in downloading the free ones. That would be the next point.

5) Many softwares you can download are free but they are free because some of them contain virus or they might act as trojans. Therefore, only download free softwares from reliable sources. By looking at a website, you should be able to say if the website contains legit softwares or not.

6) Visit only safe sides. Many porn sites have trojans and so when you visit them those programs are injected in your computer. That’s why you should be careful. Most of the times, your antivirus program should be able to catch these programs but if your program fails to detect you will have to suffer.

7) Some people also recommend not to click on popups. However, if you think a popup is advertising for a legitimate website, then go ahead check it out.

8 ) Becareul with the email attachments. Before downloading/opening attachments do a virus check to see if they are safe. Attachments that you receive in your bulk mail folder are to be ignored. That is because almost all of them have trojans. Therefore, the best thing to do would be not to open attachments from people you do not know.

9) In the case where you have been attacked by virus, remove them as soon as possible. You also should have some backup copies of your data so that you do not end up loosing everything if you need to reformat your computer to get rid off the virus.