Viruses, worms and Trojan horses

EVERYONE who owns a PC should realize the serious danger you and your machine are in from viruses, worms, Trojan horses and spyware. Some of these are mere annoyances to your computer. Others cost a great penalty in terms of productive time and aggravation. And some can even cause grievous harm to your computer and those of anyone in your address book, and to your personal financial and/or medical records.

Viruses, worms and Trojan horses are different from spyware. You need to protect your PC against both.

To combat viruses, worms and Trojan horses:

--Purchase a new (2005) edition of virus protection software from Norton/Symantec or McAfee. We also recommend the useful Stinger, which will attack certain specific viruses but is not a general protection program like McAfee or Symantec.

For all programs:

--Run in Safe Mode (at startup, repeatedly press the F8 key until it asks if you want to boot into Safe Mode).

--Use the most current version

--Run regular updates of definitions -- daily is not too often, sad to say.

--Windows XP users should find that installing Service Pack 2 may help.

--Consider using a browser other than Internet Explorer, which is a frequent conduit for malicious software. We recommend Mozilla's FireFox browser as an alternative.