To surf safely, your browser can also play an important role. There are so many choices for browsers now: IE, Firefox, Chrome, Opera, SeaMonkey; all are freely available. But unfortunately, most users are still using the crappy piece of IE, simply because it is bundled by M$.

You should dump IE when you get your new PC. Most computer viruses or malware reply on IE, because M$ tightly integrate IE with the Windows OS.

In addition, IE is notorious for ignoring the web standards and trying best to drag the advancement in HTML standard. Although M$ changed gradually changed the strategy since IE 8, it is too little, too small.

Sadly, if you are not using Windows 7, you cannot disable or … Read the rest

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After reading the part 1 of this guide, you installed the antivirus software (hopefully, it is Avast), you may still expose yourself to something named malware occasionally.

Malware includes all malicious software. Some examples are: computer viruses, worms, trojan horses, spyware, adware,  and rootkits. The purpose of malware is to steal some information from your computer or to gain unauthorized access of your computer. Normally, in the computer security industry, we classify them into virus and malware.

Just like antivirus software, there is anti-malware software. Most antivirus software has some capabilities to scan and remove malware, especially rootkits, worms and trojan horses. But for adware, spyware, most of the time, you need anti-malware software.

For anti-malware, I usually recommend the free Malwarebytes Anti-Malware Free, … Read the rest

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In the DOS era, the computer virus was mainly spreading through floppy disks. At that time, it was cool to bring a box of floppy disks around, just like nowadays bringing an iPad around.

The ever-increasing threat of virus in the last 3 decades was the result of the dominance of  M$ Windows+ the proliferation of the Internet. The Internet is a good innovation: it changes the way how information is propagated, and make information sharing is so easy and fast. Unfortunately, it also accelerates the spreading of computer viruses. The security vulnerabilities in Microsoft Windows were, are and, will be the hotbed for computer viruses.

The dominance of Windows, as well its security vulnerabilities, will not change anytime … Read the rest

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