Install a Firewall
Protecting your computer is important and keeping it safe from a harmful virus can be difficult at times. Viruses are constantly changing, being rewritten, and evolving to attack new defensive measures taken against them. But there is no reason to give up hope. There are many talented people working on developing countermeasures for viruses and there are even some things that you yourself can do.
The first thing you can do is install a firewall to protect your computer. This will monitor your computers communications ports and block any unauthorized activity. While not a 100% guarantee of protection it can keep many types of harmful virus out of your machine. Many people that suffer from infections do not have a firewall and this basic step could save them a lot of grief in the long run.
The second thing that you can do is to make sure you have some kind of antivirus software on your machine. This is an active form of protection rather than a passive form. While passive protection protects by immunization and blocking problems active protection works by seeking out threats. Once an active protection program finds a threat it will often ask you what you want to do and then take the appropriate action.
The reason that user interaction is required is that the identification of a harmful virus isn’t perfect. Sometimes legitimate programs can be identified as threats simply by the nature in which they work. If you know for a fact that a found program or file is something that you use then you will in most cases tell the scanner to ignore it now and forever. This results in fewer false positives down the line.
If however the program or file that is found is not something that you know then chances are it’s a harmful virus. In most cases you want to tell the program to heal the file, delete the file, or quarantine the file. Quarantining is done when the antivirus software cannot remove or heal the file but can lock it down and prevent it from accessing the rest of the computer. While it’s still on your machine it’s safely locked away and in most cases a copy can be uploaded to the protection software company’s database for study and analysis.
This is how they develop new detection rules and removal routines. Aside from having programs installed to protect and scan your computer there are a few common sense things that you can do to protect yourself. Making a backup of your personal data and saving it to an external hard drive every week or so can help you in the event your computer is wiped out.
You should also never open any spam email or any email that has an unfamiliar name or a strange subject line. Above all else never click on any pop ups that say you’ve won something or click here to win. These are obvious traps but they can ensnare people who don’t pay enough attention.
Hopefully some of these suggestions will give you an idea of how to protect yourself from a harmful virus. While not 100% foolproof they can keep many infections and parasites out of your system. Remember to update your protection once a month and scan every week to be on the safe side.