Protecting your PC from malware such as viruses, rootkits, spyware, etc.

Things have changed in the last year, and change is accelerating. Many PCs with current, up-to-date anti-virus and spyware protection are actually infected. And people are getting more and more confused, causing both under- and over-protective responses.

This is just a brief overview to get you started. Post a comment if you need help and I'll try to respond quickly. I'll dig right in with some recommendations first:

Consider running a free Prevx scan to find any infections that have bypassed your existing security. If Prevx finds an infection, call me and I can help you remove it without having to buy Prevx, although I do recommend their product. Also run a full scan using whatever antivirus product you have installed, and install and run the free SuperAntiSpyware (popular with some anti-root kit tech support professionals)---even if you alread have an anti-spyware product. Realize that SuperAntiSpyware will pick up what are to most people unimportant advertising cookies, more a report rather than a warning.

If you don't use an anti-virus product from either (1) ESET, (2) Panda or (3) AVG/Grisoft, I recommend switching to one of these three. That means download a free trial of their product, disconnect from the internet, uninstall your current product, install the new one, and reconnect to the internet. Then I recommend purchasing the product within the free trial period. (Grisoft has replaced Sophos as one of my top three recommendations.)

If you use ESET NOD32 Anti-Virus, I recommend upgrading to ESET NOD32 Smart Security.

If you want to read news about how things are changing, here is an article about how a bunch of companies were outed this summer as being infected despite having up-to-date anti-malware protection installed. Or read about the rise of rootkits.

I'll add to this article as time permits.