Protect Yourself Against Viruses, Spyware and Web Bugs – For Free

You don’t have to spend a penny to keep your PC safe from viruses, spyware and web bugs. Fight back with these tips and tools—for free.

Kill Viruses

Big-name antivirus software such as Norton AntiVirus or McAfee VirusScan forces you to pay for a subscription every year, but they have another drawback as well. They also tend to suck up a lot of system resources and use plenty of RAM, and your PC can take a big performance hit from them just to keep itself protected.

There’s a better way. Use avast!, nifty antivirus software that’s free for personal use and that takes up so few system resources and RAM you won’t even notice it’s there. It includes seven different shields, and it’s a good idea to install and use them all. Once avast! is running, you can customize each shield. Double-click the avast! icon running in the System Tray and from the screen that appears, select the shield you want to customize. To change the sensitivity of the scanner—how aggressively the shield should act—move the slider. Move it to the left to make it less sensitive, and to the right to make it more sensitive. To customize the shield even further, click the Customize button. The dialog box that appears will vary according to the shield you’re customizing.

Note, by the way, that before you install avast!, you’ll need to first uninstall whatever antivirus software you’re already using; otherwise it might not work properly.

Protect Yourself Against Spyware

For most people, spyware has replaced viruses or worms as the most-feared and obnoxious danger on the Internet. A relatively few number of people become infected by viruses or worms, but it seems as if almost everyone you know has been hit by some kind of spyware.

Spyware is a catch-all phrase that encompasses many different types of obnoxious programs. The least intrusive of the bunch report on your surfing activity to a web site, which tracks what you do and then delivers ads to your PC based on your interests. But increasingly, they are becoming more intrusive. Some of them spawn pop-up swarms of ads that appear so quickly they overwhelm your PC, slowing it down and making it unusable. Others hijack your browser home page so that no matter what you do, you’re sent to a home page of the hijacker’s choosing, which might be a pornographic site, or perhaps a web site that spawns even more pop ups. And some kinds of spyware, called keyloggers, literally spy on you by watching every keystroke you make, and then send that information to someone on the Internet.

Even more fearsome is spyware that turns your PC into a “bot” or a “zombie” and forces it to spew out tens of thousands or more pieces of spam, all without your knowledge.

But you don’t have to be a victim; there’s a good deal you can do to protect yourself, and you won’t have to spend a penny to do it:

Get a free spyware detector and eradicator

One of the best and most popular free program is Ad-Aware. It checks your system for spyware, finding not only program files, but also Registry entries and cookies. After it does a check, you can choose which spyware problems you want the program to fix, and it’ll go about its work, deleting files, folders, and cookies, and fixing Registry entries. Because no one spyware-killer is perfect, I suggest getting another free one, Spybot Search & Destroy. If you’re a Vista user, you already have a free piece of antispyware, Windows Defender, shown on the picture below, on your system. If you use an earlier version of Windows, get a free copy of Windows Defender.



Be vigilant about what you download

There are plenty of free programs available on the Internet, but not all have good intentions in mind. Some are spyware. So be careful before downloading any free software. Go to reputable download sites, such as the download library run by PC World or to CNET Download.com and read the descriptions and reviews, to make sure the software doesn’t carry a spyware load. In addition, head to the Index of Known Spyware page run by Gibson Research, the SpywareGuide, and the Spyware Warrior List of spyware for a list of spyware programs.

Use a personal firewall such as ZoneAlarm

A personal firewall will let you block any program on your system from contacting the Internet without your approval. With one installed, spyware can’t “phone home” and alert others to your surfing habits. Windows XP’s Windows Firewall doesn’t have this capability, so you can’t use it to block spyware. Windows Vista’s Windows Firewall is better than XP’s at blocking these kinds of outbound connections, but it may not block all of them. For maximum safety, get a free firewall such as ZoneAlarm.

Kill pop ups

Pop-up ads are a common way of delivering spyware. Click a pop up, and you might get infected with spyware. So, kill pop ups. Internet Explorer includes pop-up killers, as does Firefox. But keep in mind that sometimes pop-ups make it through their pop-up killers. If one does, close it down and don’t click anything inside it (especially fake close buttons; be sure to use the real Windows controls in the upper corners of the window).

Be wary of files and links sent in instant messages

Increasingly, spyware is propagated via instant messaging programs. Spyware can in essence take over someone’s instant messaging program and then send itself to everyone on the buddy list, either as an executable file or a link—and it appears that a person, rather than spyware is sending the file or link. So before clicking a link or using a file sent via instant messaging, double-check with your friend that he is actually sending you something, and that spyware hasn’t done the job.

Stop drive-by downloads

A web site might attempt to download software to your PC without your knowledge, and it might carry a spyware payload. Internet Explorer includes tools to stop drive-by downloads, as does Firefox. However, they’re not necessarily 100 percent effective. So don’t click links sent to you in spam, which can lead to sites with drive-by downloads.

Watch Out for Web Bugs

Web bugs are invisible bits of data, frequently a single pixel in size (sometimes called clear GIFs), that can track all your activities on a web site and report them back to a server. They are one of the more pernicious ways your online activities can be tracked, no matter which browser you’re using. Sometimes, the web site the bugs send information to isn’t the one that contains the web bug; for example, a web bug might send information back to an online advertising network.

Web bugs can send the following information back to a server:

• The IP address of your computer
• The URL of the page on which the web bug is located, so they know you visited the page
• The time the web bug was viewed, so they know exactly when you visited the page
• The URL of the web bug image
• The type of browser you have
• The values of certain cookies (generally only cookies set by the web site that the bug resides on)

A free piece of software called Bugnosis will alert you whenever it comes across web bugs on pages you visit. It reports on the URL the bug reports to, and, for some bugs, it lets you click a link it creates so that you can send an email of complaint to the web site that runs the bug. It runs inside Internet Explorer as a toolbar and doesn’t work with any other browsers.

The software can’t actually protect you against web bugs, but it can alert you when you visit pages that use them, so you’ll know to stay away from them in the future. When you visit a site, the Bugnosis toolbar reports on the number of suspicious items that might be web bugs. To see detailed information about each suspicious item and web bug, click the down arrow next to the Bugnosis logo, and choose Bugs Found in This Session. You’ll see a list of every suspicious web bug. Click the item, and you’ll see a more detailed description, and an analysis on whether the item is truly a web bug or only suspicious.

Bugnosis can’t actually block web bugs; it can only alert you to their presence. If you want your privacy protected when you surf the Web, your best bet is to surf anonymously.