I have a basic anti-virus on my computer but it was put on by someone who knew the best free programs. He also suggested that I use CCleaner every so often to make sure nothing malicious has made its way into my system. The place where I usually have issues is in updating. I used to get frustrated with all of the updates so I had stopped loading them. Although, within the past year I realized how helpful it actually is and started doing it again and I'm glad for that because I didn't know how much of a factor that was in protecting my system.
There are several things I (and anyone else!) can do to be more secure online.
- First, change passwords to be more secure. I didn't realize that the characters that are included in a password can be found so easily just by running a program that is designed to do just that. I thought that including a variety of characters just made it hard for the people themselves to guess it. If my passwords include more variety, my computer will definitely be more secure.
- Second, I can be more cautious when clicking on links and emails. I usually don't have a problem clicking on unsecure things and I can usually recognize phishing attacks and malicious links. However, being extra cautious about what I do click on could make the difference in whether or not I allow a virus or trojan horse into my system. It only takes once. I know that from experience when I had a virus crash my computer last summer.
- Finally, like I already said, I can make sure that I check for updates more often and allow them load so that there is no chance of malicious content because of something related to that.
