7 Common PC Security Mistakes

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Author: Kelly Wright

Below you will find seve­ral mis­ta­kes which I find to be typi­cal of PC users. Not all of them are cru­cial alone, but taken together they can have a dras­tic impact on ove­rall PC secu­rity. It doesn’t cost a dime to know what you shouldn’t be doing at all and what you should be doing in a pro­per way. Some mis­ta­kes lead to frus­tra­ted expe­rience, and I want you to avoid it.

1. Expec­ting too much from your current anti­vi­rus pro­gram. In fact, rel­ying on anti­vi­rus alone is dan­ge­rous by itself because peo­ple are inc­li­ned to trust ven­dors who claim to pro­vide 100% detec­tion rate and fas­test scans in the world. The truth is: every anti­vi­rus can fail soo­ner or later. Sta­te­ments of 100% detec­tion are based on laboratory-carried tests which rarely have anything in com­mon with real life sur­fing, down­loa­ding, watching videos etc. Anti­vi­rus is impor­tant, sure, but only as part of multi-layered protection.

2. Igno­ring Mic­ro­soft Win­dows upda­tes. Mic­ro­soft relea­ses secu­rity hot­fi­xes for Win­dows and its pro­ducts (Inter­net Explo­rer, Office, etc) which are meant to cover revea­led vul­ne­ra­bi­li­ties. It is impor­tant to have them ins­ta­lled in the sys­tem. Same applies to 3d party soft­ware which is com­mon in net­books and desk­top com­pu­ters. Keep your Java, Adobe, Fire­fox patched. Soft­ware manu­fac­tu­rers do have rea­sons to pro­vide upda­tes. For ins­tance, a Java vul­ne­ra­bi­lity has been used to spread Vir­tu­monde, a really nasty infection.

3. Using Syman­tec anti­vi­rus. This is deba­ta­ble, a lot of peo­ple are fans of Syman­tec pro­ducts, and they have rea­sons to. But my little expe­rience hel­ping PC owners to get rid of various types of mal­ware shows that Syman­tec pro­tec­tion is com­mon on infec­ted com­pu­ters. Its pro­tec­tion is insuf­fi­cient, to put it mildly. If you can switch to another anti­vi­rus soft­ware, do it. There are bet­ter alter­na­ti­ves pri­ced lower than Symantec.

4. Ins­ta­lling fake or rogue antispy­ware pro­gram. I just can’t stress enough how impor­tant it is. It hap­pens with user con­sent and per­mis­sion. How? Sim­ple. Get­ting per­sua­ded to get a decent antispy­ware pro­tec­tion, an ave­rage PC user goes online and looks for some “best antispy­ware”. This is a com­mon keyph­rase tar­ge­ted by scam­mers. They go to great lengths to make their web­si­tes rank high for this par­ti­cu­lar term. Unsus­pec­ting user down­loads something tit­led very close to a famous brand and ins­tantly infects the sys­tem with mal­ware, while res­ting assu­red that “best antispy­ware” will put a strong shield on the way of intru­ders. It is not that rare to come across a PC unin­ten­tio­nally infec­ted with mali­cious, fake antispy­ware program.

5. For­get­ting to renew anti­vi­rus subsc­rip­tion. Depen­ding on how your anti­vi­rus was ini­tially con­fi­gu­red, it may not warn about expi­red subsc­rip­tion. Expi­red anti­vi­rus is not recei­ving latest upda­tes and its real-time moni­tor can be deac­ti­va­ted. So it makes sense to keep an eye on your anti­vi­rus shield.

6. Con­fi­gu­ring soft­ware fire­wall is not a sim­ple task. Even those pro­grams with self-learning mode need some time to “get fami­liar” with run­ning appli­ca­tions. But a pro­perly con­fi­gu­red fire­wall is a great hel­per to your safety, it mini­mi­zes the chan­ces of intru­sion from the network.

7. Using a poten­tially vul­ne­ra­ble email client. So, Out­look Express has become noto­rious for its abi­lity to miss mes­sa­ges with dan­ge­rous attach­ments and links to mali­cious web­si­tes. A good email client should have some sort of “inter­nal inte­lli­gence” to make the user’s expe­rience as safe as pos­si­ble. It’s best not to open mes­sa­ges coming from sus­pi­cious addres­ses. Also, con­fi­gure your email to be scan­ned by anti­vi­rus. Set in the options to receive only hea­ders of mes­sa­ges ins­tead of bodies; this way you will be able to read tit­les of the mes­sa­ges without down­loa­ding them onto your com­pu­ter. It allows to quickly detect sus­pi­cious messages.

These are indeed very com­mon mis­ta­kes which can be accoun­ted for such a large num­ber of com­pu­ters infec­ted with malware.

About the Author:

Kelly Wright has crea­ted a guide to set­ting up PC secu­rity using free soft­ware. A com­bi­na­tion of anti­vi­rus, antispy­ware and fire­wall will suit most home users kee­ping their com­pu­ters safe.

Article Source: ArticlesBase.com — 7 Com­mon PC Secu­rity Mistakes